Spectre Collie

Tuesday Tune Two-Fer: They Don’t Love You Like I Love You

Two tunes that weren’t as tangentially-related as I thought but I like them anyhow

The whole idea behind “Tuesday Tune Two-Fer” was to find unexpected connections between songs, and then ride that train of thought into something else. And I thought this would be the perfect, quintessential example: “Hold Up” from Beyoncé’s Lemonade, and “Maps” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs from Fever to Tell.

As it turns out, it’s not-at-all tangential, and not really much of a story: The guy from Vampire Weekend riffed on a variant of “Maps” and sent it to Beyoncé, who turned it into “Hold Up.” Even if it’s not that complicated a story, it still is interesting to me just how much that article in Billboard is a bizarre time capsule. How many of those words would be recognizable to somebody reading it 100 years from now?

Or even farther? It’s fun to imagine a far-distant civilization that had never heard of Karen O, Vampire Weekend, Diplo, or Twitter, and had only vaguely heard of Beyoncé (in the same way that we know of pharaohs only by mention of their names), somehow discovering this pop culture Rosetta Stone and suddenly being able to piece together entire sub-genres of 21st century popular music.

And they’re both great songs, without feeling like just a cover or a sample. “Hold Up” not only borrows a lyric from “Maps” and a hook from Andy Williams, but even the idea to combine them from Ezra Koenig. But it’s still undeniably a Beyoncé song, something powerful built on top of a base of something clever.

My only context for “Maps” was playing it in Rock Band enough times for it to become a favorite. And then hearing it in countless karaoke nights, with the entire room singing along by the end. All my connotations of the song feel completely separate from the “meaning” of it, and couldn’t possibly have been in mind when it was written and recorded, so it seems like it’s gone on to have a life all its own.

Except that the reason the song is so memorable is because its hook isn’t just musical, but meaningful. I’m not sure I understand the lyrics to the original song, but I feel like I get the hook, and it’s universal. So maybe it’s not getting reinterpreted and reinvented, but actually Karen O was so good at capturing an intense emotion inside a single lyric, that she’s shared that exact feeling with everyone who’s ever sung it.

Tuesday Tune Two-Fer: Nobody Loves You More

Two tunes from someone so cool that no matter how cool you think she is, she’s even cooler than that

I’ve been a fan of Kim Deal ever since I first saw the video to “Monkey Gone to Heaven” by the Pixies — they were all doing the same gag, but she was the one really selling it, said my impressionable late teenage mind. On top of having a voice that sounds like only one other person in the world, she’s maintained a kind of integrity that I think is completely unique. It feels like she doesn’t care in the slightest about being a rock star, but cares a lot about music.

It’s something that seems to baffle a lot of people. I’ve seen multiple videos purporting to document The Breeders from formation through Last Splash and the years afterwards, or talking about the success of “Cannonball,” and the guys¹ making them just seem incapable of getting Deal’s work on its own merits. It’s always framed as a competition between The Breeders and the Pixies², as if she’s incapable of ever escaping the looming shadow of Charles Thompson. And people can’t understand how a song as non-traditional as “Cannonball” became such a big hit, without dismissing it as a one-hit-wonder fluke of the 1990s.

I may be a little guilty of it, too, since when I heard that Kim Deal was releasing a solo album called Nobody Loves You More, I wondered why not just make another Breeders record? After hearing the two singles so far, “Coast,” and “Crystal Breath,” it’s obvious: this isn’t going to be a Breeders record.

Usually with a Breeders record, even when I can’t tell who’s singing what part, I can tell what each instrument is doing. It’s odd to hear Kim Deal songs with a ton of production around them, instead of two guitars, a bass, drums, and sometimes violin. “Coast” emphasizes horns — it initially reminded me a lot of Blondie’s cover of “The Tide is High” — to feel lazily tropical. “Crystal Breath” emphasizes the back beat, and it reminds me a little bit of St Vincent’s self-titled album.

The trick is that all the production is still in service of a Kim Deal song, and she is a master at coming up with hooks. In 2013, she released a bunch of disparate singles not collected into a single album, and “The Root” was my favorite. It’s pared back to nothing but guitars and drums (and a car’s back-up camera in a snowy parking lot, for the video), and it still gets stuck in my head.

“Cannonball” still baffles some music critics because it seems too weird to be popular. I think the truth is that it’s full of hooks, but they’re not in the expected places, and I think that’s a recurring trick of Deal’s. She could be cranking out catchy songs non-stop, but she seems to be more interested in making songs that are catchy enough to stick, but weird enough that they don’t just evaporate from memory the second they’re over. I still can’t say I’m a fan of Pod, but in the rest of The Breeders’ albums and her solo work, I think there’s a lot to be said for making music that challenges you to ignore it.

I get the sense that Nobody Loves You More is something like the opposite of all the “Unplugged” performances that bands were doing in the 1990s. Those were intended to show that the bands being given tons of money by record labels were actually talented musicians underneath all the noise and over-production. Kim Deal’s new album seems like it’ll show us what’s core to her music, whether it’s stripped down, or with guest musicians and a full suite of studio tricks.

1
Always guys, it’s worth pointing out
2
Without mentioning Frank Black and the Catholics or his solo albums, which seem like a better comparison?

Tuesday Tune Two-Fer: The Worst Cake

Two tangentially-related tunes for going through a down time

Pictured is my attempt to make a belated birthday cake for myself, since my favorite kind is just a yellow cake with chocolate fudge frosting, and it seems foolish to order one from a bakery when they’re (ostensibly) so easy to make. As the keen-eyed viewer might be just able to make out: the process didn’t go well. The cake tore apart in multiple places, and the frosting was too runny and never solidified. The message of that cake is not so much “Happy Birthday” as “Why Do I Exist?”

Honestly, I thought the whole thing was funny. But it also happens to be a good metaphor for my overall mood the past couple months. Varenicline (aka Chantix) is a wonder drug in terms of helping me quit smoking when literally nothing else can, and as of today, I’ve gone five weeks without a cigarette and haven’t missed it a bit. But the side effects of the drug (and withdrawal) are lousy. For me: getting extremely nauseated after I take one, and a lengthy depression.

It takes over gradually enough that I’d forgotten that the same thing happened last time I took varenicline (and quit smoking for three years). It feels like something gunking up the gears in my brain, so that they grind imperceptibly slower each day, until they just sieze up. That means going from not really enjoying anything, to being not motivated to do anything, to just not being able to do anything, no matter how urgent it is.

“On Being Blue” is from Art of Noise’s last album The Seduction of Claude Debussy, from 1999. That means I was either on my way out at LucasArts, or I’d just left, and was likely suffering from career-ambition-oriented depression at the time. The song is actually about mood and color, though, which you can tell was a fixation of Debussy’s just by listening to La Mer, a composition that doesn’t sound like the ocean so much as feel like the ocean.

“Sunless Saturday” is from Fishbone’s The Reality of My Surroundings, released in 1991. That means I was in my second year of college and probably still feeling pretty optimistic. Fishbone was singing about injustice, not depression as a side effect of medication, but the reason I like it so much today is the same reason I liked it so much then: it doesn’t shy away from describing what it feels like to be in the pits, but it also doesn’t wallow in them.

It’s stabilizing to know that whatever you’re feeling is temporary. I’ve only got a few weeks left of this prescription until I’m done with it and the needless hassle of smoking. And of course, the upcoming election is filling me with hope instead of dread, for once. If you’re in the US, remember to verify your registration — or register to vote! — at vote.gov.

One Thing I Like About Ready or Not

Ready or Not is a black comedy/suspense movie that feels completely like an independent production

I just learned tonight (from the Dead Meat channel on YouTube) that Ready or Not, along with Abigail and the new Scream installments, were made by a group called Radio Silence. I think that’s worth pointing out for a couple of reasons: first is because this movie is so similar to Abigail that I would’ve accused the latter of being derivative. Second, both movies feel like stubbornly independent original projects.

It’s possible that I’ve just stopped going to theaters except for big franchise installments, but it does seem increasingly rare to see standalone, self-contained movies get much popular attention. No doubt the production companies would like to be able to turn them into long-running, profitable series, but Ready or Not seems to reject any attempt whatsoever to continue the story.

There are a lot of aspects common to both Ready or Not and Abigail: A premise that could work as the “twist” that sells the movie, but it’s given away in the trailer. A protagonist trapped overnight in a huge gothic mansion. A combination of comedy and pretty extreme violence. And a few gory specifics that would be spoilers if I gave any more detail. It almost feels like Ready or Not was a kind of first draft for Abigail, because I think the latter is quite a bit better.

One sequence I liked — or I guess it’s more accurate to say admired — in particular: main character Grace has been found and gets wounded by a bullet. She ends up falling into a horrific pit (something that also happens in Abigail), and after being fully traumatized by what she sees down there, she has to climb back out, wound and all.

The reason it works so well is because it’s excruciatingly suspenseful, in the way the best horror movies are suspenseful. You’re not wondering what’s about to happen; you know exactly what’s going to happen, because there is a single shot of an exposed nail that the camera lingers on for just a second too long at the start. And after sticking that image in your mind, the movie makes you wait an eternity for it all to play out, as if it were a Final Destination sequence. When it finally ends, it’s made a hundred times worse, because we’ve had to imagine the pay-off for so long.

That pay-off is also a good example of my biggest problem with the movie, though: the tone is all over the place. The studio lists it as a “horror comedy,” but there aren’t enough scenes where it’s both at the same time. Once the action starts, it feels like it’s spending most of its time either putting its protagonist through horrible and not-particularly-funny situations, or trying to draw out too much drama from the characters who are supposed to be sympathetic. It seems to take itself too seriously for what the trailers and screenshots implied.

But I thought it all came together satisfyingly in the end, even if I wished more characters had gotten their comeuppance earlier on. (I haven’t seen You’re Next, but from what I know about it, the structure is more like what I’d been expecting from Ready or Not). And I liked that it felt almost old-fashioned, for telling a complete, original story from beginning to end, with no hint of a sequel.

The Audacity of Cringe

Giving up smoking and other bad habits, and rebuilding a better outlook based on The New Honesty, Good Vibes, and Trust

I mentioned that I started using social media apps again once I noticed that the Kamala Harris campaign’s account had started firing on all cylinders, making politics fun and engaging instead of anxious and dreadful.

But what I hadn’t considered was that I’d also quit smoking around the same time. In retrospect, I was just trading one previously-reliable dopamine-hit distraction for another. And once I made that connection, it also helps explain so much of everything I’ve been turning over in my mind, trying to make sense of things that refuse to make sense, and wondering how we all ended up in this state.

There are several eerie parallels between addiction and this whole social/political dystopia we’ve made for ourselves in 2024:

The distraction becomes the focus. For me, the “quick smoke break to clear my head” gradually turned into “I’ve got to finish this so I can have another cigarette.” This doesn’t feel that different from watching the glut of political media put all of their focus on the politicians and their campaigns, instead of the real-world problems that they were trying to address. People have been pointing out for years that the emperor has no clothes, which the political media has taken as a cue for incessant discussions about The Power and Significance of Nudity In America’s Fast-Changing Political Climate.
It rejects the idea of ever having enough. In the 80s, it was 24-hour news channels. Now, it’s having to fill every pixel of every screen, and every nanosecond of the day, with content. Old-fashioned notions of relevance and newsworthiness were discarded long ago, because there always has to be something to focus on, something we can make seem important, even if it isn’t.
It feeds off of self-awareness. I always felt like being aware of how much I was smoking was the same thing as being in control over it, but for me, it wasn’t.¹ With media — traditional or social media — and politics, self-awareness is never used towards changing behavior, but reinforcing behavior. People on Twitter came up with the ostensibly ironic term “doomscrolling,” and then dove back even deeper into their phones and their imaginary, perpetually angry and miserable communities. And one of JD Vance’s least-harmful bits of weird behavior was saying that he had a Diet Mountain Dew and “people will probably say that’s racist.” The GOP is perfectly aware that they’re (with good reason) perceived as racist, but instead of engaging in any actual introspection, they’ve simply decided that the accusation is meaningless.
It reinforces the same patterns over and over again, until it loses any resemblance to the original. It’s been over a decade since I actually enjoyed a cigarette; by the end, it became more of a burdensome obligation than anything pleasurable. I’m reminded of that when I see how political media took the necessity of fact-checking and turned it from actual journalism into the performative ritual that it is now, giving nonsensical rebuttals to obviously true statements, presumably just because they have to write something. So now, instead of being a reliable source of truth, they just reinforce the (false) notion that everyone is always lying to some degree or another.

1
Respect to people who’ve been able to quit with willpower alone, but I never have been able to without chemical help.

Hillbilly L-Shaped Sectional

An obvious, absurd, and harmless lie is the best way to show contempt for someone without ruining the mood

I hate it when people over-explain jokes. And I really hate how modern media has so much space and time to fill up with “content” that it’s resulted in a surfeit of professional and amateur pundits generating so many unnecessary essays and opinion pieces and think pieces about every inconsequential thing.¹

But this is bugging me. In this Presidential campaign, there’s one scandalous rumor that seems to have spread like crazy and really resonated with people. It’s based on a shitposting tweet from someone claiming that VP candidate JD Vance, in his memoir, describes having sex with a couch.²

There has already been a ton written about this phenomenon, ranging in tone from angry, to humorless, to scolding, to earnestly over-explaining. Some of them, like Charlotte Clymer’s post calling out the hectoring scolds in media for paying attention to the wrong things, are good. Others, like a post on Platformer making a false equivalence between an obvious, harmless lie and deliberately inflammatory misinformation, are so off-base they make me angry. But I have yet to read one that I think gets at the core of it.

The point isn’t to make anybody believe it, since it’s too absurd to believe. And it’s not to trick Vance into having to deny it, since it would be a waste of time. And it’s not really meant to put them on the defensive by humiliating them, since, like saying Trump has small hands, it would be a stupid thing to get defensive about. Even if it were true, it’s harmless. Weird, but harmless. Especially when compared to the dozens of legitimately offensive stuff that we know to be true about him. It’s just a bafflingly dumb insult.³

Which is the whole point, and I think it really is that simple. The reason it feels like a fever has broken in the United States is that people are tired of being angry and worried and miserable all the time, and we’re ready for some happiness and some reckless optimism. This dumb thing lets us show contempt for the contemptible without having to think about how terrible they really are.

I’m tired of news and social media presenting a never-ending succession of unforgivably awful things that Trump has said or done, milking yet another cycle of outrage for everything it’s worth, tricking some of us into believing oh this time, for sure, he’s gone too far! and then going on with no consequences. And seemingly no memory, as they set us up for the next one. It’s more fun to say he has tiny hands than to say he’s a racist, misogynist, narcissistic, incompetent grifter. The “tiny hands” thing isn’t true, but it lets me express my utter contempt without feeling like his virulent hate has infected me.

Vance is a reprehensible person. It’s a good thing he’s such a laughably terrible candidate, because hearing his beliefs from a more competent person would be alarmingly repulsive. I don’t want us all to keep wasting our lives fighting battles of attrition against regressive people who have nothing of value to contribute to society.

In fact, I don’t want to think about that couch-molesting dipshit at all. I’d rather be happy.

1
In my defense: posts on this blog aren’t meant to persuade or really even inform, but are just me trying to sort out how I think about a topic. You get what you pay for!
2
The tweet expertly cites page numbers in the book, and independent of anything else, is just a masterfully-executed shitpost.
3
Completely unlike actual disinformation, and anyone with any sense should be able to tell the difference.

Happily Outside the Room Where It Happens

What happens when an already-dysfunctional political system comes into contact with ten million experts

Previously on Spectre Collie, I presented my grand theory on the state of American politics in 2024, which is that nobody actually understands what the hell is going on. And more importantly: the more confidently somebody asserts that they do understand what’s going on, the more suspect they are.

With a few notable exceptions. After the past few weeks, the only people that seem trustworthy to me and insightful enough to say what’s actually going on are Harris, Walz, and Buttigieg.¹ In other words: I’ve become the guy smitten with politicians and extremely distrustful of the “mainstream media,” the New York Times in particular.

In other words: what the f@$#?!²

I think the short answer is that everything has been allowed to get so weird and nonsensical that it requires a full reboot. I already thought that we were seeing a reboot of the Democratic party, but it looks like it’s turning into a total turn-the-entire-system-off-wait-30-seconds-and-turn-it-back-on-again to reset everything to the center.

And yes, obviously, it is the center. Maybe slightly left; it’s hard to tell anymore when they’re on stage at a Democratic rally saying how much they respect the Second Amendment. Everything in the Harris/Walz platform is just widely popular common sense. The only reason it’s ever interpreted anywhere as “dangerously leftist,” or even “boldly progressive,” is because corporate journalism and social media have failed us.

1
And a smattering of independent journalists
2
Reminder: I promised my mother I’d stop using the f-word online.

One Thing I Like About Abigail

Abigail is a mean, gory, often funny, action/horror movie that I hope never becomes a franchise

The completely spoiler-free premise of Abigail is this: a group of mercenaries are hired to kidnap a 12-year-old ballerina and guard over her until the ransom can be delivered. But they quickly discover that the girl’s father is a legendarily powerful crime boss, and he’ll be sending his most ruthless hit man to kill them all.

If you’re completely spoiler-averse (and that seems like something you’d be into, of course), then I recommend watching it without knowing anything else about it. Including this post, of course. The larger premise is “spoiled” in every trailer and every description of the movie, so good luck avoiding that! But also, there’s enough going on that it’s still interesting and surprising even if you think you know what you’re getting into.

My overall take: it is the horror/action/black comedy mash-up that I’d been hoping it would be, in a similar spirit as Orphan: First Kill, Malignant, and M3GAN, although not quite as good as any of those. It’s comedically mean-spirited, full of violence and blood and gore and people being nasty to each other, but keeping all of it just enough over the top that it’s still fun.

In fact, I was enjoying it enough that I wondered why it seemed to just disappear with little mention; I suspect that’s because the third act is a mess. It goes on too long, stops doing anything interesting with its premise and just becomes one fight scene after another, tacks on at least two unnecessary endings plus a Teachable Moment, and overall just feels like the result of extensive rewrites and studio intervention.

Until that point, though, it had a great “they don’t make them like this anymore” energy to it. It had the feeling of independent filmmakers working with an original premise and a big studio budget, gathering a cast and crew who all seemed to understand exactly what they were making, and put out into the world as a standalone project with no concern over franchises or tie-ins or “lore.” Considering that it’s already being called a “flop,” it seems unlikely that Universal will try to turn it into anything that it’s not¹, and that may be the best thing for it.

1
Except maybe a Horror Nights house? That could work.

Tuesday Tune Two-Fer: White Noise

Two tangentially-related tunes to help drown out the bad thoughts about diversity, equity, and inclusion

Lately you might have been hearing cool and totally normal people sounding the alarms about “DEI hires,” which is a real and normal thing to be concerned about, and not just a lazy repeat of the same old dog whistles that go back seventy years or longer. Much like “urban,” and “hood,” all the way through “CRT” and “woke,” it serves a very important purpose: it lets people express all the ideas behind the n-word, without the unpleasantness of the n-word itself.

So let’s take a closer look at diversity, equity, and inclusion, while listening to some comforting white music!

First up is “One Bad Apple” by The Osmonds. This song was written by George Jackson originally intended for The Jackson 5, but went to The Osmonds after the Jacksons chose to record “ABC” instead. Clearly yet another in the countless examples of perfectly competent white performers being passed over in favor of more ethnic ones.

People like to sling out terms like “racist,” or “misogynistic,” or “inexcusably racist and misogynistic,” whenever someone raises concerns about DEI, but critics insist that it’s actually about fairness. And the logic is clear if you think about it for even a second: if anyone who’s not a straight, white, male gets a job or a promotion, that’s a “DEI hire.” That means that every job should be given to a straight white man by default, instead of some racially-motivated special-interest virtue signaling. Why are you bringing race and gender into a discussion about the things to which straight white men are entitled?!

While you’re appreciating that airtight bit of logic, here’s a song by Jack White: his cover of “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” with The Electric Mayhem for a Muppets album. This song was written and made into a classic recording by Stevie Wonder, but it took White to make an impression of the original with a “Seven Nation Army” hook grafted onto it.¹

And Muppets often have me thinking about rainbows, and how something that was once so simple and beautiful has been co-opted to have all these weird connotations of “different people living together with respect and harmony” and “freedom to pursue your own happiness.” And how this whole “DEI fad” doesn’t do much for white men like me.

Well, except for how working for a company with an explicit and extensive DEI policy means that I’m surrounded by co-workers at every level with a wider range of life experiences than I’ve ever been in a 30-year career. And I guess that I don’t have to spend every conversation worried about fallout if I mention that I’m gay, and I don’t have to worry that my job is at risk the next time politicians decide to use sexual orientation as a wedge issue to make up for their complete lack of policy.

Actually you know, now that I think about it, anybody throwing a tantrum about DEI is a nonsense-spouting dimwit who can go get stuffed.

1
Non-sarcastic note: I genuinely like Jack White and think he’s extraordinarily talented, but doesn’t add anything to this song and the cover is inessential at best.

Do Not Cite the Deep Magic To Me

A simple and hopefully obvious reminder that if we try to learn everything from history, we are doomed to repeat it.

First I have to acknowledge that this post is entirely the result of my being too online over the past couple of weeks. I have been back on the centralized social media apps, and they are bad places that do bad things to people.¹ Everybody got such a rush from so much news happening so fast, some people are now displaying withdrawal symptoms from having to wait for Kamala Harris to announce a VP pick.

Again, and I can’t stress this enough: always-on news channels and infinite social media feeds are a blight on humanity.

But since there are going to be tons of self-proclaimed political science and policy experts going online to offer their opinions, and since I’m apparently helpless to resist going back to read everything they have to say, I’ve just got one simple request: let’s stop acting like things are still the same as they were even four years ago, much less back in 2008.

What prompted this: reading multiple predictions about who was going to be chosen as Harris’s VP, which all sounded identical to conversations that have been happening for as long as I’ve been following politics.² “It has to be Shapiro, because they have to do well in Pennsylvania,” or “they need someone who will go against Trump’s energy,” or “America’s not ready for a gay Vice President,” etc. etc. It’s all so outdated and irrelevant that they might as well be talking about star signs or bodily humours.

It really stood out to me because I was guilty of it myself. When all the “elite” Democrats were going through contractions trying to squeeze out Joe Biden, my biggest concern was that there’d be no one to replace him, forcing the Democrats into reliving the contentious “Hillary vs Bernie” infighting that helped make me disgusted with the party. I have to admit that I’d immediately discounted Kamala Harris, because I immediately assumed that she was too “risky” and would never get the nomination.

What was that based on? Just years of seeing the Democrats be frightened of their own shadows, constantly playing to some mythical undecided strawman in Iowa that probably never actually existed, and always finding a way to be foiled despite being the most risk-averse people imaginable. Plus all the self-satisfied “social media leftists” in the Bay Area, who’d never shut up with the “Kamala is a cop” nonsense.

But we should all recognize that none of that applies anymore, assuming it ever actually did. Everything leading up to Harris’s nomination feels so unprecedented, it’s gotten to the point where it’s unnerving. When am I going to have to be cynical and disappointed again?! For now, though, it feels like we’ve got a candidate for President who’s actually someone who’d be great at the job. Who’s smart and capable, and personable. Not just an emergency fill-in, not just someone who was the safest of all available options, and not just someone who’d be good at getting votes.

It’s an exciting feeling, the thought of somebody getting into office because they’d be good at being President, not just good at strategizing through an election. And I’d hope that whoever is the VP candidate (and it goes without saying, but there are no outright bad options in the front runners), they’re chosen not just for strategy, but for personality, and the dynamic they’ll bring to the campaign.

And frankly, I’d hope that the campaign takes full advantage of their opponents absolutely shitting the bed, and of the Democratic establishment being too scared of the alternative for too much infighting, and continues running a campaign based on the right thing to do, instead of just the thing that “plays best in the flyover states” or “energizes the base.” Or whatever other nonsense the 24/7 political news cycle has poisoned us with. It feels like we’ve been given the chance to do a reboot, and we should take advantage of it.

1
Mastodon is still okay. It seems to be near-impossible to unintentionally “go viral,” and the lack of up-to-date topical news makes everything much calmer.
2
And then getting frustrated and disillusioned and ignoring all of it until the next major election.

Idiotic Design

The blissfully liberating chaos of not trusting anyone who claims to understand what’s going on

The featured image in this post is a screenshot from CNN’s YouTube channel, where the title of a video promised “What the data is saying about who Kamala Harris will likely choose as VP.” It includes headshots of the front-runners, with a precise percentage value under each one. When you watch the video, you see that the “data” is gathered not from polls, but from people betting on the outcome.

In other words: nobody knows shit. (And also: 24-hour news channels were a mistake).

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve broken all my pledges to be a mentally-healthier and better-functioning human, and I’ve gone right back to obsessively reading social media.¹ The reason is because Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign is nailing it.

They came out swinging with two “channels:” first there’s the campaign, which releases official statements in response to significant events, with thoughtful takes that stay true to the campaign’s message of freedom, unity, and moving forward. Second, there’s “Kamala HQ,” which calls itself the “rapid response” team, and posts memes directly responding to whatever is the hot topic of the moment. It’s legitimately funny and fun to read, building on the unfamiliar sense of optimism that came with Biden’s endorsement and the start of Harris’s campaign, and somehow against all odds making it actually enjoyable to follow a US presidential campaign.

The only reason I’m not even more impressed with Harris’s social media team is because 90% of the time, they just post completely unedited clips and statements from their opponents. Over the past three-and-a-half years of a mostly functioning government, I’d forgotten just how bad the Republicans are at everything, and how much Trump and Vance seem so eager to just completely shit all over themselves on camera.

But again, I think Harris’s campaign has come out strong. And it’s not just because they have a social media team that’s young enough never to have used dial-up internet. It feels like more than any other Democratic campaign in my lifetime, they understand what a Presidential campaign needs to do: tell us what we want to hear and also what we need to hear.

1
Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram, at least. Twitter is still inexcusable garbage and everyone should delete their account immediately.

Tuesday Tune Two-Fer: Smalltown Boys

Two tangentially-related tunes devoted to two tiny towns (NSFW lyrics and video)

After he left Soul Coughing, Mike Doughty wrote a bunch of simpler, pared-back songs and released them on the album and EP Skittish and Rockity Roll. Many of them are just acoustic guitar and a groove box, and most of them are hell of catchy.

My favorite is “Ossining”, which I’ve been singing along to for years without ever bothering to find out what it means. I’d used context clues and the repeated “why not seek Ossining” to guess that it was a playfully made-up word for some kind of enlightenment movement. As it turns out, it’s a small city in New York state. There could still be some enigmatic double meaning to the song, though, and I’m enjoying the continued mystery.

I do know what “Lithonia” is, though — if you haven’t watched that video yet, I don’t want to spoil it but I will warn that it has a jump-scare gory ending — because I grew up near there. So did Donald Glover, since he grew up near there, too. It’s not an especially remarkable city; when I was growing up, the highlight was that it had a Dairy Queen. Now, it has a mall.

Maybe the song isn’t about the city at all, and it’s a character or something from Bando Stone and the New World, Childish Gambino’s upcoming movie. Again, I’m preferring to live with the mystery for now.

I will say that I spent a long time underestimating Childish Gambino/Donald Glover, and I hope I’ve learned my lesson. For instance: I thought it was absurd that 30 Rock picked “Stone Mountain, Georgia” as the hometown of Kenneth the page, and they set at least one episode there depicting it as the smallest, most stereotypical, backwoods shithole in the darkest part of the Appalachians. It’s actually a relatively large city, built up around a landmark co-opted by racists to celebrate the Confederacy. I assumed that the 30 Rock writers intended it as meta-commentary, since the episodes were all about how New York writers had no idea what the rest of the country was really like. Later, I found out that Glover is from Stone Mountain, and he was a writer on the series.

Also, I’d been way too dismissive of Childish Gambino’s music, as just a celebrity side project. I think it was partly a defense mechanism, because it seemed cosmically unfair that someone could be that handsome and that funny and also be a talented musician. It turns out that not only are there some fantastic songs — “3005” in particular — but more importantly, the songs aren’t “celebrity makes a hip hop record” so much as a hugely talented person having too many ideas to fit into one medium.