Good morning. Hello. How are you? #663
Phantom rain, No Man's Sky, Kate Bush, Julee Cruise, Roam, Emma's magic kitchen knives, Knight Rider Historians, male hot flashes, hope for gun safety legislation
Good morning, friend. Hello. How are you? All well? Lovely weekend? Stay off the internet? Get some gardening done? It rained a lot here and I spent most of the weekend inside, I’m not gonna lie. We got our walk in on Saturday, and on Sunday there was a torrential downpour during walk time, so all three of us got umbrellas and I did a mini-walk in the rain, which was very fun. The secret to umbrellas is that they are huge. Which is, of course, super annoying on the streets of New York, but it’s just dandy when you’re the only three walking on a country road. Also, umbrellas that have that little doubled-up part in the center are better than ones that do not. Also, that entire rainstorm was a phantom rainstorm, and both Accuweather and Apple Weather adamantly denied that the rainstorm was happening or could happen. It’s been a long time since the weather apps got the weather so thoroughly wrong. Felt thrilling. Like we were in the nineties again.
I am embarrassed to admit that mostly I spent the weekend playing the No Man’s Sky Leviathan challenge. After playing for virtually the entire weekend, I’m not done with the challenge, but I’ve got all the hard parts done, now I just have a dumb, grindy bit left, which totally should not be there. I like these challenges, but you get the strong sense that the game designers are petulant that portions of this massive, immersive world they built are underused. So they force you to interact with these segments of their virtual world when they make these challenges, to remind you they’re there. But I’ve not forgotten they’re there. I just think that part of their big world is not for me, and that is totally okay. There’s a giant world of mushrooms in the real world, and most people are not mycologists. That is part of the charm of a giant world: some parts are underexplored. Also, space battles are dumb and boring, and I’m tired of them. I don’t play No Man’s Sky for space battles and I should be able to completely turn them off. It’s not like this universe they’ve created has any bearing on reality in myriad other ways. There are no restaurants, why does there have to be space battles?
In other news:
I did get my gardening video done you can see the aftermath of the garden being left alone for three weeks and me hacking it back into shape, it is a good time:
I also got my podcast done, which I hadn’t done in a month, which is two weeks too late. Am I going to continue this podcast? Does it have a place in my media empire to call its own? This is the problem with podcasts in many media empires, isn’t it? They don’t really have their own raison d’etre. It is much more focused on media than this newsletter — I meticulously chronicle every TV show, movie and album I’ve consumed — but the original vision for it wasn’t a media chronicle, it was more of a diary of living here in Chatham County, but GMHHAY has really supplanted that. I’ve always enjoyed the spoken word format, but I am at heart a writer. It is a dilemma. But for now, I carry on.
Ha I did nothing this weekend, I only edited a half-hour video and recorded an hour-long podcast I am so lazy.
We watched that episode of Stranger Things with the Kate Bush song last night. We skipped season 3 entirely, and Emma skipped season 2, it was fine, thank you for that 5-minute recap of season 3 at the beginning. I wonder if season 3 was as dumb as it looked. Anyway, is there more Kate Bush later in the season or something? Or did the whole world go gaga for Kate Bush just because of a 40-second or so scene of a girl walking down a hallway in a walkman? That is… weird. Also, the whole “Kate BUsh resurgence” thing is very weird for me, since I’ve probably heard “Running up the Hill” at least once a week for the last thirty years Kate Bush never really went away. Anyway, at the Kate Bush live shows in London, she launched some confetti at one point, and all the confetti had printed lyrics on it from The Ninth Wave. I have one framed in my office. It is lovely.
God that show was so good.
Julee Cruise died. She committed suicide, assisted by her partner, in their home in Pittsfield, MA. She suffered from Lupus, depression, and alcohol and substance abuse. I had a hunch she was suffering from something, as her output has been close to nil for a long time. She did release a 3-track EP of demos on Sacred Bones about four years ago, and it is a lovely release, but it’s been a decade since a proper album. Couple years ago, I picked up every release by Julee that could be obtained on vinyl: it is sadly very limited. Her last two albums are not available on vinyl. Hopefully that changes soon. I wish Julee Cruise got her late-career, 2020’s moment in the cultural spotlight, she deserved it. I hate that feeling when it clicks for you that some artist you deeply respect is probably in a lot of pain because you haven’t heard from them in a decade. You think and hope and pray for them, you wish you could help. You try to separate your ego from their pain, resist from reaching out because what could you do anyway. Love for a human you don’t know, with no release, no outlet, until you hear something like this. I’m hopeful Julee found the peace and closure she was looking for.
Julee passed while listening to “Roam” by the B-52s. Aside from being best known as the singer of the “Twin Peaks” theme, Julee was also briefly a touring member of the B-52s. This caused me to read the lyrics to “Roam,” and man, I have a new respect for that song. Someone needs to do Gary-Julues-does-Mad-World-style cover of “Roam,” slow and melancholy and acoustic.
Fly the great big sky
See the great big sea
Kick through continents
Busting boundaries
Take it hip to hip, rocket through the wilderness
Around the world the trip begins with a kiss
Roam if you want to
Roam around the world
Roam if you want to
Without wings, without wheels
Roam if you want to
Roam around the world
Roam if you want to
Without anything but the love we feel
RIP, Julee. You are loved, you will be missed.
Some other random weekend thoughts:
Emma has these kitchen knives. They are cheap. She’s had them since she was a young woman, just out of college, first living on her own (Emma always had her shit together, she did the post-college roommate phase, but unlike mine, it was brief). When we began our cohabitation, her knives became our knives. They have black plastic handles and crappy, thin serrated blades. But those knives! They cut eggs so well. Better than any knife in either of our two Airbnbs we stayed in for three weeks. Each of those Airbnbs had so many knives. Airbnbs are Little Orphan Annie orphanages of wayward and remnant kitchen utensils. You’d think one of the fifteen or so knives I tried across three weeks would cut at least as well as Emma’s decade-plus-old dollar-store knives but nope. Emma’s knives are a miracle.
I am unable to decide between 71 and 72 degrees in my office with the air conditioner. Seventy-one feels too cold, seventy-two feels too warm. If I get on any sort of conference call whatsoever, I get nervous, and I get hot, and I need to turn it back down to 71. It is a constant battle, I’m changing it multiple times every day, and I imagine I have a small amount of understanding and empathy for hot flashes now. I’m about that age, right? Is this male menopause?
I was really country on my country flashcard game on Friday, and I messed up at least once on every single continent. I was cocky because on Thursday I got every single one right the first time, which is not a super-rare occurance, but still kinda rare, but also I did it Thursday without even thinking that hard, which felt like a new accomplishment. I was very proud. But then Friday rolled round, and knocked me down a peg. I deserved that.
The amazing, wondrous Knight Rider Historians have made a startling, huge discovery, and have located the one-of-a-kind, only-one-ever-screen-used Knight Industries semi trailer. They already owned, and were working on restoring, one of the four or so screen-used semis. Now they own the trailer. They spent, god, like a decade tracking this down? The level to which these dudes apply themselves to Knight Rider history is… monumental. It’s just. Imagine having a hobby you could commit yourself to that thoroughly? And imagine the luck that there are two of them. They can go deep into this together. It just seems like such a profound gift. What if more people had such pure, simple, non-violent, non-memey, constructive, real-world hobbies. The world would be a better place. I am more than a little bit jealous. In a better universe, the Knight Rider Historians completing a decade long quest, with an absurdly unlikely successful outcome, would be front page news on at least one major news outlet.
Amazing, just amazing.
And, finally, the Senate says it has reached a bi-partisan agreement on some very modest gun control steps. Do they go as far as I would like? God no. Are they partially a steam valve release to give Republicans air cover going into the mid-terms on an issue where they could actually feel some hurt? Definitely? Do we need more? Yes yes yes. Are we gonna get more? No. Do we have any choice but to take what is offered? No, of course not, these are real, alebit incremental, improvements. I’m still fairly convinced Manchin will kill it off — he’s one of the members that crafted it but that’s never stopped him before. But it’s not nothing, and that is… something. I need to try and keep my cynicism from belittling what progress does happen. That is a thing I am working on.
A live playlist for you today, because it happened to already be done. God, I can’t remember the time the playlist wasn’t done before the morning, before I had to quickly finish it up at 8:25 AM. Nice change of pace. Yes, there is an 18-minute Can song on it that takes up a third of the playlist, but I put that song on here a month ago and I didn’t notice it was 18-minutes then, and it is an awesome track and you will love it, I promise, but as a service I put it at the end so you can just stop listening to the playlist at that point if it’s not your bag. Douggie Pfeff and I were at the Primal Scream show on this playlist. Of the bands here, I have not seen London Grammar, Black Country New Road, Tash Sultana or Can live. God, imagine seeing Can live. That would be something. The BCNR song is amazing. Diet Cig are so great live I hope I get to see them again some day. I will, alas, never see Leonard live again, but I knew my time was limited and say six or seven of the late-period reunion shows. I’m not even sure I’d go see Tash Sultana but I do like some of their tracks.
And I am going to a live show tonight! But we will talk about that tomorrow. Until then.