Good morning. Hello. How are you? #751
Andor, the racial dynamics of Sting's Bring on the Night, Ford's microchip shortage hits home, someone wants to get in touch for some reason
Good morning! Hello! How are you? All well? All good over here. Hit 32 again last night, but it’s already 33 I think we’re okay. Hopefully. Fingers crossed. I went out yesterday and checked the pepper plants and they were happy as can be, didn’t seem to mind the cold snap at all. I harvested all the shishitos and jalepenos, but I left the bell pepper plant it has so many little peppers on it I am trying to get them before the real cold hits. And I left the Johnny’s Seeds Red Flame f1 plant, not a great name, but a great hot pepper.
Andor is so good. So good! So intense, I am so tense all the time watching it, they just keep that tension ratcheted up and the music is super good too and man I wonder if it would be even better if it wasn’t a Star Wars property. I think it might be amazing a standalone property. Also it’s really just a manual for how we’re all going to have to live when fascism finally arrives. Feels very real. Fiona Shaw had a scene in last night’s episode that was seriously one of the best scenes I’ve seen on television in ages. Give that woman an Emma. Criminally underused in the Harry Potter franchise, Fiona Shaw.
Oh also relatedly, here is a pet peeve: entertainment media properties launching all of their content associated with an episode the same day the episode comes out. This is driving me crazy. For example, a new episode of, say, She-Hulk or Rings of Power or something will drop. They usually drop in the middle of the night: midnight or 3 AM or something. So the episode came out, technically, say, on Thursday, but really no one is going to watch it until Thursday night. Except for some die hards and night owls, of course, but, you know, a lot of people arent gonna get to it until that night. But then Variety or Deadline Hollywood or something will have tweets at, like, 9 AM on Thursday saying something like “How She-Hulk handled that stunning debut of the new character we were all expecting,” or something: not quite a spoiler, but close enough, and also, no one wants to read that until Friday! Drives me crazy. Also there are whole YouTube properties out there who exist to rush out inferior analysis videos as quickly as possible. Take your time! Get it right! Make something useful!
Last night during Jane bedtime I watched some of Michael Apted’s 1985 seminal concert documentary Sting: Bring on the Night. This film held a giant place in my head canon in the 80’s I loved it so much. I haven’t watched it in 20 years or so, since my friend Annie and I had a Christmas tradition in the 90’s to watch Bring on the Night, go to Dunkin and maybe go to the Kells, quality Boston Christmas tradition that was. Anyway, the first thing I noticed, disturbingly, is that Sting, who was 35 when this was filmed, looks like a child to me now. I remember back when I was 14 or so and watching this, Sting looked so wise. Now he looks like a juvenile. It seems wildly inconceivable that someone his age could compose the songs he’s written. This happened recently when I saw a picture of Jim Morrison. Look at that guy! He is a baby!
Back in the 80’s I definitely noticed the weird racial dynamics of Sting’s Bring on the Night: Sting fronting an all-black band. It’s no less weird now, maybe a little less weird. Apted does a great job interviewing each band member and teasing from them some real conversation, and you can tell they all have complex and varied views of the situation. It’s weird watching it now, these guys were all giants to me then, household names. And watching their post-Sting careers. Branford Marsalis has a great speech about how he’s never going to be a star himself, he is a bandmember, a sideman. That’s pretty funny in hindsight. Omar Hakim is just so cool. Kenny Kirkland has passed away, that is sad. I didn’t know that. Miles Copeland III is such a jerk it really is amazing. When I was a kid I was unaware at just how outside the bounds of normality that guy was. Now I just see a coked-up broseph, even if he did found IRS records and discover REM.
Mostly, though, I think about how terrifying it must have been for Sting. Like, oh, hey, I just left one of the world’s most popular rock bands and let me introduce you to some smooth jazz. Yes, I will play a bunch of songs from my old band, but almost none that you actually know. It’s funny, I thought I was a Police fan when I was 13, but so many Police songs I actually learned about from Sting solo: Low Life, When the World is Running Down…, Shadows in the Rain, Driven to Tears, even Bring on the Night. To me, they’re all Sting solo songs. But yeah, the dude’s nervous. First solo show. Also his wife goes into labor during the show! When I was a kid the import of this did not register with me. He must have been so stressed! He handles it all very well.
And it occurs to me that Sting got me to take that journey from him, from the Police to Jazz. He does later journeys to folk, to world music, and I do not go on those journeys with him, I eventually come to dislike Sting’s solo work so much it colors my appreciation of the Police. I am thinking now that is probably unfair. Oh god do I need to give late-period Sting solo work a second chance? His comedic turn in Only Murders in the Building really did make me like him a bit again. Oh god oh god. What to do.
Ford emailed me and told me I could have my Lightning in nine months or so, but that it won’t have the heated steering wheel, because there are no microchips. It is deeply weird to me they are making this call now, nine months in advance, but okay. It’s also deeply weird to me they didn’t say “but then eventually some day the microchip will come in and we will stick it in the car and then you can have a heated steering wheel.” If i were Ford I would have sent along a parody Youtube video of “Some day my ship will come in” but microchips.. get it? I guess Ford just doesn’t want to deal with the logistics of that. Understandable, but sad. Now I am left with a (rich person, utterly minor) dilemma: my current Lightning does have a heated steering wheel, and I have to confess I kind of like it. I’ve never had one before and it is pretty swell. So the new one will come in, and my plan was to sell the old, keep the new, and magically have a new car again. Except now the new car will be just slightly a little less good than the old. What to do, what to do.
I wonder how many miles will be on this thing by then. If anything, and I auction the new one on Cars and Bids I’ll have a hilarious story about why I’m selling it. Except the new one might have Android Auto. Which might be better. And it will be a slightly later build so the phone-as-key functionality will definitely work, unlike mine which is still awaiting a firmware upgrade that may never come. What to do, what to do.
Related to yesterday’s rumination on feeling every outrage out there, here is an article in the New York Times talking about how doctors don’t like to help patients with disabilities that really got me upset yesterday even though, lol yeah we all knew this. It’s instructive, though, a bit, because if you read the doctor’s comments, they’re… I mean, they’re awful but… “understandable.” If I were one of those doctors, I would suck it up and serve patients with disabilities, but I would be doing this at great personal cost. One doctor, for example, reported that he hired a sign language translator for a deaf patient and the cost completely ate up his revenue since the insurance wouldn’t cover it. As a manager and business operator, I find myself making decisions for the sake of decency at the expense of the business’ bottom line constantly. But most operators don’t. Doctors are probably by and large rich assholes, but they’re also operating in an economic system of which they have zero control, and all evidence indicates that far more of the blame lays with our insurance companies and regulatory environment. This does nothing to quench my indignation, it just spreads it around. Some day my indignation will cover the earth.
And lastly, today, another gripe. There is an old business associate of mine. We used to serve on a non-profit board together. I like the guy but haven’t heard from him in years. That’s fine. He hasn’t heard from me in years either. But now he’s trying to get in touch with me. Which is fine. And he probably wants something from me, which is probably also fine. I am generally positively predisposed to this guy’s projects and schemes.
But here’s the thing: He won’t tell me why he wants to get in touch with me. He wants to pitch me in real-time, on the phone or, even worse, a Zoom. He wants me to get on a Zoom without knowing why. And I am sorry but I am fifty years old now and if I have had any ounce of success in business, this is where I make my stand, this is what that success has bought me: I will not get on the phone without knowing why unless you are a paying client of my work. Is this a generational thing? This guy is one generation up from me. Feels a bit younger than boomer but.. I dunno, maybe older GenX and I’m on the younger side of it. Or something. But definitely there’s an internet adoption divide between us.
And then I don’t know what to do! I could answer him and just say “yo put it in an email” but that seems rude. Or I could suck it up but I am not going to do that. So I just… dont’ answer him. Which is, obviously, not the best approach!
“What to do, what to do” ← is now a thing I have said three times in this issue. Feels right.
Taylor Swift’s Midnight comes out at Midnight tonight. Get ready!
Justa Mix for you today, mostly new stuff except for Sting, obviously, and Carole King and The Men, weirdly. Not sure why. Oh and Brooooce but that’s cuz of the Nebraska re-issue again. But really, if you listen to this mix, just make sure you give the first track a shot because the new Laibach single is insane and… really good? Man that is a thing I did not see coming. At all.
i’m so excited for Midnights. can’t wait for my first listen tonight!
while at my mom’s last year preparing to move her to Berkeley, we listened to A LOT of Sting. we also watched A LOT of Sting concerts on YouTube. and while i largely stopped caring about his solo music when Ten Summoner’s Tales came out, i have to say he has released some pretty good music between now and then.
Fairly sure it doesn't qualify as late period but Mercury Falling was a surprisingly strong album. (And man I love Bring On The Night, too)