Good morning good morning. Greetings from everyone’s favorite Written-word-as-tik-tokker. I mean, that’s what this basically is, right? A stream of a bunch of unconnected blurbs that you can look at or skim, based on a quick first impression? This was a big epiphany of mine the other day. WRITTEN TIK TOK.

Important reader update, I have been reliably informed by Jussi that we did, in fact, see Rollerskate Skinny, 1993-ish, Middle East Upstairs. I wish I remembered it. But I do get to add it to my gig list spreadsheet now, which is pretty exciting. Oh shit. It was already there. The sheet says July 17, 1996. Musta been the second album. Well cool. Man I must have had a cool life wish I could remember it.

Just back from the grocery store. I am on a rampage about the utter lack of decent bagged popcorn with butter flavor. Smartfood used to have an excellent butter-flavor popcorn but it is gone. Meanwhile they have five different cheese-flavored popcorns: Cheeto-flavored, Nacho-cheese dorito flavored, Simply Natural cheddar flavor, white cheddar flavor, and Cheetos Flamin’ Hot. Their site claims they still have the butter flavor, but they lie, they lie. No one does. Everyone is out to get me.

I saw the Grey Lightning at the grocery store. Driven by a pretty cool lookin bald dude. Maybe we could be friends. Saw the White Lightning driving down the road. Saw the Trumper lady in neon I see everywhere, the one with the Jeep and the ducks. She was wearing fluorescent pink skorts. She wigs me out. So severe. I see her almost every day.

Everyone’s mad at Guy Fieri this week because there is a picture of him at a UFC fight talking to Andrew Tate, which is of course very gross. But I thought we liked Guy Fieri because he officiates gay weddings and gives lots of money to liberal charities or something? The picture is blurry maybe they were just stuck sitting next to each other, I don’t know, I don’t know. I only have a vague memory of him being actually secretly good? But now everyone on the socials is going after him. I wonder if it’s AI. Just. hundreds and hundreds of Tweets of people sayhing he’s garbage and the worst and one poor guy being like “he’s definitely not homophobic he officiates gay weddings and his sister is LGBTQ” and then some other bot saying “look anyone can be homophobic” like that… man I do not know. The internet is fucking wierd.

First they came for Guy Fieri and I said nothing.

Eric Swalwell resigned his seat and “suspended his campaign” for governor, even though he’ll still be on the ballot. Everyone says Katie Porter is terrible even though it feels vaguely sexist for me. I love Tom Steyer’s book Drawdown, but, you know. Billionaire. And who can trust anyone named Xavier. I am glad we’re down one Democrat, though. Maybe California can not whiff this after all. I wonder who I’d vote for if I were in CA. Probably whomever’s doing best in the last poll before the election. Man have there been any Swalwell-free polls yet? Lemme look. Nope. Kamala Harris is up 12 for the Democratic Presidential Nomination though.

Man I never thought about Eric Swalwell once until I started panicking about the California gubernatorial primary a few months ago. I am excited to never think about him again. Creepy dude.

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We are listening to Gastr Del Sol this morning. Live at the Hothouse, Chicago, 1994. This is one of the 10,000 recordings this dude Adam Jacobs made. It’s the… fourth one I have listened to so far and they are uniformly excellent. I listened to a 1993 Low one, a 1985 Depeche Mode one, and a 1995 Rachels one so far. Just phenomenal. I am freaking out about this archive. Only a small number of them are uploaded it, to Archive.org, but a team around the world is working on it.

This Gastr Del Sol tour was hugely influential in my life. I bought a shirt. I still have it. I made friends with Andy Shea (RIP), because I had a Gastr Del Sol shirt.

The opener was Tony Conrad in one of the most mind-blowing musical performances I have seen in my life, I still think about it constantly. So far no recording of that in the archive, but I remain optimistic.

I successfully spent no money yesterday I am very proud of myself and this pathetic accomplishment. It was not particularly hard, since dinner was at home. That’s the thing that kills me, well, that and records. I didn’t buy a record yesterday. Congratulate me. I am going to try to keep it up. I want the smallest credit-card bill I have every gotten this month. I can do it. I can do it.

Financial restraint as an act of resistance.

Conversely, failed streak news: I had my first drink in 10 days yesterday. I was not trying to not drink it just happened. It was lovely, not drinking. But the drink was pretty sweet I gotta admit. We had a particularly intense and constructive partner meeting for the pool/boat storage company and once we got through all the hard parts I had a whisky to “unwind” like they did at lunch in the 60’s. It was great. Now I feel like shit. But it was worth it, just to hear Rocky say about a particular subcontractor “well, we found him at Keith’s gun shop.” I don’t know who Keith is or where is gun shop is but it seems to be a hotbed of highly qualified subcontractors. Maybe I’ll go sometime.

N.B. I have never been to a gun shop in my life.

I got through five of my six calls yesterday. Two were unfortunately double-booked, so one has been rescheduled. It was not easy but it was not terrible. As ever, the fear in advance is worse than the actual calls. It was kinda nice catching up with people, if I am being honest. I don’t know, man. I am getting more anti-social as I get older. Eh, I mean, I am still very into written communication and bar-side communication, but phone calls are hard. When Jane goes upstairs after my half of bedtime, I’ll think “and now for some quality alone time, whew.” When I spent most of the day alone. What is up with that? What is happening? I have too much shit going through my head constantly and it is very hard to distill it into anything comprehensible in verbal form.

I should walk around with an iPad with Keynote on it and make bulleted slide shows for every conversation.

Here is a thing that’s been bugging me for years. I ranted about it to Sean on one of our walks while I was in Boston a few weeks ago, and I ranted about it to Emma yesterday. maybe this is why I think I shouldn’t talk. What the fuck is up with Glenn Campbell calling his cover of U2’s “All I want is you” a “new song” in its intro on the otherwise-amazing live album Meet Glenn Campbell? I mean, yeah. Glenn didn’t write his hits “By the Time I get to Phoenix,” “Witchita Lineman” or “Rhinestone Cowboy,” but still. Calling “All I want is you” a new song in 2008 is insanity by any measure. You are just playing a cover at a show, dude. Come ON.

No shade, though. Glenn Campbell was a great American hero. Mostly Democrat, too.

Jane was very verklempt this morning because she has PE so she couldn’t wear her pink patent leather boots to school nearly caused a Seldon Crisis. We managed, though.

We are in that time of the year where all the parents start letting their kids out of the cat at 7:29 which we are not supposed to do, and it makes Jane very upset because she is a rule follower. Part of me wonders if this is a circumstance of me being on Android and all the other parents being on iOS and they are using different time servers remember back when you got to choose which time server you used? Those days are gone. I should bring my old iPhone tomorrow to see if this is the case. But probably not. People just get lazy as the year goes by.

Any day now the school will send out an email reminding parents to keep their kids in check till 7:30 and Jane will be much relieved.

This Gastr Del Sol show may not be for you, so here is the Depeche Mode show, 1985, first recording of this show.

Depeche Mode Live at Aragon Ballroom 1985-03-22 : Depeche Mode : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Depeche ModeMarch 22nd, 1985Chicago, ILAragon BallroomSome Great Reward TourAadam Jacob's CollectionEquipment: Unknown Cassette RecorderTaper: Aadam...

Enjoy your day. Hug someone. Listen to a great song and sing along at the top of your lungs. Out of key, if possible. Get someone to correct you on the lyrics.