Good morning hello! Just under the gun, 11:43 AM ET. Day off today. Slept in. Then I rushed over to Chore House to meet with the Pica Bros to go over the Serenity Walk repairs. Apparently I need to pressure wash the thing more, because tree gunk gets between the boards and inhibits drainage and causes rotting. Which sucks, because the paint will peel with too much pressure washing. We blow it with (electric, natch, I am not a barbarian) leaf blowers regularly, but it’s not enough. Wonder if I could use a compressor. Tempting. Will experiment. They added lag bolts to all the supports, replaced all the rotting boards. We had a long talk about neurodivergent kids and how some of them really like their routines, thus why this was such a pressing job. They were sympathetic. But still. Five grand. Ouch.

Then Jane and I went to McDonald’s, and we saw the old vet guy and we were kind to him and he was kind to us but not too chatty today, that was nice. And then we saw the owner of all the local McDonald’s franchises having a meeting with some corporate dudes. I wanted to go say hi, because he’s a friend of my Pool Partner, and through my partner I gifted the owner a couple copy’s of my friend Gary He’s McAtlas, a book of amazing photography of McDonald’s locations around the world.

So, you know, I got an in with this guy. And I want to compliment him on his consistently sold Warm Breeze Yacht Rock playlist. Alas, his meeting was very long and intense, focused on parking access at his locations compared to what is obviously his archrival, Chick Fil-A. Fuckin Chick Fil-A, man. So good, so evil. It’s like the David Bowie of fast food: so good everyone studiously ignores their foibles.

There, I said it.

SPEAKING OF WHICH: I read this amazing thread on Reddit while I couldn’t fall asleep last night: What’s a horrible thing that a famous person did that everyone forgot about but you. My god, what a litany of revelatory horrors.

No Bowie, though. We don’t talk about Bowie. There was something about reading this list that was… I don’t know. It wasn’t depressing, it was appalling, yes, but also… hardening? Solidifying of a dimly held worldview? It is hard to explain. It stirred things in me. I was particularly sad to learn about Don Draper and the near-fatal hazing incident. That is some fucked up shit there and I have had a fondness for Mr. Hamm that I guess I gotta let go.

“They were right when they said you should never meet your heroes,” Emily Haines said. Or maybe we just shouldn’t have any.

So I guess Hannibal Burress and John Ossoff have their own little club now, huh? Two people who have made a single, in-passing remark about some scandal, and it ignited the country and potentially changed the course of history? I wonder if Natalie is going down. Probably not, right? I wonder if there are other people in this club.

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!

Listening to Ultra Vivid Scene this morning. Self-titled first album. Real loud. My god I love this record. I love the album cuts I never get to hear like Nausea. It makes me sad Kurt Ralske doesn’t make music anymore. I used to stalk his account on Twitter — he is an art academic, focusing on film these days — and just bug him to make more music. I’m sure that helped my cause immensely. Dude is dying to please creepy internet dudes I’m sure.

After McDonald’s Jane and I went to Walmart and she did the thing where she sits in the middle of the car and takes each thing I place in the cart and makes it part of the car. She had struts and shocks and a radiator and engine block and pedals and a driveshaft and steering wheel and airbags. What a great game. I bought her a LEGO cat.

I bought my wife compressed air and it was behind the counter because people steal air. I was, of course, once again reminded of the mysterious comedy bit from my past that I remember that no one else does, or can’t find at least, where a guy at a gas station bags up all the extra air he paid for and yells FREE AIR so people can get free air. Charging for air is TIGHT. I asked Emma if she wanted to join the world of viral ultra-high-powered Chinese-made air guns, but she does not. Which is sad because any excuse to buy a weird WOLFBOX item is a good time.

They were well-stocked with Zevia, they were lousy with Taylor Farms products and it’s a giant hassle in my life because I buy a ton of it and it’s fine because it’s in my stir fry and gets cooked on ultra-high heat for a long time before I eat them, BUT I have to remind myself EVERY DAY that I cannot munch and snack on the raw broccoli and snow peas during prep and that makes me sad. I wonder how long it will be before we can trust our produce again. We were teetering on the brink before Trump. But now? Gone. Decades? At least a decade, right?

They played “Ready for it” by Taylor and Jane sang along and they played “Desperado” by Rihanna and I sang along and we had a jolly old time I sure do like my daughter.

Yesterday we went to the meet the teacher day. Jane did not get the teacher she wanted, nor are any of her best friends in her class, of course, they obviously split them up. But her teacher seems cool, she has a few friends in class, and even though it irks me they always split them up, it’s also good because in the long run she makes new friends and then has more friends. We went and looked at the class assignments for all the third graders and Emma commented about how many of these kids we know now: like… a third? Half? And we saw a dozen or two parents we know. I remembered the first time we went there for kindergarten meet-the-teacher and how much anxiety and stress I had from the whole thing. I remember writing to you guys about my profound misgivings about putting Jane in school at all. It seems to be working out okay, I guess. But most importantly, Jane loves it. There is no realistic scenario where we could do anything else at this point. It’s fine. IT’S FINE.

Was nice to feel like a community, though.

Emma loves school counselors so we stopped by the counselor’s office. Jane loves her counselor and her counselor loves her so that was all very touching. There was a woman there from the county handing out literature about the perils of AI and the internet and Emma handed me one and I muttered “yeah it’s all terrible just keep her away from it” and she was like “it IS! There is some disturbing stuff in this literature” and I wanted to tell her about how I used to run Trust and Safety at one of the largest kid-popular internet platforms in history and let me tell you, man. The shit that I’ve seen. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.

But I refrained. No one needs to hear about that stuff that will be in my head forever.

Of course she could probably say the same thing to me. What was that Nabokov quote about the perversions that lay hidden behind the respectable-looking windows of America?

No playlist, again, so enjoy this old-school Ultra Vivid Scene video from his first great single. Man that guy ruled. Turn it up real loud. I saw them play this at Avalon Citi club when Josephine Wiggs was the bassist, opening for… um… who was it? Bob Mould? My god it was loud. That bass, rumbling through the whole hall. Just glorious.

Sorry this was so short today, I am angsty and excited to go get over to chore house and do chores and fix my grape trellis and stuff. Maybe some weeding. If I can get all the outdoor stuff done today I can focus on the studio for two days. SO EXCITING.

Have a lovely weekend.