Good morning good morning oh frabgeous day calloot callay. All shiny and chrome.

Look we had a wonderful night, and we’ll get there, but this is GMHHAY and we have a few other important topics to cover first:

RIP to Sister June, one of the three remaining Shakers in the world, at the last remaining Shaker community, Sabbathday Lake. Sister June was born in 1938, first visited Sabbathday lake in 1988, when she was 50, and became a shaker a year later. She was a librarian and an archivist. Let her memory be a blessing. This is very sad.

Next, important McDonald’s update. I am increasingly convinced my McDonald’s might be the single greatest McDonald’s on the planet. I mean, yes. Did I walk into it this morning and they were playing Bruce Hornsby’s “The Way It Is,” and there were Latinos and Latinas, a black Muslim in a hijab, some dude black nurses and an old white day-trading dude on a laptop? Yes, yes I did. Rural NC is fuckin’ diverse, yo.

But it’s not even that. I had to poop, man. And I wanted to sit there good ‘n long at my table and stare at electoral precincts in Mississippi and Alaska and fuckin gloat. So I decided to suck it up and hit the head.

Now look I know a lot of you are scared to poop in public. It’s natural. We are liberals we need our home litterboxes. But this bathroom is clean man. Especially this early in the morning. So, you know. It’s fine.

So I do my business, rockin’ back and forth, doin a little squeeze and the little joey comes out and plops and…

… the fuckin McDonald’s in North Chatham, North Carolina, has warm water in the toilet.

What a joy. How French. Take that, Four Seasons.

Okay now down to business.

In this state:

In this state the Republicans have had not just a majority, but a super majority in both houses. Every once in a while we manage to break it for a little bit, but then they get it back. Last time they got it back by Tricia fucking Cothom turning turncoat and switching parties.

Last night, they not only lost their super majority, they lost their majority in the State House, and Democrats now control it.

Before last night, Republicans needed to win two fucking seats in the NC Senate to maintain control, and they have not won it yet. I can’t tell for sure, but I think the uncalled seat is NC Senate District 24, where the Republican leads the Democrat by 268 votes. It will go to recount. They may keep control of the senate, but only barely.

North Carolina flipped five seats from Red to Blue in their US congressional delegtaion. So far. Three races remain uncalled. We are ahead in one by 69 votes (nice). We are behind in two. One by 230, one by 430. If trends hold, our delegation will be 10 Democrats and four Republicans. It was four to ten before this election.

Anita Earls won her seat on the NC Supreme Court by eighteen points. Don Davis won the seat they tried to gerrymander him out of. Turncoat Tricia Cothom was voted out.

And, of course, we flipped Tom Tillis’ US Senate seat from red to blue, with our former governor, Roy Cooper, winning the seat by twenty points.

The one sad thing here in NC is that all of the shitty ballot propositions passed. Two of them were tax-limiting provisions, one was a ID-to-vote amendment. That sucks. They are not democracy ruining, but they suck. I am somewhat saddened by this evidence that people mainly rebuked Trump because he is costing them money.

And then we have the rest of the country, of course. Fuck yes. Yes. yes. yes yesysysyeyseyeyseysyesysyeeys woooooooo.

Mary Peltola has not won in Alaska. It is still too early to call but it’s not looking great.

BUT. We literally won everything else? El-Sayed ended up not just winning in Michigan but he won by seven points, exactly what he himself promised in May. In the end, it was a walk in the park for Troy Jackson, winning by seven points.

We fucking flipped South Carolina. Lindsey Graham’s seat from his nepo-sister. Sherrod Brown is back baby, in Ohio, taking back JD Vance’s seat (fun side drama about to be had about whether Sherrod gets his committee assignments back I personally vote no but whatever). We flipped Iowa. By four points. We flipped muthafuckin Kansas. By five points! Wasn’t even close!

And, of course, TEXAS. WOOOOOOO. Talarico by twelve points hahaha omg. Hinjoa by seven. AND! AND! The Texas AG! This is huge! This is one of the most important races in the country, and absolute sea change in MAGA’s assaults on the courts, rule of law, and Texas. Extradite the MN ICE murderer! Stop all their stupid lawsuits! OMG It rules so hard.

Also the new Texas AG wrote the music for the uncut english dub of Dragonball Z. So, there’s that.

We are quite possibly about to flip freakin Mississippi.

I am sad about Mary Peltola. She might get there still — only 75% of the vote counted now, and it is ranked choice. Alaska did just elect a Dem governor, though, by twenty points, lol. We have had Democratic governors in my lifetime, though. I cannot recall a Democratic US Senator from Alaska in my entire life. Oh thats’ right we had Mark Begich for a while, the good living Begich. And I was technically alive for the end of Mike Gravel’s tenure. Was nine when he left the Senate.

OH ALSO: Alaskans MIGHT be about to do the funniest thing. Mary currently has 98,951 votes. Dan Sullivan (the real one) has 100,747. 68% reporting plenty of time.

BUT: the other Dan Sullivan has 3,477 votes.

Alaska has ranked-choice voting.

What if all of the other Dan Sullivan voters are Dems, who knew he was gonna lose, and put Mary as their second choice?

Hahahaha that’d be so fucking hilarious.

Anyway, prayers for Mary.

Wanna here my crazy prediction? I’m gonna do it because I am high on the love right now.

Trump’s gonna flip.

Dude wants to be loved.

Dude wants history to remember him.

That dude is gonna sign any bill we put in front of him that has his name on it.

If we call it the Trump Statehood bill, he will fuckin make DC and Puerto Rico a state. He don’t give a fuck.

I mean, I suppose this prediction will be dead by the end of the day, when he doesn’t fire Stephen Miller, which he should obviously do even if you’re the most MAGA person on earth.

BUT… we haven’t started WWIII yet this morning. (Wait. have we? I better double-check. Nope. Whew.) So I am gonna let myself dream for a couple hours.

And when he called the NYT (not Fox, not any other whackjob pubs) and said he’s accept the results and was looking forward to working with the Dems? I mean, look. Yes. Maybe Stephen Miller or some other Nazi can rally him a bit. But that man, that man is tired.

Couple other observations:

Roy Cooper is an enigma. Most milquetoast boring white dude but people in this state — centrists, apathatics, even a bunch of Republicans - fucking love him. I do not understand the appeal but I am not complaining. Roy Cooper is 69 years old. Roy Cooper will only be 75 in 2032. It’s too old. But is it too old?

Ooo this is going to feel so good to say: John Fetterman can fuck right off and I am excited to hear about him as much as I currently hear about Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema. God what a relief. Good riddance.

Chuck Schumer sucks and we could have won Florida if he tried. He chose the worst fucking candidates everywhere — Janet Mills in Maine, Haley whats-her-face in Michigan. Just the worst. I would give anything for him to lose his job. Ditto Jeffries, who is a genocide supporter, cynic, and coward.

It is absolutely insane how well Democrats did in spite of their leadership. It is absolutely insane how much better we did without a “leader” at the top of the ballot. The current Dem bench is filled with superstars if we could only rid ourselves of its entire current leadership and elder statesmen.

Anyway. Moving on.

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!

I was listening to the new Fontaines DC this morning but I am writing so much it is already done. Short but brilliant album. One of the best of the year. Love watching that band evolve and progress. SO good.

There is a new 4LP limited edition re-issue of Sigur Ros’s Ágætis byrjun announced today. Do I need this? I do have the five-year-old 2LP reissue from Vinyl Me Please (RIP). I am tempted. Ah hell. It is a great day. In the immortal words of Olivia Rodrigo: “Fuck it it’s fine.”

Click.

Gonna put on Quasi. Since I went and saw Quasi and Built to Spill last night. Great show. Great vibe.

New Cat’s Cradle room — a third room. A bigger room. They are not moving. They are opening another room, a five-minute walk down the bike path from the other two rooms.

The manager told me the capacity was 1,200 but I put it at about 1,000. It is in the architectural shape of the Bowery-Presents-standard layout: big wide main space, GA. High stage, good sight-lines from everywhere. Wrap-round balcony. Some seating in the balcony, but also standing. Not enough seating up there. BUT they have just opened and you can tell they rushed to get open so things will still improve. BUT there are some obvious signs that they did not exactly follow the Bowery template. I swear Bowery should offer venue construction consulting services, they got it down. The floor is bare grey concrete which I do not love. There is not enough echo dampening — yet. There is a patio but it had no railings, so it was closed. There is only one permanent bar, no bar in the balcony which feels like an oversight. Sound is good, but maybe a little boomy, but I cannot sure because both Doug Martsh and Sam Coomes put a lot of effects on their voices these days. Another show will be necessary before I can make a definitive statement on the sound. And so far, nothing else has been announced.

They have regular railing in the balcony and not those drink-protecting shelf-with-a-wall railings that ought to be a law in all venues. Someone’s gonna get wet.

We met a nice couple next to us in the balcony and the woman knew Frank the owner. I asked her if he had any plans about what he’s going to do with his empire when he retires — he’s in his mid-70’s from what I understand. He has no kids. I don’t know if he’s married. I am worried. She as not. That was reassuring.

During Quasi’s set, between songs, a man shouted out “Roy Cooper won!” and the whole crowd went crazy. No one had really been looking at their phones before that, but for the rest of the night, whenever I looked down and peeked from the balcony, I could see at least one phone with little red and blue shapes on the screen.

I did good and didn’t look at my phone at all during Quasi until that guy shouted. And then I only looked once.

I was not so good during Built To Spill, because I was getting drunk on whiskey and election results by then and they were just so great.

A band called the Metzingers was playing a sold-out show at the Cradle main room last night. Don’t know them, gonna investigate today. And there was a jam band in the back room, and the tour buses were all parked in the secret parking lot, so it was a worst-case scenario for parking and it wasn’t too bad.

Gotta check out this Metzingers band today.

Quasi were awesome. I checked my gig list and I first saw them in 1998 and last saw them in 2026, so it’s been 20 years. Annie loved them, if I recall. I think I went to that 98 show with her. I didn’t remember much about them other than I liked them. Forgot they were a duo? Or maybe they weren’t back then? Unclear. Dude on distorted organ, awesome woman drummer — both bands had awesome women drummers last night. There are now six genders the election says so.

Built to Spill were solid. Doug Martsch has an all-lady band now and way more guitar effects and a vocal echo and we left after an hour because that is what we do when we have a babysitter on a weeknight — our head-home time is 10:30 and he started late. “I hurt a fly” is on a lot of his setlists lately but it’s usually in the middle of the set and he hadn’t played it by the time I left. They did play “Stop the Show” though, and, you know, I am a Perfect From Now On kinda guy, so that was nice. ‘Twas mostly new songs, I have not been keeping up, I only recognized one song but that was fine because they were great and his lady drummer also ruled.

Talked to Jane about the election this morning and explained mid-terms and what happened and told her about the NC House and I told her about the ballot initiatives and we talked about the war and gas prices and how people voted against Trump and some of them did it because of his cruelty but some just did it to get lower gas prices and stop wars but stopping wars were good so we will let that slide.

We spent the car time looking at the map of different elections. I explained her how exciting Kansas and Mississippi were. She likes maps.

OH and I explained to her that red-and-blue maps are misleading, that it makes the country look more polarized than it is, that all political maps should be shades of purple and I will die on this hill. I showed her a copy of the single purple map I have ever found, that I keep on hand for such lessons. Here it is for you. I think it’s from 2004?

We need more of this.

And she was walked into a building of education that isn’t going to tell her a single thing about the most important day of the year.

Not sure what I think about that.

Oh and she starred a late-period track by a-Ha this morning. Off of 2000’s Minor Earth, Major Sky. I told her about Morten’s Parkinson’s. We were sad about that.

Pray for Morten.

We had our parent-teacher conference yesterday. Went great. Jane is so good at school. I am a proud papa.

Got a Justa Mix for you today. AND — a rarity for me — I have helpfully added (almost) every band I mentioned today. Not Sigur Ros you’re on your own with that one. In addition to the aforementioned, I am very into the new Caroline Rose, she is coming to Cats Cradle I need to go, I think. Love the new CHVRCHES I was worried since I didn’t love love her solo album. There is a new Yello album! And it’s great! Put more MorMor on here from yesterday. We had a whole talk about MorMor in GMHHAY slack apparently it is “scandanavian” (not sure which) for Grandma. girl in red is coming, opening for Diiv. Don’t love the new Diiv but might go for the opener. Love the new Pami she is just great thank you, Nick for that one.

Okay well back to my life and I can, like, not look at polling sites every day, that will be nice. For, like, five months.

(Man. Tough call on the header image today. Rockers or Talarico and Hinojosa at a Whattaburger. I’ll go for the latter for Nick.