Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1592
Off to Oregon. Alaska Air outage. Spotify woes. Family.
Good morning hello what is up Thursday, what is up fine friends and readers. The sky is blue and all the leaves are green. The sun's as warm as a baked potato. I think I know precisely what I mean. When I say it's a shpadoinkle day. Annie, Craig and I saw that movie’s world premiere. They had the original viral South Park clip out with Jesus and Brian Boitano. I think… Wait a minute. We might have seen the world premiere of Orgazmo, I think Cannibal the Musical was already out? Memory fades, memory fades. I will be useless when Jane gets to the age where she finally wants to know things about her ancestral history. Good thing everything is documented. Except apparently which Trey Parker/Matt Stone movie to which we went to the world premiere in Toronto.
I just did a search of my master journal file for “Orgazmo” and “Cannibal.” Not a lot. I bought a girlfriend Cannibalism 2 by Can on CD in 1992. I watched that Claire Denis movie that had some cannibalism in it in 2002. I listened to Cannibal Ox in 2004. But no record of Parker/Stone. Alas.
Off to the airport in 90 minutes or so. Headed to PDX, off to see family members. Just me, no fam, sadly, school and whatnot. I’m going to my step grandmother’s 90th birthday. My dad’s mom died in the… mmm… gonna say early 70’s? Maybe late 60’s. Okay I just looked it up. Can’t have my extensive personal archive completely let me down today. She died in 1966. March 24th. Her name was Millie. Four years later, my grandfather re-married, to Florence. She was basically the grandmother I knew when I was a kid. They separated or got divorced at some point, but that seemed sort-of academic. They stayed good friends, Florence stayed good friends with the whole family, she was at my sister’s wedding, sent her regrets about not making mine. She is great and we all love her and she has a giant family from her subsequent marriage, I think, it is all a bit vague to me we just call them cousins.
Anyway, Florence is great, she is ninety! Her birthday is tomorrow. That is crazy. I am excited to see her.
This is very fitting because today is my father’s birthday. He would have been eighty-three. Yes, his stepmom was seven years older than him. But, you know, he was, like, 24 when this all came to pass. He seems to have managed okay. Anyhow, been thinking about my dad a lot lately. What a good man. I am so proud neither of my parents succumbed to Fox News. I’m sad how long he suffered before anyone figured out what was wrong with him. But he was a great dad and I love my memories of him. I dream about him a lot, actually. But he’s always just sort of standing there watching whatever else is going on in the dream. Never really participates. Hrm. Mysterious.
Your parents die and the older relatives you have become more tenuously connected. You gotta put effort into seeing them while you can. My aunt and uncle Jack and Fred are going too. It will be good to see them. And my sister, of course, and my nephews.
FAMILY.
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We are listening to The Life of a Showgirl this morning because that is the next album in re-listening to my “To Investigate” queue. It is… fine. If Taylor is Elizabeth Taylor then Travis is Burton I guess? That is weird. “Ruin the Friendship” still moves me. Man. I feel that one. I still wish there was a big anthemic jam, a large catharsis. Max is so good at that. But not here I guess.
But I will say it is literally impossible for me to ever imagine anyone liking their friends cloaked in Gucci.
Also: It is basically impossible for me to listen to this album solely as a piece of music and not a cultural artifact, and of course I am trying to temper any criticism I have through a filter of “checking my sexism” which is a weird thing I only do with Taylor and not, like, say Abriction or Jay Som, the next two female artists in my queue. It is impossible to untangle. Honestly I think maybe listening to Taylor Swift might just give me anxiety these days.
Hrm. Gonna have to sit with that thought for a moment.
My sister has been caught up in a major, system-wide outage at Alaska Airlines. She was supposed to get to Portland yesterday mid-day. As of 3AM my time, she was not there yet. Not sure what is up now. Don’t really want to text and wake her up, since it’s only 5 AM West Coast and she’s got the kids with her.
I searched for “Alaska Air” on Bluesky and got no info on the outage. Searched Threads and got one or two mentions, nothing substantial. Finally bit the bullet and searched Twitter and there was a solid amount of on-the-ground updates and a couple intrepid reporters who had interviewed some Alaska Air employees on background. It fucking sucks that the information architecture of the world is still mostly on Twitter and has not migrated. Fucking hate it.
And then we have Spotify. There is a new, renewed push for everyone to quit Spotify. People are pissed that the founder, ex-CEO-but-now-Chairman Daniel Ek invested a bunch of money into robotic drone killing machines or something. This is, of course, on top of, you know, platforming shitty podcasters and people’s assorted complaints about the amount of money Spotify pays out to artists. I am not overly concerned about the last one, but the killer robots and Joe Rogan. Oh and the fact that they bribed every major label with equity, and they all made millions on the IPO, but passed none of it along to the artists, that was a giant, massive theft.
But, but, but. I find myself mostly unable to move to something else. I have tried multiple times. Amazon is unusable to me, and an awful company and I don’t need to tie myself to them more, what with Bezos’ killing of the Washington Post. Apple is also terrible these days, giving Trump his giant Special Boy trophies, maybe (it is unclear) donating to the stupid new Epstein Ballroom, and letting the government force the removal of the ICE spotting app. Oh and their accommodation to China. Just a ton of shit.
BUT of course, I am already tied to Apple and Amazon, in inextricable ways both in my personal and work lives. So leaving Spotify to move somewhere where I am already compromised still minimizes my collaborationist failings, because at least that would be $20 a month I am not spending on yet another awful company.
So, this weekend, I was thinking yeah, okay, suck it up, bro. Time to leave Spotify, hell or high water.
And then my friend Sam sent out the latest edition of his excellent Herb Sundays newsletter/playlist, this edition with a playlist by Miki Berenyi of Lush. It is awesome. Has the single from AC Marias on it my god I love AC Marias I have that 12”. Sam includes playlist links to both Spotify and Apple Music. So I was like “okay, well, let’s get started” and clicked on the Apple Music link and… I don’t know, man. Literally nothing happened. It opened up in a browser, which then opened up Apple Music on my computer and… there was absolutely no way to find the playlist? I am totally stumped.
To be clear I do use Apple Music. I pay for both Apple and Spotify. I use Apple Music in my car, Spotify at my desktop. Because I have completely different listening habits. At my desk I am constantly listening to new music, in sequential order. In my car I listen on shuffle to one long playlist of 10,000 or so songs (Spotify’s maximum number of songs in a playlist is 7,000 — another reason that they suck).
So.. I am at a crossroads. Apple Music on the desktop is unusable. It’s mobile app is okay if you are just using a single playsist. But it’s a catastriphe on the Mac. and I need a solid Mac App. And… I think Spotify might be it? I don’t know that Tidal or this weird French streaming platform people are talking about this week will work well on the Mac.
And if I switch to something obscure, I need some very quick and easy means to translate playlists every single morning because I can hardly expect the entire readership of GMHHAY to switch to them.
And then we have my wife to consider, who uses Android, who is on my family plan. I legit don’t even know if Apple Music exists on Android.
Anyway I am fucked, this whole thing makes me feel like a bad person but I AM TRYING.
Jane Jane Jane. She’s fine. On a teeth brushing strike again but I did manage to get her to do a desultory cusory brush this morning. You do what you can. I will miss that little rascal while I am in Oregon. I hope she is kind to her mom. She promised me in the car she would be but sadly her promises are not worth much these days. It is stuffy day. She brought Robyn, her Cabbage Patch Doll that used to belong to Emma.
Brown Bear’s feelings are hurt maybe I’ll go up there and console him before I leave.
Modern Synthpop playlist for you. Except one of these is old, X-Ceta, from the year 2000, but it is great and I have only recently discovered these teenage girls making awesome music in their California bedrooms and it has been re-issued by Numero Group though I am going to be strong and not purchase it.
Okay have a lovely weekend. Monday will be tough, I will try and write but I might be on the plane? We will see, we will see. If not, I will see you Tuesday. Ta.
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Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.