Good morning. Hello. How are you? #929
Gottlieb & Caro and the missing 150,000 words of The Power Broker, Roy the cat and the parmesan shaker, the used CD market seems to be dying. Does a house need phone or cable wiring anymore?
Good morning! Hello there, happy Wednesday. What it is, what it is. Finished The Bear last night. That was intense. Harrowing and uplifting, loved it all except the last episode, which was a weak finish. Episode 6 will go down in history as some of the best TV in the world, Episode 7 no slouch. Solid all around.
Also finished Turn Every Page, the documentary about Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb that Gottlieb’s daughter Lizzie made. Took me three evenings off from Jane to finish it. I only watch maybe 30-45 minutes a night after I’ve finished all my YouTube instructional videos. It is a pretty great documentary, especially for the uninitiated. I don’t know if you’ve binge read all of Caro’s LBJ books in one year, but if you have, you know the guy has a bit of a tendency to repeat himself, say the same stories repeatedly to really drive home the points he wants to make. Bob Caro is a master of press training. It is almost impossible to get him off topic, to tell a new anecdote. He tells you exactly and only what he is willing to tell you. I consumed every single interview and saw him speak two (three?) times on the press tour for his semi-autobiography, also titled Turn Every Page, and there were almost no questions during any Q&A by anyone that would yield fresh information.
This documentary was mostly the same. We got a few new pieces of information out of it — volume five is further along than I had hoped, I do think there’s a chance we’ll get it in 2025, fingers crossed. Though they did not come out and address it explicitly, I think that Caro’s pat answer that the 150,000 words cut from The Power Broker do not exist is BS. I suspect they still exist. I think that the chapter about Jane Jacobs and the downtown SoHo expressway still exist. When asked, he blows it off. He clearly has no desire to revisit those words. And yet, throughout the movie they show actual pages of Gottlieb’s edits to the The Power Broker. So…. what? They only have some of those pages? Caro knows exactly what’s in Gottlieb’s archive? And then Caro himself shows Lizzie Gottlieb his carbons archive, where he stuffs the carbons of every page he types, because Bob Caro still types everything on a typewriter with carbons. It’s a ten foot deep tunnel where he’s been stuffing carbons for, like, thirty years, and he doesn’t go back in there and look. But we’re meant to believe that he doesn’t have the carbons of those 150,000 words, and he knows it for sure. Balderdash I say!
It is good that Caro has donated his archive to the New York Historical Society but that carbon copy tunnel shows he hasn’t given them everything yet. It seems entirely possible — likely, even — that, eh, I’m gonna say five-ish years after he passes we will finally see either an unexpurgated two-volume version of The Power Broker, or, more likely, a slimmer volume of the expurgated chapters on the SoHo expressway.
And if this doesn’t happen I’ll hoof it up there and make it happen.
They also alluded to Caro’s contract with Knopf, and how “no one could ever get a contract like that again,” and though they did not explicitly say it I get the strong sense that Knopf has literally been paying Caro a stipend for forty years. That is bonkers. Bonkers!
And, finally, very into Bob Gottlieb’s predilection for collecting weird-ass shit and his long-suffering wife having to deal with it all in their house. New Yorkers, man. Really do weird shit to make everything fit into their very small apartments.
Some important updates for you. It occurs to me that when I let a topic lapse here in the GMHHAY that you may believe my obsession has passed, or I no longer do it. This is, generally speaking, not the case. For example, though I have switched from once-a-day to once-a-week, I am still regularly doing my country maps game, every Monday. And if I get them wrong on Monday I have to do them on Tuesday, etc., until I have gotten 100% on each continent’s map game. Still going great, but I can definitely feel myself slowing down, having to think a bit more about where there tricky countries are like Malawi and Moldova and Monserrat. Man they all start with Ms. But yes, still doing the countries.
But that is not what I am here to talk about. Long time readers may remember that in the middle of the pandemic I got really into having restaurant-style red pepper flake, oregano and parmesan cheese shakers at our dining table for pizza night. Like I got very accurate, restaurant-looking shakers. And they brought me some small joy, a shining light, spark of joy during the darkness of the pandemic. And we are still using them! They still spark joy! They are great!
But!
The other day we caught Roy the Cat licking the top of the parmesan shaker. Ugh. How long has he been doing this? Shit he’s probably been doing it his whole life, at night while we are asleep. He probably just got cocky this one time because he’s never been caught.
And we have probably been eating cat-saliva-covered parmesan cheese for years.
So… now. What to do what to do? I have washed the parmesan shaker, but it seems pointless to refill it and leave it out again just to let the cat lick it. I could keep it in the fridge but that is no fun. But I don’t want cat-saliva-covered parmesan because that’ll kill you. Except obviously it won’t, because we would now be dead. I guess I will keep it in the fridge. Everyone says we should anyway, but the stuff in it isn’t real parmesan it is an American industrial bastardization, keeps forever, and anyway we go through the stuff pretty quickly.
But shit. Clearly grown-up-ass responsibility clearly should win here, the dual specter of non-refrigeration and cat saliva is a bridge too far for someone claiming to be an adult.
And so that spark of joy dies. Another childish light dimmed by the harsh realities of the world.
Farewell, sweet parmesan shaker.
So I had my Discogs store turned off for months and moths. Turned it off… I think when I had covid in January? Forgot to turn it back on. Finally got around to it the other day. Go and shop for some CDs if you’re dying for a CD. But apparently no one is anymore. Usually when I turn my store off for a while and then turn it back on, I immediately get a few orders from people who monitor items from their want list. This time I got exactly two orders, and one of them didn’t pay. It’s been two weeks now, no more orders. In the old days I would have gotten 2-3 in that time. The used CD market seems to be dying.
Still, though. In the seven years or so I have been slowly selling off my CDs, I did pretty good! I have had 1,075 orders on Discogs and I’d say they averaged 1.5 or so CDs per order. We’ll call it 1,600 CDs. And I only have 610 left for sale. I successfully sold, up cycled, kept-out-of-a-landfill about 1,600 CDs, which is about 400 pounds of plastic. I can feel pretty good about that.
I’m sad the market is finally dying though. People have been saying it’s dead for years, but as a purveyor of fine, rare CDs, I knew that to not be the case. But now? I dunno, man.
Maybe I need to lower all my prices. Which is, sadly, a fairly labor-intensive activity on Discogs. I don’t think they have a “on sale” function, alas.
Oh wait, interestingly, all the expensive stuff sold. Most expensive CD for sale now in my store is $30 — a Tindersticks CD — and there are only 7 items for more than $10. I always said there was still a market for the rare ones. Maybe that’s still true. Maybe I just don’t have any more rare CDs.
Don the electrician was by yesterday working on the outlets in the garage and we laid out a plan for getting electricity to the greenhouse. We will trench for him, lay conduit from a vent in our crawlspace over to the greenhouse pad, and we’ll get it all set up so that the conduit is in before the concrete forms. He’ll come by sometime once the concrete is poured and add the wiring. Should be a pretty quick one-day job for him. I mean, he’s a little slow, but I am slowly earning his dedication. He repeatedly thanks me for the work. He really likes my drill press. Maybe one day I’ll broach politics with him and get him to take that thin blue line sticker off his van, but, you know, old dogs, new tricks.
I’ve also started tearing out the phone and cable wiring from the house. Is this insane? I feel like I’m going to own this house for a good long while and by the time it sells, no one is going to even think about cable or phones. Coax cable takes up so much space. I will keep the in-wall phone wiring, that stuff can be converted to ethernet, but the rest? Pointless. It feel so irrevocable though. But fuck it. Right?
Right?
Right.
Right?
Justa mix for you, mix of old and new. Lotta old, actually, between stuff I’ve been revisiting, stuff I’ve just discovered that is old (E, Les Hommes Sauvages) etc. But a lot of good new stuff too. Flows really nicely, this mix. Covers a lot of ground. New Sigur Ros is great wish I saw that recent tour I regret things.
All right take care friends. Until tomorrow.