Y’all, please do not confuse my use of this greeting as some implied folksiness I just wanted something that wasn’t gendered and was also not “folks”, the last week has been a good time mostly! Lots of Spring happenings and hangs despite the deep coat confusion that this time of year brings. Prayers up for the coat rack in our home that is now larded with the optimistic light jackets of forecasted 60-degree highs as well as the lingering winter coats who know that they’ll still be called into duty should a surprise sub-freezing temperature strike out of nowhere. The only guarantee these days is that if you leave the house in the morning, you’ll be sweaty or very cold at some point before you return.
ROSES AND THORNS
When I got to college I heard about kids who would sit down to dinner with their parents and name three good things and three bad things that they saw or experienced that day, they’d call them Roses and Thorns. This sounded like a nice way of communicating as opposed to my childhood of spending dinner hoping that we’d sit late enough to miss the boring syndicated episode of MASH and be dining just as the awesome syndicated episode of Night Court was coming on. So now I’m stealing this idea for what may or may not be a running feature!
ROSES:
I had to get an MRI; nothing major is happening to me health-wise, so don’t worry, and my specialist sent me to the VERY NICE HOSPITAL. My friends, if you have not experienced a VERY NICE HOSPITAL you are truly missing out. They played calming classical music in the halls, everyone was super nice, and the paper clothes they gave me were so enjoyable that if they had been made of cloth I would’ve stolen them. This is not to shit on the regular hospital I go to, that place has some pretty neat architecture, an excellent Keith Haring mural, and a kind of 70s charm, but the VERY NICE HOSPITAL made me feel like I was a damn king. That isn’t to say there weren’t problems (see the Thorns below) but if you have the opportunity I say go for it!
I’m a real asshole when it comes to the way I get my music, I don’t do Spotify or Apple Music or Tidal or any of that corporate streaming mishegas. I mostly use Bandcamp because at least they make a show of getting artists paid and they have the option to download things (I could go deep into my very annoying reasons for this but that would be a whole other substack, suffice to say I do not trust corporations to be subservient to anything besides their own bottom line/whims when it comes to making art available). Recently I realized that Leaving Records, a label I’ve purchased multiple things from, has its own subscription service inside Bandcamp. I got it and yes, there is a lot of stuff on there that is not for me, but it’s led to the discovery of more than a few artists that I think I’ll be going back to again and again. Special shoutouts to Benedek and Green-House, two new artists that I discovered due to this subscription. Also big-ups (do people say this anymore? Or should I say do “cool” people say this anymore?) to Sam Gendel, LARAAJI, and Time Wharp, the artists who allowed me to find Leaving in the first place.
On Sunday I went for multiple nice walks, once to have a very filling lunch and once with a friend who was in town. BIG UPS to a nice walk.
THORNS:
When I was in the MRI machine in the nice hospital they asked me if I wanted to listen to music and I could not say “YES” fast enough. If you haven’t been in an MRI before, it’s basically like having your whole body in a very narrow tube for 40 minutes or so while the sounds of a harsh noise show involving only keyboards and hammers take place all around you. I wanted very much to close my eyes and go to a peaceful place as this happened to me so I asked for something “very chill”. Sliding into the tube I hoped for some very basic new-age spa music to come drifting into my ears and the horror I felt as the first strains of Califorancation by the Red Hot Chili Peppers assaulted me was indescribable. The best I’ve been able to do was compare it to this Stephen King short story. Unfortunately not as many people spent their first lonely years of high school reading Stephen King short stories in the library during lunch as I did so that leads to me having to explain the short story and that really robs my whole MRI tale of its power (so this is kind of like a double thorn, in that I had the bad experience and the story isn’t as good as it should be). Anyway, they switched the music quickly and I spent the rest of my MRI thinking about baseball and ALMOST falling asleep. I do wonder who wanted to listen to mid-career RHCP during an MRI though.
Look, I know hearing a bartender complain about bad customers is pretty boring at this point but I implore all readers of this newsletter that if you’re going up to a bar and want a martini please please PLEASE be prepared to say what kind of martini you want. I spent a good five minutes going back and forth with someone during a very busy shift as they were perplexed by even the mere thought that I might need more information beyond the word “martini” to make their drink. Gin or vodka? Dry, dirty, or classic? These are the basic things you should be armed with when ordering your drink. I beg of you, stop plaguing the bartenders of this world with your bullshit, we have enough to deal with (bad bosses, other bad customers, the fear that we’ll end up like that one old bartender that dresses in a bowtie and cumberbund to work at a bowling alley that everyone else thinks is cool and funny but you see as the darkest timeline of your life).
My baseball team made me sad this week by losing three out of their first four games in a somewhat annoying fashion. This thorn goes out to both them and my own twisted little brain for allowing 25 men who I’ve never met to control my mood to a degree.
SOUND OF THE WEEK
This could be a song or just like a sound I heard or something. MY SUBSTACK MY RULES!
This one is less happy than last week as Ryuichi Sakamoto died recently, but damn if this song doesn’t rule. The title and cover of this record also whoop immense ass, so let’s celebrate this giant of music.
CELEBRITY SIGHTING OF THE WEEK
In case you didn’t know, I LIVE IN NEW YORK and there are a lot of celebrities here. I often see them and now I’m going to tell you about them.
Rajat of Jeremy and Rajat comes into the one bar that I go to all the time and unlike last week’s false spotting of the Guy from the Planet Money Tiktok, I got verification from the bartender that it was him after he left. Not a biggie but you know what they say, there are no small celebrities just small follower counts (I don’t think this totally works but these things have to end somehow).
SEE YOU NEXT WEEK!