Good morning good morning. Sorry I am late. Boy I needed sleep. And I had to deal with some work stuff. And I had to take my daughter to the Ukrainian-not-Ukrainian place for breakfast and see if they had babkas. They did not. She broke down crying in front of the woman who worked there. It worked, though. She promises they will have babkas tomorrow.

Greetings from Somerville, MA. We have been here since Friday night. 14-hour drive up from Chapel Hill. One lunch stop, two quick pee breaks. Rained almost the whole time. No real problems, just slower traffic from rain. Took the new Tappan Zee again. Real architectural marvel that bridge is. I-84 was busy, though. Genuinely considering heading all the way up to Albany and taking the Mass Pike the whole way next time.

Mass Pike: still an awesome road. Just the best.

Jane was a trooper, as usual. She is a great car kid. And she did not have a meltdown at the Maryland House Rest Stop like she has had on four separate occasions. She brought Hayden her Cabbage Patch doll, and he had a meltdown instead, and she said all the things to him that I would say to her. Her emotional transferrence to her doll seems pretty weird but you know what? Fuckin works.

Join the GMHHAY slack! Reply to this email and ask for an invite if you’re a human who likes chatting with other humans about topics such as these within!

We are listening to Claire Rousay, a little death. We are speaking in the plural again. We have a little under four hours left in the To Investigate playlist to clear it out before the end of the year, and I have about 6 hours of work left this year, so I should be able to make it. Fingers crossed. Love Claire Rousay. The ability to make ambient so damn emotional is a real skill. She is moving.

We did the Real Wild Child goth/new wave dance party for Kids at Man Ray this weekend. And I say “we” this time because it is a real team effort. It is absolutely amazing how the adult staff of this goth/new wave/gay/fetish night club pulls together to throw this amazing dance party for kids. Lindsey makes up the mocktails, with rice-krispy rims, whipped cream, and the works. The AV guy helps choose amazing kid-friendly video content, helps lights the snacks and the FREE MANIC PANIC, and the doormen, of their own initiative, obtained and handed out candy canes to each and every kid that arrives. The main promo woman dressed up as Santa’s little helper, and her husband dressed up as Santa, and it ruled. They are a truly great staff. I love that place so much.

The kids had a great time, got their faces painted, got high on sugary drinks and ran around like maniacs. Like last time, 90% of what I played were requests, because these kids make great requests. Now, they have absolutely zero request ettiquette, to be clear. The first time we threw the party, at any given time half the kids were at the DJ booth shouting requests at me. So now we have a notepad and cauldron and they write their requests and put em in there. But some kids make 10, 20 requests. They make one, I play it, they immediately make another one. They request songs that have already been played. Tony (my DJ partner) and I do our best to accommodate, but there’s no way we could ever play them all. It is very emotional when you gotta let down a little kid! Chris, my old friend and one of the house DJs, stopped by to check it out and he was chatting with me at the DJ booth and saw my sea of 100 or so request slips and I could see the panic in his eyes. Really is a different sort of DJing.

Volume is an issue too. You can’t have it so loud that when they walk into the club they freak out. We have a reduced-sensory area, but it’s in the back you gotta walk through the dance floor to get to it. But the kids are yelling and the music’s gotta be loud enough to hear to dance to. But also a lot of the parents are there to catch up with their parent friends, and ideally they’d be able to hear each other. But unlike a normal dance club where you step off to the side when you want to chat, the parents are sort of interspersed with the kids on the dance floor because they are also, well, watching their kids. I find it works best to start quiet and slowly ramp it up as the party continues, then slowly bring it back down as it thins out toward the end.

But all-in-all, they loved it, danced their little hearts out, danced on the speakers, jumped from the speakers. Did their drawing activities and ate their snacks and oh gosh if you haven’t seen a room of little kids dancing to the Cramps, I am sorry.

Also I want it known for posterity’s sake that I found the clean version of the Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York” and played that. Lotta people object to that version, but my view is Kristy sang that vocal before she or Shane died, so it is legit. Clean versions in general are a whole thing at RWC. Our policy is no swear words, but so long as they don’t swear, sure, we’ll play a song where the content is a woman chopping up her husband? Just don’t swear? I dunno. It works. No complaints yet. Takes a certain type of parent to bring their kid to Man Ray.

The kids, parents and staff alike when absolutely crazy for the free Manic Panic, so I would like to thank Tish and Snooky, and my friend Cassel who works for them now. Tish and Snooky have been running this company independently since back in the days of Blondie at CBGB’s. I had assumed somewhere along the lines they pulled a Ben and Jerry’s and sold to Unilver or something, but nope. They rule. And they sent me a copy of (one of) their records from back in the day! 1982! Dedicated to Jim Belushi and Lester Bangs. I would watch a whole documentary about Tish and Snooky. What a life.

Afterward Emma wanted to go to the burger place across the street and several of the parents and kid patrons of the dance night were there and they told me how much they love it, how nice it is to be able to show their kids Man Ray, how they “just love that kind of music,” they say, in a tone where you can tell they are constantly explaining their weird music tastes to their normie friends. It was very validating and heartening.

Promotion is a bitch, though. Already many people have told me they would have come if they heard about it. Man Ray is great about promoting their night, but it’s occurred to me that the audience is slightly different: not people who go to Man Ray, but people who used to go to Man Ray. I spent some money on Facebook, advertising the night to parents in New England who like goth. And it was the most successful one yet, most people. But it wasn’t packed, and I’m still not successfully getting the word out. My photo booth company has email functionality so I gotta get the email list compiled, so I can email people about the next one, but of course that’s only the people who go now.

I should probably do some traditional PR, but man, this is just a joke hobby. I already have a job.

After Real Wild Child, I met up with a bunch of friends at my friend Ivelise’s apartment for their annual Christmas party, thank you for inviting me the interloper. Then a bunch of us dudes went back to Man Ray for Chris’ New Wave night, which was excellent. DUDE TALK DUDE TIMES.

Yesterday was understandably a bust since I had drinks, went to bed at two, and Jane woke me up early for breakfast. I did manage to take Jussi to Market Basket, on the Sunday before Christmas, and it was chaos but also amazing. I love that place. Excellent music, cheesy Christmas decorations, brand names on the aisle labels, every checkout aisle open and humming (when have you ever seen that?) and just the most diverse group of customers out there. Busy AF but a real joy nonetheless. Long live Market Basket and F those private equity jagoffs trying to make it worse. Solidarity, etc. etc. x

OK back to work. It is my last day of work for the year, very excited. Our friends Nick and Meghan and Henry arrive here tonight and we all spend Christmas with Sean and Jussi and other friends here in MA. It is our… third year doing this? And we have a nice Christmas Eve gathering at a local restaurant if you are in the Boston area with nowhere to go on Christmas Eve. Drop a line!

Here’s my 2 DJ sets from the night — Tony did the other two. I let him go a little more goth. I would also like it noted that everything except Tear Garden and Casiotone were requests, and yes, I played the poppiest Cure song but only because the kids gave me two requests for A Forest (in two different handwritings!) and it is just too long, so I chose the poppier one. The kids probably thought I was sooo square.