Good morning. Hello. How are you? #996
Sinead, one moment in a day, the impossibility of capturing a single moment of internal dialogue, Denton and Peretti and New York Tech in the oughts, the lack of NY tech billionaires, pre-K jitters
Good morning. Hello. How are you? What’s shakin? Did you watch that debate last night? I did not. Usually, in previous elections, I would subject myself to this sort of torture in the name of “civic duty” but I don’t have the stomach for this anymore. There are less nauseating, more productive ways to do one’s civic duty than watch a bunch of sociopaths musing about the subtle joys of fascism. Pass.
I sure gloated over Rudy’s mugshot though. I definitely did that.
My eyes itch my lungs itch what is the point of getting off of Claritin how long will these symptoms go on is this just my natural state and the Claritin was helping or is the Claritin causing this how are we ever to know why are human bodies so full of shit both literally and figuratively I guess I’ll just do this for two weeks and then know boy I sure am glad I’m subjecting myself to this misery arbitrarily.
Yesterday as we were getting read to go on our evening stroll (such lovely weather before another four days of 90’s will this endless summer ever end I swear to god it hasn’t rained in two weeks), “The Emperor’s New Clothes” came on First Wave in the kitchen. I turned it up. And I almost cried, as I do every time Sinead comes on randomly these days. And I had just been reading this article about how John Kennedy O’Toole was, in fact, quite successful and not really the model for Ignatius, and it seems that he in fact took his life in a very strong bout of mental illness and was not by any definition of the word a failure and that made me sad mental illness makes me sad, suicide makes me sad, and there has been no cause of death announced yet about Sinead and I’m wondering why it matters, how it matters, whether it’s any of our business at all, how we’ll all want to draw conclusions from it and how I feel vaguely awful for caring but how its also part of the closure we need and how a very close friend of mine once died and no one told me one way or the other if it was suicide and to this day I am not sure and it eats at me and it feels like a weird failing on my part that does and while all this was happening Jane was educating me on Fahrenheit and Celsius, having just explained to me that “urine” is another word for “pee” and christ why aren’t all those great Sinead albums available on vinyl and is there even going to be some sort of reissue campaign now that she’s gone, what’s going on there. And she was so brave and awesome and where’s her Little Golden Book like Taylor got? And maybe I’m just being impatient about her family having their act together as artistic executors and everything I want probably makes them feel terrible if they are good people.
And all of that took about a minute and it’s the sort of thing that all of us feel every day and can never capture and can never share in any accurate way and being alive really is something. And maybe it’s our inability to capture this and share it, the sheer impossibility of the task, something I’ve been striving at my entire life and am only moderately okay at it — maybe our inability in this task is why people do stupid things like have ambition and get into conspiracy theories and run for office and troll people on Twitter.
And then we took the walk and it was lovely, just lovely out, what a world.
And then I did Jane bedtime and we watched videos and one of them was the Foo Fighters doing “Mandinka” with Alanis Morissette (one L, one N, one R, two S’s, two Ts) and if you need any evidence of how Sinead’s voice was singular, watch someone as absurdly talented as Alanis Morissette struggle with the vocals on “Mandinka” and you start to realize.
Oh and I watched a live performance of Sinead (with hair) do of “The Last Day of Our Acquaintance” and they rocked it out so big at the end and it was so awesome.
All of this makes it sound like I am in a funk and I am absolutely not I am in a great mood, aside from my inexplicably spiking blood pressure and various other physical ailments. It’s a great week, no meeting week rules, and maybe I’ll never have a meeting again wouldn’t that be great.
In my no-meetingness I have been catching up on (semi-) work-related articles in my (fantastic) Kindle Scribe and I finally got around to reading the roundtable interview panel thingy Peter Kafka did with Nick Denton, Ben Smith and Jonah Perretti as part of the promo for Ben Smith’s Traffic. I haven’t read Traffic yet, despite being mentioned in it (always gotta mention that don’t I), but I will get to it soon. But the conversation really was great, really ticked off some nostalgia boxes for me. Nick is so smart, I wonder what he’s up to these days would be great to see him back “in the arena” so to speak, and it was really something watching these guys talk so frankly about the absurd hurdles media businesses have faced through the years.
And my god did it take me back to a time and place of New York media in the early oughts. Really was something. I wouldn’t say “I miss it” but it is… it’s weird seeing everyone in this post-scene world. We’re all off in different places, doing different things. Some are out of it completely. Some are still toiling away at “the dream,” in “the biz” — I guess you could count me in that cohort. I shocking number, just an ungodly number, work for Google and Facebook now it really is insane those companies really picked over that scene. A few have reached near star status — Joe Weisenthal comes to mind, Taylor Lorenz, of course. It’s weird though, for all the hype in New York tech in those days, I don’t think anyone reached billionaire status? Maybe Kevin Ryan, but even there I don’t think so. Some of the west coast visitors have — Garret Camp and the Uber guys, of course. But of the home-grown New York scene? The richest ones I can think of are in the hundreds-of-millions camp, at best: David Karp, Fred and the USV guys, Kevin Ryan, the Moat guys…
Lotta billionaires in New York but I can’t think of any that came from New York tech. Except Michael Bloomberg, lol.
Anyway I guess all this is to say that I miss Tom and Jerry’s and Tile Bar and the Magician?
Jane’s school was supposed to tell us which class she was in yesterday, who the teacher was. They did not do that. We’re supposed to go to this open house tonight, and now I guess we have to go to find out who her teacher is. So that is fairly disorganized and unpleasant. Six more days till her Kindergarten starts. Or so. We don’t actually know yet, which is another annoying thing. This does not feel super organized, for all the phone calls and emails and voice mails. I kinda want to bail on it all right now. As it gets closer I get more depressed about it. I wish I did not feel this way. And I am annoyed I can’t bring her and my wife to Boston on this trip I’m planning for three weeks from now I wish we could all go and I wish we could drive and it is annoying school is annoying, I am deeply afraid she’s going to get dumber. I’m afraid she’s going to handle it as well as I did, though Emma’s DNA has tempered her temper from my youthful extreme levels. It’s all too horrible. And I shouldn’t even be writing this cuz Emma will read it and agree, and we’ll both spiral and decide to pull her which is a thing we joke about daily. It is very, very hard to stay the course. And I’m thankful for all of you who write in and tell me it will be great and she will love it and I will love it. And I do envision how it will be nice to drop her off at school and have my day to myself. But. You know. My kid is special. We are special snowflakes and different. Blah blah blah.
Steady as she goes, lad.
Moody and quiet mix today, new and old. Love the new Bonnie Prince Billy. The new Tricky is a light, wispy, moody thing. New Blur is better than I expected but… not quite holding up on multiple listens.
Righty-O, jolly good, carry on. Until tomorrow old chap(pette).