Good morning, friend. Hello. How are you this fine and grey Monday? I am good. I have returned home. Got home yesterday. I enjoyed my time alone in the Hyatt Place Hotel 15-501 Southern Village, but it is better to be home. Jane is ambivalent about my return, alternating between hugging me and saying “I missed you daddy” and throwing fits. Emma says she’s been throwing fits for the last three, four days. She apparently does not like change too much. Looking forward to trying to get her back on an even keel. We had a nice bedtime last night. We also had, like, three fits yesterday. I’m still happy to be here. That’s the thing about being away from things you love: you miss the good and the bad.
Anyway, the hotel was lovely. I got to go on long walks through Southern Village, like I used to do before Jane was born. I took a lot of COVID tests and kept having to change my phone timer from three minutes, for my allergy drops, to fifteen minutes, for my COVID tests. The bed was comfy, the curtains blacked things out, the breakfasts were good, the guests were awful. There seemed to be a wedding party and some sort of women’s high school or college (I can’t tell anymore they all look like children) sports team. Masks are required in the lobby but there was always, like, 20% of the people—much higher of a percentage than anywhere else around here—who were scofflawing. But they were all either majestic specimens of health or dressed up in gowns or tuxedos, so I guess it wasn’t all bad.
Last night Emma and I were chatting as I was getting ready for bed and I noticed my soap was gone. I did not notice that the entire bathroom counter had been cleaned. I panicked and I was like where is my soap! And Emma points exactly six inches to the right and says “it’s right there, I moved it, so I could clean the soap holder, which is very clean now did you notice how clean it is? no.” And we both laughed, as I was very embarrassed about my monomaniacal focus on my soap. While I was in the Hyatt Place Hotel 15-501 Southern Village, I was working on editing the GMHHAY book and I had just edited a long passage about these soaps. I love these little round soaps so much. I used to steal them from my hotel in New York, the Nomo SoHo, at which, you will recall, I have just stayed. The thing is, though, on my last trip before the pandemic, they didn’t have the round Molton Brown soaps anymore. They had switched to square soaps, of another brand. I had hoped that maybe that was just some sort of blip, but on this last trip back to the hotel, my triumphant post-pandemic, (er, who are we kidding, let’s scratch that and say our “staggering, stumbling, mid-pandemic return), they still did not have any more Molton Brown little round soaps.
And I wrote a passage during the pandemic about how wasn’t I clever, for planning ahead and stealing a boat load of these soaps before the pandemic, and I had enough to get through the pandemic now, but little did I grasp that I wasn’t going to have to just get through the pandemic…
“I only have so many of these little round soaps,” I said last night, “And these soaps are going to have last me the rest of my life.”
I have eight.
That is not good.
So… Five, six years a soap? Maybe not realistic.
So. You know. When you get your copy of the print edition of Good Morning Hello How Are You, and you get to that passage about the soap, remember this passage, and you can have a nice sense of soap foreboding for a good year or so.
Soap foreboding. Wouldn’t that be great if that was the only sort of foreboding we had? Good grief.
Here is a fun video my old friend Jake made that you may enjoy. I am very fond of the Dream Eating Freak Show:
Yesterday I went to my first movie in a movie theater in, like, 21 months. It, too, was a staggering, stumbling, mid-pandemic return. I was mildly surprised how many people go to movies in movie theaters these days, though I should not have been since, you know, I still look at box office ratings and I can do math. I chose to go see The Eternals since it has been out a while and I figured there wouldn’t be much of a crowd, and that worked great. I got my favorite seat in the front row (sitting in the back of movie theaters is a meme that will not die in American society, with no rationale or benefit). Almost no one there, and anyway I strongly believe in eating your popcorn as quickly as possible upon arriving at the theater and I am usually done before the movie begins, so my mask was back on before, like two other people arrived in the theater.
The Eternals was okay. Props to Disney for taking a little bit of a risk, props for it not being overloaded with endless, pointless, long fight scenes. It only had, like, three endless, pointless, long fight scenes. Props for daring to put celestials in movies, the whole thing really is supremely ridiculous. It’s interesting how Chloé Zhao could do more with awe-isnpiring vistas in Nomadland than with that giant Disney budget. It’s like we instantly mentally adjust and are less impressed with a panoramic scene of a desert when it’s in a Disney movie than a human-scale one. I think there was a lot of interesting lore in The Eternals, it juusssst tapped into that childlike sense of wonder I had when I first watched The Highlander or Interview With The Vampire about immortality. But it may have been perhaps best served as their most atmospheric, experimental Disney Plus show. It could have benefitted with more time and it was already two and a half hours.
Speaking of Interview… Anne Rice died. I have literally no idea what was up with her for the last thirty years, but those Lestat books were huge in my childhood, and I loved how bonkers her stories got. I got my copy of Tale of the Body Thief signed by her in the BU Bookstore in 1992 and I was so nervous, it was like meeting a diety. RIP.
Speaking of RIP I watched the HBO Documentary Adrienne last night and… my god. It was… gutting. I started crying within the first minute. Somewhere around minute four, they are interviewing Nathan Fillion, who starred along Adrienne Shelley in her final film, Waitress, and he started tearing up, and I almost lost it again. And then they introduce her daughter, now, and I start bawling and it doesn’t stop. I rememeber all of this so vividly. Adrienne was such a star, but, like, a connosieur’s star. Everyone who loved indie film knew who she was, and she was on, like, the cover of Interview, but the average person had no idea then, and the average person has no idea now, even as the musical Waitress passed 1,500 Broadway performances. And I remember her death so vividly, I remember those days when they told us it was a suicide and I remember thinking that was so, so crazy and seemed so impossible, but what did I know I didn’t know Adrienne Shelley, I just idolized her. And I remember when they annouced whoops, nope, turns out it was a murder, and I remember when they caught the guy. It was all so insane. It still is! So senseless, so random.
And it’s so visceral and raw thinking about how her husand, her child, have to keep living this.
Yeah I don’t know if I needed 90 minutes of solid crying while away from my wife and child, but it sure made it all the better when I got home, even if Jane didn’t care, I did.
That’s the thing about being away from things you love: you miss the good and the bad.
Speaking of Nathan Fillion they are going to reboot Firefly on Disney Plus — they got the rights when they bought Fox. I mean, props to them for doing what Fox was too chicken and lazy to do, but… I am dubious. They’re gonna tone it down, make it family friendly. And Joss Whedon is not on it. I mean, I know the guy is cancelled, but… Joss is first and foremost a writer, and the great thing about writers is they can write alone. I think, for his level of crimes, a solo gig, away from everyone, writing the outline and such, is entirely a reasonable compromise. Hand it over to a showrunner and a writer’s room, he stays in his probation, away from the production, but we get something that feels more… connected to the original. Maybe this is a problematic viewpoint. I will ponder that.
I also finished off Get Back while in quarantine, but I have so many thoughts about that, I think I am going to just save them all for the podcast, because I could ramble on for, like, three hours about it and no one needs that sort of thing.
And now I can turn my attention to Succession, since the finale happened yesterday. No spoilers, please. I’m not sure why, but this is a rare thing where I care about spoilers.
Last Saturday—two days ago— was Barbarian Day. December 11th is the anniversary of the day that Barbarian Group became a legal entity. In 2001. So it was exactly twenty years. I wonder if anyone actually working there had any idea. Anyway, happy birthday, old company. You will be able to have a drink next year. You can vote now. Let me introduce you to the concept of ranked voting.
Anyway, happy to be home. I think the trip did its purpose. I am renewed. I am ready for work, then the holidays. The end of the year and all of my little tasks that need to be done. The routine, god, routines are great.
Mix time! Let’s do a quiet and moody one. Lotso f new stuff, mostly new. Got a lot of music to catch up on, now that I’m home.
Talk to you guys tomorrow! Have a button!
rick, good news, you can buy these soaps on ebay (but they'll cost you at least $4.87 apiece): https://www.ebay.com/itm/265237024080?chn=ps&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-117182-37290-0&mkcid=2&itemid=265237024080&targetid=1264870805424&device=c&mktype=pla&googleloc=9001999&poi=&campaignid=13920139115&mkgroupid=126556537844&rlsatarget=pla-1264870805424&abcId=9300613&merchantid=8457994&gclid=CjwKCAiA-9uNBhBTEiwAN3IlNC6AT4-thcMIF_Fh7SSVvNTVKFS0u1BySkARMHV0Z8DR6vCxhwFqihoCgQAQAvD_BwE here's the company's official website. you may have to contact them directly and pretend you own a property, but then i bet you REALLY could have a lifetime supply! https://www.moltonbrown.com/store/hotel-amenities/hotel-products/essential-accessories
i know it's not the same as getting them for free. womp womp.
also i saw an old friend in NY, and her nephew, who is living and working remotely in porto, works with your pal aubrey (i'll txt you about it!)