Good morning. Hello. How are you? #631
Quarantine timez, Ukraine, mask mandate, and Trek ranting, and my pitch for the Missile Command TV series.
Good morning there, friend. Hello! How goes it? How are you? I hope all is well. The sun is rising. I hope the sunrise looks lovely for you this morning, even though unless you are in this time zone, it is not happening right now. And, of course, if you are in this time zone, the sun is rising now, as I write this, but will already be risen by the time you receive this. But we will not concern ourselves with such pendantry. The sun rises for all of us.
My copy of the new Spiritualized album arrives today oh frabgeous day callot callay. How exciting. I will have to stop listening to ten hours of Ben Palmer’s noise recordings from the 90’s, which is a shame, but I get to listen to “The Mainline Song” on vinyl, which rules.
So if you read my wife’s Facebook posts you may have heard that I have been, in fact, watching Jane solo these last few days as Emma quarantines from a COVID exposure last Friday. Today is the last full day. It is going well. It was a pretty minor exposure — mostly outdoors, like 95%, but, like, a meal sitting to two people who are definitely infected, and masked indoors because my wife is a careful individual that cares about other people and understands that her actions have consequences beyond her individual self, such as for her mother, who lives with us, who has some risk factors for such things. I generally think that Biden’s 33% approval rating is kind of BS, but when he goes around saying that wearing a mask is a “personal” choice as if the very existence of the concept of helping others, for caring about other people does not exist, well, even I get my gumption up enough that lord knows what I’d say if was momentarily gripped by madness, answered an unknown phone number on my phone, and took the time to listen and respond to a poll? Lol. Yeah who does that.
The more I think about this overturning of the mask mandate on airplanes the more disgusted I get, not gonna lie. Obviously a court case is a different branch of government making different policies than congress and the president, but I think this tweet succinctly exposes the otter absurdity of the situation with air travel:
And, like, doesn’t it just seem a matter of time before they come for the allergies sufferers? Like doesn’t it just seem, on the face of it, that people who cannot stand helping people by wearing a slim piece of cloth will also not stand for helping people by the equally trivial task of abstaining from peanuts? It seems a matter of time before some right wing lunatic decides that planes going without peanuts is unacceptable. We are litigating molecules here now: if a peanut dust molecule can kill you on a plane, well, shit, let’s drop everything and make the entire plane help out that is just being civilized. But if it is a COVID molecule that can kill you on a plane, well, fuck you. The lunatics are distracted this week by grooming but it does not seem to be a stretch that before too long they’ll start dehumanizing people allergic to peanuts and calling them weak, entitled tyrants.
Oh also I should say that the DOJ is (probably) going to appeal this ruling that a literal child judge gave, so I am pleased about that. Except they’re only going to appeal if the CDC decides that the mandate is still necessary, which is dumb, they should appeal anyway. I mean, yes, I guess, even though the CDC is useless and will probably rescind the mandate reccomendation even as 500 people a day still die, the administration should probably abide by their mandate or lifting of the mandate. But the principle is important and the DOJ should sue either way. Even though a quite likely outcome is that the courts throw out the case because it’s “no longer relevant,” which of course is a lie. There is a victory in forcing the courts to say that this is a narrow ruling and no longer relevant. It’s a dodge to say they’ll only sue if the CDC still recommends the mandate what kind of BS is that outsourcing federal litigation decisions.
Anyway, yes, Jane and I have been alone since Monday. Janet had Jane Sunday night when Emma found out, and we decided she could/should quarantine. Honestly it is going okay. Jane has been 90% amazing, we had one half-hour or so tantrum yesterday because I helped her with her hood on her hoodie when we were getting ready for the store, though she kindly paused the tantrum to actually go into the store, and wore her mask, and then started it right back up again when we got back to the car which was pretty hilarious. Other than that, she’s been great. Both bedtimes have been lovely. Here’s to a third lovely bedtime tonight. I did have a board meeting for work yesterday and I uttered the words “Okay Matt’s going to take this next section of the deck as I go see if my daughter finally pooped” on a board call but I am more proud of that than mortified.
Wilco posted some audio to their YouTube channel last night, to which I subscribe but had completely forgotten about, because they never post anything to it, we’ll see if this takes or if it was a random one-off. It was a live recording of the song “Reservations,” one of my favorite Wilco songs, from 2001, back when Jeff Tweedy was a sad bastard drug addict which, it pains me to say, is the Jeff Tweedy with which I still emotionally respond the most strongly, even though we have both cleaned up our act and are much more healthy, happy people these days (but probably not really deep down but hey this is Amurca we don’t talk about that). Anyway, I was sitting there listening to him sing those painful, plaintive lines “I’ve got reservations, about so many things, but not about you,” and Jane looked over at me and said “I don’t love daddy when he’s sad.” And that did not super make me happier, let me tell you. I looked over at her with my sad bastard suffering from art face and I said “we love each other even when we’re sad, but we don’t like it when the other one is sad, because we want the people we love to be happy. You love me when I’m sad but you want me to be happy isn’t that right?” And she said “Yes. That is right. I love you all the time.” And, well, I wasn’t sad anymore.
There is still a war going on in Ukraine. Isn’t that fucked up? It’s so hard to keep paying attention to it. Like you know it matters, you know it’s insane that it’s happening, a giant tragedy, every fiber of your being is telling your body to keep caring and you can do it if you really really try but seriously what the hell is up with the composition of human beings that it’s this hard to keep caring about others in peril what the hell is up with our spiritual makeup, our biological componentry that it takes constant vigilance to care about others that is really dumb it’s like having a computer that only does math if it remembers to. Anyway the Russians have “regrouped” and are undertaking “the battle of the donbas” where this time they are going to “do the war like they know what they are doing.” Apparently they tried turning it off and turning it back on again and that did not work and now they have decided to read the manual before trying again and I guess that means we should be scared but also maybe they should have read the manual the first time. The Russian military are a bunch of hapless idiots, but they’re like Andre the Giant after drinking ten full cases of vodka, they are an insanely huge, lumbering hapless idiot, still capable of enormous damage.
Man. I wonder how much booze you had to put into Andre the Giant to get that dude staggering and falling down. Holy moly I just googled “Andre the Giant drunk” and that is some insane stuff. I’ll let you go down that rabbit hole yourself.
So I finally sucked it up and paid for Paramount+, which I am annoyed about. I had been resisting because the whole thing was a clear fleecing of Trek fans with a bunch of mediocre Trek shows and the brilliant Lower Decks. We’re watching Star Trek Picard and there is a lot to like about it, but also it is deeply problematic as Trek. It’s a flagrant violation of canon in multiple ways that is just trying and tedious. I will refrain from getting into too many details but I will just point out that Captain Picard is a progressive man from a utopian time, with 24/7 access to free health care and an in-house therapist, and we have followed every intimate detail of this man’s life for decades. You do not get to suddenly surprise us thirty years into this relationship with surprise daddy issues. Nope. I was watching the last episode, though, and thinking “I would love this show if it weren’t Trek. Some awesome sci fi about a curmudgeonly old space captain being toyed with by a god and forced to time travel with his greatest enemy? Shit yeah I would watch that in a heartbeat.” And this is.. unfortunate. It makes it much harder to write for Trek than other things. You have to care about Trek. You can’t write something cool and apply it to Trek. It’s like those old authors who sagely say “you have to write the characters where they want to go it’s not up to you,” and you as a smug young writer think “fuck that this is my book,” but eventuall you realize they are right. You might want to write a cool Picard story but if it’s not what Picard is, what Picard wants, it shouldn’t be written.
In the end, though, the reason I finally paid for Paramount+ isn’t because of Picard or Trek at all, but because of their $90 million+ adaptaion of the video game Halo which I am finding shockingly good. It’s a great counterbalance to Picard. I mean, I last played Halo for 15 minutes or 2004 or so. I know who Master Chief is, and the bad guys, but that is it I know nothing about the canon or lore of the game. And there are some tedious Sci-fi tropes, especially around the set design which is just so comically SCI FI, but, then, you know, they gotta actually pay lip service to the game Halo. But man, the show is great, acting’s good, plot is interesting, I am actually compelled. And I’m very confused by this. Like… do other people who don’t care as much about Trek feel this way about Picard? Is it actually good TV even as its bad Trek? I did some light Googling and some Halo fans (who exist!) are annoyed with the show. But I think it’s great.
So I’m thinking that the entire staff of producers and showrunners who work on the Trekverse for Parmount+ should all go and obtain the rights to, like, Space Invaders or Missile Command or something and just use all that material to make a show like Halo for one of those 80’s video games. Cuz I bet then it would be awesome.
Okay let’s do a W Hotel Lobby in a Better, Alternate Universe mix, been a while. There is a new book coming out about former pop stars. Not, like, one hit wonders necessarily but just people who used to be giant pop stars and are now… not. Paul alerted me to it and it looks amazing and I bought it and I can’t wait to read it and it reminded me about Saranda Maitreya fka Terrence Trent D’Arby’s post-stardom career and all those awesome records he still makes from home in Milan and self-releases, living the good life, he is. But instead I just put one of his old hits on here, sorry, still a great album, Introducing the Hardline. Other than that, this is almost all new stuff, including a new song from Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins with her husband and former member of Spiritualized Damon Reece.
Okay! Last full day of me and Jane alone. It’s gonna be great. Talk tomorrow!
Your playlist link goes to the Guardian article instead of the playlist :)
While you have Paramount+, take a chance on seasons 5-7 of The Good Wife and the early seasons of the follow-on, The Good Fight. It's an insanely good, smart show that was totally unexpected when I discovered it. All of the seasons of The Good Wife are ok but it really hit its stride in season 5 and you can easily start watching their and follow the series. It's seriously, so good!