Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1554
Chores! weekend studio work, thank you to my dad's union, Reeves Gabrels, parenting woes, GMHHAY editing, rock dreams, Brown Bear says hi
Good morning good morning. New work week. Hope your labor day holiday was lovely. Hope you took a moment to give thanks to unions. I pretty much owe my life to unions. Not because I got to be in one, ever. But both my parents did, and that allowed me to go to college. Unions aved my dad’s job when he was wrongfully terminated and the governor of the state wouldn’t help him because “your dad didn’t vote for me.” He said this to my dad, who did vote for him. But his dad didn’t, so too bad for you. Union got him his job back, with back pay for the year they wouldn’t let him work. That back pay paid for my college. Yay unions.
Had a dream last night where I was at some festival and saw James do “Born of Frustration” with Alyssa and the Pretenders do “Don’t get me Wrong” with Sean and Seth. Good festival. Met the new member of the Cure, he looked just liked that dead-eyed young member of the Night’s Watch, Olly, who saves Jon Snow’s life then kills him later spoiler alert. The Olly plot line is remarkably well done, actually. Didn’t even notice it on the first viewing. Couldn’t tell one Crow from another. But he was driven. Was never going to get over the Wildlings raiding Mole’s Town and killing his family. Even though Jon killed the wildling who lead that raid, the minute Jon made peace with the Wildlings, Olly’s betrayal was inevitable. You could see it in his dead eyes, the dead eyes of a nihilist. Excellent casting. Wonder if that guy’s done anything else.
Well, in my dream he worked at an ad agency (my old place of employment, Arnold) by day and was in The Cure by night. This is obviously a Reeves Gabrels proxy, the current guitarist of the Cure who used to play for David Bowie and would just pal around Boston in his downtime. I remember seeing him at an Elevator Drops show at the revolving museum with Annie and just being sort of fascinated that David Bowie’s guitarist was just hanging out. Compounded with Bill Whalen, my departed friend who worked with my at Arnold and was also in the fantastic rock band Bullet Lavolta. Been thinking about Bill again lately since re-reading the 2021 GMHHAY.
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We are listening to a band called Winter, album called Adult Romantix. Don’t know anything about them. It was a recommendation from the GMHHAY Slack. Those people have some good music recommendations. This album is great. It’s like if Silversun Pickups didn’t try and sound like the Smashing Pumpkins and kept what was awesome about them.
Excellent weekend of choring. Assembled a Birdies Bed — gonna move my indeterminate tomatoes outside next year, no fear of squirrels. Shredded a ton of cardboard, just an absolute ton. Mounted more of those nifty magnetic tool-holding bars along my miter saw station. Cleaned up the wiring in my truck for the aftermarket rear-view window cam. Cleaned up the wiring for the speaker in the master closet because, man, I spend a lot of time in there putting laundry away and cutting hangars to size in shit (deep GMHHAY cut there).
But mostly, I spent the weekend cutting large pieces of foam and laying on the floor in the studio. The whole floor will, eventually, have an inch and a half of foam on it, floating the floor above it, detaching it from the floor below, helping prevent sound transmission via vibration. But I need to do this one section now because I need to move a bunch of HVAC ducts and I need the subfloor under them all done before I move them. It is a complicted jigsaw puzzle. But it is very satisfying laying foam on the ground. It goes much faster than my other current job — pulling up the old subfloor, adding sound-proofing insulation into the bays, and adding new subflooring. And it is super fun to cut the shapes you need to place the foam up against the walls or ceiling. You can really get too obsessed, trying to make the shapes match exactly. It’s like fractal myopia. You’ll never get it right, you gotta chill eventually and just do your best. There will be five more layers on this floor before its done. You can make the top level match perfectly, the foam just needs to provide a vibration barrier.
Anyway, it’s really fun and I got the section I needed to get done done. So I spent the rest of the weekend doing materials prep for next weekend — cutting sheetrock to carriable size, cutting OSB for the next flooring section. Man, sheetrock is heavy. We are using a kind called type X, additional weight (hence additional sound prevention). It is heavy. Seventy pounds a sheet.
Also managed to get more editing done on GMHHAY volume 2 book. I added a lot back in from Lisa’s edits, I feel bad. I’m some existential spiral right now about this six-year-long project. What is the purpose, what is the value of these books? I believe the value is their historical insight, like those old Nazi citizens journals. A look into the mind of a normie while we slide into fascism. This is different than, like, a normal memoir. Which means not pulling back on the existential dread or political minutae? But I dunno, maybe I’m wrong. People also really love subplots about egg cracking and 2007 Old Navy nine-inch brown bears.
(Brown Bear is doing great, by the way. We took him to breakfast Monday. He ate some of my potatoes and some of Jane’s pancakes. He says hi.)
And, you know. I am a brilliant genius so most of my political predictions turn out right, but not all of them, and then you gotta decide, like, are you saying the whole thing, warts and all, or are you cutting the predictions that turned out wrong? Gotta go warts and all, right? But man, it’s no fun editing something that you know turned out badly.
But, I do have some updates for you, future reader of all the volumes of GMHHAY I’m sure you’re out there:
I hadn’t ever looked at the view count of that “moving birdies bed” video I made in 2021, where I kept saying “it’s gonna get a thousand views on YouTube someday” in a tongue-in-cheek way. But reader, I went and looked and it has, in fact, gotten four thousand views. So there. Called it.
I had completely forgotten about mine and Jane’s habit of waking up every morning and opening the curtains and looking out the window and “saying hi to Grammy’s house” and oh my god as soon as I re-read about that I got super-emotional. I reminded Jane about it and she had forgotten too and she got excited about it, briefly, but not enough to start saying hi to Grammy’s house again alas.
The Cat Person lady wrote the original screenplay for Bodies Bodies Bodies and got a story credit so I guess she is doing okay after all. Forgot about the Cat Person drama. Did not miss it.
Jane has been being absolutely horrible for about twenty hours now and it is a lot. She was just the worst last night. Hitting both of us, leaning in to scream as loud as she could into my ear to actively hurt me. Telling us both we’re the worst parents ever, trying to pit us against each other. Just horrible. Only slightly better this morning, still snappy and mean and disagreeable and wouldn’t let me brush her hair or give her a hug and I mean I know she is the kid of two willfully stubborn people but this is just too much maaaan. I’ve been in a, mmm, gonna say five-year monumentally stressful situation at work and I have assumed that, in addition to the fascism and genocide, was the source of most of my anxiety and sick-feeling in my stomach, but maybe it’s just parenting. She can be so mean. It is just so depressing. And you can’t let it show and you have to keep being kind and boy the whole thing can really suck sometimes.
Sometimes I think I was a genius for having a kid so late, and everyone else was dumb for having them young. It’s nice to be better equipped to handle it — I could not have handled this cruelty back in my youth before I got my temper under control. But now I feel… I wish I was going to have more time with my adult daughter. I think of my friends who had kids young and all the years, decades they’ve gotten to spend with their adult kids and… I will just not get that. And it is really sad. Fingers crossed she’s not this terrible, or worse, through her teenage years. Maybe she’ll figure it out. We are trying to guide her to kindness and civility but, jesus.
But, then, on Saturday she was horsing around, doing that kid thing where she thinks a thing is fun so she willfully ignores everything that can go wrong. And she promptly flung the blanket so that it spilled my water all over me and my chair. And I hopped up, alarmed, and ran and got a towel but I did all this in slightly too angry of a way and probably yelped. I did not swear, I did not yell at her, but I probably said something like “god! jesus!” and it scared her. And instead of apologizing she started defending herself, and all I wanted to hear was an apology so of course I bad-parented and told her she should have been being more careful and that’s what happens when you’re reckless. And I had a real l’espirit d’escalier while going to bed about how I should have parented that, and the next morning and breakfast I had a conversation with her explaining what I did wrong before mentioning anything she did wrong, and I told her I understood how she felt, etc. And we had a great talk and by the end she understood she should have been more careful and quickly apologized and it was so great and I felt like such a good parent.
And then twenty hours of holy terror came and quashed that completely so, you know. Win some lose some.
Do we have a playlist today? Let’s see. One thing I am sad about is that GMHHAY vol 2 removes all of my playlist commentaries. It is a logical, even mayhaps necessary decision, but still. It’s sad.
Hrm yes Justa Mix today, starts with an oldie, the rest new. Lotta good shit on here. I am very into the new Anamanaguchi I think I told you that already. New Soulwax is all very promising. New Suede! Well, I think it’s new? Maybe it’s not. I am no expert. Not one I recall, anyway, and it is very good.
Okay byeee.
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Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.