Good morning. Hello. How are you? #728
Proud, ew. Blowing money on new phones. The only Blu Ray of Schlafes Bruder in America. Sympathy for John Connally's dilletantism. Bellicose faux patriotism.
Good morning! Hello, there, how are you this fine Monday? I hope your weekend was lovely. Mine was great, thanks for asking. My phone has iOS 16 on it now which comes with a new fitness app like the people with the Apple watch so now I am obsessed with closing rings except I always set my phone down when I’m gardning and stuff so I don’t get any credit for that movement and now it is pissing me off and suddenly I want an Apple Watch after a good solid decade of not caring and man, those rings are the most nefarious bit of marketing I have come across in a long time. Curse you, rings. Curse you.
I’ve come to realize this weekend that I cannot stand the use of the word “proud” when it is used to say “sticking out.” It strikes me as grossly phallic. My wife disagrees, but it just seems so gross. They used it in the last Apple Keynote talking about the new Ultra Mega Ok Apple Watch (man that would be a cool Apple Watch it just plays Soundgarden all the time). There’s a big new button on it and it sits “proud” from the edge of the watch. Ew ew ew. It gives me the heebie jeebies just to write that out. What a dirty, disgusting word.
I am very much into “Dynamic Island,” though — the name for the weird new morphing black blob at the top of the new iPhone 14 Pro. The Dynamic Island is a good time, fun little black blob. Someone needs to make a Dynamic Island fidget spinner game. That would be fun. I got this new phone and it is.. fine. I still buy this new phone every year — I tell myself that it is excusable because, you know, I work at a mobile app company. And the camera. The camera is how they get you. When you have a kid, you want the best photos of your kid. And every year, the camera gets bettwer. It is a monstrous waste of money, though. I spent all this time customizing my hip new lock screen and.. it’s fine. I miss the old clock font. But the camera is pretty awesome, no getting around it. Sissy SpaceX, Jane’s astronaut doll, approves:
Jane was pretty rough yesterday. We took her to the neighbor’s pool and the pool is getting cold, because it’s not in the high 90’s anymore. At first she didn’t mind, and she swam around in the water in the 70’s. But then she discovered the hot tub like the rest of us, and got in there, and stayed in there for, I mean, not forever, but, like… 30 minutes or so? And just like that, rest of the day she was a raging nightmare. It was Daddy bedtime and let me tell you, that was a trial. Forty-five minutes to get her jammies on. Hopefully she’s better today. We keep telling her about this trip to Baltimore to go see New Order and the Pet Shop Boys on Wednesday and she is so not into it. It seems like a good first concert? Something she can brag about when she’s older, two huge bands that aren’t going to be touring for much longer that both have one billion hits. Technically, it’s not her first concert, I took her to see the Spinanes at Merge 30 in a tent behind Orange County Social Club. It was super fun. She was… two maybe? But Emma doesn’t think that should count. I really thought I was endowing her with major hipster cred with that one. Alas. Anyway, she says she doesn’t want to go. She is scared, she says. Of the drive, mainly. Which is really weird, because she loves drives and is very good at them. We got two days until we leave and I feel a bit of a sense of impending doom. Fingers crossed.
Got some gardening done this weekend but honestly, not tons. Lot of harvesting, though. Bunch of green beans, radishes, peppers, tomatoes and lettuce. The new baby bok boy is going great. I finally have some ginger growing. The fennel is looking really good. The Roma and cherry tomatoes are going great and honestly, I think next year I’m gonna stick to Roma. They’re so prolific compared to all these heirloom large tomato varieties I had good luck with in the spring but nada in the fall. And the heirlooms take up so much room. I have a huge baby watermelon (oxymoron) on the vine and I think it’s ready to pick, but it occurs to me I have no idea how to tell when a watermelon is ready. My rose bush is twelve feet tall and it makes me want to espalier some roses it seems fun. But where. I have a lot of stuff I need to do for fall — hoping next weekend. I gotta move the grapes to some sort of permanent home, though I have no idea where. I gotta plant the apple and pear trees, and the blueberry bush, in the ground. I gotta plant the fall lettuce, carrots, radishes. My fall potatoes aren’t doing jack, that is a shame. We had a delicious salad for dinner, though, comprised primarily of garden vegetables, that was great. And we had some delicious garden-grown potatoes in our breakfast tacos last night (breakfast tacos for dinner yum). Gardening is rad. Gardening with drip irrigation is fantastic. So much less work than previous years. Really amazing.
Other than that, just a lot of puttering. Plex up-rezzing coming along — I added: How to Get Ahead in Advertising, the Wim Winders film Faraway So Close!, A History of Violence, Down By Law (bought the blu ray and ripped all the extras which are pretty fun) and the 1995 German masterpiece Schlafes Bruder, or Brother of Sleep. My friend Annie and I saw this film in a theater of some sort — was it Toronto? Or a very limited engagement at, like, the Brattle or Landmark or something. I do not recall. But the homoerotic church organist period piece had a profound effect on both of us, it really is a masterpiece.
Unfortunately Schlafes Bruder has never been issued on Blu Ray or HD in any format in North America. Or the UK. The only option was to purchase, at great expense, a German Blu Ray and have it imported to the United States. Hence I am quite likely the only person in the United States currently in posession of a Schlafes Bruder blu ray, which is a giddy, heady feeling. Also unfortunately, said Blu Ray did not come with English subtitles. So I spent a good, oh, god, three hours trying to figure out a way to graft the English subtitles available at OpenSubtitles.org into the MKV file I ripped from the German blu ray. This is actually not that hard — VLC allows you to do this. Unfortunately, the subtitles were off by about a second, because the version of the film that the subtitle file matches is presumably the DVD or something, and the Blu Ray has a bit more introductory bits and bobs. So I spent a ton of time on forums and discovered this is totally doable with a bit of open source software, and they even make the software for the Mac. So I grab it off of GitHub and my Mac just flatly tells me I can’t run it. Because it’s broken. This is not the usual bit about how you can go into your system settings and tell your Mac to open it anyway. It is something else. I cannot figure a workaround. So I have to give up on that approach. It is all very frustrating.
Eventually on a lark I just hit play on the movie in Plex and it’s like “oh yo do you want to grab these English subtitles off the internet?” and I say “yes” and it… just works. Steve Jobsian style. Very nice, thank you.
I go through this whole thing a second time for Wim Wenders’ Faraway So Close! which has also never been issued on HD in the US, at least not on physical media. This is doubly sad given the phenomenal performance of Peter Falk in this otherwise somewhat disappointing sequel to Wings of Desire. Really seems a misfire to decide that Wings of Desire’s sequel should be… a crime caper comedy. That was a weird choice, Wim. Weird choice. But anyway, it’s now in Plex, in HD, and the subtoitles should just work. Enjoy.
I really cannot convey to you how much of my precious weekend time I spent on that problem. It was both super rewarding and somewhat depressing.
I’m getting close to the end of my History of Conservatism books. Well, I guess they’re Rick Perlstein’s History of Conservatism books, I’m just the reader. And one who does not subscribe to John Green’s dictum that “Books belong to the reader.” Balderdash, I say. Anyway, I’m now in the 1980 presidential election. Learning some stuff. Everyone thought John Connally was going to win the Republican nomination when things started out. Didn’t realize George Bush gave Reagan a run for his money in the primary. Didn’t realize Teddy Kennedy ran against Carter in the primary and lost so, so badly. Carter is not as unpopular at this point as I had thought: generally speaking, the hostage crisis seemed to keep his popularity up, at least through the primary. I’m sure once Reagan clinches the nomination he’ll pummel Carter even more but Carter was not as consistently, monstrously unpopular as I had thought. Also super bummed at how everyone in government is now obsessed with outdoing each other trying to cut the budget. Really very Hooverian and depressing.
Also I had forgot about the “Bomb Iran” song, sung to the tune of “Barbara Ann,” that was a big thing in my childhood. Everyone was so mad at Iran. I remember being a kid and singing that song, god, how mortifying. Thankfully, some adult not completely consumed with bellicose faux patriotism set me straight and told me that was not something I should be singing. I think it was my dad. He was a Republican but no fool. Didn’t fall for Reagan’s warmongering. Thank you, dad.
Connally’s a name I was plenty familiar with from my — er, Caro’s — LBJ books, since LBJ gave him his start. But Perlstein said something about him that I really resonated with: as soon as he got good at something, he got bored with it and moved on. I have the same problem. So bad. As soon as I get some success in something, I think, “yeah, okay, I get it, I can see all the basics here, and I can see how you could spend your life honing it, getting incrementally better, mastering the craft, but I got, like, the basic 70, 80 percent down, and I don’t really feel the urge to spend a decade learning the rest.” This is my default setting. From back when I was doing page layout, to design, to advertising, management, startup world, venture capital, as well as in my artistic life, being in bands, music, even writing, in a way. I have zero interest in “honing my craft.” I have, occasionally, thought about this but I can’t recall reading about it in anyone else. And it seems very… insightful of Perlstein to pick up on that in Connally.
And it’s a great descriptor. It has such a big influence on the person in whom this motivation exists. It motivates people in ways that are not otherwise obvious. To understand this motivation, is to understand a lot about someone’s actions in a way that people may not be otherwise comprehensible.
I’ve been trying to fight this natural tendancy of mine as the years go on. Stick to things. Been at the same job six years now. Kind of amazing. And I have a kid now, you can’t really abandon that project. And I think that is maybe part of the reason why I am so into daily habits. Because they force me to stick to things.
In reading these Perlstein books, he has a very clear habit of learning new obscure words. I am kind of into it. I like to learn a new word. I highlight them and look them up and try and remember them. Sometimes I remember them, mostly I don’t. But what strikes me is that Perlstein more than likely took a pass at that manuscript and added a bunch of bigger words. What a ridiculous pastime, waste of time. Every author is always like “you gotta go over your book ten thousand times and ruin your life over every line” and to that I say: NOPE.
Moody and quiet mix for you this Monday. Man I love Loamlands. They are really the best. This is all new, except the Breeders. Great song. I guess the Angel Olsen is a few years old now. And the Loamlands. But everything else! New! Thank you Bill for introducing me to 40 Watt Sun they are great.
Until tomorrow, then.