10.31.2025 - Weekly Digest
Or is it Spookly Digest? Por qué no los dos.
10.27.2025
1BR Bay Area: your very own coffin with views amputees encouraged kitchen shared with pho place down the street walking distance to freeway we are a tolerant blessed family with nine teenage boys looking for mature responsible tenant drama drugs free to occupy tree house during major holidays $1200 a week must have background no credit must pass credit check dangerous felons LGBTQ cannabis encouraged no alcohol no meat on property free wi-fi you must go away and work somewhere during the day dogs not allowed we have two dogs very friendly will not work for dog person open house by appointment tuesday only send photo i.d. contact broker for broker fee not allowed
10.28.2025
Listen to the music. Whoah-oh-whoah. Dance party? Coming from all directions. Triangulate. Mormon church? Arts high school? Lone amplifier with a glowing blue light in an empty parking lot. No one anywhere around. Possibly the most unsettling result. Like a player left on when the world ended. Imagine you wake up from a long nap to empty streets and this. And to make it worse it's the same song on loop for the rest of time. Daring you to approach. You do not approach. The song starts up again. Someone's idea of a prank or a way to torture an ex. Sorry you're hurting but why do we all have to suffer. We didn't cheat on you with your friend. Probably. Someone somewhere's notion of Apocalypse.
10.29.2025
There's a scene in Poker Face where the villain gives this long weird rambling monologue and you realize at the same moment as Natasha Leone he's quoting 'Hook' by Blues Traveler. You really are the fuggin' worst, she says. As with everything else she's right. Rare I've felt so keenly violated by a tv show. The song is from an era where jangly indie jammy pop rock was pervasive and somehow catchy as hell. There's a whole purgatorial playlist of those rattling around in my hippocampus and when I'm in a bad place, insecure or panicky, reverting inwardly to adolescence it's not unusual that one will get stuck on an internal loop in my head. I'm talking days or weeks, and it's usually not the whole song, but a snippet or two of the song, the one line or riff and chorus you remember, and it's stitched so tight into the autonomic system I can feel my larynx move with the vocals or I'll catch myself whistling a lick when all I want to do is turn it off. That stupid song with its Pachelbel's Canon chord progression and wordsy vocal riffs my god. The fuggin' worst.
10.30.2025
There are certain songs by certain bands I will leave a place or plug my ears with wax like the sailors in the Odyssey to avoid. Please do not play Wheezer around me, and if you're a grocery store manager you should post warning signs at the entrance if your music service includes Counting Crows. A girlfriend once asked me if I'd rather be blind or deaf and I didn't have to think about my answer. I've been half deaf about half my life anyway and you figure things out. Grew up with a deaf uncle and all of us knew a little ASL, could operate the TTY extension on the telephone before email and chat were everywhere. That and I've gotten pretty accustomed to using my eyes and I usually have a song from my Critical Period playing on loop in my skull whether I want it to or not, like I have headphones on, clear and persistent even if there's a loud protest going on around me or I'm camped out next to a jet engine. Sometimes I can force a song I actually like in there but after the thirtieth playthrough it's not much better than a smoke alarm battery chirping somewhere in the house. Also my memory for a lot of those songs is incomplete, or I'll find out I misheard the lyrics thirty years ago and never knew what the hell they were saying anyway, so it's usually just a line or two or a hook and part of the chorus before it repeats. It's like having these guys playing in the same room only all the time:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DH4TezOOiD9/
