Hello hello good morning friends, hi, how are you, I miss you I need you I love you don’t ever leave me. Rough day yesterday. I don’t want to, like, blame the world for my own problems but god damn is this political environment getting to me. Read about this dude at Anthropic yesterday who presumably made his millions and is leaving his job in keeping us safe from evil AIs to go get a poetry degree, “learn to speak out” and do things more aligned with his values. Good for him, I guess. Get your bag, go retire. American dream. I hope his attic studio is a good one. Honestly everyone in Silicon Valley should do just that.

I started to write “Silicon Valley” uncapitalized, and Apple recommended I write “silicon valley.” But then I deleted, backed up, and started to write it capitalized, and it recommended I write “Silicon Valley” with caps. There is a metaphor for AI in there somewhere. Also how many times have I friggin turned off writing recommendations in OSX. While I am at it, how many times have they turned them back on. How many times must I turn off their stupid-ass AI DJ mixing in Apple Music just the worst.

Going to New York in about 3 hours. Are you in New York? Wanna go to Tom and Jerry’s tomorrow? Drop me a line. I am going for a friend’s work anniversary party and to see some old friends tonight. That will be nice. Much needed. I’m also grabbing lunch with one and coffee with another friend, both of which I have not seen in over a decade. That’ll be something. There are tons of people I would love to see and tons of people I promised I would let know the next time I went to New York but I do not possess the mental faculties to actually make good on those promises, so I will just leave it up to fate. GMHHAY readers are the only people I’m gonna tell. Maybe. Probably.

Hrm this might just be the petty complaints edition. Let’s roll with it. Went to the doctor a week or two ago, you will recall, to deal with this “mother’s curse” finger, which is basically now made of of 50% scar tissue and 50% finger. There was not much they could do. The told me to buy “scar tape” on Amazon. I tried to buy it at local pharmacies but no luck, sho ‘nuff, Amazon is the only place. Well. Around here. In LA there is probably a small store front in a strip mall next to the greatest sushi restaurant on the West Coast. In New York there is probably an “medical products district,” probably in Flushing. But here in the boonies you gotta buy em on Amazon.

They are fucking expensive. Like almost $30 for 10 sheets. And, I mean, they stick okay, but this is a finger, knuckle included. They stick about 80% as well as a Curaid waterproof bandage. So not terrible, but not great.

Plus! No one knows how — or even if — they work. There are theories. Maybe it reduces blood flow, maybe it reduces movement. Sorta like that tape athletes wear. Maybe it works maybe it doesn’t but what are you gonna do, not give it a go like some European anti-capitalist schmuck? So, $30 down the drain. And now my finger is entombed in clear plastic. And it keeps peeling off.

Is it working? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(footnotes to this section: 1) I call it “mother’s curse” because the whole thing started by getting a single grain of glass in my finger while unpacking a box I sent myself while packing up my mother’s house after she died. 2) I am really trying to reduce how many times I say “fuck” this edition, it is very hard. 3) I used em-dashes like a god-damned human and I am not embarrassed.)

Had a dream about Mark Kozelek last night. And a pet chinchilla, that was a stand-in for my child. It was a Chinchilla because my college girlfriend had one. She set it free in the Fenway. Suspect it did not live long. Anyway Mark Kozelek was playing a San Francisco version of MSG. He was bigger than ever. Cancelled, yes, but… you know. Getting past that. And I… I was so conflicted and sad but also crying to the songs I loved and missing Annie, who used to run a Red House Painters fanzine, and Emma was unimpressed with the whole thing but eventually Mark came and laid down next to us and we — well, I — requested “Have you Forgotten” and he played it which is a thing he never does anymore and the whole thing made me so sad because it was a metaphor for this country’s lost innocence and my own and the nostalgia I fight so hard to ignore, in order to look at the path in front of me where I am now like Yoda says but also those early Red House Painters songs really stick with you and, ugh, man, I just want to listen to some music without feeling bad.

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The key, then, is to listen to bands, where you know nothing about the members. Didn’t we talk about this a while back? I was developing some thesis about “every band is a solid unified unit of amazingness until you know something about them?”

Thus I am listening to C Cat Trance today, a post-punk band from Nottingham whose heyday was 1985-1987. I learned about them from my friend Mike in 1992 or so, the single “Shake the Mind” was like nothing I had ever heard, been a big fan ever since. Come to think of it, whenever i have that bar discussion about “what bands are on your list of dream reunions you’d love to see,” I should say “C Cat Trance.” I wonder if they ever reunited. I recently purchased a copy of their 1983 debut self-titled EP, and I am listening to it right now and my god it is it a clean copy. And the version of “My Tattoo” is not the Les Invisibles CD comp I bought in the 90’s and it is great. Except it’s one of those EPs that is 33 on one side and 45 on the other, so, we can still get a petty complaint in.

But the good thing is I know nothing about the humans in this band and I assume they are all great people, paragons of virtue, never did a bad thing in their life and I can listen to them without guilt and if that is not the case, keep it to yourself.

Hrm it seems my monitor screen is freaking out. Think I gotta restart. Brb. Hrm. I quit every app in preparation of restarting and the problem went away. Mysterious. As we were, then.

Speaking of Mike, the friend who got me into C Cat Trance in 1992, he has a new album out today. Ritual Fever, by one of his many bands, Water from the Sun. You should listen to it on Bandcamp. Maybe even buy it if that sort of music appeals to you.

All right you will be happy to know that I remembered the thing from about three days ago I wanted to write about that I thought about in bed and wanted to write down but then forgot and got all upset with myself about it. And this time I wrote it down. So here we go: MOONRAKER

Ever seen Moonraker? The James Bond film?

You should totally watch Moonraker.

I think I was… eight? Nine? the first time I saw Moonraker? I would not say Moonraker is inappropriate for an eight-or-nine year old. I would let my daughter watch Moonraker. As an eight-or-nine year old, I frickin (no F bomb) loved Moonraker. I have re-watched it many times. It always seemed so ridiculous.

And yet.

I mean. It has now occurred to me that Moonraker is, in fact, some of the most prescient science fiction ever created.

In thirty short years, in my lifetime, Moonraker went from one of the most idiotic plots of sci fi absurdism to an absolutely accurate prediction of the future.

To recap, the plot of Moonraker is that a madman billionaire genius assembles a fleet of space shuttles, flies them to his space station. And on the shuttles are two things: the “best” of humanity from a good old fashioned Nazi Eugenecist perspective, and a bunch of toxic gas so he can kill everyone on the planet, and then repopulate the planet with only his perfectly-selected beautiful specimens.

I used to laugh at this plot.

First, you silly screenwriters, you have no idea how expensive space programs are. Only nations can afford them, they are well out of reach of the world’s plutocrats, ha ha you silly screenwriters.

Second, you silly screenwriters, Nazis and Eugenicists are a thing of the past my god get with the times, Bond is getting so old fashioned you really need a reboot with someone like Pierce Brosnan but if you can’t get him get that Timothy Dalton guy and move the thing into the modern times jesus get with it.

Third, jesus is this a step up in the evilness of the Bond villain’s evil plots. I mean, sure, there have been some Bond villains toying with nukes, threatening to destroy a city or two, but the entire population of the planet? That seems a bit extreme no one would play god to that level you screenwriters really need to get a grip and bring things back to the human level.

BUT NOPE. Dead accurate on all counts. Holy mother of god, is Moonraker on the nose or what? Elon recently said “eh, Mars is too far away we’re gonna go to the moon instead.” Seems like only another year or two when he’ll be like “never mind, the moon is too far away we’re gonna build a space station.”

And given his to-the-bone racism, it is obvious the dude is planning to bring a master race with him to Mars. And historically I have thought “well, good riddance let em go,” but I mean come on are you telling me it is never going to occur to that guy that being on Mars is a pain and why shouldn’t he get Earth instead of leaving it to us mutants."

My god. Moonraker was prophetic. Moonraker is probably the single most accurate portrayal of the future of humanity ever committed to celluloid.

Literally the only things incorrect about Moonraker are the competence of the government’s spies and the sophistication of their laser weapons, which of course would not work since they would have purchased them from Drax who enshittified all of them with a master kill switch.

I want a sort-of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead for Moonraker. I want to know a few things:

1) I want to know if all of those perfect specimens of humanity knew they were complicit in global genocide. if not, I would like to know how he duped them all. Because they sure don’t seem very smart for a master race.

2) I would like a sweeping six-part epic about the centuries-old Viennese glass factory because a) that place ruled and b) I want to live in a world where a centuries-old Viennese glass factory is on the cutting edge of glass technology instead of Corning.

3) Obviously we need to know more about Jaws and Dolly, the real stars of Moonraker. What happened to them? They are the best. Jaws is perhaps the greatest henchmen of all time. Oh and don’t worry. I checked. Dolly was 25. Jaws is not in the Epstein files.

4) When I was a kid I was absolutely obsessed with the easter-egg that the door code at the nerve gas factory (conveniently located down the road from the glass factory but hey so is Tesla and SpaceX I guess) was the musical motif from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I loved it so much I thought it was the funniest thing in the history of film. And then you get older and you think “eh, that sort of thing happens all the time in film.” But does it? That was weird, right?

ANYWAY, I think we’re generally safe from Elon pulling a Drax, not because of any sort of scruples Elon has — he absolutely would pull a Drax on us all and please no one send him a copy of this newsletter — but that he will essentially have been hoisted by his own petard since Elon is primarily responsible for the imminent manifestation of the Kessler Syndrome, when the space surrounding the earth becomes so full of space junk that a cascading series of collisions makes it impossible for us to ever launch anything in space again. Looks like we have maybe five years. Bravo, us.

Asked Jane to be kind to mama while I’m gone this week. She said she would, but if she wasn’t, she wouldn’t tell me. Last night we were sitting at dinner and I was emotionally exhausted from an emotionally exhausting day and i was trying to make conversation with her, and I did that ridiculous thing where I just keep asking her “how was your day?” And she wouldn’t say anything. Just silent. So eventually I gave up and retreated into my phone and then she started telling mama all about her day, this person and that, this class, what she did at recess, everything I was hoping to say. And I was lost in my phone so I didn’t even hear what Emma had said to get her talking and basically I am a failure as a parent this week so that is just great.

Best to leave town I guess.

Psych rock woooo. Mostly new, I think. I mean, except for Jack-O. But i am not sure. It is hard, man, keeping track of all of these bands I have a job, two jobs, a child, a family cut me some slack maaaan.

On that note I may or may not write tomorrow it is hard to say. Things are unpredictable on trips. That is what a vacation offers me, I am now realizing: unpredictability. Even if it is boring unpredictability. Maybe I’ll watch a lot of Storage Wars in my posh NYC hotel who can say.