Good morning good morning hello hi howdy-ho. I got nine hours of sleep. It was rad. Except for the part where I woke up at midnight completely drenched in sweat, like my clothes dripping. Do not like that. Going through a mini mid-life crisis here with this blood pressure jack-up. Guess I’ll have to go through that whole ringmorale where for a single day of my life I try to consume an appropriate amount of sodium. But not today. Just had a turkey stick and the package told me it was 17% of my daily sodium. My god, my god. I DID manage to use half as much soy sauce in my lunch stir fry, though, and it was still delicious. Thank you, MSG. Wait does MSG increase blood pressure. Shit shit shit.

Got one of those “someone changed something on your profile” emails from Quickbooks for the contracting company. Emailed Eddie the bookkeeper to see if it was him. Every time I do that, my email tries to get me to email Eddie Cue, from “back in the day.” One day I will mess it up. Maybe I can get Eddie to invest in some Boat and RV storage facilities.

Grocery store stop this morning. Why do people insist on parking right next to you in an empty parking lot? It’s like they cannot handle the thought of not being as close as possible to the door. Drives me crazy.

Ommmmmmmmm…………………………

Just got some work stress this morning. Heart racing. Which is a lovely thing for when you’re stressed about your blood pressure. I don’t know, man. Was convinced yesterday my skin was tingling all over, some sort of mysterious heart-skin necrosis disease or something. And Emma’s all stressed about this blood pressure thing too, so that is super fun. It’s almost like I’m not allowed to be worried too. At first I wasn’t, but maybe she rubbed off on me. Maybe it’s because I feel more out of breath when doing the studio work. Maybe it’s because I am at a crossroads in my day job.

I’m not even really going through that “oh god I have give up all the good things” panic people go through when they first think about getting healthy and get sad about stopping drinking or fried foods or salt. I am mostly fine with it. I love sodium but you know what? I will ditch that fucker in a heartbeat if it would help. I WANT TO LIVE. I want to live forever.

I am not good at thinking about mortality.

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We are listening to a band called MEMORIALS, all caps this morning. I think this is a band that my old friend and band mate Aug saw in London a few weeks ago. I got his London recap newsletter the other day and he said how great they were, and described them, and this band I am listening to here does sort of sound like them? Mix between Stereolab and a choir and Neu and some other stuff. Album is called All Clouds Bring Not Rain and I quite enjoy it.

Be still my beating heart.

Wu Lyf, the band I traveled to Boston to see, but then cancelled their show so I could not see them, have announced a rescheduled date. And OF FUCKING COURSE it is on a date I cannot go to Boston — four days before we get there, unable to leave earlier because of Jane’s camp. I am pissed at Trump since it seems to have been a visa issue. RAAAAGE.

I would also like to thank Aug for being a friend who writes a personal newsletter. Personal newsletters are so great. You guys are welcome.

However, I am sad to report today’s edition will be mostly about Media.

We finished The Pitt. Not a great show to watch when you are having a health scare. But otherwise absolutely addictive when you’re watching it. I’ve seen think pieces about the show being normie or mid or mainstream but also great and that is okay or something. I’m not sure, really, what that’s about. There are obvious compromises shoehorning certain plots into the show’s format, but the parts that make a show truly great: the acting, the emotional resonance, the editing, the pacing. That shit is all world-class. I was avoiding it at first because, ew, medical dramas, but a friend said “may as well watch it now while everyone else is watching it because everyone is eventually going to watch it anyway” and I don’t know if that is true, but it sure worked.

It took me back to 1995 (6? 7?) when I was living with Nick and ER came on and Nick got really into ER and kept trying to explain to me that no, really, TV is getting good again. I understand why you don’t watch any TV, Rick, but this show is good. We are about to undergo a TV renaissance. Nick was definitely right, TV got good again. But also I kinda wish I didn’t watch any of it. I miss my smug self-satisfied, holier-than-thou schtick, and my god I got so much done.

Watched Master and Commander The Far Side of the World last night because people have been telling me it was a pretty good movie for, oh, 23 years and you know what? Turns out they were right. That was extremely my jam. A few plot elements have become a bit more cliche since then, and there was a single scene where Russel Crowe’s acting was slightly out of sync with the editing and tone and it was all a bit muddled, but so what man, that movie ruled. Also now that I have read David Grann’s The Wager, I am an expert on how treacherous sailing through the Strait of Magellan can be, so I felt Very Smart. Also Merry Pippin Billy Boyd is in it in a very small role, so that was fun. Actually kinda shocking how few of the actors were names I recognized.

Anyway fuck yeah sailing ships and canons and avast and huzzah and whatnot. Super cool.

SNL this week was astonishingly good. I mean, are people aware this is actually a very good SNL season? I am shocked. But my god. That porpoises sketch was one for the ages, as was the divorcing auctioneers my god that was just brilliant. Several very solid sketches. A+ SNL. I, too, am shocked Matt Damon has only hosted three times dude deserves to be a five-timer he is very funny who know yah dood wicked pissah.

Also, that divorcing auctioneers skit had “yuuuuuup” in it, which is the catch line of one of the bidders in Storage Wars which, longtime readers will recall, I was completely obsessed with during the pandemic. My god I wonder how many more, new seasons there are of Storage Hunters that I have not seen. No. No. Do not go look.

Oh my god there are 18 seasons. FIVE MORE since I last watched it. And Dave Hester, the yuuuuup man, is back as a main character.

I was wondering about that. Like, is this completely his schtick, and SNL was parodying him? I mean, dude puts yuuuuup on his baseball hat. Or is it something lots of auction bidders say but he made a thing of it. But I guess since the show is still going and he is back in it, it’s a direct homage?

Deep cut, SNL. Deep cut.

Cranes the band have finished their vinyl issue/reissue campaign, I think, with the reissue of Future Songs and it is awesome. I am very into late-period Cranes. I am sad I didn’t hip to this reissue campaign until a couple years ago, so I missed the Self-Non-Self, La Tragédie D'Oreste Et Électre and Population Four reissues, but I am getting close to a complete collection of Cranes vinyl, which has been very hard since most of my Cranes was on CD. But I lost track of them for like a decade in there, and had no idea they had Four albums after Tragedie and they are all very good. They have been sporadically putting live performances on their YouTube and those are good too. It would be pretty awesome to see Cranes again.

Emma and I are finally getting around to the new season of Wednesday and I cannot say I particularly care about the plot but I love the art direction, the humor, the casting, and the hamming-it-up acting. What a great role for Steve Buscemi. I do not know how to spell “Steve Buscemi” I just Googled Kagid it. “Steve Buscemi” would be a good song title.

I am in a weird book place where I am working on two books simultaneously and they are both kinda long, like 500 ish pages each: Molly Crabapple’s book about the Bund, and the second-to-last of Anaïs Nin’s unexpurgated diaries. But I am happy to report that, contrary to virtually all biographical information out there, Gore Vidal and Anaïs made up sometime in the 1960s. Did they ever achieve their previous manic closeness and mutual obsession? No, they did not. But they do seem to have reached some sort of resolution and amicable close-but-not-too-close friendship. Which is really the best any of us can hope for after undergoing an folie à deux. Do we think that is an accurate term for their relationship? Yes, yes I do. Why did gay guys keep falling for Anaïs? Why did she keep falling for gay guys? Seems unproductive. But hey us humans have never been known for being rational.

Annie why aren’t you here to discuss this why does no one else want to read all 12 volumes of Anaïs’ diary spread out across four decades so that you are roughly the same age as Anaïs for most of it.

Jane Jane Jane what can I say about Jane. She has not done anything too quirky in the last few days. Quiet nights in Chatham. She is very into videos about black holes. She and I did some drawing on the sketch app this morning, that was fun. There is a whole drama where the parents are all letting their kids out of the car at 7:29 AM instead of 7:30. Normally when this happens, the school sends a sternly worded letter to the parents and things tighten up, but I guess no one cares anymore. And she is very torn between joining all the kids one minute early and following the rules and it sucks. So I’ve given up too and just let her start leaving the car at 7:29.

So, you know, I’m part of the problem now.

Moody and quiet playlist for you today. I have no recollection of ever adding this Raveena song to my playlist, but it came on this morning and yeah man. Yeah. The internet is like eating plastic. It’s weird to think of kids growing up with this giant, monolithic “internet” being a thing that exists in their life it must feel like some sort of malevolent/chaotic god or something.

Been thinking about that Akron Family show at Great Scott back in the day where they ended with Sorrow Boy and my god that was such a great show why aren’t shows that good anymore why can’t I feel anything like I did when I was young and free and wild.

At the age of, like, 40.

Oh god my heart is still pounding. Look I know I’m gonna die while journaling that is just facts with graphomania. But I would prefer it to be in, oh, four decades or so. At least.