Good morning! Hello there, what’s shakin’? The sun is shining it looks very pretty out there after a long afternoon of rain yesterday. I just sold two CDs on Discogs — The Bangles’ Greatest Hits and Modest Mouse’s This is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About. Man, I have owned that Bangles CD a long time. More than thirty years, I’ve been lugging that CD from Alaska to Boston back to Alaska back to Boston to New York to North Carolina and something like 25 moves in between. And it’s in pretty good shape! Only cost a dollar, too, this woman in Arkansas got a great day.
I suppose there’s no easy way to come out and say that last night I watched driving home 2 u, the Olivia Rodrigo special on Disney+. See, what happens is Disney sees these wholesome lady artists and decides they want to be associated with them (or, in Rodrigo’s case, associated with her once again) and they write them a check for, you know, a few million dollars, and then these wholesome musician ladies go and make a weird tone poem of a film that sort of pretends to have a point but does not have a point. By my count this is the fourth one of these they’ve made, after the Beyonce one, Taylor Swift one and the Billie Eilish one. Olivia’s was pretty good. It was based on the conceit of a road trip from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles (“one last time,” not sure what that meant) where she drove by herself in a cool Jeep (with the logo painted over) and stopped at places along the way where her cool lady band would magically appear (maybe she had them in her suitcase?) and they would play one of the songs from the album. They did one at Arcosanti, which was awesome, and one at that airplane graveyard. It was cool. This was interspersed with “interview” footage, except there was no interviewer so it was kinda like narration, and historical footage of her and Dan Nigro making Sour.
All of this would be kind of ridiculous except Olivia Rodrigo really is kind of a sensation, and it’s just stunning how in the span of weeks she went from being a 17 year-old girl in high school releasing her first single on the internet to playing giant festivals and on Saturday Night Live and all of these huge high-pressure performances around the world without skipping a beat. Like she is ridiculously good at her craft, she has an amazing voice and has obviously spent her whole life practicing, it really is a feat.
She said something kind of interesting about her album and it’s hyper-dramatic tone. She said that she’s worried that now that “her world is not falling apart” and she’s got a bit of perspective, she’s not sure what her next record is going to sound like, because it’s obviously not going to be (very well done, astonishingly well done) teen angst. I for one am super excited about that, I bet it is going to be awesome. She also said something about how when she was writing “Deja Vu” it was about how much recycling there was in relationships when you’re young, and it’s really all the same, over and over. And, god, that got me remembering that. Remembering how when you’re young, people get good at one part of a relationship but not others, so the next time round they try the parts they were good at again and then try and make the parts they failed at better, like the whole thing was free throw practice or something. That comment really brought me back to something true about young relationships I had forgotten. Making a mix tape for your next lover that has, like, six of the same songs as the previous one, and that’s if you’re not a sociopath using the same mix. That throwaway line of hers really took me back.
And then there is footage of the first time she performed “Driver’s License” in “public” — i.e. streaming on the internet in her bedroom. And behind her, up on the wall, is a framed poster of the Smiths’ The Queen is Dead and that is unfortunate but, you know, fine, also explains a lot in a way. And I was wondering if someone has told Morrissey: hey guess what one of the largest pop stars in the world grew up a fan of yours. And he would be such an asshole about it, pretending to not know who Olivia Rodrigo is while simultaneously slagging off “Drivers License” because you just know this is what Morrissey would do. When of course he doesn’t deserve it at all, they should have taken that poster down, she namechecks plenty of other musicians in her music and anyway she probably just liked Johnny Marr.
Also there is a brilliant, Elise Truow-inspired version of “Traiter” played with live loops from a gas station parking lot.
Not content to spend just an hour twenty in the mind of a teenage girl, I decided to skip up a generation and enter the mind of former teenage girls, now functioning adults out there with jobs and student debt and re-watch Twilight because Hulu put it on its home page. Let’s seee…. I read the first Twilight book in early 2008, and I remember this because I was reading it when we went to see the very first Leonard Cohen show of his comeback tour in Toronto in June of 2008. By later that year when the first film opened, I was living in San Francisco and I went to see the film opening night at the Metreon (RIP. Not that I’m even sure it’s closed but I sure miss that weird place) and it was awesome because it was me drunk and a ton of gay guys who also seemed very drunk. Fantastic time. This kept a tradition for me of seeing every Twilight film opening night, while drunk, which was a great way to see them except I barely have any recollection of them. Turns out I kinda like the first Twilight film! Kristen Stewart is just fantastic as an angsty teen it really is a brilliant performance. I’d totally forgotten Anna Kendrick was in it until Emma reminded me a few weeks ago and I love Anna Kendrick so that was just great. And the bad things are not as bad as I remember. The sparkles are kind of… fine. Like there’s a questionable narrative choice with the sparkles but that’s on Stephanie Meyer not Catherine Hardwicke.
The one thing I had forgotten about, though, is thast it is patently absurd that the Cullens were all in high school at all. That is just dumb. They were faking their ages anyway and there were five of them just fake their ages to 18 and not 17 why the hell would you even bother with the risk of putting all of them in high school and what insane person would want to go to High School when they are, like, 80 or something. Ridiculous plot conceit. Ridiculous.
Other than that, though. Twilight. A-OK. At least the first hour. I didn’t finish it.
Yesterday Jane took the eggs right off of the plate and put them on her tray I did not have to set the plate right in front of her or go sit by her and hand her the eggs and waffles one by one. It was a revelation. It ruled. I am never going back. I’ve gained a good 30 seconds of my life back. Maybe this is the beginning of… hahaha yeah no. She also threw a fit because she had trouble putting her shirt on, she threw another fit because I went and got my slippers the way I do every morning and proceeded to dictate to me exactly how and when I should get my slippers, which turned out to be the exact way I was already getting them, only directed by her, so, yeah. She was mostly unimpressed with Olivia Rodrigo and Twilight, but I did get a picture of her staring very intently at the screen during “Traitor” so, you know, if she’s ever a pop star and I need footage of her being inspired by musicians, I have that.
BUT she went to the doctor with Emma yesterday, got two shots and freaked out a bit but generally handled it, came home covered in Hello Kitty Band Aids and was so excited she had gone to the doctor and gotten shots so I am proud of her for that, and bedtime was very fun and quick. And she wore her mask, properly, the whole time because it is not hard to wear a mask, properly, for long periods of time. Even a four year-old can do it.
Finally, in the world of people who are not girls of teenage or child age, right after I wrote about it yesterday, Elon Musk joined Twitter’s board which is just so dumb and ridiculous I can’t even. I mean, I should stress here that I can’t blame Twitter for this move. They are fucked. They are caught in the crosshairs of the world’s richest man who is compulsive and a chaos agent and the only rational move for them is appeasement what other choice do they have when this dude could ruin their company without even blinking. In one sense this is just like any other private equity takeover, except with a sprinkling of lawbreaking and Puck thrown in for good measure. When people buy 10% of your company you usually can’t ignore them.
But mark my words, this will not end well for anyone involved.
Today’s mix is justa mix, mix ‘o new and old, new Wet Leg, my vinyl shipped, very excited about that and finally getting the whole album I hope they come back to America and come to Cat’s Cradle in, imagonna say, August or so? That would be lovely. Thank you to Nicky for reminding me about Bill Nelson. Beta Band please remaster your seminal Three EPs for Spotify it is too quiet, sorry about that.
Talk tomorrow!