Good morning. Hello. How are you? #653
Salem life, record stores, more playgrounds, Craig Finn albums, Instagram birthdays.
Good morning, there, friend. Hello! How are you this fine.. Tuesday? I am good I have to work today. I got my laptop and big ‘ole monitor all set up in this Airbnb rental, and I have a whole 300 Mbps down right now, though it seems to be DSL because it is early in the day and it went went waaay down to 30 Mbps later in the day when other people are up and at ‘em. Jane is already up, I can hear her chirping upstairs in bed, reading her books. I am very glad we have her trained to stay in bed until breakfast, whether or not she wakes up.
I’ve been trying to replicate home as much as possible for Jane, doing the same routine for breakfast and daddy bedtime. It’s been somewhat difficult. There is an electric stove here, and I like it just fine, even if it’s a bit slower, but I can’t seem to get the scrambled eggs to the exact same consistency they are at home, and believe you me, Jane has noticed. There’s no toaster oven, so I’m toasting the waffle in a toaster and it… is more toasty? And less warm? Very curious. I might try a quick microwaving of the waffle today, very exciting.
There is no compost at this Airbnb and I am ripshit about it there should be compost at every Airbnb it should be a law. There is a garbage disposal, and I am using it, but I’m convinced this is a terrible idea because I’m convinced that the Salem sewer underneath this house is like 200 years old and it can’t handle the particulate matter introduced by a garbage disposal. Compost! Compost!
Yesterday I spent a lot of time on the playground with Jane, it was lovely. I am profoundly glad she gets to experience the simple pleasures of a community playground. And I’m glad I do too. It’s so endlessly interesting. This group of teens came along and played and hogged the swings, and they were all wearing hoodies so in my mind they were hoodlums, but Jane just loved them and played with them all on the spinny-seat-thing, pushing a group of, like, five teenagers by herself. When they left they all said “bye Jane!” so somewhere along the line she must have told them her name, which is good, and I guess they weren’t hoodlums after all.
I did meet up with Bill and go to the record store and it was great. Residency records, new location, along the northern outside edge of the Witch City Mall. It was a damn fine record store. I bought a Strand of Oaks LP, a Rachels LP, a Mogwai soundtrack I didn’t have (man there are a lot of those) and a reissue of Peter Murphy’s Deep. God knows how I will fit them in the car. Then Bill and I walked around the historic Chestnut Street district and he showed me a couple of the houses he and Annie bid on before they won they finally won a bid.
I walked home and listened to the new Craig Finn. I am convinced that Craig Finn has a very complex non-compete with the rest of the Hold Steady that says he may record solo records provided that they a) have no choruses b) have no killer hooks or riffs, and c) exhibit no unique musical characteristics. They are essentially spoken word albums. There was one sort of exciting distorted, angular guitar in one song, but only for a second and it didn’t, you know, riff or shred. All that being said, I am generally a sucker for Craig Finn’s lyrics. It is fascinating. He hasn’t really changed the topics of his songs at all in the eighteen years since Almost Killed Me came out. And, like, of course, you yourself grow and change and maybe aren’t spending as much time in bars as you used to, so your relationship to Craig Finn’s lyrics changes. But it changes in two ways, because you might listen to the lyrics to “Killer Parties” or “Your Little Hoodrat Friend” and feel a nostalgia for youth (lol, I was 35 when Separation Sunday came out but bear with me here), but you might listen to one of the new songs, like “Birthdays,” which are functionally and topically the same lyrics, only now they’re not the warm familiar ones you learned and knew back when you were hanging out in bars too much, so they feel more removed, more fictional, and you think “man is Craig Finn still hanging out in bars too much or is he on some sort of Tom Waitsian journey and none of these songs were ever autobiographical?” It is a bit disorienting. But I like it. Craig Finn lyrics bring me immense comfort. They are lyrics about people of high intelligence in low settings and that brings sympathy and reality to these situations.
Other than Bill, didn’t really see any friends yesterday and I felt sort of bad about it in the evening, but it is so hard with Jane to see people in the evening. We need babysitters, but even then, god, it’s exhausting. Tonight hopefully Annie and Bill and I will go check out a goth bar. It’s looking like Friday for Portland to see the freindz up there that’ll be fun. And I am trying to see a few other people who live in the area before we head down to Boston on Saturday. It makes me wonder what it would have been like living in a town where I knew a bunch of people, raising Jane. I suspect I would have had a lot more babysitters’ phone numbers on speed dial. Except for the pandemic, of course. Playgrounds are great, sit at the playground, tell people to come visit you but that works less well on weekdays when people are working during the day. And when there are events in the evening you want to attend.
I really like Salem, it’s a great little town. On my long walk on Saturday, during mommy bedtime, I became convinced we should move here. I was gonna buy the one big house on the market right now, move here, start a new goth band with Annie and then eventually open up a goth bar. It seemed the perfect life. The place isn’t too expensive, it’s walkable, it’s cute AF, it has a bunch of goths running around, it has a great record store, good food, what more do you need. My trip to Hudson, NH, and, thus, the surrounding environs tempered this a bit, because I remembered how much of the North Shore is kind of awful and ugly, but within Salem itself? Fantastic.
Today I have a ton of work, actually, the next three days. I could have “taken them off” but the work would not have disappeared, and at least four of the meetings I have across the next three days would have been necessary either way, so then I would have just been irked that I was having a meeting on a vacation day. This is for the best.
I posted a photo to Instagram of Jane when we got to Boston on Thursday, but then Instagram asked me for my birthday and I did not want to give them my birthday. Facebook already has it, of course, though I’ve not linked my Instagram and Facebook accounts. But I figure that if they can’t figure out that they already have my birthday, they probably can’t be trusted to keep track of my personal data very well. And if they don’t have it, no point in giving it to them. So then my Instagram account stopped working. They claim this is so they can protect children from harmful content, but of course that’s a lie, because if that’s all they wanted to do, they could just not show me adult content until I gave them my birthday. And then I would feel like I’m getting something for it? Maybe? Or more likely I just wouldn’t care, and I’d never give them my birthday, which would be fine, of course, except, oh noes! Less ad revenue! And I, of all people, am sympathetic about ad revenue. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I feel like $27.9 billion in ad revenue, with a profit of $7.5 billion — in a single quarter — is enough ad revenue. I think they could afford to let me not tell them my birthday.
But nope. So I guess my Instagram is just… broken now. Not sure what to about that. Kinda wanted to, you know, post some travel photos. Alas, you will have to get by with only the photos here in GMHHAY.
Okay here’s a club mix. Man it is hard to make these mixes every day when you live in a society with other human beings and friends outside of the house and things. I’m trying to not get too repetitive or draw from the same well here. Lotta new stuff on this but the last third or so are some “classics” from the last.. three, four years? Nothing too old.
Talk tomorrow!
Have you been to the crazy coffee shop in Salem that has, for reasons neither me or Annie can figure out... copies of "In This World" by Cindytalk and "Sleeps with the Fishes" by Michael Brook and Pieter Nooten on the wall? That place is intense!
The trick on the waffles might be to spritz them with a bit of water before putting them in the toaster. Then they don't toast up as fast and cook more evenly. ; )