Good morning. Hello. How are you? I am good. I am proud of myself, I just resisted buying some elaborate, absurd 11 LP box set version of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Maybe I can finally get this stupid vinyl obsession under control a bit. Last night, I had two seconds of one of those “maybe I should sell all my stuff” fantasies yesterday that kids think are so cool and noble. It was horrifying. And yet. Maybe someday. Maybe someday.
I would like to start by apologizing for yesterday’s comparison between the USA and the 2009 Coachella Throbbing Gristle show. Not because it was inaccurate, but because it was a poorly written paragraph and not up to GMHHAY standards. We would like to apologize.
Had a pretty horrible day yesterday. Jane is low-level sick, just “not feeling well.” Can’t really say what’s wrong. It’s probably something with her stomach, though when you ask she says no. Janet came up with a theory that maybe she swallowed pool water at the pool party on Saturday but, I dunno, it’s been, like, four days, seems extreme. We are going to throw fuel onto the fire today and go get her vaccinated. I mean, why not. When it rains it pours, I guess. At least then we can explain to her why she’s feeling bad and maybe she can understand it.
As it is, it’s just her being monstrously unkind all day. Breakfast was a nightmare, didn’t finish, then we came downstairs and she just screamed at me for an hour and a half. She’d scream at me “I need Daddy!” over and over and over if I tried to leave the room, but as soon as I came into the room, she would scream at me to go away. Even the old trick of asking her “do you like kitties?” didn’t work. She just said “I do like kitties but I don’t like them right now I don’t want to hug them right now” and kept screaming at me. To be clear, this was not screaming in pain. She insisted she felt happy and fine. She just wanted to scream at me. Our theory is that she was low-level nauseaus, and since she was cranky, she decided to take it out on us. We tried to explain to her — as we have many times before — that it’s not okay to be unkind to others even when you don’t feel well, but she had no interest in hearing that.
It is deeply, profoundly unpleasant feeling so helpless when your child does not feel well, even though you’re 99% sure it’ll pass. Never mind that remaining 1%. Best not to speak of the remaning 1%, it is a beast.
At one point, though, she said “I just want to drink until I’m happy,” which I thought was pretty wise of her, actually. I mean, worked for me for… twenty years. Really got me thinking. Later in the day, I was dealing with some work stress and I thought about how I was always so stressed during my ten years of running a famous and successful digital agency, but that I didn’t recall it ever making me this unhappy after work, as I felt last night. Of course, I was exhausted from my kid yelling at me all day — it was daddy bedtime, so I got more yelling at me in the evening for good measure and a nice, verbally abusive bookending.
And, of course, back in my Barbarian heydey of, like, 2005-2009 or so, the political situation in the world wasn’t quite as awful, except, you know, it was, and I was already obsessing over it. Except I mostly obsessed about it alone, it wasn’t all consuming. It had more of a “alone in the wilderness” feel to it. But, then, lots of people worried about it and I was probably self-sorting away from the politically engaged. Except my friend Peter Feld. Anyway. Something is different now: being a parent, the political situation, my level of political engagement, maybe it’s age. Whatever it is, I can’t shake off a rough work day as easily. You’d think it’d be easier, I’m far more physically comfortable, I’m happily married, healthier, better rested. But I think Jane was on to something. Maybe the answer is that I have a harder time shaking off a rough work day… because I don’t drink as much anymore.
Never underestimte the power of getting blotto’d after a hard day’s work.
As an experiment to test this thesis, I drank two tiny bottles of wind last night and watched three episodes of the new comedy with Melissa McCarthy and her husband. I know they have made some cheesy movies recently, but we enjoyed those cheesy movies, and we are enjoying the pure simple silliness of God’s Favorite Idiot. It hit the spot. Or the booze did.
Thank you to Conrad for informing me that the new woman Bad Seed is Carly Paradis. She is a score composer, a solo artist, and member of a band called Oceanship. I am listening to her solo album Nothing is Something right now, and it is solid. A bit of a Bad Seeds feel to it. An excellent choice, Nick, on a new Keyboard player.
Yestereday I got a strong urge to listen to a certain male singer songwriter, and I looked him up on Spotify and listened to his three solo records, and noticed that between his solo records and his band, he has not put an album out in nearly five years. So I texted a friend of mine that played in his band for a while and asked “why has this man not put a record out in five years when can we get a new record I need this in my life” and she said “well, he had a kid and his wife’s a nurse so I suspect he’s been a little busy these last few years” and then I felt really bad. Poor guy’s probably going through days like mine with Jane constantly, trying to support his wife as she goes through the hardest two years in health care in the last fifty years. Not exactly prime conditions to record a sensitive acoustic solo album, I feel ya, man.
Also on the music front I sold three CD singles by the Cranes yesterday: early ones: Inescapable, Espero and Tomorrow’s Tears. Good for that dude in Roanoke, Virginia. Solid choices. Beautiful packaging. Only $3 ish each on vinyl might need to replace them shit Rick what did you just say about trying to get the vinyl habit under control.
Emma made an amazing thing that deserves to fly up the charts on Pinterest searches. Look at it: an outdoor cat tree that doubles as a firewood holder. Come on. This thing rules:
I like the little cat toy placed there as… added incentive.
This last weekend, I burned a bunch of my grape leaves. It was like 95 degrees out and I sprayed neem oil on them, only the pump sprayer had been sitting there baking in the summer heat all day and the oil-water mix was very hot, and I didn’t think about it and I sprayed it on my grapes and now my poor grapes, already ransacked by Japanese Beetles (fuck it I’m capitalizing both words) now have brown, curled leaves, cracked from being essentially deep fried. Luckily it’s only one grape plant out of six or so, and not all the leaves, but dammit. That was a screw up. Also my lettuce is finally all slowly going to seed and turning bitter. I think about a third of it is gone now, the rest will go in the coming weeks. I have been enjoying my fresh garden salads at lunch so much and it will be sad to wait until fall to have them again. And I just got some carrots to go with them in a salad. That’s the thing about garden salads here in NC. It is impossible to get the main ingredients — lettuce, tomato, carrot, cucumbers — to all grow at the same time. They’re all slightly different timings. It is a shame.
I head to New York in a week. Nine hour solo drive alone each way. It’s going to be a thing. Wednesday night is booked. Thursday lunch and EOD are booked. Early Thursday evening is booked. If anyone wants to grab a breakfast Thursday, though, drop a line. Or Coffee. Special priority for GMHHAY readers.
Okay justa mix today but this mix is great. Stars off with three oldies, then goes into a bunch of great new stuff. Oh plus Elliot Smith and the Hair and Skin Trading Company, which never got enough credit, they were so good. Over-Valence needs a remaster. But man, the good stuff. All these new songs are so good. What a great mix. So much good new stuff. I don’t even know who some fo these people are. Who is Part Time? No idea. Alex G? No idea. This mix rules. This new Foals song? Awesome.
All right let’s try and have a more positive day than yesterday and not sit here in a K Hole of political paralyzation and abject misery about the state of the world. That was not helping anyone. Maybe we can even, I don’t know, think of something to do to help. That would rule. Someone send me an activist charity getting shit done or something. I am ripe for the picking.