Good morning to everyone but especially the Carolina Hurricanes, who won the Stanley Cup. Oh and the Knicks. Both are owned by billionaires, hard to say which is worse. The owner of the Hurricanes (who also owns the Trailblazers) made his money in subprime lending. Donated to Trump, supported him publicly, doesn’t seem to have changed his mind, so you know, fuck that guy. Knicks owner James Dolan sucks six ways to Sunday. I don’t really care about sports.

I do like a big urban multi-ethnic celebrations though. Even occasionally like a quality sports riot. I was, eh, 100 feet away when the Boston police shot and killed a 21 year-old Emerson girl for no particular reason during the 2004 celebration of the Sox winning the World Series. No one was rioting. That was super fun.

Hrm come to think of it, maybe that has given me a little PTSD about sports championships. Ahh well. Add it to the list.

HEY. Anyone know anything about brown rice and health? I have been eating brown rice because it’s healthier for, god, ten years now? Except now maybe it’s not? Because of arsenic poisoning? What the fuck! Arsenic??? Fuckin fuck fuck, man.

A person isn’t safe anywhere these days.

Any of you guys have an educated opinion on this? I am verklempt.

Looks like the UK will ban social media for kids under 16 starting in 2027. Oh joy now I get to hear all my favorite “liberal” internet pundits tell me how this is a terrible idea and won’t work. Are they right? Eh, who knows who can predict the future. I certainly find it tedious when people do it with 100% confidence bordering on the aggro. One nice thing about having all these countries on the planet is we can try different policies and see what really works. Get a little bit of new real-world data. Also I am old enough to remember when everyone said smoking bans wouldn’t work and would make kids smoke more. That did not happen. Smoking bans worked hella well.

Who knows. Maybe this will work.

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 to the new Slift again today, Fantasia. Vinyl showed up. Such a great album. I wasn’t sure it held up to their previous canon upon the first listen, but it has been growing on me this is a bad-ass record. I hope they tour I hope they come to Cat’s Cradle please please please.

Alas.

Hrm they are playing the Sinclair in Cambridge, and that is five days after the Tear Garden show at the Middle East. Maybe I can have another ROCK WEEK in Boston this fall. That would be great.

Spent most of the weekend listening to the new Olivia Rodrigo, since my wife and daughter are both obsessed with it. I like it a lot as well. I very much like her Freezepop rip-off, “Expectations.” I am not a huge fan of the ballads, which is weird for me because I usually like ballads. I suspect they will grow on me. In addition to the three singles and Expectations, I love the duet with Robert Smith, and the closing track “Cigarette Smoke.” There’s only one I really don’t like. Solid album. I hope that girl sells all the records.

I hope she fuckin adds, like, oh, I don’t know, 50 more dates to her tour so people can fucking see her live without paying an arm and a leg? Maybe she can take a cue from Robert Smith there too and, oh, I don’t know, charge a sane amount for her tour? I suppose her production costs are a bit more that Bob’s: the cure just stand there and mope on stage and she has big ole sets n stuff. Though honestly why bother. Just play the hits girl.

Was thinking about the unfortunate business between Olivia and Taylor that stemmed from Taylor’s management’s actions during Olivia’s first album cycle, claiming credit for two of her songs and receiving 50% of the royalties. And Hayley Williams doing it as well for another song and how it really does sorta smack of older women preying on younger women and I don’t like it one bit nope no siree.

BUT ALSO I suppose we can just blame Marvin Gaye’s estate, twelve nameless people who are probably not even musicians, two dumb-ass appeals judges and twelve nameless jurors who completely changed the law around songwriting in America, throwing out centuries of legal history and tradition and fucking everything up for everyone. Now we have this giant mess where there is no clear line between inspiration and theft when we had a perfectly clear line forever.

The Blurred Lines case was absolute bullshit. The world of music law completely changed, no review by the citzens, no legislative review, no professional musicians involved. And Olivia got fucked by it. What is anyone supposed to do anymore to protect a copyright? You have to be a stupid-ass legal vulture.

Well, if you listen to your lawyers and ignore reality.

Like Taylor and Hayley did.

Excellent weekend of chores. I am DONE DONE DONE with the floor on the west side of the house, all seven layers, everything is also now caulked, foam sealed along the edges, cleaned up and vacuumed. DONE. The HVAC people are coming next week to move the ducts and re-route things, now that I am done, so I can make the new doorways I need and start framing in the vocal booth and the IT room.

But for now I turn my attention to finishing layers one and two of the floor in the rest of the place. We are going to finish up the south side of the house. Right now I am doing the floor above the front patio. So I had to map out all the whole in the patio ceiling I need for wires for speakers and cameras and APs. I bought high-vis orange landscape flags, I write on them what the whole is for. Drill a whole in the ceiling, stick the flag in, so when I am flooring I know what wires to run. one of the most stressful things about this build is making sure I put everything into the main floor ceiling that I want to, while the floor above is still open. Because after adding seven layers to the floor (well, nine with the final flooring and padding), I will never again be able to put a single thing in the ceiling. It is stressful! I am constantly thinking of new things I want to put in! There’s a lot of stuff in the ceiling of a new(ish) house. In the immortal words of Alex Chilton, “look up.”

Started running speaker wire for the patio and it is a total pain to measure wire distance as wires circumvent the house in cable runs to get to the IT room. It occurred to me it would be easier to measure every segment of the house and then add them up to determine cable length runs. SO I did that. Then I thought “oh man I bet they make wire measurement tools, sort of like those wheels-on-sticks you use to measure your yard.” And I am sort of shocked! They do, but only super expensive electronic ones. I thought for sure there would be, like, a $50 analog cable measurement tool. But I can’t seem to find one? I found one for $150 but it gets absolutely shitty reviews and seems like it’s not super usable.

So I just made one on the floor of the studio. Marked out 5, 10, 20 and 25 feet on the floor from a post. Should do the trick.

Analog.

Jane and her friends — who’s names start with M, A and Z, started a publishing company. They are having their first partner meeting this afternoon. Daddy is very proud and ready to assist with partner legal dynamics. They named the company with their initials. You would think they would call it JAMZ but no, it is MJAZ. And it is adorable and Jane made awesome logos for it and last night she and Emma turned those logos into buttons using my crappy button maker that is the least usable button maker in the world. I bought it for a reunion in Alaska and I was on a time crunch and it was the only one I could find in all of Fairbanks and it is by far the crappiest buttonmaker on the market. They don’t even make it anymore. But, like, we use the button maker maybe once every year? Is it really worth paying another $60 for a better one? No. So Jane and Emma suffered through it and eventually got two buttons each for each of the girls, and a set for me and a set for Emma. THEY ARE SO CUTE. I love them so much.

Jane’s dental surgery friday went well, thank you for all your well-wishing. She was hilarious afterwards while coming off the GA. I shot a video. She was very annoyed about me shooting the video at the time but later found it hilarious. Her teeth look great! You would never know that they had been shattered. I am so relived. She is happy. A day on the couch with Bluey and yarn craft recovering, and she was right as rain afterward. She saw a bunch of friends Saturday and did pool time Sunday and plenty of iPad time and breakfasts with daddy and snuggling.

Excellent Jane weekend.

Moody and Quiet playlist for you today. All new stuff except for Johanna’s House of Glamour. One of my favorite bands ever, one of their albums is finally on streaming, though not my favorite. But still. A masterpiece. God I love them. Oh and “Trouble” is on here too. Hearing that in the grocery store a couple weeks ago is what kicked off all this Coldplay nonsense.

All right off to do work shit I have a meeting in 15 minutes. Whew. made it. See you tomorrow.