Good morning. Hello. How are you? #752
Taylor Midnights thoughts, through a series of mis-steps I find myself in posession of two trucks.
Good morning. Hello. How are you? All well? I do hope so. I am good, thanks for asking. We met one of our new neighbors yesterday. They were not old! Also from New York, lol. But they seemed very nice. Exciting. It’s Friday, I have the day off. Sorry for being a little late. Did the Walmart run and recycling this morning. Jane is at Grammy’s.
I am listening to Taylor Swift’s Midnights on my Phonon 4400 Ghostly Edition headphones (I’m typing so f***ing hard I might break my f***ing Mac book Air!!!!!!!! ← in hindsight we all shoulda seen it coming).
So, early initial Taylor thoughts:
I’m sad the vinyl didn’t show up by release day, this is a bugbear of mine, plus in this case I am looking forward to creating a sequel to the one and only TikTok I have ever created.
I like the music sounds on this record, but I don’t love the samey-ness, the, well, the Jack Antonoff-ness of it. My feelings on this subject are known, and I don’t wish to publicly speak ill of anyone. Last night, Taylor extolled the ten year songwriting relationship with Antonoff and I think that’s exactly the problem. There are artists from whom you freakin love another record that sounds exactly like them. For example, I love Damage and Joy by the Jesus and Mary Chain for exactly this reason. It sounds like a Jesus and Mary Chain record. But Taylor is a master of re-invention, that’s a huge part of her appeal! And Antonoff is a master of the exact same beat. I’m listening to “Bejeweled” for the third time right now and the music could be for Lorde, for Clairo, for Florence. He makes it all sound the same! Only Lana seems to have the fortitude to get something different out of Jack. It was all so promising when it seemed she was ditching Antonoff for the National guys, maybe those one or two Antonoff songs on Folklore and Evermore were just residual, the lingering end. But, alas, he is back with a gusto, and I think she suffers for it.
Someone needs to grab Jack Antonoff’s hand and place it on the tempo knob.
To be fair to Jack, he makes really good sounds. They are sounds with emotional heft. This is not easy! But sounds are only part of a song.
There are some filler lyrics on here, at least on first list, I do not like the first two songs at all, but, then, I only gave them a single listen so far, when I ill-advisedly tried to stay up till midnight and listen to the album immediately upon release. I got through four songs. I need to try again.
I know “love songs” are another key part of Taylor’s schtick but I loved the third-person songs on Evermore and Folklore, the high school kids and crazy heiresses and murder plots. I miss that stuff. This might just be me because I love songs that aren’t love songs more than I have ever, previously, in my life. It’s just where I am in life, and I do not expect Taylor to be writing songs for a 50 year-old man. I could write a whole essay about the interplay in my head between the lyrics on this album and the book I’m reading, the new Nick Cave interview book, where he discusses at length his abandonment of his previous predilliction for narrative songs. I didn’t expect Taylor to start writing tone poems or anything, but I didn’t expect a full-scale abandonment of her recent topical expansion either.
Lana Del Rey seems neutered here and that’s sad. I was really expecting more from that collab. It’s good. But not as batshit amazing as I was hoping. Also my god I wish I was a fly on the wall of the studio that day, assuming there even was a day they were both in the studio together.
“Mastermind” is a Freezepop rip-off lol. Okay not really but that is funny.
If your tastes run further afield, there is a new album from the goth/noise/experimental/electronica/drone outfit Cindytalk, though only two songs are avaialable for streaming.
“Karma” is a fantastic song and I wish it were earlier in the album but man it redeems everything. It’s so good. It’s so good.
Taylor you’re totally right: having someone kiss you in a crowded room is awesome.
So, get this shit. Ford emailed yesterday to tell me my F150 Lightning is not coming in Spring/Summer, as originally estimated, but sometime around November 11. Not 2023, but 2022. As in… in three weeks or so? After the previous wait was expected to be nine months or so? I suppose most people would be very happy about this, but of course I jut bought an F150 Lightning at auction a month ago. Which I very much would not have done had I known one was coming this year!
SO. Now there are a million tiny little calculations about what to do here. First, of course, is to decide whether to take delivery of the thing at all. I can bail. But then the dealer, who sucks, will just put it up for sale at some higher price and gouge someone.1 ALSO Ford does knock dealers who sell pre-ordered EVs to people other than the name listed on the reservation, so they may not even want to do this. Easiest thing would be to ask them, but I don’t like them, and also I’d rather help a friend if I could?
Then, assuming I take delivery and then sell one, the next question is which one to sell. I like things about both. This whole no heated steering wheel on the new one situation is a bummer. I just went out. It was 35 degrees. The heated steering wheel is awesome! Why did no one ever tell me how great these things were? Did they exist in the 80’s? Really would have loved one when I lived in Fairbanks, AK with no garage. Anyway, that is a minus on the new one. But then the new one has a few plusses: I bought the spray-in bed, which is much better than the crappy Amazon bed I have in this one. And it is build after the random mythical date in June 2022 (ish?), before which all F150 Lightning’s cannot make use of their Phone-as-key functionality due to some security glitch they say they’re gonna patch, but who knows when, and they have not yet patched. So that is two things in favor of keeping the new one.
Of course, I could get more for the new one, and there’s the steering wheel issue.
Another issue is Android Auto, which is not the Android Carplay equivalent but rather an OS for cars, takes over the whole infotainment screen and the instrument cluster (you can still use CarPlay with Android Auto). Ford’s Sync system is okay, but it’s EOL’d and the Sync Lightnings aren’t gonna be upgradeable to Android Auto (which is so dumb and pisses me off don’t get me started). So I was hoping that by mid next year when *my* Lightning was going to be delivered, it’d have Android Auto but oh well I guess no such luck.
And then, whichever one I do sell, how do I sell it? I don’t especially want to do Cars & Bids (an auction site), though obviously that would be the best bang for buck. But as long as I come close to breaking even here, I am happy. Ideally I’d sell one to a friend.
So: Anyone here want a Black Ford F150 Lightning with the extended battery?
And assuming not, I dunno. Carvana? Facebook Marketplace? Anyone sell a car recently?
Finished Shiller’s Narrative Economics the other day. I feel I must defend Shiller — because that Nobel Laureate totally needs me to defend him — he does eventually acknowledge his over-reliance on Google NGrams and Trends and even points out something I did not know: Sometimes you can get more results when you enter a search query with quotes (thus limiting the search to the exact phrase) than without. This is counterintuitive. It is, apparenly, because when you put the quotes in, it causes Google search to “dig deeper” which is just… crazy! Also he seems to have learned this by doing online research and not, like, throwing his Nobel Prize around and asking someone at Google for comment, so, you know, good on him.
(Relatedly, some friends of mine recently found an odd Google search query behavior that was returning incorrect results. I have a friend who works there, on search. I asked her about it. Took a month or so, but yesterday she got it fixed! I feel drunk with power!)
Anyway, I really enjoyed Shiller’s last chapter about “okay I have now laid out for you all these new theories, what we need now are a bunch of people to do deep research on all this stuff,” which is a great tool in book writing and I am totally going to steal that when I finally turn my attention back to my ad economics book.
Someday.
Justa mix for you today, predominantly new, starting off with the best Taylor jam on the new album. Also there is a new Ladytron! And it sounds really good? I didn’t know about this at all till the algorithm alerted me to it this morning. Must investigate more. Is a new album coming? Is a tour coming?? Omg. Threw a few oldies on here: I am very into Trio and Trio II, a pair of albums from Linda Rondstat, Emmylou Harris and Dolly Parton of which I knew absolutely nothing until this week and man, they are so good. Why did I never know about these?
All right. Have a lovely weekend!
Hey dealers! Consider, in the 21st century, hiring at least one person on your sales staff who can sell things through email. Who can write an email more than three words long! There are literally millions of these people in America.
I really like Question and Karma. I'm not a huge fan, so I'm curious to hear serious fans' thoughts. Your thoughts on the production seem pretty spot on to me...