All the good aliens have left the planet. And now this news. Fair winds and clear skies, Dolly.
Recall/warranty notices for a vehicle you own are never good. As the owner of one of the affected vehicles mentioned here, I’m glad to know Honda is taking the matter seriously, but reading some of the comments on that thread, I’m now more worried than before. I have always had excellent luck with the Hondas I’ve driven and owned (a ’78 Accord, ’86 CRX, ’00 Civic, ’06 CR-V, ’09 Accord) but this gives me pause. We are in no position to swap our car out for a Toyota, but if the opportunity presents itself, I might have to get ahead of this issue.
In the meantime, enjoy this picture of Finn practicing her driving!
I took the girls to see The Odyssey on Sunday afternoon, and my ears are still ringing. The movie itself was beautiful, and I left the theater with more questions than answers—which is something I appreciate. I wanted to read everything I could about the original story, Nolan’s commentary on the direction he took, and some of the reviews by people I respect. Every one of the cast did some of their best work, and it was a pleasure to see some favorites bring it (Leguziamo as Eumaeus was amazing; Pattinson was punchable, and I was happy to see the beautiful Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy, I don’t care what the white supremacists say).
However, the sound was absolutely deafening. And when I mean deafening, I mean seeing-GWAR-in-1992-at-Hammerjacks-with-all-the-levels-at-10-on-the-soundboard LOUD. At the climactic battle, I had to plug both of my ears. Whoever mixed this movie needs to have some remedial education on how to actually hear actors speak their lines. When I was looking at the showtimes, there was a separate theater which featured on-screen captions, and when I offered it to Jen, we both said, “Nah…”
Now I’m thinking that was a mistake. It would have been nice to understand the first 10 minutes of dialogue, but after that I was mostly able to separate words from the BLLLEAAAAAAAAHHHHHH when I started reading lips. For years I’ve thought that the sound system in our house was lousy, even though I have a center channel speaker pointed directly at the couch, but I’m beginning to think that the failure to hear and comprehend modern dialogue is not my fault.
I played music on my little purple iPod Mini during the last two hours of the ride home, and Undertow by Lush got stuck in my head. At the time this album came out I wasn’t all that into Lush but over time I’ve come to appreciate the shoegaze harmonies this band specialized in.
Finn and I are back from a week visit in Upstate New York, where we were able to get a bunch of chores squared away for my Mom, visit my Dad and grandparents as well as some of my cousins, and eat lots of good food. It’s the first time I’ve been to the old house in Aurora in a while, and years since I visited the Wells golf course, which is now being run by my cousin and looks about a billion times better.
Now, it’s back to the salt mines.
About five years ago I made a mental decision to document all of the songs that get stuck in my head. This might be hard for some people to understand, but when I get something in my head, it usually takes a couple of days for it to wash out, and there’s no telling how it’s going to get in there in the first place: it could be playing on the loudspeaker at the grocery store, it could be used in an Instagram reel, or it could be something that just pops in there. I was curious the other day and decided to make a list of all of the earworm songs I’ve made note of on this site, which was a lot more than I thought it was, 88 in total to date. There are only a few I’m embarrassed by, but typically I’m not in charge of these things.
- Never Enough, The Cure
- Wire, U2
- Regret, New Order
- World (Price of Love), New Order
- Angel, Massive Attack
- Geek Stink Breath, Green Day
- Heavy Metal Suicide, Ringo Deathstarr
- Iris, Goo Goo Dolls
- Fu Manchu, Mongoose
- She Drives Me Crazy, Fine Young Cannibals
- Falling Hard, Crystal Method
- Ladytron, Destroy Everything You Touch
- Dark Neccessities, Red Hot Chili Peppers
- Lights Out, Royal Blood
- Phantogram’s Howling at the Moon
- I’d Really Love to See You Tonight, England Dan & John Ford Coley
- Auto Pilot, Queens of the Stone Age
- Hands All Over, Soundgarden
- Outshined, Soundgarden
- Burden In My Hand, Soundgarden,
- Something’s Always Wrong, Toad the Wet Sprocket
- Light Design, Turnstile
- Never Enough, Turnstile
- Wires, Red Fang
- Blue Light, David Gilmour
- True Widow, Theurgist
- Dreams, Beck
- Daymom, Drop Nineteens
- You Can’t Quit Me Baby, Queens of the Stone Age
- Pull Me Under, Dream Theater
- Apocalypse, Cigarettes After Sex
- A View to a Kill, Duran Duran
- Love Spreads, The Stone Roses
- Then She Did…, Jane’s Addiction
- How to Handle a Rope, Queens of the Stone Age
- Young Americans, David Bowie
- Tristessa, Smashing Pumpkins
- Mexican Moon, Concrete Blonde
- Eurotrash Girl, Cracker
- Spring and Summer, Fall, Blonde Redhead
- Atlas, Battles
- Armageddon It, Def Leppard
- ill peach, BLOOM
- This Conversation is Getting Boring, Acopia
- Beautiful Disaster, 311
- Inertia Creeps, Massive Attack
- My People, The Beaches
- Dirty Movies, Van Halen
- Cemeteries of London, Coldplay
- Council Skies, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds
- She Sells Sanctuary, The Cult
- Afterlife, Arcade Fire
- Welcome to the Pleasuredome, Frankie Goes to Hollywood
- Valerie Loves Me, Material Issue
- World Impact, Drug Church
- Sometimes, My Bloody Valentine
- Need You Tonight, INXS
- Golden Brown, The Stranglers
- No Time To Die, Billie Eilish
- Ocean Size, Jane’s Addiction
- Giant Peach, Wolf Alice
- Brushed, Quicksand
- Nothing to See, Miya Folick
- Maria También, Khruangbin
- Fight Test, The Flaming Lips
- SWEET75, Sleigh Bells
- Shotgun, Soccer Mommy
- New York, Richard Ashcroft
- My Own Worst Enemy, Lit
- Lies, Chvrches
- Glamour Profession, Steely Dan
- Guilt, Ringo Deathstarr
- Around the World, Daft Punk
- Music Sounds Better With You, Stardust
- Japan, Tycho
- Don’t Waste My Time, Sault
- Cosmonauts, Quicksand
- Valerie Loves Me, Material Issue
- Two Urns, Windhand
- Party in the USA, Miley Cyrus
- Falling Hard, The Crystal Method
- Sometimes, My Bloody Valentine
- Cure for Pain, Morphine
- You Made It, DJ Shadow
- Here’s What’s left, RJD2
- Saturdays, Cut Copy
- Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime, Beck
- One Too Many Mornings, Chemical Brothers
From a link on Metafilter, I found a webcomic called Strong Female Protagonist, which was published online from 2012 to 2018. It’s a standard superhero setup but completely upends the standard genre by investigating what happens when superheroes realize that punching bad guys doesn’t actually solve anything, while navigating friendships and romance after revealing their secret identities. There are some very interesting (and, at points, navel-gazing) discussions about right and wrong, free will (in the context of a superhero who can read minds), and other moral and ethical questions about what it might mean to have extraordinary abilities. The creators went on hiatus and have not finished the series, sadly, but have gone on to bigger things. I shared the link with Finn and she devoured the entire series in a day, which is the best recommendation I can give.
This is Never Enough, by The Cure. This appeared on a comp album they put out called Mixed Up, where they had a bunch of different artists re-imagine earlier work, and was an extended version of a new single. My roommate bought the album and I had this one track on heavy repeat back in the day. All of the current streaming versions are different than the one I remember—the one on the cassette was a little shorter and simpler, and I like that one best.
Happy Birthday, blondie. I love you!
I took the girls out for a pre-birthday brunch on Sunday at a place called, unfortunately, Bunny’s Buckets & Bubbles, a southern comfort food place now installed in the dear departed Wharf Rat in Fell’s Point. The food was very good, the drinks were strong, and we ate enough that we went home and didn’t eat for the rest of the day.
* * *
I was using my old MacBook Air as a travel machine for a while, leaving the big new one on my desk as a dedicated video editing machine, and I found it to be super-handy. Not worrying as much about bringing my primary laptop out to the dirty garage, for example, was liberating. About a month ago I threw the travel laptop in my bag, not realizing one of Hazel’s travel water bottles was also inside, and that it was leaking from the lid. Before I knew it, about 1/4 cup of water had leaked onto the laptop, and when I noticed it, I immediately shut it down and tipped it up to drain out for a couple of days. Carefully booting it back up, I was happy to hear the startup chime and see the screen come up, but the trackpad and keyboard refused to work.
Annoyed, I followed the disassembly directions on iFixit and pulled the trackpad assembly out to find corroded circuitry at the base, where the trackpad/keyboard ribbon connect to the main controller board. Pulling the bottom cover off with the required force to disconnect a bunch of clips, I wound up cutting into the ribbon at one of the 90˚ bends (d’oh!) but was able to get the trackpad assembly out with no problem. iFixit had the trackpad I need in stock, but the ribbon is not. I ordered the trackpad and put myself on the notification list for the ribbon. I’m hoping water did not find its way further inside and onto the logic board—but I figure the fact that it boots up with no problem means I’m in the clear there.
Here’s a video update from July, which includes a bunch of truck stuff but ends with some good camping footage. My output has slowed down dramatically in the last couple of months, as I’ve gotten busy with work-work and also gotten a little burned out on shooting, editing and posting every week. I don’t know how you’d be able to do this as a solo creator for years on end unless you had an outside editor, but that’s a success problem I don’t have at this point.
Ooof, this is a tough one. Mark Lanegan (of the Screaming Trees, Queens of the Stone Age, and an extensive solo career) did a cover of Alice In Chains’ Nutshell about six years ago: a song about addiction—but really, what AiC song isn’t about addiction? He dedicated it to the memory of Layne Staley and Mike Starr, who both overdosed at different times. Lanegan and Staley were good friends, and Lanegan was also an addict, and was apparently clean—but died of unknown causes two years after recording this.
He’s singing in a completely different voice here—I didn’t recognize him at all without the rough growl, and his clean voice is achingly beautiful. I’m always wary of pedal steel, but his accompanist is masterful—she’s just perfect. What a beautiful tribute.