Good morning! Hello! How are you? I am good. The sun is shining. Actually, it’s not, really. I mean, it is, but it’s cloudy. But I have been doing the copy edits on the GMHHAY book and I had completely forgotten that I used to mention the sune every morning when the sun is shining. I seem to have lost that habit somewhere along the way. It was a good one. Gonna try and bring it back. But I guess not today, because it is not sunny out. It is warm, though. It is was mid-70’s yesterday. It is 66° right now. It is just great. It’s one thing I love about this place: the random, absurdly warm winter days. Like… winter days as warm as the warmest summer days where I grew up. I do like that quite a lot. I got through the copy edit part where my mom and I were quarantining in the Hyatt last February, and there was an unseasonably warm spell then, too. We would sit on the terrace of the hotel in our facemasks.
Jane had lots of fits yesterday—a big one at breakfast, as I mentioned, and they continued throughout the day here and there.. Then, at dinner, she was trying to take the lid off of a bowl of queso and she spilled it all over herself and all over the floor. I watched it happen, I could tell it was going to happen. I knew I should intervene, and I was thinking about it, but I was weighing that against the huge scream I would receive as a reward for my intervention. That slight pause of hesitation was exactly enough to make me miss my chance, and cause the queso to go pouring all over her lap, down the table leg and onto the floor. I have to say, though, she handled it decently. I mean, don’t get me wrong, she immediately started screaming—and of course the first order of business was to make sure it hadn’t burned her, but it wasn’t that hot. The screaming didn’t last that long, though, and she soon turned to crying and expressing remorse, which she currently does by saying “I wanted to be kind, I tried to be kind.” We try to explain to her that accidents are not unkind, it is what we do afterward, but she is not interested in that. She wants to berate herself more. But that, too, passed pretty quickly.
One thing about spending so much time editing the GMHHAY book right now is that Jane’s past phases are fresh in my mind, the past tantrums, the past resistence, and it puts this period in perspective where, yeah, we might have a tough day like yesterday (I am sure this was because she didn’t go to sleep until after 11), but all in all, it is a lot better.
While editing this book I am struck with two thoughts: 1) my old GMHHAY entries are so much better, I really am phoning it in these days. 2) Lisa is such a good editor, this book is so much better than what I remember writing. And of course the two are related, of course these entries are better when you cut all the bad parts out. I still think the raw material’s probably not as good, though. Also we’re all just so much more exhausted. And we don’t have Trump to keep us perpetually outraged. I really kept up the political stuff for a good while after Biden got elected, and I still occasionally dip back into it, but.. yeah. I’m trying. Anyway, the midterms are coming. WINTER IS COMING. It’ll be back.
Then again, I watched C’mon C’mon last night, and that kid was, like, what? Nine? Ten? And he wasn’t much better than Jane, so maybe I have another six years of this. Who’s to say. I did not enjoy that film. I mean, it was well made, I loved seeing so much of my old neighborhood of New York, and everyone acting in it was brilliant. But also, everyone in the film had huge problems, the weight of their problems, their past, their trauma, and… I am tired of that. There was an article in the New Yorker this week entitled The Case Against the Trauma Plot, and while the article itself spent too much time wallowing in various trauma plots, I strongly agree with its main thesis: the use of trauma has become a crutch in modern media. C’mon C’mon is a great example. Great film, but… couldn’t there be one main character not ruled by trauma? That would be nice. Sure there are plenty of ancillary characters who have their shit together, but to be a main character, you gotta have some pain in your past. Of course, we all have pain in our past, but… yeah. We are not all suffering PTSD.
I think maybe, too, I am getting a little tired of “The National Aesthetic,” ambient, mellow, sparse soundtracks, black and white, big block, sans-serif letters, all caps, inexplicably written across the screen mid-movie, movie shot like a music video, also coincidentally directed by Mike Mills. We have reached peak National, and I am a huge fan of the brothers Devendorf and Dessner, along with their stalward leader Matt, but. I think I’m good for a while.
Of course all these solo projects and collaborations are maybe coming to a close which means maybe there’s another National album coming soon, so, yeah. Maybe we’re not done yet.
I idd love seeing Scarr’s in it, though. I miss that place. Delicious.
Another thing I re-read in the GMHHAY edit yesterday was my long rumination on the new Fabergé egg made in honor of Game of Thrones and how it cost $2.2 million and who was going to buy that and did they just make it to guilt-trip George RR Martin into buying it? Well, I still don’t know the answer but just today, Hollywood Reporter announced that the egg has, in fact, been sold, to an “anonymous US buyer,” and if I were GRRM I’d keep the purchase anonymous too, so, you know, this theory lives on.
Of it’s been a while, I forgot to mention this, but my share of the Green Bay Packers came in. I bought a single share. Why not. I approve of their vaguely socialistic ways, the only major sports team not owned by a plutocrat. Yes, the whole thing is vaguely a scam, and the shares have no voting power or rights, but I am still kind of into this fan-based fractional ownership model, Aaron Rogers aside.
In some actual good news, here is a thread by a researcher who worked with Texas Children’s hospital and Baylor college to make a new COVID vaccine, that is free. They have already produced a hundred and fifty million doses for the developing world, which is more than the US Government has committed at all, and are in the process of shipping a hundred million more, every month. They have development partners in multiple developing nations, and there will be zero licensing costs. Bless these people, they are saints, and they seem to have just done more than our government has done in two years to bring this thing to heel.
Sold a CD copy of Bob Mould’s Workbook yesterday. It still had a price tag sticker on it from Mystery Train, in Boston. That took me back. That great little record store, an institution, was there when I first moved to Boston, had all those bootlegs. Then some friends bought it in… the mid-90s? Late 90’s, I think. And they kept it going for another decade or so. So many rockers worked there. I remember buying stuff from Juliana Hatfield. Hell, maybe this Bob Mould CD was bought from her. Anyway, great little store, great scene. There was that time Fugazi deigned to come back to Boston and they played some indie venue (of course) and Mystery Train was, like, the only place in town from where you could buy your tickets. So cool. Those guys were so cool.
Let’s do a goth mix. New goth. Just learned about this Meridiane band yesterday from John O’Leary and Kathryn Pollnac and they are great, really great. This is a good dark mix, I hope you enjoy it. I know the Cure’s not really “new,” but I swear to god I have only ever listened to 4:13 dream, like, twice. It turns out it’s not all terrible. I really am a lot more appreciative of the Cure’s later work these past few years. Bloodflowers, too. Not a bad album at all. Some of these bands arent’ goth per se but they are making very goth sounding music. This seems to be a growing trend. Goth is a genre people dip into, like when you have a ballad on your album or a folky one. I for one approve of this, fine by me.