I had this whole thing planned out. I would get up at 6:30, make Jane’s breakfast and lunch, take her to school, drop her off, back home by 7:45 and back in bed. Two full hours of additional sleep before I had to head to the airport. But noooo. I have to be an insane neurotic and feel compelled to write to you guys instead, so here I am, blowing my nap opportunity moment.

There will be three other “nap opportunity moments” today between travel and meetings and rocking out. Will I avail myself of any of these opportunities? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

RIP Gloria Steinem. You were a real one. I suspect there are internecine obscurist feminist gripes about her of which I know nothing. Hrm. Reading her Wikipedia page says she worked for the CIA for 4 years. Eh, I can handle that.

The benefit of all these famous people dying in their 90’s is that they remind us all that a ton of people live until their 90’s and you, too, can live until your 90’s.

The judge in (one of) the Google antitrust cases says that Google does not have to be split up. I am sad. There is no decision to read yet — the judge is giving both parties time to ask for redactions in the decision before they release it. So I can’t even read it and find out their logic. I am sad. Did I already say that? I am sad. Also, the judge is not going to force Google to release their ad algorithm source code, which would have been super fascinating. I am sad. Then the judge says to the prosecution “look I am giving you everything else you wanted.” This is like when I asked for a new bicycle and a GoBot for Christmas and I got the GoBot.

What can I tell you, I was more of a GoBot kid than a Transformer kid.

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 Ethel Cain’s Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You. Because I was listening to an earlier Ethel Cain song this morning — American Teenager off of Preacher’s Daughter and I could not process her transformation between albums, because my memory of Willoughby was that it was basically an ambient noise album. Also for a long time now I have been completely confused about teenage American girls being obsessed with Ethel Cain when her album, to my recollection, sounded like a black metal drone album in the vein of Planning For Burial or something.

But here I am upon re-listen and this album is way more melodic and beautiful than I remember. Now I am realizing I am thinking of Perverts. This is, according to Wikipedia, “a drone, slowcore, and dark ambient project that Cain conceived as a standalone release to her main trilogy of albums, which began with Preacher's Daughter.”

Okay I guess that explains it a bit? Does she play stuff from Perverts live? Are American Teenagers (forgive the fun) losing their shit to drone slowcore? Well, according to Setlist.fm, yes. At both Lollapalooza and Outside Lands, Ethel played a track from Perverts at both shows.

What a world, what a world.

GUESS WHAT.

Yesterday was the single greatest day in the history of my youtube viewing. My god my god. SO EXCITING.

FIRST: The Knight Rider Historians have completed a seven year journey. I have been there watching all of this journey since covid. First they tracked down and obtained the GMC General truck that served as the FLAG mobile unit for Knight Industries. They had spent years looking for it, found it, convinced the owner to sell it to them. Then, three years later, they tracked down and purchased the trailer from FLAG. It had been a race car trailer, looked absolutely unrecognizable. But this crack team of historians found it, mainly through deep historical document research and VIN numbers.

They had already owned two fully restored screen-used KITT cars from Knight Rider.

And then they spent the next several years restoring both the truck and trailer to their screen-used glory days.

And while they are not quite done with the truck’s decals, the trailer is almost fully restored. Including the interior, and the awesome office/command center. And this week, they united the truck, trailer and car and put a KITT into a FLAG for the first time since the 80’s.

MY GOD MY GOD.

I have long lauded here in the annals of GMHHAY the dedication and craft of the Knight Rider Historians. I have been a huge fan for this entire seven-year run.

I cannot convey to you what an emotional experience it was to finally view this culmination of their work.

Congratulations Knight Rider Historians.

And if you need a screen-accurate KITT license plate or a cool t-shirt, or any specialized accessories for your own KITT conversion, they will totally hook you up.

AND THEN:

Lego: Skylines! The marriage of LEGO and Cities: Skylines to create a new city-builder based on LEGOs, but in Cities: Skylines. OH MY GOD. OH MY GOD.

Several city builder and LEGO gaming Youtubers got to play the game over the last week, and while they didn’t get to show any new footage, they did get to offer their unvarnished reviews about the game (Chomsky and news capture theory aside don’t @ me) and the reviews are STELLAR. THIS IS SO EXCITING.

Also: it works on the Steam Machine. Which is very exciting for me because I own a Steam Machine and I bought it specifically to play Cities: Skylines II and got it all set up and tried to download Cities; Skylines II and steam said they had not gotten the game fully compatible with the Steam Machine yet. I was so sad. So sad I haven’t even touched my Steam Machine yet. Actually that was like four weeks ago I should check again and see if they got it working yet.

But now I don’t care because I am totally going to play LEGO: Skylines instead because it looks so much more fun and cute and it is, apparently, almost as full-featured as CSII, and more-featured than CSI.

There are things they haven’t announced yet or put in the game. It doesn’t have trains yet, which is so dumb. The reviewers saw a section called “my content” but it was empty so no one really knows exactly what that’s for. But imagine if they offer as many content expansion packs for this game as they did for CSI omg omg. Imagine if you could make your own lego designs and put them into LEGO: Skylines. A careful study of the game shows that this would be really hard because the game actually interacts with parks and buildings way more than CSI or CSII does. You’d have to, like, mark “play” areas and doors and whatnot, identify the type of building you built and are plopping. But SO WHAT. My god. Imagine a world of 3rd party modding for LEGO: Skylines as robust as is out there for CSI. I WOULD LOSE MY MIND.

LOOK AT THIS THING.

I forgot an important bit of the deodorant story yesterday: I’ve been using this deodorant for so long, and it is so much a part of me that people are convinced I don’t smell and/or I smell like this deodorant. I see people after years and they say “oh you still smell like Rick.” It’s quite nice. Man I should not be telling you any of this. Anyway, this year Emma was convinced I didn’t even need deodorant. Since HE:O Old Spice was being discontinued, maybe I should just stop wearing deodorant, she thought.

So we gave it a shot and within, like, two days, I staaank.

It is crazy how well this deodorant works on me. It has become part of me.

I hope it does’t have aluminum in it and it’s killing me softly.

Jane was a pain at bedtime last night, completely manic, didn’t want to do any jammies or teeth. Emma called in reinforcements and I cajoled and threatened her through it. I did get her to talk about it a bit, she said all of the sudden she gets too much energy and has to get it out and she can’t control it okay she can control it but she doesn’t want to no, no she can’t control it it is just so weird.

It’s kind of weird, isn’t it? Do other kids get completely manic and insane at bedtime? I have definitely gotten loopy from lack of sleep but I don’t magically get a ton more energy.

Very mysterious.

Moody and quiet playlist for you today. Added Ethel Cain, since, topical. Mon Rovia I told you about yesterday. There was a new Beth Orton not too long ago and it was pretty good! Very good, actually. Was less excited about the new Tricky. I like the new Will Sheff a lot. I am very into this SOFIA ISELLA lady, kida moody scary goth feminist thing she is pretty great with killer fashion sense. Been digging into Clock DVA’s back catalog it is more diverse than I realized. Gave the first UNKLE album a re-listen after oh, 20 years and… I mean it was fine but I thought it was gonna be better. Learned about this Masie Peters lady from Reading Festival. She’s a.. you know, there are a lot of this type of lady coming out of England right now. Sorta a Holly Humberstone kinda thing. I like it, though.

All right I will try and write tomorrow but no promises. I have the day off AND I am flying back from NYC. AND I need sleep. SO might not see you till Monday. Byeeee