Good morning. Hello. How are you? #824
Aug visiting on his book tour, the (literal) train wreck, a bit more about the Super Bowl, Austin's changs vis a vis the Triangle, a book mystery, print New Yorkers, NC Dem party changes
Good morning! Hello, there. How are you? All well? My friend Aug is visiting today that is nice. He is on a book tour. A book tour for a book he wrote. A book tour for a book he wrote and published. A book tour that he self organized like a 1980’s punk band for a bhook that he wrote and published. That people show up to. It is so gloriously indie it is boggling my mind. Shit, even Ian MacKaye helped him book a gig. You should go see him read. When have you ever heard of a human being booking their entire own book tour? I mean, I’m sure it happens, but shit. All I manage to do when I finish a book is tell you guys and post once to Twitter. I’m so lazy about every aspect of writing except for actually writing. But Aug, man. He is doing it all. Hats off.
Aug and Emma and I had a talk last night about how long it takes them to fall asleep and how I am blessed with the ability to fall asleep in ten minutes or so almost every night. Fifteen minutes for me is insomnia. Maybe once a year I have a truly sleepless night. This is a gift. I was like this even before the CPAP but the CPAP helps a lot. Anyway I left them and went to bed at my early bedtime, and as I was falling asleep I could hear them chatting in the next room and I became convinced they were plotting to come in and see if I really had fallen asleep so fast. Like they were gonna spy on me. And it filtered into my dreams and it was… actually quite nice. I hope they did come peep and see I wasnt’ making it up.
Jane is at Grammy’s so they can have a Valentine’s Day party this morning. Oh right. Happy Valentine’s day. I used to hate Valentine’s Day. I’m still not much for it. In high school my friend Val Lord and I made these amazing anti-valentine fliers one year I wonder if I have a picture of those they were so great. Hold please. Alas. My filing system let me down. I will have to dig that out. The great thing about the filing system is that once I find this item, I will copy it to everywhere I just looked and in ten years when I think of that item again, it will be there.
I get to do Jane bedtime tonight and I bought her a pair of heart pajamas from that awesome place Aubrey told me about that sells pajamas. I hope Jane isn’t over Valentine’s Day by tonight. That will be nice.
In the notes that I gathered for topics to write about in GMHHAY over my five day haitus, there was one that said “what’s up with this train wreck” that I wrote down like Wednesday or so. And then when I was writing yesterday’s GMHHAY I looked at that note, assumed the words “this train wreck” were a metaphor, cuz well, look around. And I couldn’t figure to what metaphorical train wreck I was referring. But lol and behold, nope! I was referring to the actual train wreck which seems terrifying and insane and for ten days like no one talked about it except Twitter and it’s just such a perfect encapsulation of American media discourse. A thing happens. The populace decides its a big deal. People talk about it on social media. The news ignores it. Eventually a few small reports come out in the news. Then finally MSNBC — I swear, it’s always MSNBC — starts doing some in-depth segments about it, which finally happened yesterday. Then eventually the mainstream media starts properly reporting on it once they get their paws off the boring-ass balloon hysteria. Yesterday and Today, not a single article of the 100 or so articles on the top page of NYT.com. I used to think when this happens that the Times doesn’t have its finger on the pulse of the American public but now I think it’s the same as the rest of us: it doesn’t fucking know what’s going on. A significant portion of the population is worried that the entire Ohio River Basin might be being contaminated as we speak and no one in government is capable of saying anything that sounds like the truth and no major news outlet is capable of getting to the bottom of it. Literally no one knows anything about the chemicals being railroaded around the country. Plenty of excperts could tell you exactly what happened if they knew what was on the train but no one is sure. Are they not sure because the lists were rolled out slowly so they wonder if there were even more chemicals? Were the lists rolled out slowly because of incompetence or secrecy? By the government or the railroad? No one knows! There’s no plot its just obscurity and confusion turtles all the way down. Really is something.
Oh I meant to start with a comment I sent to a friend yesterday about football. He emailed to tell me he loved football and was sad about my POV. And I wanted to clarify to him, so I should clarify to you, too! I wrote:
Oh to be clear, I love football, and I don't think there's anything wrong with football. You should play football with your friends! The SPORT is great and I love it and I am sad that Goodell's ruining the league and won't just give up and leave. He should be kicked to the curb and the way the league has handled CTE is a scandal and tragedy.
I also think we're in an interim period, sorta like cigarettes were in the 80's. Like, by the time I took up smoking in the late 80's early 90's, it said in big letters on the package THIS WILL KILL YOU and anyone who took up smoking by then is, in my opinion, on their own. They knew the risks. Same with the NFL. I'm 100% okay with the NFL continuing and players joining now who know what they're getting into, eyes open. Except, of course, Goodell's current approach is to pretend all these new rules mean its safe now, so, you know, people still arguably not going in eyes open. And there are still players playing from before all this. Well, a few now. But not none!
I think it's fucking batshit that they keep changing laws to reduce the risk while not acknowledging there was a risk before and not paying THROUGH THE NOSE to take care of players. I think it's batshit that the NFL is a for-profit enterprise that somehow still enjoys a government-mandated exemption to America's anti-trust laws but works this hard to avoid helping the people who MAKE ALL THE MONEY. A fund with $34k for each player. That was his proposed "settlement." He made $63 million last year. The average NFL player makes $45k. The worst.
Plus, of course, racism! Military fetishism!
Question: Did you recently send Jane some nice books? Someone mentioned they were going to but I thought it was one of those things people say then never do. Ashley, was it you? Anyway, whomever it was, thank you, and I applaud your personal organizational system you should probably write a small chapbook on how to keep your promises when you tell someone you’re going to send something to them because I am struggling with that right at this moment.
Read this loong article in the New Yorker by Lawrence Wright about Austin and all the changes its made through the years and it made me so sad. For about twenty-five years I went to Austin several times a year. I first visited in the early 1990’s. I stopped going regularly when Jane was born and have only made it back a few times in the last couple years becuase of Jane and work and the pandemic. It was changing so utterly radically even before I left it was kind of terrifying, and Wright’s article made it sound like it was even worse. All the billionaires. All the libertarian billionaires leaving San Francisco cuz it’s so terrible, going to Austin and… turning it into San Francisco really is something. The part where Lawrence and his wife went to an ACL show at the crazy new gorgeous but crazy ACL venue and then stayed at the crazy new W hotel and then looked out the window at the skyline and literally couldn’t tell which direction they were looking, in a town that they had lived in for forty years, because in every direction there were just skyscrapers.
Emma and I considered Austin when we moved here nine years ago but even then it was obvious it was being changed beyond recognition and even though I had 20+ years of friendships and connections there, it was clear we would be coming to contribute to the problem.
The contrasts between Austin and the Triangle are really fascinating. I used to tell people that the Triangle was Austin but in an exploded view: the capital was in one town, the business district was in another and the university was in another and they were all 30 minutes apart and they were not space constrined by a bunch of hills like Austin is and all of that made for a vastly more affordable, albeit car-centric place. I still think all that’s true, but it’s only part of the story. First, of course, I studiously ignored the presence of the other universities — most notably Duke — when I focused on UNC, and being a region with multiple world-class universities really is a different thing. Secondly, and more ineffably, the Triangle had some weirdness, but it’s exploded view geography kept it from ever really having anything like the Keep Austin Weird ethos. There are hippies and there is a history of weird but honestly nothing like Austin. The hispanic culture that infuses Austin is swapped out in the triangle with the vibrant black culture and history eminating from Durham. The alienation of car culture is real, even when you live in one of the (three! maybe four!) downtown cores, because any well-rounded person will want to make routine forays to the other downtown cores and there is zero public transporation between them. A Raleigh or Durham hipster downtown resident still needs to get to Cat’s Cradle, etc.
All these things make the Triangle different, good and bad, but it does feel more resilient to change. The change here is sprawl, hence more easily ignorable from downtown, which sucks, and makes the old farming families sad, but there has not been the same radical change to the core(s).
Wright’s article made me feel like I made the right choice. There’s so much I’d like to see improved about the Triangle — especially the mass transit — but it feels more… stable. And our vote matters more. I am, sadly, coming to the conclusion the idea of Texas inevitably turning blue over time is a myth. The people who move to Texas seem more libertarian and self selecting. Not to say some people aren’t moving there jonesing for a political fight, but it feels different from NC, which feels different from TX.
Two tangents from that ramble:
The NC Democratic Party is under new leadership after a vote last week and by all insider accounts that Emma and I can uncover this seems like a good thing and hopefully we can see them connect NC’s blue potential more with the wellspring of national support that has helped in Georgia. Georgia proved it was worth it and the national dollars followed. Here’s hoping the new NC leaders can replicate that.
I re-subscribed to the New Yorker to read that Lawrence Wright article and I love the pub, but it didn’t click that when I re-subscribed it would start sending me the paper magazine again. It has begun arriving in my inbox and I feel dread. It used to consume my entire week. I just wanted the digital. Maybe I’ll start ripping my mailing label off and anonymously dropping them off at my dentist.
Just another Justa Mix today because I had another one ready and I gotta finish this up and call the car place cuz Aug needs his car looked at and he will need a ride back and I have a very busy day today again man one day they’ll stop being busy I am thinking next week? Fingers crossed. Anyway a lot of the current usual suspects here, new Young Fathers just so good, there’s another “new” Neutral Milk Hotel, the new Smashing Pumpkins is obviously Billy trying to make a good old school Pumpkins album and you know, he didn’t miss completely. Some songs are all right. I like the new Depeche Mode I like it’s… happiness? Peace? Something about it warms me. Oldies from David J for some reason and Kate Bush because that is Jane’s favorite Kate Bush song so far she likes dancing to it.
Till tomorrow!