This week I got to catch up with my old friend Pat King and talk about one of my favorite “guilty pleasure” albums, Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone? by Harvey Danger. Pat recently started a newsletter called Not Above It, focusing on overlooked music, film, and television. Read our conversation here!

Jenny O is one of my best friends and favorite people, and also one of the best musicians I’ve ever known. She made a new record called “New Truth” and it’s finally out! I GOTTA RECOMMEND IT.

It is Tuesday, August 4, 2020 and a Tropical Storm Isaias just ripped through the East Coast. Oh, and the world has been in apocalypse mode for the last 5 months (or let’s just say, I guess, since the Industrial Revolution). I haven’t left my apartment more than a handful of times since March; I’ve been lucky enough to keep both of my jobs, and they have been adjusted to fully remote positions indefinitely. They both involve a lot of social media work, and necessitate being extremely online during work hours. Combined with the absence of real human interaction and a default increase in the need for and use of the virtual realm, I’m feeling totally worn out by any and all social media. It’s a sure thing if I want to feel horrible (or just amp up my anxiety) – all I have to do is start scrolling.

Anyway, I’ve decided to largely stay off of my personal social media accounts for the time being. Instead, anything I want to put onto the internet will go here. It feels more intentional, less automatic, and less likely to keep the cortisol thrashing through my nervous system. I have been making websites since A.D. 2000 and I used to be kind of good at it; at least, I used to really enjoy the intersection of design, content and connection to a community. Social media absolutely destroyed that feeling for me, despite its apparent design to function precisely AS the intersection of those things. I’m looking at this as an experiment to see if there is any road back to the old way, before I started to feel like I was actively killing brain cells every time I logged on. So here’s this!