Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1594
Return home, Zevia, Fred Meyer, Jazz clubs, Tom Waits reissue campaign, Turo, secrets with the old man at the HT
Good morning hello hi how are you miss you everything all right? I did it, I flew home, landed at midnight, got home at 12:30, fell asleep at 1:30 and got up at 6:30. That was unpleasant. I am tired but I think I can make it through the day all right. And it was worth it to see my daughter this morning. That was nice. She is swell.
Think my soul is still floating somewhere over the midwest. Miss it. Will be excited when it makes it home.
I like the act of flying a lot. Sitting in the plane, not connected to the internet, reading my articles, listening to my music, sometimes just sitting there doing nothing. Kids call it “raw dogging” these days: Just sitting there doing nothing. I’ve been doing that on planes for 20 years, I like to get at least an hour of it in on any transcontinental flight. Normally I put a hood over my eyes so as to not unnerve the passenger next to me. Side note: Nick, this hoodie rules, and it has a great hood for airplanes.
It’s the airports I don’t really like. I mean, I like PDX, man, that roof is a masterpiece. And I love RDU. But there is something about them, the indignity, the lack of seats. Especially at SEA. Nowhere to sit. Something about airports is just exhausting, even when you’re alone and have given yourself plenty of time.
I think I would enjoy someone picking me up from home, driving me to an executive airport with no security, putting me in a plane and flying in circles with no internet for four hours, then going home and sleeping in m bed. That sounds nice.
Even from the distance of the suburbs and the airport, though, Portland seems pretty cool. Dude in a Crass shirt at the Fred Meyer. Another dude in a CLAWS shirt: Cat Lovers against White Supremacy. Gave him a thumbs up. Saw a couple in all black in that airport lounge, one of them wearing a Skinny Puppy shirt. Too Dark Park era. Another dude and all black and I just sort of nodded to each other like we were in a secret society. I liked that.
Speaking of which, I read this article — will do the article rundown tomorrow I am too tired for it today — that talked about secret societies amongst feudal poachers and let me tell you: that is a club I would join.
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We are listening this morning to a Tom Waits 50th Anniversary re-issue. This is a slow-moving, ongoing theme of GMHHAY, we are buying the 50th anniversary re-issues of the Tom Waits albums I do not already own as they come out every couple of years. We are now up to the classic Nighthawks at the Diner, which I owned on CD but never vinyl. It has now been rectified. I got into Tom Waits in the Bone Machine era, and have only, before this campaign started two years ago, sporadically dipped into his early work. I told myself I “did not like Jazz” back then. But then I picked up the compilation The Island Years and realized there is a lot to love in the “Jazz” years. So I started picking them up here and there through the 90’s, mostly on CD. Now I am methodically completing the collection on vinyl. Looks like we will be done in about five years, after the fiftieth re-issue of Heartattack and Vine, since I already have One From the Heart and, indeed, every album after that on vinyl. Because, like they say, when you’re a white dude in you’re fifties you gotta choose whether you’re gonna get into brewpubs, vintage computers, sports betting, vinyl collecting, cars or nazism these days. I chose vinyl.
Okay I confess I do not have the Night On Earth soundtrack on vinyl, nor do I have the Teddy Edwards collaboration, since it has never been issued on vinyl.
We will continue this conversation next year with the reissue of Small Change. That’ll be a good ‘un.
I wonder if this album was actually recorded live. It’s got that crowd sound, but sounds studio. OH. Interesting. Per Wikipedia: “It was recorded over four sessions in July in the Los Angeles Record Plant studio in front of a small invited audience set up to recreate the atmosphere of a jazz club.”
Clever.
All right what other trip-related snippets do we have in our GMHHAY notepad today?
OH RIGHT the Jazz Club. Well that is thematically appropriate today. Yeah okay so the first night, I landed, Uber’d straight to my cousin’s house, met up with the fam, had a lovely night. Drank a shot of Blackberry Crown Royal, which was surprisingly not bad, then some light beers, then at the very end, a shot of some Pecan Whiskey with my cousin and her husband and mom and man that stuff was nasty. Then Jack drove me to the hotel, and it was, like, 9:30 PM and I was still pumped, even though it was midnight in my brain and soul, but, you know, I was out and alive. So I did some googling and there was a Jazz club in a strip mall across the street, the only nearby bar still open, so I walked over there.
Almost last call, but man, it was hilarious. A lot like the banter on this Tom Waits record right now, actually. It was obviously one of those situations where there is a scene and the scene is mostly other Jazz musicians, so as the night wound down, they were all sitting at the bar talking about Jazz and talking like Jazz, and saying things like “yeah, you know, there’s the music, and then there’s the music on a higher plane, you know man?”
“Yeah, yeah, I do, man, I do.”
“Kinda like life, man”
“That is right, that is right.”
It was the fuckin best.
Excellent bartender too.
I did not mingle but man I like those guys. JAZZ GUYS. I guess we will add that to the above-mentioned list of acceptable middle-aged dude pastimes. JAZZ CLUB SCENE.
My sister used the Turo car rental app to rent her car outta SEA-TAC and drive it down to Portland and she got a very sweet, more-or-less brand-new 4Runner in this awesome green shade. We talked about the app a bit and she said it was great, vastly superior to renting from Hertz or something, that the renters have gotten more professionalized and the cars are now usually in a pretty convenient location. I told her about how I don’t love AirBNB and boy did I sound like an old person, but she assured me Turo was a lot better of an experience. Anyone else use it? Any one have any horror stories?
By and large mostly these days I just Uber places when traveling — or Emma and I drive instead of fly — so I don’t have much cause to rent cars anymore. But I do wanna, you know, stay up on the hot new ways of doing things. This last rental-while-my-car-was-getting-repaired thing was a bummer since it wasn’t the car I was hoping for at all. And I do like to, you know, choose. Could be good.
There was a new flavor of Zevia at the Clackamus Fred Meyer (seriously, I went there three times I love Fred Meyer so much): Strawberries and Creme.
Semi-related, I was just at Harris Teeter, Fred Meyer’s nowhere-near-as-fun east-coast sibling store, and this is a Zevia sale week so I bought eight six-packs of caffeine free Zevia, and the old man who works the self-checkout told me it was also on sale right now at Food Lion. I was like “no no this is the caffeine-free and you guys are the only ones who have it.”
And he replied “No, they have it at Food Lion now, I buy it for my grandson. Caffeine Free. And it’s $4.99 over there this week too.”
This man took a significant risk disclosing this confidential competitor information to me, you know. Kinda like the Bothans. I respect that.
We share a bond now.
Was excellent to see Jane this morning. She got new red Hello Kitty shoes while I was gone. As with every trip, I swear she grew while I was gone. We played our Tiles game in the car this morning. She only plays the hard mode now. She is getting very good. She and mom and grammy went to Waffle House last night and they got the birthday waffle and boy that sounds delicious. I am jealous.
BUT we have halloween and her birthday party this coming weekend, so there will be plenty of cuteness.
Come on down!
Got another “To Investigate” clean-out playlist for you. Twenty-ish songs that have been sitting at the top of the playlist since August, as I re-listen to them each time I start to work on the playlist. No real rhyme or reason.
Have a lovely day talk to you tomorrow.
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Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.