Good morning. Hello. How are you? #805
Walmart Radio, Conspiracy theorists in the aisles, musings on narrative, Pyrex myths revealed, multiplying GMHHAYs, Taco Bell Dorito Locos Tacos outlasting the Confederacy, Man Ray reopened.
Good morning, friends! Hello. Happy Friday. How are you holding up in these trying times? Well, I hope? Fingers crossed. Just back from the greatest journey of the week, the Friday morning recycling-and-Walmart errands. Just fantastic. Exciting times. The big fancy truck that takes away the giant auto-compacting dumpster that you throw your recycling into was there. It is such a magic truck. While I was there the attendant fished out an entire stove ventilation hood from the recycling dumpster. We bitched and moaned about it. There is a free means of disposing such an item less then twenty yards away, at the other end of the collection site. Ridonk. I also forgot to drop off the glass recycling on the first trip, so I had to go back to the recycling center a second time.
Walmart was mostly boring. Still no Walmart Radio. I am becoming slightly worried that particular marketing and HR endeavor has come to an end, mayhaps due to its cross-purpose, slightly muddled marketing strategy and brief. The DJs and content speak directly to employees but it is played throughout the retail area of the store and the parking lot. Kinda weird.
Or maybe the computer BSOD’d and no one’s gotten to restart it. Even though Walmart Radio is probably only a couple years old, I assume it’s running off of Windows XP.
I had a nice chat with the woman who manages the produce section about the continued absense of organic mini cucumbers. She said she doesn’t know why but she hasn’t been able to get any for months. She even reset the entire system. She seemed very excited to chat with someone about this aspect of her job. I shoulda asked her if the system was on Windows XP.
Also chatted with a man who looked exactly what I imagine Thomas Pynchon to look like (Kurt Vonnegut with a bigger white-man afro), who was very put out that the price tag was inaccurate on his particular brand extension of Pirate Booty. I suggested maybe it was misplaced on the shelf and he said no, no, read the description on the tag, it is the right variety. I trusted him in this. He did inform me — and I confess I did not know this, as my blue-collar jobs were primarily in hospitality and restaurants — that the wholesalers put the price tags on the shelves, not Walmart employees. He suggested a massive conspiracy, as anyone who looks like Pynchon would. He is probably not wrong.
Wow I have so much to write about today and I spent that much time on the Walmart trip. I am in a narrative mood I guess. Been thinking about narrative a lot lately. I know I am a giant proponent of non-narrative sci-fi and the like, and don’t worry, I’m suddenly not pro-narrative in my sci-fi or anything but… We’re watching His Dark Materials and there is so much to like about it but also it’s kind of terrible and I cannot for the life of me figure out what’s wrong, save for the blameless fact that HBO did not have enough cash or access to The Volume to handle the VFX in a naturalistic enough way so the whole thing looks too animated. But it’s more than that. I don’t think the problem is the narrative, the story, which I find very compelling. But it’s also getting a bit too what I call “chess pieces,” where the supposedly epic story is, at its core, reduced down the author tediously having to move groups of people around on the story chessboard so that they’re where they need to be for the next set piece to happen and nothing feels real. This makes me want to actually read the books to definitively ascertain if the story’s all right or not. But then I feel like I’m losing my mind because why would I read the books for a show about which I dislike so much. I’m spending way too much time thinking about this, though at least my wife shares me confusion about this one.
Two friends, Schuyler and Kellianne, have both started their own versions of GMHHAY this week and that makes me very excited (Schuyler’s is on Substack here. Kellianne’s is friends-only for now). Let’s start a revolution here, people. Schuyler asked a couple logistical questions that I suppose are worth addressing to a larger audience. Yes, every day after I finish GMHHAY, right before I hit “post,” I hit command-A and select all the text — it is important to do this in the editor view not just onthe published article. Then I post it to Substack. Then I move over to Facebook and paste the contents of my clipboard into Facebook. This is the only way it will maintain the paragraph formatting properly. It does not, of course, transfer over pictures and links and bold and italic, and that is all sad, but that’s the kind of fantastic bonus content you get on the email version. Then I drag in the playlist photo, hit publish, then manually copy and pase into the first two comments the Spotify Playlist URL and the URL to the Substack version to subtly encourage people to sign up for the Substack so that some day when Facebook dies we’re all still in touch. Even if you, you know, just shunt me off to the archive folder in the meantime.
After that I actually do the whole process again, slightly differently, to copy and paste a copy of the day’s edition into my master GMHHAY scrivener file, so things are organized for the book versions. This needs to be copied from the delivered email in my inbox, which is the only way to maintain links and boding and whatnot. Work on Book 2 is beginning soon I think. I hope. As soon as I find a couple hours to prep it and get it to Lisa.
Anyway, let a thousand GMHHAYs go forth. It is absolutely the best format on the internet these days. Imagine instead of just me your Facebook was filled with such quality content, or your inbox was filled with heartfelt newsletters from people you care about — or even interesting strangers! — every day.
The other thing I’ll say is every day it takes me longer to do the bolding, the photos, the playlist prep (even if I have a playlist ready) and the subhead than it does to actually write the thing.
Moving on!
MAN. People fucking CARE about Pyrex! It is AWESOME. I struck gold with that topic, I could milk it for months but, you know, not my style. What I have learned in the last day though is YES, Pyrex made an irredeemable brand fuck-up in the 80’s that is on the order of New Coke. The brand will never recover. Though clearly it did not impact the profit line. I also learned some interesting facts I think you should all be aware of:
You cannot actually differentiate between borosilicate Pyrex and soda-lime glass Pyrex by whether the word “Pyrex” is in all caps. That is a myth. What you are looking for is a blueish tint to the glass.
Anchor Hocking may have borosilicate in some of their glassware, but I can find no actual evidence of this, and what I did find is a comment from Anchor Hocking on this topic in the Q&A section on Amazon of a Anchor Hocking “Fire King” line — which you would assume is a good heat resistant line — saying that that line is made out of Soda Lime glass.
Despite these two sad facts, there’s actually a ton of borosilicate measuring cups and mixing bowls on Amazon, but they’re all sort of the no-name brand claptrap that is the stock and trade of the ad-addled Amazon (oh what alliteration) of the 21st century. So, this is somewhat reassuring, you can still get borosilicate. And it’s not even that expensive.
But, somewhat worryingly, there are zero borosilicate products on, for example, Williams Sonoma’s site, which is somewhat worrisome in the sense that it makes me think that maybe Borosilicate isn’t actually better after all.
To round this out, I will probably buy a borosilicate measuring cup on Amazon and check it out, but I’m not sure I’m gonna blindly start putting boiling water in it or anything.
A few other quick items of note today:
My good friend Nick informed me that the Taco Bell Doritos Locos tacos have been around for longer than the Confederacy and I think that says something profound about America. He also informs me that the Doritos Locos breakfast taco with the spicy potato is off the hook, and I trust him in these matters. I will be trying one soon. Relatedly: he also says that Rao’s is a quality mainstream marinara sauce so I bought a jar at Walmart this morning and I will ask for Jane’s input on the topic.
I would like to just say that GMHHAY readers were on this gas-stoves-are-unhealthy topic months (years?) before this recent mainstream (lol, Twitter) dustup about prying one’s gas range out of one’s cold, dead, asthmatic hands. Yes, hands can be asthmatic just look at Steve Scalise.
The legendary Boston night club Man Ray is re-opening after 20 years next week and I want to go so bad. Shit. It makes me want to move back to Boston. I will probably come up for a Wednesday in a couple weeks when it’s died down a bit. I want to see it on Wednesday. The weekends, great, but what I really want to know is if Wednesday still feels like… home? comfort? The best thing in the world? Imagine if that Wednesday night could be recreated. It would be insane. I cannot wait to find out and I am so excited they’re trying. This is just great. I do have to come for work sometime in the next month, so.. fingers crossed. I know. Who goes out on a Wednesday. We are old. There is still a lingering pandemic. But that’s just it. That should make it much emptier, and that would be awesome.
Finally, I have to say that though I have not been talking about it much, the toilet seat pedal installation is such a marvelous invention I am so, so happy. My beautiful, lathed, food pedal brings me satisfaction every time I step on it, and we have had zero “incidents” between the partners in this marriage since its installation. Now, I know most men out there do not suffer from congenitial neck fusion that leads to headaches when they bend over, so they do not have the excuses and disincentives I have to “just lift the seat,” but I’m telling you, even beyond my own medical idiosyncrasies, the thing is freakin awesome and they should be standard on every domestic toilet installation. Just the best.
Moody and quiet mix for today. One more till 100. The legendary Boston band Tribe has finally appeared on Spotify, so I am putting one of my favorite Tribe songs on here. Most of the rest is new. The new PiL song is preposterous. I mean, it’s fine. Whatever. I would listen to an album by a bunch of kids if they made that song. But it’s hard to listen to a cranky old Tory making that music. Only other oldies on here is Bark Psychosis because they were such a good band, so beautiful, mayhaps the true torch bearers of Talk Talk. God I miss them. Both of them, actually.
Have a lovely weekend. I hope you do a lot of sleeping in. I’m totally going to.