Good morning good morning. Happy tax day. You done? I am… well, I “made” the deadline. Extension on the personal taxes, two states. Still waiting on two K1s. Actually, still waiting on a twenty-twenty-four K1. Extension on the day job taxes, six states. Extension on the three returns for the side gig, one state. But all the money is paid. That’s the part they care about.

New subscriber Gavin comes in guns blazing with two fantastic comments, both revelatory:

1) Glenn Campbell had alzheimer’s, died of alzheimer's, couldn’t remember his own son’s name by the end. Meet Glenn Cambpell came out not too long before his death. It’s quite possible he was simply displaying early signs of his disease when he claimed “All I Want is You” as a new song. This never occurred to me. As an aside, the first time I heard “Rhinestone Cowboy” when I was a kid it blew my mind. What a song.

2) You can, apparently, purchase the appropriate chemicals for butter popcorn on Amazon and then, as Gavin says, “go to town.” My god. My horizons have been vastly expanded. This is too exciting.

(Semi-relatedly? Have you heard of popcorn lung? Kinda crazy. Real name Bronchiolitis obliterans. That “obliterans” is a… concerning word.)

We have a drought here in North Carolina. Hasn’t rained in ages, lowest April levels in the assorted reservoirs in 18 years. My garden will be fine, I have a spring and well on my property. They haven’t instituted any controls yet but they probably should. Forecast shows no rain for the next 12 days, and even then only 40%. Not great Bob. Really tried to find somewhere not too impacted by climate change when we chose this place. It is mostly good but, you know. I like rain. Rain is swell. It’s the droughts that’ll get you

Speaking of droughts been thinking about the Dust Bowl lately. Man the dust bowl was crazy. You know, they teach you about it in, what, middle school or something? Or they did back when I was a kid not sure if they even bother anymore. But it was fucking nuts. NUTS. Could that shit happen again? Wikipedia seems to imply it was partially humans’ fault and partially natural. Imagine if we had a dust bowl today.

I mean. We will. Ogallala Aquifer is gonna run out someday, probably in our lifetime. That’ll be a thing we get to witness: the decimation of America’s grain bowl and more or less the entire midwest.

Kinda crazy that page about the aquifer drying out is still on a US Government site. No one wants to talk about the Ogallala Aquifer running dry.

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 today to Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime, an album by Beck that is, I believe, all covers, though I only recognize about half of them. Came out on Valentine’s Day. Well, day before. Has a cover of Daniel Johnston’s “True Love will Find You in the End.” People love covering that song.

Oh I got a Daniel Johnston cassette box set not too long ago. Came with a small vinyl toy. I looked at it once, thought “oh yeah I don’t really listen to cassettes” and put it on a shelf. I should probably sell it.

Tom Waits and Massive Attack announced a collaboration and, well, consider my mind blown. I have been worried about Tom lately. He’s gettin up there. 77 ish? I mean he could have a long time yet or… not. I will be sad when Tom Waits goes. I maintain hope for one more album or one more tour but after more than a decade, I am losing hope. I am happy for the four time (on tour tours) I saw him but I have come to love him a lot more since then and would like to see him one more time.

But anyway this collaboration certainly is promising and weird and exciting. The world needs more of this. I would like a… let’s see. A Brandi Carlisle and Motorhead collaboration. That would be great.

Joy Division and New Order are being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This is very satisfying for me. We built an old version of the RRHOF’s website and were good friends with all those people for a while and they gave us a tour of the archives and they were amazing and I took a very blurry photo on my Sidekick of Peter Saville’s original art for the cover of Power, Corruption and Lies. Let’s see if my impeccable photo filing system will let me find it quickly. Ah yes, here it is. Took less than a minute. My photo filing system is unstoppable.

(Look. The Sidekick was amazing but it did not have the best camera.)

But yes. I am very excited about this. There remains the question of whether the band will reunite, with Hooky, for the event. I assume there will be no “guest” vocalist for the Joy Division stuff, since Bernard a) is kind of, well, you know, Bernard, and b) routinely sings the Joy Division songs live.

There remains the uncomfortable truth that the whole performance would probably be better if it were just a Peter Hook and the Light show instead of a New Order show but we’ll put that aside.

I do think Hooky would do it in a heartbeat. I don’t know if Bernard will.

But my god the idea of Gillian Morris a) being in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and b) playing with New Order again? Well, both of those fill me with excitement.

Shit maybe I should go.

Shit.

Some people are complaining that NO and JD both got inducted “as one” but I don’t see it that way. Genesis got inducted and now, this year, years later, Phil is finally getting inducted for his incredible solo run. But NO and JD? They just did them both at once, both bands get to be in. It’s an honor not a slight if you ask me.

Hampshire College is closing and I am super sad about this. It was the alma mater of several of my friends, including my departed best friend and former bandmate Annie. She was attending Hampshire when I met her. And Adam, too, who I met through Annie, oh, thirty-plus years ago. Hampshire was filled with weirdoes and had great parties and made the Five Colleges better. This fucking sucks.

I have been hearing about the existential risk these days to small colleges in America but I didn’t really think it would extend to something as… prestigious? Renowned? Beloved? as Hampshire.

What’s next? Bard? Reed? Shit.

The ten-person bridal party for our neighbors’ brother arrives at Chore House today for the weekend. Which will be a hoot but also sucks because I can’t work on the attic or garden. Also the stove doesn’t work. It is a real mystery. It’s not getting gas. Emma had the gas man over yesterday and they figured out why it’s not getting gas, because a line has been disconnected. Except that line has been disconnected since I took the hot water heaters out of the attic when we bought the place. And several guests have cooked there since then. My sister made noodles for her kids many times. My aunt and mom made tea. It’s freaking weird.

Gremlins. I blame gremlins.

So I am trying to make a list of chores over at the main house to keep me occupied this weekend, so I stay busy and do not face the dread of the modern world. Emma pointed out some loose boards on the porch. Gotta replace all the batteries in the AirTags. Those two chores will take maybe an hour wtf am I gonna do the other eight hours of free time I have this weekend? Oh god, the dread, the dread.

Oh but also as I was leaving the partner meeting at Chore House Monday, I saw that the stained glass window in the pump house is still illuminated, those Apple Homekit timers are still working. Which is rare for HomeKit stuff it usually just gets bored with its job eventually and goes kaput. But this thing has been going strong every night for two years now. Very rewarding. Hard to take a picture of, though.

Jane was a lunatic at the Mexican restaurant again last night, third week in a row, I think we might be doing some reinforcing behavior here. Might need to switch up the Taco Tuesday restaurant. But she likes that one because it has Hello Kitty on the menu and Mayra our server is so great.

We had a talk about “the male loneliness epidemic” or whatever you want to call it this morning in the car. “Not all men” may have been said. I mean look man I do not want to be the sole representative in this family of men but I guess I am. Basically I tried to explain to her how… you know how when I say things like “if you just fix it now it won’t bug you all day?” And it’s really hard for her to do that even though she knows I’m right and it is the correct thing? That she just doesn’t want to? Well a lot of men are like that into their 30’s, 40’s, 50’s. And they kind of know it. I don’t know. I was suddenly, after eight years, aware that maybe I should, like, try and explain men and their stupidity and insanity and torment to her. It did engender a smidge of sympathy but also, she was like “well maybe they should just not do that.”

And you know, Janey? You’re not wrong.

We have a mix today! Justa mix, almost all women. Wow yeah I should really kick off Ser Ilyn Payne and the guy from the Who. Did you know Ser Ilyn Payne from Game of Thrones was a rock star? I did not. Until about a month ago. He was the guitarist for Dr. Feelgood. In 2014 he did an album with Roger Daltry and it went to #3 in the UK and was both of their best-selling album in decades. Illen payne, man.

Other than that we got new shit by all sorts of awesome ladies – Metric and Robyn and Kim Gordon and Mitsky and Courtney Barnett and Nine Hagen (!) and Brandi and Lana and Holly Humberstone I quite liked her 2022 album Can You Afford to Lose Me and her new one is good too and she had a great Coachella performance. The new Raye is not technically my jam but it is a complete fantastic work in the vein of Fetch the Bolt Cutters and the new Lily Allen. I am impressed. And thank you Nicky Nicholas for Fcukers. Too catchy for their own good.

hey well I feel pretty good about this edition. been having a sort of dry spell on the GMHHAY. Been depressed. Life is hard. But this one? Came out all right.

(Bonus creepy Ilyn Payne playing guitar picture)