Good morning find friends, welcome to the last day of school here in Chatham County, NC. Jane is very excited. But probably not as excited as I am, who gets one and two half months off from waking up at six frickin thirty in the morning. I am going to sleep so long. I might even sleep till seven thirty tomorrow. The trick, of course, is to go to bed at the same time and gain that extra hour in sleep, not re-reading Dan Simmons’ Hyperion Cantos. I can do it, I can do it.

Jesus the news was bleak this morning. My depression is already poking its head up and looking round asking what’s up. Then I gotta read about Irish pogroms? What in the actual fuck what is wrong with you, Ireland? Go listen to Enya or some shit jesus H. Horrifying. Trump is newspeak bombing Iran in “self defense” because they shot down one of our helicopters that was (checks notes) violating their airspace in the middle of a war. Definite self-defense there. We got screw worms and I have read so much about fucking screw worms this week. I read a Bluesky thread from a rancher that talked about how they handled screw worms back in the day, made it sound terrible but not catastrophic. Probably a bot. I read some congressional testimony from the secretary of agriculture who said Elon did not cut screw worm defense. Maybe propaganda maybe not. No way of actually knowing.

It’s fine I shouldn’t eat beef anyway.

Don’t get me started on the world cup catastrophe(s). Or Trump pulling the AMOC monitoring line that we already paid for. WTF. These fucking people.

Relatedly, the Undisputed Truth version of “Ball of Confusion” came on my shuffle the other day and my god I forgot how good that us, how utterly timeless and horrifying.

There’s been some good news, I suppose. That jerk didn’t make it to the runoff in the LA election. FISA will probably get shut down on Friday. The planet now produces more power from renewables than not. We are ahead of the most optimistic projections for fighting climate change. Nancy Mace catastrophically lost her primary run for governor of South Carolina. Just fucking terribly wiped out. Fifth place. You love to see it.

Lol I had a whole list in my head to go here just an hour ago. It is gone. Humans are not cut out to remember good news. It’s the real reason why none of those “good news only” websites ever work out: because people don’t want good news. And most of the sites that do exist are all human interest shit: dog saves boy kinda thing.

We are curing cancer. There’s an awesome new cholesterol gene thereapy in the works. We found a new species of bird in Indonesia. GLPs continue to stun with the new ways we find that they improve human health. A lot of earthquakes didn’t happen.

Except they cost a fortune.

Sorry, sorry.

Buncha that news came from positive.news, a website I just found that doesn’t seem terrible for good news. Maybe I should check in on it more often.

The pharmacist at Walmart found a coupon for My Wegovy HD out-of-pocket purchase and it ended up being $399 instead of $1,600. That was freakin luck.

(N.B. Even with my love of Walmart, I do not willingly use their pharmacy. My awesome local pharmacy told me to, because they cannot reliably get Wegovy).

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’re listening this morning to a vinyl copy of a record that was absolutely a formative part of my upbringing, C’Est La Morte Record’s compilation Doctor Death’s Volume IV: The Marvels of Insect Life. My god I love this quirky goth comp from 1990 so, so much. I sold my CD copy in the great CD sell-off of 2015, and have regretted it ever since. I’ve had a Discogs alert on the LP version for maybe ten years but they never come up for sale. But one did last week and here we are. I learned so much about deep cut 80’s goth from this thing, and it’s predecessors vols 1 and 3 (I don’t think a volume 2 exists??). Johanna’s House of Glamour, Area, Handful of Snowdrops, Talisker Tale (A more goth Erasure?), M1 Alternative (total Chameleons Rip-off but fantastic nonetheless), Beautiful Pea Green Boat oh man this record rules.

C’Est La Morte was even my introduction to The Magnetic Fields. This label rules. Run by some guy in NOLA. He eventually moved to Oregon, I think? He died in 2012. Tragic loss. I have written about this dude before, huge inspiration to me and many other goths my age, and no one even mentioned his massive cultural impact in his obituary.

(Spent more time than I care to admit trying to decide where to place the phrase “In his obituary.” Before “his massive cultural impact? Or after?)

Was listening to Jeff Buckley’s cover of Hallelujah this morning and started getting all up in my emotional Hallelujah shit, which hasn’t happened in, oh, maybe ten years since that song started appearing everywhere. Remembered I read a whole book about the song, how many songs have books about them? Nowadays it would be a blog entry, maybe a Substack email or, a podcast or, god help us, a Tweet thread. And I suppose that’s fair, I read the whole book and, now, all I remember is a Tweet thread’s worth of basic facts anyway. Or are you missing something by not reading the book, not getting Alan Licht’s prose?

Tough to say, tough to say.

Can’t sell a book like that anymore.

Unless you have a hit Tweet thread about it first. Hrm. Weird.

Anyway, the basics: The general journey is Leonard wrote it for Various Positions at the dawn of his unsuccessful synth-lounge phase, in 84. I got into Leonard with I’m Your Man in 88, worked my way backwards an album or so, but then skipped back to “the good stuff” on his greatest hits, which did not include it. Various Positions was sorta persona non grata with Cohen’s folk fans and new younger fans like me were only just starting to get into him. So it didn’t really find a home.

John Cale gets the real credit here. In.. 91? Ish? That I’m Your Fan cohen comp came out. That thing rules. Cave’s version of Tower of Song? Fantastic. For 30 years, every time I listen to that comp, another entry on it stands out. Last time, the James and That Petrol Emotion covers stood out. Shit I might have to listen to it again today. Anyway, Cale did “Hellelujah” but he also knew Cohen and knew that Hallelujah had extra verses not on the Various Positions version. So he asked Leonard for them and Leonard faxed him a gazillon verses, and Cale’s version contains a bunch of verses that were not on the original Cohen version.

And that is the version that Buckley covered.

Through the years, Leonard adapted and started singing the Cale/Buckley version.

Hrm, I thought I had a video of Cohen’s later Cale-inspired version, but all I can find is this live version of “Everybody Knows.” Alas. I guess we should also credit Concrete Blonde and Pump Up The Volume for Leonard’s career resurgence. People forget that these days.

Hey semi-related question: anyone know what’s up with Bob Dylan? Is he still doing that endless tour? I mean, yes, right? I see he’s coming to town here, or did recently. But is it still the same endless tour? Does Bob Dylan even own a house?

Does Bob Dylan own a house. My god. I have never thought about this.

Ask Bob Dylan who our best songwriter was and, while he was alive, he would say: Leonard Cohen.

Do you think Bob Dylan and Springsteen have any rapport or respect for each other? They kinda have a lot in common.

Jane wore an adorable pink dress to her last day of school. She is very excited about it. I am happy and excited. Which is a nice change from last night where she was mean to me on the way home from the splash bad and I could not emotionally recover the way a parent needs to. She was very inhospitable to me singing along to music. Just kept telling me it was terrible and I needed to stop. And, like, yeah, I probably do, but also singing brings joy, man. And I know she’s a kid but it is a pretty big bummer when someone tells you to stop experiencing joy in this world in the best of times, never mind in these times of fascism and screw worms. I knew we’d be better by morning but man.

Some days it just gets to you.

Here is a song of me singing just to get back at Jane. Also it has a lot of goth band names in it, a propos of Doctor Death. Did I rush it? Should I have redone the strings and cleaned up the rhythm? Is the lower baritone vocal cheesy AF? Yes, yes and yes. But sometimes you just gotta get shit done.

Love you guys stay sane talk to you tomorrow.