Good morning. Hello. How are you? #480
Abby and Grendel's and Maddow, Tribe Abort 30th, Mythbusters TNT box, in defense of the Wachowskis, big talkers, Love Night
Good morning, hello, how are you? To all of you but especially to friend of GMHHAY, long-time reader and long-time best friend Abby, who last night had her tireless pandemic-era efforts extolled on the Rachel Maddow Show, as Rachel talked about Lawrence Tribe’s new op-ed, How a Massachusetts case could end the Texas Abortion Law. Abby is a manager at Grendel’s Den, as well as the instigator of their merch store, which Rachel called out last night while explaining the history of Grendel’s 1980’s journey to the Supreme Court, shepherded by Tribe, in a successful effort to overthrow a restrictive Massachusetts liquor license law. Rachel made a point of talking about how great the merch was, and this has, gloriously, lead to a run on the merch store, with most everything selling out. Even my mom texted me this morning about it and told me to go buy some Grendel’s merch, so I got to tell her that Abby, whom she knows, runs the whole thing. Fantastic. I love a good TV-inspired run on merch what a good, clean use of the internet. Very 1990’s.
Grendel’s has been of late getting a bit of shit for being one of the earliest restaurants in the Boston area to implement a vaccine mandate, so it’s nice to see them getting a bit of good attention now. YAY.
Speaking of Boston and Tribe (har har har), the Boston band Tribe’s major-label album, Abort turned thirty last week. They were a great band. A bunch of the band members lived in Brighton near my friend Mike and we used to sort of semi-stalk them, not really stalk them but were very excited whenever we’d see them on the street, especially Terri because “Rescue Me” is the best Tribe song, fight me:
Later on I worked with and became friends with the drummer Dave, we still chat on Facebook, he was a great guy, and he told me some great stories about working with Gil Norton and it was all very glamorous.
I remember vividly the first time I heard the first single, “Joyride.” I was driving back into Boston and I was hitting that point right around Framingham on the Mass Pike where the WFNX signal kicked back in and you could listen once again, and just as I did that, the DJ was like “Tribe’s new major label debut is coming out soon and here’s the first single!” And I was very excited.
And I remember seeing them, god, so many times. Like a dozen, at least. I even got to see them at the Boston Garden, with The Call, who I go on and on and on about these days because The Call were one of America’s best 80’s bands. I remember going to that show with my dorm-mate Paula. It was super fun.
Anyway, happy birthday Abort. You are a great album. I wish you were on Spotify, but that’s okay, I own the vinyl.
In other online merch news, my Stars of the Lid shirt, referenced in a previous GMHHAY, came in yesterday. I am wearing it today. It makes me very excited. I am happy about it. Nice shirt.
(There’s this guy, the Lock-Picking Lawyer on Youtube and he has thousands of YouTube videos, dude’s been at it a while, and he’s so good at saying “if you want to see that, go check out video 1138” or whatever. I really need to get some sort of index of past issues together so I can quickly link to them.)
And also in our TV watching yesterday, Emma and I realized that the TNT box we bought at the Mythbusters charity auction is in one of the more iconic opening credit scenes. Mythbusters doesn’t have one set of opening credits, they have dozens, but this scene is a pretty frequent one, and most Mythbusters fans will remember it. That is exciting!
Day 20 with no nicotine. Day 12 post-leg-injury. It’s doing a bit better today. Bruise is still nutso and there are certain positions that suck, and certain moves I can’t do — closing my legs is especially difficult — but sitting and standing are not so bad. I love my giant ice packs and my big man-sized compression bandages. Yesterday was a big day since we actually went out on the family after-dinner walk for the first time in 12 days. We didn’t do the whole walk, but we went down the big hill and back, and it was so nice. I have missed the walk so much. I couldn’t walk as fast as before, but it was a great first effort. Jane didn’t use the stroller, so our slower, leisurely pace suited her just fine.
There’s a new Matrix movie coming, and they launched a little teaser site for it, like in the 2000’s when we all made cool movie trailer Flash websites oh my god I miss that so much back when the internet was faaaar more (though by no means completely) benign. Making movie websites out of Flash. Man. I wonder where Hi-res! is now. Their website is down. Sadz.
Anyway, I think last night I figured out on which internet hill I’m going to pointlessly die on, needlessly ruining my career and reputation about something that is technically right, but no one needs to really bother defending it:
It’s true. You know what? The Wachowskis are fantastic filmmakers. The two Matrix sequels are waaaaaay better than you remember them. The plot is solid, there are too many side-quests but most of the side-quests are kind of cool. The action scenes are too long but they by and large mostly hold up and are still very good. The highway action scene is still very good. Bullet-time has been so widely imitated the original awe you felt while watching it is gone, but that’s doubly true of the first Matrix movie. One scene that does not get enough credit is the final battle of the machines against the humans on the landing bay of Zion, which still looks amazing from a VFX point of view (fun fact, Adam Savage of Mythbusters worked on the 40-plus-foot model of the hangar bay for The Matrix sequels) but is emotionally harrowing and moving as well.
Where the sequels lost me the first time around was, for some reason, the rave scene on Zion where, like, I guess I thought it was unrealistic that a society under the threat of such peril would still feel like dancing hahaha yeah well I’ve learned my lesson on that one.
But most importantly, the central conceit of the sequels, the plot, is good. It is a good plot, it holds up, it makes sense, it was not pandering, it is clever, and even now, having seen them before, it’s quite possible you don’t quite remember the plot correctly or don’t give it enough credit.
The two worst things, I think, that can be said of the Wachowskis is sometimes their actors — especially mediocre ones or ones not used to working against greenscreen — sometimes feel wooden and their takes are bad. Sort of a Lucasian problem, but not nearly to the extent of St. George. You could also accuse them of often making their actions sequences too long — this is certainly the case in the Matrix sequels, Jupiter Ascending and Speed Racer. Though it’s also the case on The Force Awakens and, say, Avengers Endgame which suffers the exact same problem as the Matrix sequels: It could have been one film, if the action scenes were cut down. But no one is complaining about that one.
Then we have Cloud Atlas, which, if you ask me, is a nearly perfect film. Yes, some view it problematic since some actors play characters of other races, but this is a central point of the film, of the book, a major theme, the recurrence of different aspects of humanity throughout time, the echoes, the persistence of essential aspects of the human soul transcending physical boundaries. Both of the Wachowskis having transitioned, I’m inclined to give them a pass on this. And even if, in the end, we view that decision as a mistake there’s no denying the bonkers, singular beauty of that film. It’s just phenomenal. It stands alone.
I would even re-watch a one-hour, or perhaps six-hour cut of Jupiter Ascending. There is a lot of interesting plot and universe development in there and, hear me out, I think a large part of the hate against that film is garden-variety sexism, where the chosen-one trope that we all love in films, was used with, gasp, a woman. Heaven forbid.
Still reading What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 by Daniel Walker Howe. It’s so good. Loving this book. Great period of American history that I didn’t know enough about. Last night I was reading about Charles Grandison Finney, the preacher most responsible for the religious revival in America known as the second great awakening. The thing about Finney is that originally he was a lawyer. Then he had a religious awakening, an epiphany, a life-altering revelation, got baptized, went back to work and told his client that he could not help him defend the law because the only law he could defend from here on out was god’s law, and he walked out of his law practice.
Which sounds super fun! And I was thinking last night how awesome that must be, to wake up one day, have a revelation, and change your life. And how more secularly-minded individuals need that experience. I mean, I guess I sorta-had one the day I walked out of my job and decided I needed to leave New York and move to North Carolina, but it doesn’t seem like the same thing, maybe. Or maybe it is. Maybe I just want another one. Also, dude was 29 when this happened, lucky duck.
The other thing that struck me reading this — and I’m sure not sure if I can make this make sense — is how self-reinforcing cults, big ideas, and big talkers are. Like it’s almost self-fulfilling. If you have some big idea, and you talk big about it, and just act confident and charismatic and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk, it is basically inevitable, that, given that you’ve talked and talked and talked and talked to, like, a thousand people, because you’re such a charismatic talker… it’s basically inevitable that a few people are going to latch on, to click with it, to follow you. Despite how every single person misunderstands this, the truth is that this is absolutely not a sign of the quality of the idea.
And you, you’re going to think, because you’ve got people following you now, that you’re on to something, that you’re somehow right. But you’re not right, you’re just a big talker, and people love big talkers, regardless of whether they’re right.
And in the end, the whole cycle, the whole process, the whole phenomenon is just a giant waste of human energy at best, destructive at worst. It’s like the ultimate heuristic failing, equating big talking with worth, and humans fall for it over and over. It really is something.
Like I see this even in YouTube videos! I’ll start watching some guy or woman doing a thing, building a boat or a farm, and as the months go by, more and more hangers-on appear, and eventually, the YouTuber has a whole freakin CREW. Like people who live there! Who have dropped whatever they were doing in life and moved to a different city to, like, dig a well or grout wood gaps.
It really is something. Humans are so weird.
Or maybe I’m the weird one for simultaneously thinking that is hilarious and dumb but also on some level irresistably compelling.
The point, though, is that it’s just talk. You can just talk about anything and get a following. It doesn’t mean anything.
Eh, I’m not quite getting that to click. Ah well.
Moving on!
A mix!
Got a special mix for you today, a Love Night mix. If you don’t know Love Night, it was the dance night at the Common Ground, in Allston, DJ’d by DJ Brian, that me and a bunch of friends went to for years. It was so fun. It was so fun for years. It really was a great dance night. Also there was so much slow dancing. Like high school-style, one-on-one, arms-around-the-waist-and-shoulders slow dancing. It was a great mix of music.
The thing is, though, it’s actually really hard to remember exactly what songs were played at Love Night. I had the idea to do a Love Night mix like a month ago, made a note, didn’t get around to it, and then yesterday I thought “oh I should dash off that Love Night mix” and remembered, like, three songs. I brought in some help, texting Abby (before she got overwhelmed with Maddow orders), Sean and Jussi, and with their help we managed to cobble together an hour of the mix. But we’re definitely forgetting a ton of the main Love Night songs. Mention some in the comments if you remember any. Like I said to Abby yesterday, “it’s so weird I slow danced with so many beautiful women there, for years, and I can’t remember the songs at all.”
What a magical place, Love Night. To hear Ray Parker’s Ghostbusters every week and not get sick of it — obviously had to be some deep alchemy running through the evening.
Wednesday time. Wednesday the hell out of this Wednesday. Xoxo Gossip Girl.
When I worked at Heavy (first job, basically) we made a lot of Flash promo sites. It seemed so cool and futuristic. Also random memory: I saw The Matrix at the 68th and Broadway theaters. Phantom Menace trailer beforehand. Was so packed that I had to sit in second row. The beginning of the movie with the dripping green code looked like it was raining on me.