Good morning. Hello. How are you? #680
More Peter Gatien, Elon stuff, Hulu stuff, Bob Dylan stuff, Karate and Helms stuff.
Good morning, friend. Happy Friday. How are you? I am okay. Jane is mostly recovered from the vaccine, I think. She was pretty achy yesterday. She woke up not feeling too well. We had about an hour of crankiness and recalcitrance and it was a nightmare getting a little bit of food into her, but she recently discovered that age-old kids’ sick food, saltines and American cheese, so I managed to convince her to eat a couple of those. Then we went to the play room and she made me sit on the couch. And then it was like instinct took over. I put a pillow next to me on the couch, patted the couch, she came over, laid down, I covered her in the blanket, handed her a couple of plush kitties, she hugged them, and moaned. I put on some kids YouTube videos of a Japanese woman crafting small dioramas of cute pink houses out of cardboard, and just like that, Jane, never having done it before in her life, fell right into the habit of being a sick person on the couch. It was very cute. The child Motrin seemed to help a lot, and by the end of the day she was mostly recovered enough to spend last night at Grammys. So. Yay us. First round of the vaccine down.
Shit man looks like someone shot Shinzo Abe? Wow. Congratulations, America, your cultural exporting supremacy continues unabated. Oh wow holy shit looks like since I woke up, the headlines have been updated that he died. That is sad. What a world.
My uncle sent me this photo of the old Tamarac Inn in Fairbanks, on Minnie Street, the motel my grandfather ran and where my parents first lived when they were married. It is very rundown, but the sign still stands.
I regret not having gone to Fairbanks for Solstice this year, there were some good peeps in town, and I miss my mom and sister. Last summer’s visit was deeply satisfying. Jane is getting vaccinated now, which is what I was waiting for. Second dose in a month, but… I don’t know. I am kind of thinking Christmas now, actually. It’s the other time when people who no longer live in Fairbanks visit, and I am starting to miss the winter, god help me, though it’s not usually that bad in December. Seems unlikely I could get my wife to go, though, but she said it would be fine to visit then. We shall see, we shall see.
I started reading Peter Gatien’s autobiography. The founder of Limelight. It is very well written, an excellent overview of the history of New York nightlife, and Atlanta, and Miami. I find myself liking the guy, he seems very down to earth, though he obviously had his problems earlier in life, mostly he kept marrying people and having kids with them even though he was married to nightlife management, working 16 hours a day and mostly ignoring his family. He seems to have made his amends later in life, though. As “I’m old, here’s a story of my life” books goes, you get the sense that Peter is in a good place of acceptance. Other items: Funkmaster Flex seems awesome. His insights into how the Tunnel could successfuly run a hip hop night and (mostly) avoid violence were very smart. There was a Barnard dropout woman named Jessica Rosenblum who was also instrumental in the establishment of Hip Hop nightlife in New York. She is now an interior decorator and got married in a COVID romance and had a New York times profile about it. It’s funny looking at that photo and thinking “that woman is as responsible as anyone for the success of many of the biggest rappers in New York.”
I did not know there was ever a Limelight in Chicago or London (only knew about Slimelight, which I always assumed was unrelated and… still think is unrelated?). Peter Gatien produced A Bronx Tale with Chazz Palminteri, because Chazz was one of his former employees at Limelight. Peter Gatien’s love of his employees seems genuine and profound, it sounds like his clubs were mostly great places to work and he speaks of the employees close-knit solidity in a manner that makes me miss Barbarian. He captures that feeling well. Tupac sounds like a lunatic. He describes the night after Biggie died, it was a Tunnel Sunday, New York’s pre-eminent hip hop event, and Funkmaster Flex put “Hypnotize” on and 3,000 people danced and cried and it gives me chills even just thinking about it. The first band he ever booked, in Ontario, was Rush before they got big. He booked Whitney Houston’s first show in New York. One new years he had Cab Calloway and Laurie Anderson both play the Limelight to a sold out crowd: the only thing they had in common, the Times said, was that they wore white suits. The Limelight lasted eighteen years, surviving the AIDS pandemic and more, and the only reason it isn’t still in business is because of Rudy Giuliani.
I was thinking as I was reading this book what a good movie it’d make. Halfway through the book he mentions it has already been optioned by Amazon and is in pre-production (though it seems stalled now).
Hrm Ticketmaster just sent me “virtual commemorative tickets” for the Tears for Fears show. They seem to be NFTs on some network/app called Flow. Which, okay, I guess is kind of cool. But there doesn’t seem to be anyway to forward them to another wallet, so I can’t, like, put them in my main wallet, which would be kinda hilarious, cuz why not, throw a weird Tears for Fears NFT in there. I can give it away, but only to an email address not a wallet. But I can download it, though, so, here, take a gander:
Man that show was so good. I’m ready to go see Tears for Fears again it’d be cool if I didn’t have to wait a decade or two this time.
Oh wait that one is for the Boston show. We didn’t go to Boston we only went to Chaarlotte. Gave the Boaston tickets to some friends. I have like seven of these things. Weird they did not transfer the NFTs when they transferred the tickets. Feels like a scam in the making. Like those people on eBay that sell 4K Blu Ray discs without the digital code but don’t mention it. Or something.
Felix has just informed me that for the first time since its original recording, Bob Dylan has re-recorded “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Except you’ll never hear it, because it is being pressed to a single lacquer, gussied up as a fine art item and being auctioned via Christies for more than a million pounds. Wu Tang style. T Bone Burnett is involved. I am somewhat ambivalent about this. This Guardian article explains the ambivalence I feel about it: Good on you, T Bone, for parting rich idiots from their money. Were I a billionaire and this was, say, New Order, I would certainly consider buying it. But also I would release the actual music on the lacquer to the public. Look, vinyl collecting has nothing to do with being the only one to own the music, it is about the artifact.
As it stands, I am not a billionaire, and I would be ripshit if an artist I collect did this, as I long, yearn, exist to own complete collections of certain artists and it would be absolutely devestating to know I will never, ever be able to complete a collection. My neurotic completism would not handle this well at all. T Bone, I love you, “Humans from Earth” is a great droll ditty but please stay away from the artists I collect it’ll bum me out.
Are you in Boston did you go to the Karate shows? Were they great? I am sad to have missed them. I am doubly sad to have missed Wednesday’s show because the fantastic, legendary, marvelous Boston band Helms were playing for the first time in ages and I want so badly to see them again. If you went please let me know how they were because my god I can’t imagine. I used to go see that band all the time and I miss them something fierce. I am going to listen to them today.
Looks like, quelle horreur, the Twitter deal is in peril as Elon continues to insist the bot issue is a real problem, lol, despite the bot issue being exactly what it was when Elon made his binding $44 billion offer and said he didn’t need to do any due dillegene because he had done enough already. There is a breakup fee of $1 billion, but a substantial body of legal theory that says Elon is pretty much on the hook for all of it, deal’s a deal, dude agreed to buy it and now he has buyer’s remorse since, you know, he list like a few hundred million dollars (no biggie) in the last few months. I don’t have much to add to this ridiculous saga except I desperately, profoundly want the Twitter board to fight this in courts until the end of time. I cannot see how it is not in their interest. It will keep their stock (mildly) propped up in this economic downturn, and make Twitter less susceptible to hostile takeover attempts for… years. If they ever find another buyer they want to do a deal with, they can drop the lawsuit. It seems very clearly in their strategic interest to go full guns blazing on the legal front, even if, in the end, I very much don’t want Elon to own Twitter. Win the case then settle for, oh, I dont know, a $20 billion breakup fee, own your destiny. Also, not to put too fine a point on it, Elon deserves it.
Oh and speaking of insane $20B+ breakup fees, year after next, Disney has to pay Comcast at least twenty seven billion dollars for its one-third share of Hulu. And Disney probably does not want Hulu. But also Comcast does not really need Hulu either, since they have been doing such a great job with Peacock (good job, wife). And yet, Hulu is kind of awesome. But neither of the two parties who own it need it. And one of them has to pay the other, like, twenty seven billion dollars. What a glorious shitshow. If I were Comcast I’d be like “okay you know what? You can save your twenty seven billion dollars and just give us the rest of Hulu instead.” And then go sell it. I suspect, in the end, some nutty thing like this is going to happen. Hulu belongs with Paramount or something. I don’t know. I don’t know. What a mess. I will continue to follow this insane story for years. It is right up my alley.
Oh man we are so late today Wordle was so hard I have been so distracted. Jane is at Grammy’s so I am going to Walmart now isn’t that exciting? Here is a mix, justa mix, old and new. Starts with Hypnotize cuz I can’t get it out of my head and it’s such a great song, but I don’t have time to make a whole mix around it, so I tried to just sort of flow it into the things that were already in the mix but ha it really does stand out. This is kind of all over the place. New Titus Andronicus is great. New Metric album out today. Good stuff, good stuff.
Okay! Happy weekend! Till Monday!
I saw Slick Rick once at Limelight like the second year I lived here and it was so awesome. Also... virtual commemorative tickets (if REAL ones are not doable) are very much up my alley. Of course, I'd prob print them, too.