Good morning good morning. Sorry I am late. Am I late? Or is this summer norm. Probably summer norm. Sleeping in is great! Woke up at 8. Loved it. A+ no complaints. Okay actually I have a few complaints:

1) Although sleeping in manifestly makes my day better, and the immediate seconds after the alarm going off are better, the “morning” part still kinda sucks and I am still tired and cranky.

2) Of course I waste about ½ of my potential extra sleep-in benefit by staying up later reading.

3) It turns out I actually do things in that period 6:30-8, and now I don’t get to do them, so I don’t get to leisurely play my Wordle and chat with my daughter and read my beloved doomsday-prophecizing newsletters. How will I know how John Roberts is ruining the country today or what is up with dumb stupid tech companies.

All in all, probably a worth it trade now that I think about it.

Dammit I had a dream last night I wanted to tell you about but it is already fading away. All I remember is that it involved an evil David Bowie, whom I am realizing actually appears in my dreams with some regularity. I am not the biggest David Bowie fan but I think about him a lot. Also I “met” him once, sort of. It was at this fancy gala, we were leaving at the same time. He was swamped with admirers, and I was… not. But I called out to him:

“David! Hey David!”

He looked up at me. All the admirers looked up at me.

I made a thumb-and-pinky telephone symbol and held it to my ear. “Call me!” I shouted at him.

He smiled and nodded and said “I will!”

And suddenly I was the coolest dude there.

Thanks for playing along, David.

We are on a new blood pressure medication, again, as of today. This is number four. Hopefully this one works and I do not feel faint and my back does not feel like it’s on fire, nor do I puke or get massive leg cramps. That would be swell. Getting old, man. Getting old.

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We’re listening to the new Mono today. Mono the Japanese post rock band not Mono the English trip-hop band, though I would not say no to another album from as well. But we are talking about Mono (7) in Discogs parlance. Their new album is called Snowdrop. Comes out tomorrow. Lotta competition in the charts for Olivia. This is their 17th studio album, including collaboration albums but not live albums. Do they all still sound the same? Yes. Did they so nearly perfectly mimic Mogwai 20 years ago (along with Explosions in the Sky) that Mogwai felt compelled to change their sound? Probably. Is every album awesome? yes yes yes. Can’t get enough Mono.

After posting my goth tune yesterday for you I gritted my teeth and listened to my solo album from… eh, 2018 ish and… I didn’t hate it? I have pacing problems here and there because I couldn’t figure out how to do Codas in Logic Pro. The guy I paid to mix it did some weird things. My voice is my voice and I hate listening to it. But I still think most of the songs are hilarious — I was going for comedy here. And I still mostly like it. Which is a far cry from the last time I braved listening to it like five years ago and hated everything about it.

I do not, however, like it enough to put a link in here to the whole album.

Look do I have a serious problem promoting my artistic output? yes, I do. Do I think most of it is crap? Yes, actually. Virtually all of it. Except Rockets they were awesome but that was mostly because of the three other band members, not I.

Is it a problem that I hate my artistic output so much I can barely bring myself to mention it at all? I mean… maybe? But maybe not! Promotion of the arts sucks! Commerce taints art!

I choose to endeavor to convince myself it is a moral stand instead of a self-loathing one and it mostly works.

Cheers!

Must flip the record this is a 2×45 affair, this Mono record, so things move fast.

Rewatched Hal Hartley’s No Such Thing last night. I love that movie. The effects are cheesy, the acting often (hilariously! intentionally!) wooden, the editing sorta choppy but it is still a brave and interesting film. The monster’s monologue is one of the most beautiful speeches in cinema, and there are some hilarious lines (she was spirited away by the Ingenue!) I am glad Hal got to work with legendary actors like Julie Christie, still transcendent at 61, Hellen Mirren, and Sara Polley.

If I recall the film came out weeks before 9/11 and involves a subplot of terrorists in New York and plane crashes so, I mean, there are limits to even Coppola and American Zorotrope. The thing took a bath financially, if my understanding, and I don’t think Hal and Coppola did any other films together, which is a real shame. Come to think of it I am kinda thinking No Such Thing was the last Hal Hartley directed feature to not be self-produced. He’s done a bunch of TV for Showtime and such but… I think all the rest of his films have been Kickstartered and such? Fascinating.

Still would kinda like to see Hal with a giant budget, but I suppose he doesn’t need it.

Got some old school physical junk mail reminded me that I sued a guy for a bunch of money seventeen years ago and won and the judgement is still valid and the jerk never paid me and I could sign over this judgement to these people and they would give me a (presumably microscopic) cut. And I am… kinda tempted? Is that awful? At the time, I took comfort in the fact that I sic’d the FBI on him, got him plastered all over the New York Times, was the only one of his victims to speak out, and made sure he could never defraud anyone again.

But I’m still kinda pissed and he is still out there pretending to be an entrepreneur and claiming to have a venture fund and it is… kinda messed up?

But also this is a piece of physical mail junk mail what the hell is wrong with me.

But maybe there is a more legitimate sort of company that does the same thing. Anyone know of any “reputable” judgement recovery companies?

Jane Jane Jane. School is over. She is sitting beind me on her school Chrome Book, which I did not remember she brought home from school for the summer wierd. Thing is kinda a piece of junk but i suppose it is good this girl is using all the operating systems. She can be preyed upon by enshittified evil AIs on multiple fronts as she grows up.

Her big dental reconstruction surgery is tomorrow, she is going under general anesthesia again. She is very excited because, like all right-thinking people, this girl loves general anesthesia.

She is also, of course, having a hard time grasping that Daddy does not get a summer break.

And you know what Jane? You’re right. It is terrible.

We are very close on four different playlists but none of them are quite there and I don’t feel like padding today.

Yesterday was the twenty-seventh birthday for my friends’ band and label partners Freezepop that is crazy. Their band is old enough to have kids. So in celebration I give you this video I directed for them twenty years ago. I suppose Karaoke interfaces are mostly different these days so a chunk of the joke of this video may be lost on you, but I am still proud of it. Oh and it has a karaoke version of Bowie’s “Heroes” at the end that I made from scratch in MIDI so I guess that’s full circle to the Bowie content above.

Happy Birthday Freezepop.

Hrm seems I finished this writing right around the same time I always do so I take everything back that I said about being late. Was the writing better for the extra hour of sleep? Meh.