Good morning. Hello. How are you? #566
Diet, cigarettes, two years not three, mopey ranting about Manchin and Sinema, finally watching Succession season 3. Passing references to Being John Malkovich and Ethan Hawke's Hamlet.
Well hello there, happy Friday, what is up. I am running a bit behind. Jane is at Grammy’s house for a sleepover this morning. My fingers are extra-arthritic. These two things are not related. I only lost half a pound yesterday, that is a bummer. BUT it occurs to me that another service dieting provides is that it helps me get out of bed. Like I’m lying there, and I’m like “this sucks getting out of bed sucks I’m just not going to do it,” then I remember “but you dieted yesterday. You probably weigh less. You should weigh yourself.” And it gets me out of bed. Of course, five minutes later when I get on the scale are fraught, and some days, even when I have been a good dieter, I didn’t lose any weight, and at that point, I want to go right back to bed, but, you know, I manage. The diet still got me back out of bed.
PSA: Yes, we are in the third calendar year of this pandemic, but come on, we haven’t even hit two years of this pandemic yet. I noticed mid last year we’d started saying two years of pandemic, even though we were at, like, a hear and a half at best. Now I see people saying three, which is hilarious. It’s not even two. But it sure is understandable, right? I get it. Our brains, our souls, are spirits, are mud. It feels like three years. But it’s not. And besides, when we’re still doing this next year, what are we going to say? It’s been five years. Feels like eventually that’ll be.. unhealthy.
Last night, the WITI Slack passed around this fun article about the cool kids in New York smoking again. As Felix pointed out, Martin Amis’ daugher and Alexander Calder’s great grand daughter are two main quotes so, you know, must be a real thing amongst real people. I suppose if you’re Martin Amis’ daughter, you have two choices in life: rebel and not smoke, or turn into your parents and smoke. Sort of genuinely shocked she chose the latter path, but, then, so did Martin I suppose. Anyway, to me this mostly reads as an article by someone who grew up and stopped going to Bushwick sometime ago, and while I haven’t been to Bushwick since the pandemic, I was still popping in with some regularity before that, never really stopped popping into Bushwick, and I can tell you that for the last decade, people have still been smoking in Bushwick. It was interesting to read that in 2020 for the first time in years and years, cigarette sales actually increased.
Man I am glad I finally quit nicotine last year. That’s going great, by the way. It wasn’t that hard at all, in the end. I mean, I’m still eating these stupid zero-calorie mints as a replacement for the lozenges, but whatever. When I did my whole year-end review, I completely forgot that last year I managed to quit nicotine for the first time in, oh, twenty-six, twenty-seven years (I was a late starter). That’s something to be proud of, I ought to give myself a little bit more credit there. Yay me.
What else, what else. Emma and I have finally gotten around to watching the last season of Sucession. Man, Jeremy Strong is a very good actor, that guy can be as wacky as he wants if it delivers that sort of performance. I wonder what he will do next. I hope it is something radically different, and he plays it in a radically different way. Really proves some next-level acting chops. I love it when that happens. Hey speaking of which, we don’t give Cameron Diaz enough credit for Being John Malkovich, that was a very impressive performance. I love it when I can’t see the actor in the role it makes me so happy.
I’ve enjoyed Succession a lot more since I’ve stopped viewing it has having anything to do with the actual media industry and just viewed it as a sort of comedy that takes place in modern times. Just like Ethan Hawke’s criminally underrated Hamlet costarring Bill Murry and the Sony MiniDV deck also took place against the background of New York media empires, but it wasn’t particuarly relevant. Oh man I am going to have to watch that movie again, aren’t I? And start carrying around the GV-D1000 and my old Fisher Price PXL 2000 with the modified RCA Video out jack again, huh? God, that seems like a great idea. Yeah this seems like a great idea I bought a replacement GV-D1000 like a year ago, works great.
Here’s a fun Tweet thread courtesy of Rex that will probably both anger and amuse you. Apparently Krysten Sinema is under the impression she is presidential material and has a shot. This is such a hoot. It’s like..I suppose why not. If you have no purpose in life, no theory of mind, no sense of reality, but you need some organizing pricinples with with to arrange your life, why not shoot for the moon? Can mostly work as well as any other goal in giving you the decision-making framework you need. Ninety percent of the days of your life, it will work just fine. It’s just hat ten percent where you learn, finally, that the goal is a fantasy that will be a little rough, but provided you handle failure well, that shouldn’t necessarily matter. Who cares that we all have to suffer through it in the meantime.
I am kind of enoying Schumer’s push to the senate floor for voting rights right now, even though he doesn’t have the votes. First off, lots of people want to see this happen, they want Sinema and Manchin to have to put their money where their mouth is. Secondly, I like that everyone’s just slightly confused about Chuck’s stratety, what’s the long game here. It’s good to have a little crazy in your leadership, keep the other team on their toes. Sinema and Manchin are toxic, malevolent assholes, and it is right and proper to hold their feet to the fire and make them say they are toxic, malevolent assholes. It is right and proper to stop letting them abuse you, even if that means, in the end, you have to walk away from your dreams, because, here’s the thing, they are toxic and malevolent assholes, and they were never going to help you fulfill your dreams anyway.
Of course, that means that the dream of voting reform is dead, which is so, so painful, but, then, it was never alive anyway. I held out half a hope Schumer had some sort of mid-season twist planned and two Republicans were going to go along with a one-time rule-change for election reform, but, LOL, as we’ve learned recently, hope nd optimism are two different things, we all knew that wasn’t going to happen.
If I’m being honest, I suspect this is the end. The day those votes fail will be, more likely than not, the day the history books point to and say “that was the end of democracy, and the end of the planet.” Of course, I have hope still, and even a shred of naive hope we can keep at least one branch of congress in the midterms, hope that Trump will die, or, god help me, Desantis will beat him in the Florida primary. But hope is not optimism. Hahaha man I am doing a great job turning Tutu’s inspirational words into a depressing kudgel, good job Rick.
Ha whoops. Sorry. Didn’t have anything in my topic list so I guess this is where we’re at. Like Doctor Manhattan said, “Your mind goes to dark places and you wonder why I keep the worst from you.” I feel like I’ve been sort of aimless in my GMHHAY’s this week. I was thinking about it last night. A year ago it was still interesting to, like, ramble on about the paradoxical uniqueness of every day being exactly the same. Every day was exactly the same, but that was a new thing, so there was still something interesting about it. Now, every day is exactly the same, except that very fact is no longer that interesting.
Oh wait! One more thing I wanted to rant about. Pixar employees are super pissed that the next Pixar movie is not getting an exclusive theatrical window, it is going to Disney+ at the same time. So, like, what the fuck is up with Disney right now? I would posit that the move with Luca is correct, and they’re fucking up with all of the other films that they’re giving exclusive theatrical windows in the middle of a pandmic that is killing two thousand people a day. So, like, I can’t espcially get behind Pixar’s desire to give Luca a theatrical window as well. BUT I can definitely say it is bullshit treating Pixar like a second-class citizen. I read somewhere that the driving factor of whether or not Disney is forcing you to risk death to see one of their films on opening day is whether or not it’s a family film, which is very interesting: the childless can go ahead and kill themselves for a film I guess. It’s also very interesting because, like, supposedly this pandemic is less risky for kids, but if your film is aimed at kids? Best not risk giving it an exclusive theatrical release. The whole thing makes no sense.
Oh hey it’s new music Friday, and look, there’s some actual new music in the list instead of Spotify straight-facedly insisting that Can’s Live in Stutgart is a new release three months after it came out. Well that is exciting. And here is your mix today. It is really good. Every song on this mix is awesome. Heart and Soul is the best 80’s “new wave pop” or whatever you call that genre. Such a majestic banger. Lala Lala is a new discovery featuring the woman who sings for Dehd, but it’s more melodic and goth and less rock. Mckenna Grace is the girl who plays the lead in the new Ghostbusters. Heavenly needs a remaster desperately it is too quite sorry. I put the Halo Benders on here because Nick said something disparaging about Beat Happening recently. Thay onlys ort of makes sense. That Fesit song was in Legion which was very good and apparently the creator of Legion (and Fargo) is working on a Star Trek film, which sounds potentially great, at least different than the Section 31 tedium we’ve been subjected to for a decade, but it is in development hell, alas.
Okay! Have a lovely weekend. It’s a three-day one, so I am probably going to take Monday off from GMHHAY as well. Or, at least, I maintain that option. TBD. TTFN.