Good morning good morning. Howdy ho hello hey hey hi. Neck hurts. Back burning like sunburn. Unbelievably high blood pressure this morning, after some good progress for a week from a mix of new meds and way less salt. World is out to get me. Did some ill-advised Googling Kagi-ing last night and best bet is I have Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, life expectancy 6 to 12 months, so you know. Nice knowing you. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Speaking of Google, they are gutting Google search completely, turning it into some AI monstrosity. I repeat: you do not have to use Google search. There are alternatives. I use Kagi. Yes, I pay for it but it is worth it, oh my god is it worth it, I cannot convey to you how much it is worth it. It is $4.50 a month seriously. Seriously. Look at this glorious, minimalist search results page:

I cannot convey to you how pleasant that is. Not a single ad.

Wish I could get rid of the quick peek but, you take what you can get I guess.

Not a single person had an answer to “which 80’s or 90’s comedy featured a guy at a gas station freaking out over the cost of air and after filling his tires up, bagging all the air he paid for and shouting “free air! anyone need free air?” Or something like that.

I will have to suffer with this burden for the rest of my life, I suppose.

Sure did make me laugh, that gag. Back when the world was young and simple and free.

Just back from the grocery store and it accused me of shoplifting again. Old guy wasn’t there, it was a young woman. We sat there watching a video of me typing my phone number in, with the machine asking me if I was stealing anything. While I was doing a thing it wants me to do. I asked her how I was supposed to do this without arousing criminal suspicion and she just shrugged. Alas.

The Zevia sale is going gangbusters, they are plumb sold out of regular Zevia cola and I cleaned em out of the Caffeine Free variant. All the other variants are decimated. People freakin’ love Zevia. They just love it at $4.99 a six-pack, not $7.99 a six pack.

I came home to cat poop in the entryway and I would like to state for the record that I did not pretend to not see it. I, in fact, cleaned it up. Because I am an adult. A responsible adult.

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We are listening this morning to the soundtrack to a film called Oh, Canada, about which I know nothing. Other than, minutes ago, I learned that Phosphorescent did the soundtrack, back in 2024. “Song for Zula” came on in the truck this morning and I completely emotionally lost it like I do every time I hear that song. So I decided I would listen to the Live at the Music Hall album this morning, with the ultimate version of “Song for Zula” (though don’t sleep on the St. Pancras version). And when I searched for Phosphorescent I discovered this album I did not know about. So here I am. Used to know a few dudes in his band, never knew Matthew.

(Oh also I referred to “we” as second person the other day. It is first-person plural, duh. Thank you Liz for pointing out this comical error).

It is bonkers no one has put out the first two Phosphorescent albums out on vinyl, ever. But I guess the kids are into CDs these days look at this batshit photo my friend Nick sent me yesterday. $52!

So. I had a revelation last night. Shoegaze won. I mean, there are no grunge festivals, grunge bands like Hazel or Seaweed are not playing Primavera. The Pumpkins are on tour and will do okay, but not as good as Slowdive or MBV, and they are eschewing their grunge facets anyhow. Billy Corgan is not wearing a GRUNGER shirt the way Neil Halstead wears a SHOEGAZER shirt. Bands that left shoegaze like Ride and Slowdive returned to the fold and got huge. We do not have Madchester festivals with The Farm and Northside. We do not have Britpop festivals with Senseless Things and Fretblanket.

Yet we have giant shoegaze festivals, shoegaze bands headlining festivals, reunions of everyone from Hum to the Drop Nineteens to Chapterhouse. Chapterhouse swung through Boston in, oh, god, what was it Jussi? 2004 ish? Played to a half-full Middle East downstairs. How crowded was their show at the Sinclair last night?

Kids love shoegaze, kids are making shoegaze, there are a bajillion new shoegaze bands and I cannot think of a single Madchester, Britpop or Grunge band that the kids have started.

I guess you could say metal and techno won too but those were always much bigger to start. And both of those have significant shoegaze components these days (Diiv, Nothing, M83, Trentmøller). Shoegaze is everywhere.

I am very psyched that shoegaze won. I wish those kids would discover my shoegaze band from the 90’s but what can you do.

Fuck yeah good job Shoegaze. Pat on the back for you.

So I have a new purchase. I now own Steve Albini’s Rema Rema t-shirt. I mean, is there really anyone else in the world who should own this shirt? Well, yeah, probably. But I bought it. It was just sitting there for weeks on the Steve Albini’s closet site while everything sold around it. It is stained. It is, according to Byron Coley, probably hand-screened. Where did it come from? Did Steve make it? Did Rema Rema make it and send it to him? Did a fan make it after Big Black notoriously (well, in my world) covered the song “Rema Rema”? (Fun fact: Rema Rema are another band that have a song with the same name as the band like Talk Talk).

Just yesterday I was listening to the criminally underrated Adam Ant song “Beat My Guest” and I was thinking to myself “I like Adam Ant and all but I don’t know if I can ever forgive him for luring Marco Pirroni away from Rema Rema.” (Tangent Adam and the Ants are playing this summer with Squeeze. Is Marco still in the band? Should I go?)

There is not a chance in hell I can fit into this shirt. Also it has a stain on it. I am doing my best to educate my daughter about music but I do not find it super likely that in, ten, fifteen years, this girl will be super excited about Steve Albini’s Rema Rema shirt. My wife briefly considered stealing it but was unimpressed with the stain. What IS the stain, I wonder.

Steve what did you do in this shirt.

Primaries around the country last night which mostly sucked. Some weirdness in Georgia with judge voting, I cannot really tell what was up with that. That Kentucky republican congressman who has been all gung ho about getting the Epstein files released lost his primary. Trump endorsed someone else. Told a bunch of Republicans: look this guy wants to release the Epstein files which will probably implicate me as a sexual predator and possibly pedophile and we can’t have that so I need you to vote him out of office” and they said “yes sir right away sir how high.” Just fucking great.

Was freaking out at the state of the world yesterday, then tried to calm myself down, find a moment of joy. Had one of those moments we all get where we think about how we gotta take care of our health and maybe we should just relax a bit and stop freaking out about the fate of the world and I could see a little glimpse of light and it was real nice.

And then I thought about how… you never hear about a bunch of zen, kind Germans in Nazi Germany who were just trying to take care of their health and ignore everything. You hear about an entire country complicit.

So I guess, like, taking care of your health is great and all, so long as you are content to be labeled a collaborator for all of history.

Pass.

Jane and I watched some pretty sweet Space videos last night, though. She is also pretty into demographic collapse videos. Very into South Korea’s demographic collapse, and Germany’s, and it is the one area I do not super love Kurzgesagt for. They are pretty convinced it is bad for us all if people stop having babies. I am not convinced. They set up a false dichotomy, you see it everywhere: Sure a world with fewer people would be nice but how are we going to get there without pain? Well dude how are we going to keep having more people in this world without pain? We’re killin the freakin planet.

Wait this is supposed to be the happy Jane section. We played tiles in the car this morning, it was nice. Took cute photos together. She brushed her teeth again without much fuss. She acted like a lunatic in the Mexican restaurant last night like she has for, like, seven weeks straight. Something about that place makes her go crazy it is very weird.

Emma leaves in a week for her girls’ trip to Boston. Man the apostrophe could go anywhere in the term “girls trip” huh? You could have no apostrophe, would work. You could have it before the S, because Emma is a girl going on a trip, or after the S, because there is more than one girl and it is their trip. Weird. ANYWAY. I am very excited. Haven’t been spending enough time with her this week. It is going to rule.

I mean, it’ll be hell. But it’ll also rule.

Song for Zula for you today. Listen to it on repeat. At least an hour.

Until tomorrow my fine, feathered friend.