Hello hello hello. So much to do today. Slightly overwhelmed. Jane forgot her backpack. had to go back to the school and drop it off. Which made me miss my yiddish lesson. It’s 8:24 and everything is already falling apart, maaaaan.

I can do it I can do it I can do it.

Emma is home, it is lovely. Picked her up at the airport, we all went to dinner, then the playground, then she did bedtime. I felt bad for her. I know all too well that feeling of coming back from vacation and knowing your partner needs a break from childcare but really just dreading jumping back in. I tenderly gently suggested I do another bedtime but of course Jane was not having it.

Aetna denied my Wegovy because I am not fat enough because the Wegovy worked that is awesome. Never mind all the other benefits it is manifestly doing for me — keeping me from (well, reducing my chance of) getting Alzheimer’s, making me enjoy alcohol and the edibles substantially less (god I haven’t had an edible in weeks I might be over it), helping my hugely at-risk heart. Whatever, maaan. $1,300 a month for you thank you very much.

That drug cannot come out of patent fast enough the whole world she be on it.

There are new Icebreakers flavors. Longtime readers remember my Icebreakers mints (not gum) obsession during the pandemic. Clearly some Icebreaker employee was antsy and bored during the pandemic and those cats were making a new flavor every month. The Peach Iced Tea Icebreakers may go down in history as the pinnacle of human achievement.

And then we had, like, four fallow years without any new Icebreakers flavors.

But in April we got two new flavors.

We are so back.

Currently enjoying Mixed Berry. It is no Peach Iced Tea but it is a solid entry into Icebreaker canon. I give it a B+.

Also Ice Breakers Mints actually has a space between “ice” and “breaker” but they are wrong in this regard and I refuse to indulge that nonsense.

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I am listening this morning to A Storm in Heaven by Verve, not The Verve, because that nonsense hadn’t happened yet. It is one of the greatest albums ever made, it makes me cry every time, and it is a crying shame what happened to their career. I mean the getting huge part and writing “Bittersweet Symphony” was maybe okay. The show at the Paradise for A Northern Soul remains one of the best shows I’ve ever seen, even paradoxically better than the Storm in Heaven show at Venus. I bawled my eyes out on song one when they started with “A New Decade,” which I had not heard yet, and Richard moans “how long will I run for / who am I running from.”

But I digress. I do not begrudge them their millions (which they sort of, eventually got when Andrew Klein and the stones finally fucking chilled the fuck out). But after that things did sort-of go downhill and I cannot abide by Richard’s solo career. I tried, man, I tried. I kinda like “Money to Burn.” But jesus. Things kept getting worse.

I have not listened to Nick and Pete’s Black Submarine band. I don’t know why. Today might be the day.

But I digress. A Storm in Heaven and it’s commensurate Peel Session, the B-Sides album No Come Down and legendary live album Voyager One? That shit is the bomb. That is the true heart of shoegaze. There’s a reason the recent, by all accounts amazing, shoegaze festival Slide Away was named after a Verve Song. I lived the hardest, most romantic, insane years of my life with that album as a soundtrack. It is just beautiful.

(Pedantic side note it’s weird how “Butterfly” has really become a big Verve “hit” with the shoegaze kids not sure how that happened.)

Man. If Verve and not Ashcroft solo had opened for Oasis on that reunion tour I mighta bothered going. Though the Verve reunion at Coachella was pretty wan. Too much Urban Hymns, not a single song from their true masterpiece, A Storm in Heaven.

Was driving out of the school parking lot from dropping Jane off today and peeking into the other cars, looking at what kind of people would buy electric BMW sedans or R1Ss or Ionic 6s. And, man. What generation are these 30-something parents these days? Gen Z? What is with the dudes and their short, clean hair? Why do they all care about such clean clothes and my god how often do they go to the barber?

It got me thinking: I am thankful for grunge. I mean, I loved grunge, but I also loved goth. I am a grunge goth. I said this the other day, remember? And it’s just the best. Your goth music can have guitars in it, you can have messy hair, you can have baggy and ill-fitting clothes, hold me daddy Robert Smith, thank you Kurt Cobain.

GRUNGE GOTH.

Watched Widow’s Bay while Emma was gone. It was fine. Wait am I done? No I don’t think it’s done. I think there’s like another couple episodes. The idea of a comedy horror is pretty funny, and course you wanna do it in a different way than Scary Movie, but, like… it isn’t that funny? And most of the humor comes from making fun of dumb people like they do in the Office and whatnot and it’s this supposedly smart subtle comedy about dumb people doing dumb things and I do not like that one bit nope no siree. I did enjoy the spooky horror I mostly enjoy supernatural mythical horror as opposed to slasher killer in mask horror. I mean, it was fine. It was on the better side of the world. But it was not the masterpiece of genre-bending I was hoping for.

Watching The Boroughs now, and I am optimistic. First off, the cast is stellar. Second off, my old friend Tara is the visual effects supervisor, and thirdly, OLD PEOPLE.

When I lived in hipster-era Williamsburg I was already old and I would go to The Woods dance club and stand in the middle of the dance floor and shout OLD PEOPLE! over and over.

Old people rule.

OLD PEOPLE.

Need more shows about Old People.

Jane was not a lunatic at the Mexican place last night and the fajitas are sizzling again everything is righting ship at the Mexican joint. We went to the playground afterwards and she didn’t have a bathing suit so she just went into the splash pad in her dress with a little girl maybe 4 in a Bluey dress. They had a grand old time. Emma and I had time to catch up because Jane’s ban on “boring old people conversation” is becoming increasingly strident and obviously after a week apart Emma and I had a lot to catch up on. They had to shower afterwards, thusly I did not do bedtime.

And, I gotta admit, I missed it.

I actually have a pretty good playlist going for you but you know what? You should listen to Voyager One today, the semi-authorized live bootleg of Verve in their Storm in Heaven glory. Bought mine in 1993 when it came out from Newbury Comics (where, actually, I met the Verve and got them to sign my “Slide Away” single. I have a picture of them at that signing somewhere. It’s not scanned. I need to find it. Shit that’s gonna take a month.) It remained nearly impossible to find for 30 years, was re-issued for RSD in 2025. I shoulda bought the reissue but I did not.

But my god, it’s so good.