Good morning! Hello. How are you today? I am good. Running a smidge later than usual since Jane is at Grammy’s house and I decided an extra half hour or so of sleep would be nice. I was having some very nice dreams and I didn’t want to get up. It was very cozy, and I was amongst friends. Like the olden days. Which will never happen again.
So COVID’s on the rebound and I sure lucked out on that New York trip. Dodged a bulled on that one. My friend Paul sent me some tweets about 11 of 20 people in a group getting COVID at the LCD Soundsystem show on Thursday night, the night after the one I went to. And I can be smug and say “well, no one there was keeping their mask on, I kept mine on the whole time,” which is true, but of course it isn’t true at all of Tuesday night at Tom and Jerry’s. Vax checks are good. Masks are good. Vax checks and masks are real good. But you know what’s not good at all these days, I think? People saying “vax required” and not checking, or “most people are vaxed.” This is all just unproven theory, but I feel like with Omicron right now, one unvaxed person with a heavy viral load can wander into a party where everyone else is vaxed, and manage to get, like ten, twenty people sick. But one sick COVID person who’s also vaxed can walk into a party and it won’t be such a ticking time bomb. And I feel like people who just put “vax required” on an invite or something, and don’t check? Well, someone’s gonna cheat.
On a related note, the City of New York is requiring us employers to check the vax cards of all their employees. It’s a bit of a weird situation: you have to check the card of everyone who lives in New York City, and everyone who works in New York City. But, like, if you have an employee who lives in Jersey City who doesn’t work in the office, you don’t have to. And, like, I have a Texan employee whom I can’t check the card of, of course, unless they need to come work in New York City, but then I have to, except I guess I have to wait till they leave Texas? Unclear. And of course, Justworks hasn’t built any functionality for this because it’s so complex and it’s only for one city and the deadline is in like one more week, three weeks after it was announced and what big company can build a whole functional module in three weeks anymore. The best part is it’s, like, specifically the city limits, so, like, I am, like Googling all these random town names checking if they are in the city limits or not.
It is oddly intimate looking at all these vax cards. I mean, a million bouncers across America are doing this every day, it’s nothing special, but up until yesterday I’d really only seen my card and my wife’s. I’ll tell you: everyone else’s cards are much more neatly written than mine. Those people in Moncure, NC did not know how to fill out a vax card.
I have tickets to the hot show in town this evening, a sold-out club show of The Mountain Goats at Cat’s Cradle, one of America’s best venues and a smaller one than the Mountain Goats play normally these days, but I am, alas, probably going to pass. Cat’s Cradle is still doing “Vax or negative test from the last three days” as their admissions requirment and that is manifestly not enough these days, as evidenced by the LCD show Thursday. I am sad, but I think I’m laying low on the shows again for a few months. Feels right. I am not a cat.
My copy of the new photo book Grass to Gaze: Slough Festival 1991 by Joe Dilworth arrived yesterday. The Slough Festival was basiclaly the shoegaze Woodstock: Ride, Slowdive, Lush, Curve, Chapterhouse, Revolver, Thousand Yard Stare, my god, can you imagine? We don’t need no stinkin My Bloody Valentine. It’s a great little chapbook. I shot so many shows back then, and it’s never occurred to me to sort of go and look back and see if I shot enough of any one show to make a nice little historical time capsule book like this, but my gut says “probably not.” Joe Dilworth did a great job capturing the crowd as well, which I never really bothered with, but make a book like this so rewarding as a time capsule thirty years later.
Today I am going to do my podcast and basically talk for thirty minutes at least about Get Back, so that will be fun. If you are an afficianado of the podcast keep an eye on your favorite podcast app in, oh, like two, three hours.
Yesterday was so nice out, mid 60’s. I am sort-of hoping that it lasts one more day, so I can do one last leaf-vacuuming pass on the lawn, collecting the leaves for my leaf mould compost, but a cold front is imminent and I may not make it. Fingers crossed.
Oh fun my COVID test was just negative. Think I am probably in the clear now, eight days after my flight home.
Except for those bastards at the hotel.
They have added solar panels to Laguardia, which is great, but get a load of this local news feature on the topic, I don’t think I’ve watched a local news segment in, like, oh, more than a decade, but I am stunned that they are exactly the same. That “gee whiz what’s this solar thing called” artificial idiocy. It really is stunningly bad. Been a while since I’ve seen an industry say “fuck it, we’re gonna just die with our customer base.”
CHRISTMAS IS COMING. And after Christmas I am going to start pumping myself full of this magical weight loss drug for three months, so it occurred to me that if I want to make delicious bagels again, it needs to be this weekend. So, Christmas bagels here I come. I also need to decide, like today, if I want to do a big Christmas dinner or not. I am genuinely torn. Emma and Janet always say they don’t care. But maybe they do. I will consult.
What films should I watch? I am going to try and do my annual Christmas vacation movie marathon. Which is gonna be difficult since I don’t want to go to movie theaters. But I have House of Gucci, Eyes of Tammy Faye, Spencer, The Matrix, Don’t Look Up, Spiderman, Nightmare Alley, Tik Ti Boom, Liquorice Pizza, French Dispatch, Power of the Dog. Any I am missing? Any of those skippable? I am looking at you, Josh Bis.
Let’s see.. what else… Hrm. I don’t think I have much more today. I feel like GMHHAY had a good run this week, forgive me this one half-assed entry.
Here is an ambient playlist to chill with for the weekend. I think you should consider playing it right around 2 PM tomorrow, just lay on the couch and listen it’ll be great. I won’t do that, of course, because I am neurotic and feel like I must be productive at all moments and cannot waste a single second of my precious weekends being unproductive, but, then, this is why I like ambent music, because it helps keep that neurosis in check. Meditation, yo.
Have a lovely weekend. BE SAFE.