Good morning good morning. Hello. Hi howdy.

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We are listening this morning to the finest supergroup of all time, Trio. Dolly Parton, Linda Rondstadt, Emmylou Harris. We are down to two of them. Linda and Emmylou are 80 and 79 respectively.

Lost a giant yesterday. What is there to say about Dolly that hasn’t been said in the last 24 hours. My god, she made the internet a pleasant place again for a little while can you imagine what a saint you have to be to pull that off? I swear to fucking god the country came together more yesterday in sadness over Dolly than they have since 9/11.

My friend Elizabeth is from the deep south and is a wonderful New Yorker leftist these days, and she tweeted out that whenever she’s back home, arguing with her yokel family about what it means to be a true Christian, they ask her “ok fine who is a goo Christian if we’re not?” And she says “Dolly Parton,” and they shut up because not only to they know she’s right, they all love her too.

Millions of books to kids. Helping us with the Covid virus. A movie that brought feminism to the mainstream big screen to the point an 8 year old boy in Alaska who became obsessed with it.

Dolly did not grow up Catholic, but I swear to god our new American Pope needs to make her a saint, asap.

Man what a bummer.

We shoulda made her president.

Feeling excited and somewhat stressed about this weekend LA jaunt. Heat wave in Irvine, 93 degrees. I’m an old Coachella veteran, and that was before I stated living in the hot, humid south, so I don’t think a dry 93 will be too too bad, but we will need sunscreen and a lot of fluids. Luckily Olivia has a new partnership with Taco Bell and Mountain Dew, a pink Baja Blast. And there is a Taco Bell brand activation at Daisy Chain Fields and reader, I am going to lose my mind on pink Baja Blast that is going to rule.

I’m very stressed about the ride share situation, since this stupid park is basically inaccessible by foot and we are not renting a car. The festival just announced where the ride share locations are, and if Google maps is to believed, it is an hour’s walk from the Uber lot to the festival gate. Except this is a dumb, circuitous route that will almost certainly not be necessary with the road closures. Except they haven’t specifically announced or explained that. Nor have they explained exactly what kind of ride-share lot it will be. Will it be organized? A designated high-traffic area like an airport or something where the whole system changes and the ubers just line up and you get in one and type in a code instead of waiting for your specific uber? No one knows!

The festival is being run by C3. I used to do a ton of work for C3, and those peeps knew how to run a festival. Though they have since been 50%+ acquired by Live Nation or some shit, so it seems entirely possible they have been enshittified.

And none of this would really concern me if it weren’t for my ladies. I can walk an hour, I don’t care. But Emma will. And Jane will definitely care about walking an hour at 11 PM when the show gets out.

Stress stress stress but still we’re gonna Yolo it. They have shuttle busses from two locations in Irvine but those locations are very far from our hotel. It is so weird they do not have shuttles from the Irvine Spectrum Center. That really would solve all our problems. Though Shuttle Busses are very hit or miss, as I recall from that Arcade Fire/LCD Soundsystem show on Randall’s Island where we all ended up walking back to Manhattan. Oof.

So the head of the CIA snuck off to Moscow yesterday and the last time we did this was when we sent a different head of the CIA to say “hey don’t invade Ukraine we see what you’re doing and it will not go well for you” and one day Joe Biden will get the credit he deserves for his absolutely masterful handling of the Ukraine invasion puts Obama to shame for his shameful flop on Crimea. But anyway, the rumor this is about him warning Moscow to stop with its BS like GPS jamming and drones at Frankfurt airport n shit and man that is just not good. A war with Russia would suck at any time but can you imagine a war with Russia with Natalie Harp in charge? We are so fucked.

And you gotta wonder what she has against Canada.

But I am really here for Canada’s fighting spirit. I wish I could be Canadian right now and boycott American shit that would be so fun. Oh man I hope they cut off Facebook and Google and Anthropic man it would be so fun to only use a Canadian internet I bet it would rule. All Shopify and Tucows. What the heck is Celestica never heard of it. Some Canadian company is trying to buy us I should totally sell to them. Maybe they can speed up this tedious process of trying to get Canadian citizenship.

Did my map flashcards game yesterday for the first time in… god, months. Reader, I confess I have slacked on the maps flashcard game. But I did it yesterday. And you know what? It has mostly stuck! I mostly know where every country in the world is now. I mixed up Rwanda and Burundi, which was mortifying and stupid, and I mixed up Curaçao and Aruba. I also got the Cheyenne tribal region wrong, mixed it up with the Shoshone, I have been doing that forever. But that is pretty good! I am proud of that result after not reinforcing the memories for months. Yay me.

Jane had a wonderful and pleasant first day of school, thank god. I swear to god the school has plotted to keep her away from her three best friends, but she doesn’t seem to mind. She has other friends, she does not seem to see a shadowy plot like her paranoid father. I am half-joking. But I do find it very fascinating how schools allocate kids to different classess. It is clearly not random, there is some sort of system, but it is opaque. Do they really sit around and do it all one-by-one? Do they focus on specific kids? Teachers? I don’t love it. I mean the results aren’t terrible, and I suppose in the long run the kids get to know almost every other kid this way, rather than sticking with the kids they know. But it does get me stressed out at the beginning of the year.

Alas, those fears seem unfounded.

We have been trying to not talk about “boring adult stuff” at dinner and in the car. It is easier in the school year when Emma and I can have lunch together and chat then. My work life is frankly overwhelmingly stressful at the moment, and talking to my wife is the single most important and effective way I can manage work stress. But of course how much does an 8 year-old girl want to hear about P&Ls and deals n shit.

And she talked about school! Oh god, it is suck a relief. Like she actually told us about the teacher and students and what they did today and… man maybe we’re starting to get through the silent-treatment-on-school period.

Hahahaha yeah right.

Listen to this fucking song, man. Jesus.

Until tomorrow.