The Medicine, Joe

Have I ever written about this? I don't know if I have. Maybe, maybe not. It's hard to say after 10,000 blog posts. I'm sure somewhere amongst the dirt and debris of tossed-off writing is the factoid that I am afraid of slugs. You know, like the slimy, slow-moving things that you find in a garden at night. This is my fear. It's both true and also funny to say. A good addition to any otherwise trite conversation about fears. No one wants to be the dude who's saying something like "I'm afraid of heights." That's boring as FUCK. You gotta surprise 'em when you're giving a piece of yourself like that. You want the reaction to be a giggle: slugs?! Yes, slugs. I'm not lying. It's not as effective if it's a lie. The trick is to make them laugh through truth. And my truth is: I'm afraid of slugs.

Now, when I say the word "afraid," again, I'm not lying, but we do need to clarify what it means to be "afraid" of something. How would you describe it? It's an emotion, which are typically difficult to define. You know the emotion because you feel it, and you know that other people feel those emotions too and know what you mean when you say "fear" because you know they have felt "fear" too, and you can relate in the use of the word because you don't have to define it, it's common knowledge, that emotion. But what if you HAD to describe what being "afraid" meant, how would you? Well, then we'd default to the physical properties that are tied to that emotion. Your heart beats more quickly. You get sweaty palms. You get dizzy, or nauseous. Your breath quickens or stops completely for a brief moment. Maybe your eyes get wide, your mouth hangs agape, your body starts to move away from the thing that is causing this emotion within you. I feel all these things when I see a slug. And the fact that I feel these physical reactions to the sight of a slug should, within this definition of "fear," prove that I am afraid of slugs.

In this definition, we are using the physical sensations to explain the emotional sensations. But what I'd like to propose to you now is: what if it moves in the opposite direction? What if we are using the emotional sensations to explain the physical sensations? In other words, what if I feel a certain way physically when I witness external stimuli (in this case: a slimy slug), and the only way that I am able to explain why I am feeling this way physically when I see this particular object is with the word "fear"? But what if those physical sensations are totally separate? What if I'm misinterpreting the way my body is reacting? And if so, should we still use the word "fear"?

Because I'll tell you this: I am old enough to know that there's no real reason to be afraid of slugs. They present no actual threat to me. The most recent 200 times I've seen a slug, over the last 20 years or so, my response to seeing it is simply to move away from it. And if you know those dastardly slugs, you know that they are way too slow to catch me, a human man with abnormally long legs. I know this. I am acknowledging it now. I don't fear slugs when I don't see them, I am instead only reminded of my fear when I see one close by, and feel the physical reaction. I "fear" seeing a slug on damp, half-lit mornings along the sidewalk path, but really what I mean is that I don't want to feel sweaty or feel nauseous or feel my heart skip a beat or feel a strong motivation to run away quickly. Those are unpleasant physical feelings, and I don't want to see a slug because I don't want to feel that way.

I guess it doesn't really make all that much of a difference, how you or I choose to define my "fear" of slugs. Whether it's actually fear or not is a moot point. But it's interesting to think about what we feel and how we feel it and why we feel it, isn't it? We choose to define this sensation as "fear" because that's the easiest way to do it, that's the most understood emotion, and adequately serves to explain why I react the way I do when I see a slug. I must be afraid of slugs. And that seems to be good enough, even though "fear" is an ancient impulse that serves to inform the human body of a threat and trigger a fight or flight response in order to preserve safety and security. But slugs aren't a threat! I know this! Do you see why "I'm afraid of slugs" doesn't seem like a satisfactory answer to me? If I know something is not a threat and have decades of personal data to back up that fact, then why do I still think that I am afraid of that thing? It doesn't make sense.

So when you ask me what I mean when I say that I am fucking thrilled and elated when I listen to Midwest emo, then I am similarly curious as to how I would even explain those emotions. You know what I mean when I use words like "thrilled," of course. If something makes me happy, then you know what I'm trying to say, because you know what it feels like to be happy, and we can relate because we have both felt that human reaction, happiness. And you can connect the dots from there, and say, yes, if Joe feels that way about this particular genre, then I can interpret exactly what he means. He likes it, because of the emotion he says he feels while he listens to bands like the Jazz June is something that I've felt about something else, so this makes sense. The world makes sense. Good. Yes. I'm just curious if we need to be thinking about the Why here, or if it's just good enough to lean on words that signify universally known emotions, and leave it at that.

Like the origins of my love of this Midwest emo genre, the origins of my fear of slugs are murky, forgotten, lost in time. I do know for a fact that the backyard of the home I lived in from birth until the summer of 2003 (at the age of fourteen) was known to feature a non-negligible number of slugs on any given summer evening. My assumption, based on my limited knowledge of how trauma works, is that I had some sort of traumatic experience with a slug during the time in my life from which no memory still remains. Or maybe something happened to me with a slug after the moment in my life when my brain started hitting the Record button, but this particular traumatic experience rejiggered my brain chemistry so that the Record button became loose and stopped recording for that particular experience, ya know, as some sort of self-defense mechanism against whatever horrors I witness in that moment. And yet without the memory, my brain still responds like it probably did in that unrecorded moment, with the fear symptoms like sweaty palms and shortness of breath. This is all guesswork, but fits into the framework of human trauma psychology.

So what's the history—guessed or otherwise—of my love of Midwest emo? It's similarly patchy, though obviously the holes in the story have nothing to do with age. I was 30 years old when it occurred to me that I love this shit. There is documentation on the blog, but here's the secret I'll share with you: I was fucking loaded when I wrote that thing (oh whoops, not a secret, I literally say that in the blog post). This accounts for the bad, lazy writing. This also may or may not account for the shaky reasoning behind my love of this type of music. I know what I feel: I feel breathless, but in a good way, like when you're thrilled with something, like maybe akin to going fast on a highway, or winning a prize at carnival game, or seeing a smile on a newborn's face. But I don't know why that reaction for this music. I'm reading the RYM description of Midwest emo, looking for clues, finding information but no explanation. Did I have some eye-opening experience, back then in the winter of '18-'19, something that I can't remember because I was too blotto drunk but nevertheless changed my brain chemistry in some irreversible way to always be attracted to these particulars sounds?

What you might need at this juncture if confirmation from me that I like The Medicine by the Jazz June. I do. I can confirm it. This is an album review and so it must be said. It also must be clarified that I don't love every single piece of Midwest emo that has ever come across my desk. It, like all music genres, is vast and deep, and ultimately (because it, like all music genres, is just something someone made up and just happened to become widely accepted, even though it doesn't actually mean anything and isn't actually real) encompasses a whole lot of disparate sounds. Record Club's only other pure example of the genre came to us last summer, in Sunny Day Real Estate, and I struggled then to say what I'm struggling to say now. Not only that, but I was less impressed with SDRE than I am with the Jazz June. That probably has more to do with expectations than actual quality, but I'm really just bringing it up because I don't want it to seem like anything that could be reasonably affixed with a "Midwest emo" label gets the rubberstamp treatment from me. The difference in my own opinion between the Jazz June and Sunny Day Real Estate (and American Football, and the Promise Ring, and Braid, and Mineral, and Cap'n Jazz) isn't really that large, but it is there. And I really, really liked The Medicine, in the broader scope of my musical tastes of course (since I love Midwest emo), but also within the specific context of all Midwest emo bands.

I know how I feel when I listen, but those feelings are borne of physical reactions. I know that I love Midwest emo because of the physical sensations I feel when I listen to good Midwest emo music. Then I take those physical reactions and interpret them in a way that makes me label it like: I am excited, I am thrilled, I am happy. I think maybe it's time to just admit that I'll never know the Why. I won't be able to go back and figure out why I feel the way I feel about certain things. There is a reason, a genesis story to those emotions, but they are occasionally lost. And ultimately, they don't even matter, because you are you, and you feel what you feel, and you understand what you feel and what that means, to feel those things. I know how I felt this week, and I liked it.

Also: please don't talk to me about salt. Everyone always talks to me about salt. What about salting a slug do you think would make me feel any fucking better about this? Do you not understand what happens to a slug when they touch salt? And you think that would be helpful for me? That this would address my fear? C'mon now.

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5

In My Place 209

July 28, 2026. 40.073, -75.06934. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

It's a stupid picture because you can't see the horse, but if the lighting was better you'd see a horse. Maybe for the best you can't see Tina; I would feel weird passing a picture of someone else's pet. It's not our pet, Tina the horse, though of you asked my kids they might say something different. She is our closest neighbor, and certainly the only neighbor that we can see sleeping when we look out our bedroom windows. She was also the first neighbor we met when we moved in. Her birthday is in my calendar. There is a feeling of comfort knowing that Tina the horse has been a constant presence for the last six years. Especially since the other neighborhood animal, Tré the three-legged cat, recently moved, and we haven't broken the news to the kids yet. There's Tina, though. She's still there, don't let the photography fool you.

Being So Normal, Gloria

I've been having a hard time knowing what to write for this, as I think it's a near-perfect album and one of my favorites. But I don't want to write about how an album is good. But I guess it's better than writing about an album that I think is bad?

I'm sitting in a coffee shop and decided to put it on my headphones and write for the length of the album, whatever comes to mind that is not related to music directly.

The first thing I think about is how there is one person who knows how to drop the guillotine on me. One of the only people who I've loved who could deeply destroy me with a few words. And I wonder how much of that is because they've been diagnosed with narcissistic tendencies and how much of that is just because they are an Aquarius.  

I read once that your soul works through the different Zodiac signs during its reincarnations. As in Aries are newer souls, so things feel harder for them. They still have so much to learn, and it's so hard to be a person stumbling through Earth for the first time. And as a Pisces, I'm almost done, ready for my soul to no longer be mine, but rather for it to dissolve and go back into the great cosmic soup. So, it makes sense, as an Aquarius has seen just about the same number of reincarnations as a Pisces would have, so that they would understand a heart's weak spots differently.

But I don't really know if I believe any of that. I also don't know if I'm ready for my soul to be done with its earth reincarnations. I think about that a lot and I think that there are still lives that I'd like to live. But maybe I'll feel differently when I'm older and live more in this lifetime. 

I mostly want to believe in astrology when it tells me exactly what I want to hear. And it's right often enough that I can't help but have some belief in it. I'm always so mesmerized when I put my birth information into compatibility calculators with someone else's data; it's accurate, but you need the exact date, birth location, and time. I was born at 7:30 AM on the day the Gulf War ended, in case you want to see what an internet astrology app would say about our compatibility. 

Because of the significance of that date and time, my mom almost named me Irene instead of Gloria, since it means peace. Irene is the daughter of Zeus and Themis. She is the goddess of peace and the personification of harmony and wealth. That's a good name. I would have liked having that name too.

Aphrodite is the motherless daughter of Uranus, born from sea foam after he was castrated by Cronus and his genitals were thrown into the sea. She emerged from the sea fully grown (think Botticelli's The Birth of Venus), and is the goddess of love, beauty, procreation, and desire. The Pisces origin story comes from her too. In Greek mythology, Aphrodite and her son Eros jumped into the Euphrates River and transformed into fish to escape the murderous giant Typhon.

But I feel like this is too much about astrology and not at all about Peach Pit lyrics. Not at all about being normal.

I wondered if Chagu is also a god that I never heard of, and did a quick search on Google. He's not. He's a musician and was the band's tour guide in Indonesia. Chagu kept saying, "we got to side turn sometime." But that ended up being slang for doing crystal meth. You definitely don't need to side turn sometimes.

And that's 37 minutes. It's less thoughts than I thought I'd have, but that's fine. I was constantly distracted by how good this album is.

Unorthodox Behaviour, Nate

Recovering from a nausea once thought to be eternal, unplugging from the future expected and making slow sad peace with the future ascendent. Things much slower, much roughly, much looser than expected. The past tells the story, it knows what will happen next. Resignation, not retirement. A long road, not a gold watch. Were they ever really gold in the first place? 

My grandfather sired twelve children from the comfort of his easy chair, ruling with fear and a fist of bone and meat because bone and meat really is all you need, iron overrated and no longer produced in America. The first five remember a severity, the next five lived in its reputation's shadow, the last two never even heard its story. He slapped and kicked and died in a hospital bed.

It's all so much more analog and tactile than the acid-eaters thought it would be. Undone by the common decay more than anything else. I read somewhere that deviance is a sacrifice made in response to longer lives, that it pays to be normal when being weird can take years off your life. On the one hand, what are the years worth if they aren't lived? On the other hand, if the years aren't worth their own value, what value does anything have?

Larry Bird was a mean son of a bitch. In being mean, he surpassed racism. Maybe there is a wisdom in unmitigated and unmodulated cruelty. I'm in my own hole, stay over there in yours. We're all in holes and maybe there have been dreams that we might get out, dig tunnels to each other, share chestnuts and tips on how to build ramps. But what's out there, anyway? Nothing is waiting, might as well get to it.

Chroma, Joe

I saw him walk into the room, gray college tee and clashing red-and-brown plaid shorts, hair disheveled and slightly sweat-stained from the summer heat, both hands gripping the faded white cardboard box of magical elixir that we had all been waiting for. He was the only one with the means to this particular end, something about a fake ID from a trailer downtown, I never got the full story. He walked in like Christ with the bread, and we all jumped up to grabbed a loaf. It tasted bready, is the thing; it was a figure of speech, about bread, but ironically kinda true.

The music was playing and you can guess what. You could probably guess if you saw the look in his eyes, as he sat down on the dog-haired couch and took his first sips of the only-cool-not-cold elixir. A slight roll of the eyes, but reserved, like he knew he didn't like it but didn't know why. A glimmer, too, perhaps a vision of the future briefly passing by. In nineteen years, having long ago eschewed the ugly plaid board shorts, he would sit down and hear this music again, and know that he was wrong. Now, in this moment, he knew that he didn't know, and that's the important part.

Important to me, the observer. I like being here, among these friends, because they don't bother me. That might sound like a pat way of putting it, but it's true—I have a tough time with people. I struggle to connect. These kids mostly just let me be. That's how I like it. I get to sit here, drink whatever beer is available, and observe. People-watching in micro, basically. I see myself as part of a lineage of storytellers, stretching back to the minstrels with their lutes. Unlike Cartel, I'm not really trying to impress anybody.

Maybe that's what he can't see, not yet anyway (those nineteen years will go by in the blink of an eye). That this music is the thing that is meant to impress, and that no one finds it very impressive to go out of your way to not be impressed by it. It's not impressive to hear heart-on-sleeve emo music and question it. All that does is betray an inability to place one's own heart on one's own sleeve. It's cowardice, is what it is. A complete lack of gumption, contained in a half-eyeroll. I can see it across the room. I can practically hear the creak of the eye tendons twirl, even over the pock of ping pong ball careening off red solo cup.

Twenty-seven years from now, I'll get hired to write a short article in Harper's BAZAAR, some brief sarcastic piece about men's fashion of yesteryear, and I'll really struggle with getting my thoughts down on paper, because I won't be able to stop thinking about this one particular night, the one with the broken mirror and the burnt Ellio's, and those stupid red-and-brown plaid shorts. Men's fashion indeed. I will wonder then whether the image remains so indelible because of who wore the shorts, or why, or what he listened to when he wore them, against his will, and how the shorts were a statement or a lack thereof, and what that would mean either way, and whether he even knew that you could never wear those shorts without betraying the fact that emo music was not your thing, so uncool was the clothing, so cool was the music.

In the present, the here and now, I only hear "Honestly" on the tinny iPod speakers, only taste the bready pilsner and feel a dog hair in the back of my throat. I watch as Christine and Marnie attempt to shoot ping pong balls from behind their backs, the balls missing their targets by several meters, the girls giggling uncontrollably at the attempt. Their boyfriends on the other side of the table are grimacing, each of them taking this game way too seriously, but I can see that their heads are nodding along to the music. Dan gives a shimmy, hitting the part in "Burn This City" that feels like a breakdown but isn't actually. Fifteen years from now, Dan and his wife (not Marnie, though that probably doesn't need to be clarified) will get a babysitter so that they can see Cartel perform "Burn This City" in a medium-sized room, and their voices will join the gang chorus chanting, and then they'll go back to the hotel room they booked in the nearby city and talk about having another kid, and wondering smirkingly what fresh horrors will await with the return of endless diapers.

The light down here in the basement is red. Or has a red plastic sheet covering it, giving everything a mildly bloody glow. Breona—it's her house, or her dad's, who's clearly not present—she's already hitting her third bottle. Three hours from now, she'll fall asleep in the shower. Three years from now, she'll fall to her knees when she snatches an art degree from the jaws of academic defeat. Three decades from now, almost exactly, she'll find herself reaching into her pocket for her last cigarette, which she lights in a different basement, much farther away from here, the lights non-red and fluorescent and flickering, takes a puff and says her name and what she is and then tells her story, the parts she can remember anyway. She doesn't mention this night, but it's part of her story just like it's a part of mine.

The chorus that goes "out of rhythm with our time" plays on repeat, up here. Time is a goon, cornering you and landing many punches.

Wayne stands up. I still see him from across the room. The emo music has compelled him to move. His plaid shorts swish as he jerks first one way and then the other, zigzags across the room, ostensibly for another beer, but stops short, ears perking up, maybe again hearing something that he doesn't know anything about now but can feel that he will, eventually. And he will, long after this. He'll hear the music and it will mean something to him and he'll think about all these nights now that the music meant nothing, and he'll wonder if it was all part of the adventure of life, or if it was just time wasted.

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5

Discussion — Week 384: Amanda Leigh by Mandy Moore

The only reasons that the celebrity-gossip-rag discussion of "did this celebrity get too much plastic surgery" could possibly be relevant in this Record Club discussion about a musical work of art are 1) because we have arrived at Mandy Moore as a Record Club artist based on the fact that one of our members found her attractive, a subjective measure that might and should change based on the factors of that measure and how they are adjusted in the act of plastic surgery, and 2) because I needed to find a bunch of pictures of Mandy Moore as header images for our album reviews, and the annoyance of people's obsession with celebrities getting plastic surgery totally crowded the top of the image search results for "mandy moore," and so I had to adjust to "mandy moore 2010s" to get some relevant photos to use.

Let's throw the whole goddamn thing in the trash and focus on what matters here. Did you like the reviews? Did anything about them change your opinion? And hey, any thoughts about any of the new or old albums covered in our fresh RCAA feature? No? All good! Happy Friday, everybody.

Sunny Daze for President, Gloria

I came into this blind this week and wasn't expecting it to be a modern garage-rock/surf-rock band. Something about the band name Sunny Daze & the Weathermen made me think that we were in for something like Bill Withers (I was thinking "Lovely Day") or like Roy Ayers ("Everybody Loves the Sunshine"). Maybe I should have read the write-up last Sunday.

But I'm just not really in the mood to read anything or write anything this week. I have 28 unread text messages, and I wonder if I really need to get to them. I have 193 emails from today in my Gmail's Primary tab, but they all shouldn't be there. Somehow, things migrated over from Promotions and Social tabs. So a lot of those emails will get straight up deleted. My therapist gave me homework two weeks ago that I didn't start, but I also don't want to write that either. And I still didn't read most of the entries for the Monday Morning Mixtape. I started in the comments and read the only one that was called out at that time.

I did a quick Google search, and the internet now tells me that Sunny Daze and the Weatherman do not classify themselves as surf rock and that they are, in fact, from Pittsburgh. Cool. Pennsylvania boys. When I first put this on in the car yesterday, I was trying to figure out if I could tell a good story about surfing. But that's less relevant since they are not, in fact, a surf rock band. Still, I just kept thinking about how my favorite pictures of myself are about thirteen years old now and were taken with a GoPro while surfing in San Diego with some people I met on the CouchSurfing website.

Then I was thinking about why the ocean is salty—basically, because of mineral ions dissolved from the rocks. That's pretty cool. Then I was thinking about the primordial soup from which we all came, then "Ground Soup" came on. And I thought that was pretty good timing.  And I can't stop thinking about the Primordial Soup now. I also can't catch any of the lyrics in this song, but there is no way it's about that, right?

Right?

But how stoked would Miller and Urey have been after realizing that they could recreate early Earth conditions in a lab and, with some electric sparks, spontaneously create amino acids? The building blocks of life. It would be a good song.

I don't feel strongly about this album in any way, which you can probably guess from the fact that I am not writing about it. The "Sun God" instrumental tracks are the best thing on this, in my opinion. They are the only thing that got me to stop thinking about the early Earth's atmosphere, four billion years ago—just molecules vibing. Maybe I should Google this, too. "Is the primordial soup still the best hypothesis for early life?"

Shit. There has been more development in this field of study, too. I'm curious how much of my undergrad knowledge is completely irrelevant at this point. Is the phrase "the half-life of knowledge is two years" accurate? If it is, almost everything I know is outdated. Is that even a real phrase, or is that something that my dad would say to keep us interested in continually learning?

In My Place 155

June 4, 2026. 39.95358, -75.16364. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

A decent amount going on in this picture, a good list of conversational topics that I could pull from the scene that the wide lens has captured. I could maybe talk about the new plaza outside the Municipal Service Building, how nice all the greenery is, contrasting with the ugly flattop that used to take up this space, though seen cynically perhaps a ploy to make it seem like Philadelphia is nicer than it actually is to all those international tourists visiting for the soccer thing. That's a whole fucking tangent. No time for that now. Because I want to draw your attention to the statue on your far right. It's a guy and... I think a printing press? It's been there forever. I want you to know that, at one point—though it has since disappeared—there was a video on PornHub of a hot woman peeing on this statue. I didn't want it excessively, I'm not into watersports, but I did think it was funny that I was familiar with the statue featured in the video, and I do think that it proves once and for all that hot women can do pretty much whatever they want and the act itself becomes hot simply due to the woman's hotness. If some old dude was peeing on the statue, I wouldn't say it was a hot. It's not the peeing that's hot, it's the hot woman peeing that's hot. You get it. Everyone gets it. Everyone who is visiting for Mayor Dipshit's 250 Year Vanity Project is going to get it. They are going to see the famous PornHub statue and be like, wow, we are very glad that we were able to visit this great city, despite its infamously incompetent leaders, simply because we are now able to bear witness to this very statue, the one from the video, the hot video of the hot woman peeing hot pee all over the place. Thank you to the mayor for making it happen! Yeah buddy!!!

tIl d3ath #25: "Come Out and Play"

A review of S02E03 of the American sitcome 'Til Death.

You were strong. You were brave. You are gone. You are not forgotten.

You were born on the ground in Cambridgeshire and that was the last time your feet touched ground. You flew. You flew to the tops of charts and you flew deep into our hearts. You never lost that accent. You weren't from Australia, despite what people might assume because of your iconic role, or because of your duel citizenship later in life.

You were the light for so many.

You must remember that time, on the set of Grease, that you and Eddie were taking a break, and he asked you about your childhood, and for some reason you started talking about a particular trauma that had occurred so long ago, and had been kept hidden for so long. Eddie was preparing to be hit in the face with a whipped cream pie and you told him about what happened, when you barely escaped death. That you had been changed forever.

And then years later you were sitting down on a chaise longue in your palatial estate and you were, as so many people around the globe were doing at the time, watching the American sitcome Till Death, and you were struck with the notion that you had seen this before, had lived this exact plotline that was on the TV, that you knew intimately what it meant to not be able to do something even though everyone assumed that you could. Like the tall dude, what's his name, the guy from Nightmare Ned, you know who I mean, how he told his hot wife that he could play basketball but he could not. Or how pasty piefucker guy made it seem like he was a hotshot tough guy but character actress Kat Foster knew him well enough to know it was all bluster. To want to be one thing, and know in your heart of hearts that you are actually something—someone—else.

You could never quite articulate what that episode meant to you in your lifetime. How it touched some deeper memory. You suspected it was kin to the emotion that you felt when you were young and you almost died, but how, how they were intertwined, you could never seem to understand. You can't know that your loved ones continued the search after you passed. That they are here now, ready to tell you what they have learned. You will be so pleased to hear what they whisper in your ear as you lie in your coffin specially prepared for you.

You flew, but you feared hitting the ground. You were alive, truly alive, but you were fascinated with death, so closely did you feel its heat. You were seen as a source of hope and you radiated love, but they did not know you. You knew you, and you, unfortunately, believed that you had nothing to give. That's how you lived your life, believing that it was all a lie, that no one really knew you, the true you, and you thought they would be disappointed if they knew. That death had wrongly passed you over, so long ago, and now it was coming to claim what was rightfully his.

But you were wrong. You lived and you were meant to live. Like every episode of the American sitcome Til Death, your life was a 5 puke out of 5 life. Let today be a tribute to your life, and the way you lived, and the way that you allowed others to live. We live today in honor of that life that you had and didn't want but kept anyway. Your life was, thus, one of courage. Let it be known that we now know you, the real you, and that we stand here today and proclaim that we love you, everything about you, and that we're proud of you. You should know this, wherever you are. You were Olivia fucking Newtown-fucking-John. You lived. You lived!

In My Place 138

May 18, 2026. 39.9565, -75.1629. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

My big pet peeve is the existence of "feels like" temperatures, which are different than actual temperatures. The whole point of the local news broadcast weather report is to inform us what is gonna feel like outside. Why even bother with regular temperatures? Just give us the "feels like" and be done with it.

It felt like 100 degrees today.

The irony of it is that I spent very little time outside. Which is a privilege mostly, even though being stuck in a windowless office feels more like a curse sometimes. I received a few texts from kith and kin who were traveling around under the sun, telling me how hot it was, but by the time I stepped outside myself, I was so frozen from overcompensating AC units that the "feels like" temperature was more like: thaw.

I was still pretty hot by the time I got to the subway entrance, four blocks away.

It takes a lot longer for the underground tunnels to heat up, so there are a great respite from the heat from early May through late June. When I think about Race/Vine, I think about how wet it always is, like something is dripping somewhere perpetually, or the mopper on call is overzealous with the mopping. But maybe in these next months I'll be thinking about how cool it is too.

Kinda funny to think about how the first like 40 pictures in this project all had snow in them.

Song of the Evening: "Take a Sexy Picture of Me"

A column about music, and about how the music informs our lives. Today's author is Joe. See the previous songs HERE.

"Take a Sexy Picture of Me"

CMAT

from EURO-COUNTRY

2025

Gig report. 5/12/26 @ Union Transfer. CMAT, with Blonde in Car opening. In attendance: me, Pam, and a sold-out crowd. Age range skewed younger, gender skewed female. It was my first concert since the much-vaunted Titus/Eve6 double bill fifteen months ago. Getting boxed out by fans on either side of me as soon as CMAT made her first appearance reminded me why I'm not big on concerts. It was cool having a night out with Pam, though. That doesn't happen often enough, for babysitter reasons. This was actually Pam's second of three concerts this week. All RC alumni, by the way, but watch me not mention the blog to Pam, and watch me write this blog post knowing full well she'll never read it. The main point here being that Pam is the concert person in this relationship. Also: R.I.P. Pam's back muscles, they are never gonna recover.

Let's see. You all remember CMAT, right? Sure. I went into the concert with medium-high expectations. I absolutely fucking adore three CMAT songs, and am mildly satisfied with a bunch more. She's known as a good live performer, though, which I saw first and foremost on a Jimmy Kimmel performance that is for some reason (I suspect something political?) not available on YouTube anymore. So I knew it was gonna be a good show. Even if you're not huge on an artist's songs, a good performer can change your mind through simple virtue of playing them for you live and in person.

The thing that really caught my eye during that Kimmel performance was CMAT's backup dancer. CMAT herself is good looking, mostly because she gives off insane confidence, which is hot, and also because she does the ironic "I'm gonna joke about being hot in an ironic way" even though she is actually hot too, which, ya know, the irony is hot. It's self-deprecating hotness. Did I write about this in my CMAT review last December? I'm trying to remember. I read the review before the concert, but I already forget. My mind is mossy and rotten and decayed. Usually gets that way when I'm around hot women.

But oh yeah, okay, the backup dancer. My point being that the backup dancer is out-of-this-world hot. I wasn't sure if she was part of the touring crew or not, but I found out last night that she is. I also found out that I was wrong about her being "the backup dancer." She's actually their full-time violinist, which is even hotter. She was only backup-dancing in the Kimmel video because they played a song (embedded above) that doesn't feature violin. The rest of the songs are violin songs. She was really good at the violin. It was a surprisingly tough google, but her name is Holly Carpenter. Here's a similarly horny internet-dweller trying to find out the same info, mistaking her for an Irish actress. Nope, just a hot Irish violinist and part-time dancer.

I didn't mention any of this to Pam, my crush on the violinist in the (self-described) "Very Sexy CMAT Band." I think she would have taken issue with this, but not for the reason you're thinking. I think it's generally pretty fucking normal, despite its incredibly unfortunate social taboo, to find human beings outside of your marriage to be attractive. This is something that Pam and I both agree on. Me saying that Holly Carpenter is maybe the hottest person I've ever seen on the Union Transfer stage would do nothing to affect the strong foundation of our marriage. Pam knows that I think she (Pam) is the hottest person I've ever seen in my life but that I also see other very hot women all around me, and so why shouldn't I live out that truth, be honest, say that Pam is so goddamn hot that being married to her still feels like I'm being bamboozled somehow, but also, like, yo, holy shit, you see that violinist up there?!

I didn't say any of that last night at the concert, though, because of a minor argument that we had recently in which I took the loss. When I say "recently" I mean within the past like three days, ongoing. Here's another truth about me: I am pretty open when it comes to the subject of sex. What's been proposed to me, very recently, by parties including Pam and those in her circle, is that I talk about the subject of sex both too much and also inappropriately, and it's starting to wear on Pam. Or maybe not "starting to," maybe it's been that way for a while, and a recent incident in which I made someone else feel uncomfortable also made her (Pam) uncomfortable. And so this was made clear to me. In Pam's words, I need to "read the room" a little better.

Which is not really all that easy for me, if I'm being honest. To be clear, I think I'm actually really good at reading rooms, and knowing what is "expected" of me, like in terms of what is socially acceptable. My problem is that I also have a tendency to say shit that is specifically designed to break those social expectations, to say shit that is gonna be very open or borderline shocking because I know it's going to get a reaction, and that's what gives me joy for whatever reason. I'm not being a dick about it. In fact, I've always viewed this as one of my (very few) charms, that I can say shit that is almost but not quite inappropriate, and that I can say it in front of people who know that I am well-meaning about it, and that I'm going to be—like CMAT, if we're trying to keep the thread in view here—self-deprecating about it, always make the joke about me, say something about myself that is funny because it's out there and too honest and honest in a way that you can only laugh at it. Most of the time, this involves me talking about sex.

What's been proposed to me is that not everyone feels this way, that I was mistaken, that being this way around other people actually makes other people pretty uncomfortable a lot of the time. Which, okay, I'll consider the notion. Especially as I find myself in more social contexts lately in which such open talk about this very specific subject of sex is allowed and even encouraged, I'm maybe still navigating how and when to turn that dial down a little in other contexts. I know for a fact that I have already made two different friends on two different occasions a little upset simple through the act of attempting to discuss my lifestyle with them, and that didn't feel very good. And then there was this most recent incident where I thought I was okay to talk about it and crack jokes about it and all that, and as it turns out, it very much was not, and now I have Pam telling me shit like I was "acting like a 12-year-old boy," which doesn't feel very good about it at all.

And now that mindset is spilling over into other moments that would normally have been extremely innocuous. Like Pam was expressing some anxiety over something completely separate from all this on Monday, and I was hearing her out and being a good listener, and she was finishing up, and Kacey Musgraves' new song "Dry Spell" happened to be playing on the speakers, and I try to lighten Pam's mood a little and say something like, "c'mon, let's just sit here and listen to Kacey Musgraves be extremely horny for a while," and the reaction to that was "see! this is what I'm talking about!" Which really got under my skin. First, because that wasn't my intention, like at all. I was just making a joke about a song, a song that any music critic worth his salt would be able to instantly tell you is an explicitly horny song. Second, because... I don't know, maybe she's right. Maybe it is a problem.

Is it my problem, though, would be the question I would consider. I don't know. I have to think about it some more, and I need to practice my empathy a little more. I get that many, if not most, people view the idea of "sex" differently from me. That includes my wife, who takes sex more seriously than I do, I think. Like her view of it is more toward the "sacred" end of the spectrum, i.e. sex is an act that can feel good but should be taken seriously. I've never viewed it that way, or at the very least have felt uncomfortable when I've tried. It's more like: hey, this is something fun to do. And recently, I've made pretty good strides, I thought, in living out that mindset. And we as a couple have made good strides too in creating contexts in which we can live our truths about the idea of sex, however close or far apart those respective ideas are.

So this recent situation was pretty new to me, created a new little wrinkle that I'm still processing. I don't want to change because I don't think I did anything wrong. But "nothing wrong" is only true when you view the world like I do. Empathy means viewing the world like other people do, and trying to understand that. When I try to see it from other people's point of view, I can probably see how the way I treat this taboo subject of sex and everything that comes into play within our particularly lifestyle re: sex could and most obviously would make other people uncomfortable. I don't think I'm being a dick by being open and honest about myself, but I do think I am being a dick by not considering how my openness and honesty affect other people's feelings.

So I'm trying not to be a dick anymore by talking so much about my dick anymore. So that's why I kept my big takeaway from the CMAT concert hidden away (at least until I found room for it on the blog). What's pretty funny, though, is that CMAT feels like a kindred spirit in this regard. Just in the way that she's always talking about and joking about the subject of sex. And she had a room full of people adoring her because of—and not despite—that. I don't really know if I understand the difference between what I saw there and how I try to live my life.

Pam even pointed it out in the car on the ride home. "CMAT seems like the type of person you would want to be with, since she talked about sex so much." But see, that's sort of missing my whole point, I think. My point is that talking about sex and wanting to have sex are two different things. And that I should feel, and almost always have felt, comfortable talking about sex with my platonic friends. Even if "talking about" is making a self-aware crude joke or something. I don't feel more or less attracted to CMAT because she was quick with a sex quip. But I do feel more connected to her as a human being. And I think it's interesting to consider how she pulls it off, and how I'm apparently not.

I wasn't thinking about any of this during the concert, by the way. I was just jamming out to some great songs (she played "The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station" second, and for real, gang, it's one of the best songs of the decade so far), and appreciating how tight the CMAT band was. I was also watching the violinist, but it wasn't the right time to talk about that. I'm trying to read the room, I guess. Even though I was reading the room and it sure seemed to be the appropriate time to talk about how I thought the violinist was hot. CMAT herself said it multiple times. It makes me wonder if the problem really is me or not. I still don't know. It was a good concert.

Monday Morning Mixtape 069: The PoYB Official Mixtape About the Number 69!!!!

Welcome to Monday Morning Mixtape, a PoYB Contributor-curated playlist of songs, made just for you at the start of each week.

"The PoYB Official Mixtape About the Number 69!!!!"

Yes! That's right! It's Week 69 for MMM! Let's celebrate with some songs that make you think of 69! Which is a sex act! Or maybe you have some other interpretation, who gives a shit! 69, baby!!!!!!!!!

chosen by Joe

Spotify

YouTube

"The Math" by Hilary Duff

from Metamorphosis, 2003

The joke only works because it's Hilary Duff. It was someone way less innocent (or, ya know, "innocent" according to early-aughts PR people, or whatever, you know what I'm trying to say), then I would not be hearing a reference to *69 on a phone and thinking "ha ha, she's singing about 69 the sex act." But because it's Duff, I'm absolutely thinking that. I don't think I'll ever forget it. As we as a society move beyond the concept of *69, then this is all that remains. The children hear this 23-year-old song and assume that Duff must be singing about two bodies turned 180 degrees so as to better perform oral-genital contact simultaneously.  —Joe

"The Book of Love" by the Magnetic Fields

from 69 Love Songs, 1999

I had this on my list of songs for the "the" playlist and moved it off when I saw this week's theme was 69, since this is my favorite love song on the Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs album (with close seconds being "All My Little Words" and "I Don't Want to Get Over You"). I'm so curious if more songs from that album will end up on this playlist. The concept for this album came to Stephin Merritt when he was sitting in a gay piano bar listening to a pianist cover Sondheim songs. It made him feel like he could get into theater music, and he decided on the following: "I'd write one hundred love songs as a way of introducing myself to the world. Then I realized how long that would be. So I settled on sixty-nine. I'd have a theatrical revue with four drag queens." My favorite Sondheim song is "Being Alive" from Company, and I think that plays nicely with the same themes of this song. The idea of love being shown in the mundane moments of life, and not really knowing things, but figuring them out. I also love the idea of introducing yourself through 100 love songs.  —Gloria

"What's Your Fantasy" by Ludacris ft. Shawnna

from Incognegro, 1999

This is a song that I had no business knowing every word to. It came out in 1999, which means that I was likely ten or eleven when I was singing every word to this song. This is also a song that made my mom switch the radio station immediately. Years later, we'd add "Candy Shop" and "Magic Stick" to that list. To this day, I think I've only listened to the radio edit. I don't know if I feel ready to listen to the explicit version. Will report back.  —Sara

"Rainy" by Erika de Casier

from Essentials, 2019

I've never actually had sex while listening to Hilary Duff. That's more of a joke. I have had sex listening to Erika de Casier. I chose this de Casier song because I thought it would be funny to choose another song that's about calling on the phone. I wonder what it would be like to know that the audience for your art is having sex while engaging with that art. I don't think there's an appropriate way to convey that to the artist, unless they asked. I would not walk up to Erika de Casier, say if I recognized her at a bar or airport, and be like, hey Erika, I have had sex to your 2019 classic Essentials. Though maybe she would prefer that over hearing me explain to her what Record Club is.  —Joe

"69 Année érotique" by Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin

from Jane Birkin - Serge Gainsbourg, 1969

This week, I was thinking about 69, not just as a number or bodies intertwined, but as a philosophy. I was thinking about it in relation to the karmic promise that what you give, you receive. But that doesn't really sit right with me. What you give isn't necessarily what comes back to you, but rather what you give is who you are. Generosity is not meant to be transactional. You are generous because that's who you are. You love because love flows through you. You are safe because you know how sacred safety feels in another person's arms. There is nothing more beautiful than a person who gives without keeping score. Who loves not to be loved in return, but simply because they are, at their very core, someone who loves.  —Gloria

"All the Things You Get" by Frog

from Frog for Sale, 2026

This song is not about calling people on the phone, it is about sex. Specifically, getting drunk and having sex with coworkers. They don't mention the sex act of 69 at all, I don't think, but for the purposes of this mixtape, it can be implied. I try to explore boundaries as often as I can, but I think that "having sex with coworkers" is probably a line I'm not willing to cross. It's just too complicated. Not that any of the amazing women I work with would ever want to, I'm just saying. Probably about ten years ago at this point, my boss was retiring, and I got loaded at her retirement party at Manayunk Brewery. This story is not headed in the direction of "and then I tried bangin' my boss," because she was a very nice person but also, like, an elderly woman. But I did hit on her daughter a little bit. Her daughter asked me to buy her a drink, and it ended up being a $17 drink or something. I bought it, but that snapped me out of it. Something about an extremely expensive drink made me realize that I was not headed down the right path. Where was I going with this? I forget.  —Joe

"Head" by Prince

from Dirty Mind, 1980

McKnight's is a long-term care news publication. I usually read their weekly updates, and one of the articles this week was "The keys to supporting safe sexual expression in long-term care." They interviewed a psychologist who talked about how intimacy and sexual expression are fundamental aspects of the human experience across a person's lifespan. But when a person enters an LTC facility, sexuality and intimacy are often ignored, since it's assumed that aging lessens a person's desire and ability for sexual expression. I can tell you from personal experience that so many nursing home residents are inappropriately horny and touchy to the point that I always wore shorts under my skirts and dresses at work. It's such a balancing act, talking about sexual expression in this setting, especially when you are dealing with differing cognitive abilities. But the folks in this article are trying to institute new guidelines that aim to prepare staff to promote boundaries and respect, assess consent, and prevent harm, all of which are very good things.  —Gloria

"Summer of '69" by Bryan Adams

from Reckless, 1984

I read something recently—and by "recently," I mean "when I chose this song for the 69 mixtape"—that Bryan Adams has claimed that this song is NOT about the warm months of the year 1969 and all the nostalgia that thinking about that time in one's life might entail, but is in fact literally about the sex act of two bodies turned 180 degrees so as to better perform oral-genital contact simultaneously. Adams' songwriting partner Jim Vallance has rebuffed those claims, and I am going to go out on a limb and say that Vallance is the voice of reason here, and that Adams is just trying to start shit online. It's still pretty funny, though. The number of 69 can be funny in so many ways, including as an antidote for overwrought nostalgia.  —Joe

"Doot Doot (6 7)" by Skrilla

a single, 2025

Also extremely funny? The number 67. But only in a way that is at least two levels more ironic than 69. With 69, the joke at first was that it was funny because of sex, and then one level of irony is that I am acknowledging that it's a dumb joke but leaning into it here on the mixtape by taking it seriously. With 67, it started out as a joke because [insert mysterious origins of the number 67 here]. The first level of irony is old people (my age and above) saying the numbers "6 7" as a way of making fun of the young kids (my oldest child's age and below) who think it's funny. The second level of irony is that people my age saying it in a jokey way is, in itself, not funny at all, and actually pretty cringey, because, like, whatever, just let the kids have their own dumb inside jokes that don't mean anything, okay? But then the third level of irony is saying "6 7" in a serious way, as a way to rebuff my peers who are attempting to be ironic with it. And look, if you think there should be more ironic layered on top of the number 69, then that's gonna be up to you, in this very mixtape. I don't have the capacity to do it. I can't make fun of myself any more than I already do.  —Joe

"Why Are We Sleeping?" by the Soft Machine

from The Soft Machine, 1968

"It begins with a blessing, it ends with a curse / Making life easy, by making it worse / 'My mask is my master,' the trumpeter weeps." All these lyrics feel very appropriate for a playlist about 69 as a position, haha. It is something that should be hot, but in reality is cursed, in my humble opinion. It's too hard to focus on both receiving and providing pleasure in a not ideal position for either. Is it better for men? Let me know in the comments!  —Gloria

"End of the Line" by Traveling Wilburys

from Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1, 1988

That Erika de Casier blurb above should ring a bell in your mind about something that I wrote about a few years ago, deep in the blogging archives: Joe's Top Five Things That He Can't Do While Listening to Music. Sex is listed at #1, and yet here I am, claiming that I had sex while listening to music. You're right to point this out. I have indeed been exploring the act of listening to music while having coital relations. It's been hit or miss at this point. I feel like I need to hone the art of choosing the right music for the occasion. I don't like trusting the algorithm to take the task seriously, too much bullshit in any "making love" playlist you might find on Spotify or whatever. But it's also tough to keep my own collection of homemade playlists consistent when I keep breaking my iPod. This means that I'm usually just putting on the same ol' not-necessarily-"sexy" playlists. Which means that, yeah, sometimes I finish to the sound of "End of the Line" by Traveling Wilburys. And yeah, that also means that I'm slowly getting Pavlov'd into getting horny while listening to songs that should by no means make me horny, but you can only bang so many times to non-sexy classic rock tunes before your brain starts getting warped. Ah well. As the 69-joke-loving internet-dwelling dweebs love to say: doesn't matter, had sex.  —Joe

NEXT WEEK: "Dancing on My Walk Home" — Songs that make you want to dance, even after a shitty day (chosen by Gloria)

Monday Morning Mixtape 067: Your Mixtape Summons in the Mail

Welcome to Monday Morning Mixtape, a PoYB Contributor-curated playlist of songs, made just for you at the start of each week.

"Your Mixtape Summons in the Mail"

Songs for jury duty

chosen by Gloria

Spotify

YouTube

"Jury Duty" by Joan of Arc

from Testimonium Songs, 2013

This is the first time I've picked a MMM theme without any song ideas in mind. I was summoned to jury duty last Monday and thought, "Sure, that's a mixtape theme." I ended up not even having to go. I got an email Sunday night that read, "You are no longer needed to report on 04/06/2026 for your Jury Service. You will be given credit for your service and will not be called again for at least one year from the date. You are instructed to go to work as you normally would. However, if you have already made arrangements for coverage at your place of employment, and cannot report to work, you MUST report to jury duty as scheduled at 8:15 AM." And I don't understand why you would have to go only if you've already arranged work coverage? It makes no sense to me. Either you want me there, or you don't.  —Gloria

"Waiting" by Green Day

from Warning, 2000

Here's my jury duty story: I've never been to jury duty. I got the letter maybe twelve years. They told me to take the online survey to see if I had to go. One of the questions was "Have you ever been convicted of a crime," and I selected "yes," even though I don't know if that's actually true. I wasn't lying, I was just being cautious—I didn't want them to be like "you lied on your pre-jury duty online survey, and selected 'no' even though you received multiple underage drinking citations in your youth?!" I suppose that's not really a "conviction." I don't know, man! I choked under the pressure! And now, I seem to have been removed from all jury duty lists. Even though I'm one of the few people who would get paid a full wage for jury duty. I'm a government worker. I would fucking LOVE to get sequestered. But alas, it doesn't seem to be in the cards.

I don't know how I'm going to fill five more blurbs.  —Joe

"I Don't Live Here Anymore" by the War on Drugs

from I Don't Live Here Anymore, 2021

I recently caught up with a family friend who just moved back to the area after living overseas for a few years. One topic that came up was how they still were getting jury duty notices from Philadelphia forwarded to this other country they were living in. There's not much more of a story there, just one of those moments that make you shake your head...  —Batts

"Garden Gnome" by Lebanon Hanover

from Sci-Fi Sky, 2020

Actually, no, scratch that, I have at least one more thing I could say about jury duty. But I've already said it a lot on the blog. Jury duty, as featured in the fifth season episode of Reba, called "Grannies Gone Wild." This song was featured on the GGW playlist at the end of that project. There's a whole story that came together over the course of that summer, how Barbara Jean is on the jury for a capital punishment trial, how Texas executes you if you are convicted of steal a garden gnome, how there's a garden gnome on the jury, how that garden gnome speaks exclusively in catchphrases about deli meats, how........... oh god, what am I doing with my life, oh god. I was watching Grease tonight, and remembered that one of the lawyers in the background of that scene is canonically Eddie Deezen, the actor who plays Eugene in Grease. The lore goes as deep as you wanna follow it. Come back to Puke on Your Birthday at some point to read more about Eddie. Maybe his thoughts about 'Til Death. Today is the 1714th day in a row that Puke on Your Birthday has published something, but what they don't tell you is that every single post in that time is ESSENTIAL.  —Joe


"Not Guilty" by George Harrison

from George Harrison, 1979

The first time I was summoned for jury duty, I had to request a reschedule because I had a work trip planned. That was easy enough, and they gave me a new date. I got to the courthouse on that date, and they separated everyone into different groups. They did not call me. Once everyone was gone and I was the only one left, I told the person who was assigning people that I had never called. They told me I "definitely was" and asked for my name. Then they said, "Oh, you’re not on my list. You can leave." Beautiful. I went to the Reading Public Museum afterward and saw an exhibit of famous buildings recreated in toothpicks.  —Gloria

"Green Typewriters IX" by the Olivia Tremor Control

from Music from the Unrealized Film Script: Dusk at Cubist Castle, 1996

"How much longer / can I wait?" I would imagine there is a lot of waiting at jury duties, no? I've never been. I'm pretty good at waiting, though. I can keep myself occupied. I can just sit there. I was in a bad mood last year at the beach and basically spent five hours a day for a whole week sitting in my beach chair and not doing anything but staring at the ocean. I would probably be pretty good at jury duty. One time in high school we did this "day of service" thing and me and a dozen other guys I didn't know and two teachers (probably in their early 20s at the time honestly) I didn't know were at retirement facility or something, and we ended like two hours early, and they put us in a room, and no one knew each other and no one was motivated to say anything, so we all just sat there in silence for two hours. I overheard one of the teachers remark to someone else on the bus ride that it was one of the most uncomfortable days of his life. I don't remember it that way. I was cool just twiddling my thumbs and waiting it out.  —Joe

"Myxomatosis (Judge, Jury & Executioner)" by Radiohead

from Hail to the Thief, 2003

I, like many of my peers, didn't really know anything about politics and "how it all works" until a disgusting pedophile successfully ran for president in the mid-'10s. But I recall being cognizant of at least some moral sticking points as early as 2004. I wasn't old enough to vote, but I was old enough to understand the disconnect between what was right and what people believed. My one friend's dad was handing out political material during the 2004 Presidential election, outside of church, and I grabbed one, and it had, among other Useful Facts, that we should vote for George W. Bush because he was pro-death penalty. Even as a dumbass teenager, I was like, hold up, what? How is executing people following the church's teachings? It doesn't follow the church's teachings, or Jesus's teachings, at the very least. Pretty sure the dude who was executed by the state wouldn't be pro-state-execution. But what the fuck do I know.  —Joe


"The Court of the Crimson King" by King Crimson

from In the Court of the Crimson King, 1969

I already know that Joe is going to say that this sounds too much like Jesus Christ Superstar. He says this as if Jesus Christ Superstar is not *quite literally* hit after hit. It's an outstanding soundtrack and the only musical soundtrack I'll listen to. As someone who used to do musical theater, there are four roles I would step back on stage for, no questions asked: 1) Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar, 2) Mary Magdalene in Jesus Christ Superstar, 3) The Leading Player in Pippin, and 4) Ms. Hannigan in Annie.  —Gloria

"Please, Judge" by Roky Erikson

from True Love Cast Out All Evil, 2010

Haven't listened to this song in a hot minute, but I know that written and sung by a dude (backed by Okkervil River, sidenote) who is intimately aware of how judges hold extraordinary power and can abuse that power. Roky spent a lot of time in mental health facilities for marijuana use, probably more than he should've been, but he was ordered there by a judge. He was also stealing people's mail, so there was some legit mental health worries. But it's crazy to me that a judge could just be like "you seem crazy, off to lock-up for you." I've had some bad run-ins with some shitty judges. I used to spend so much time in court. Oh shit, duh, I totally could've written about all that in one of these blurbs. But I never really had any contact with a jury. These weren't criminal trials. They were [censored].  —Joe

"Famous" by Jenn Champion

a single, 2023

Believe it or not, I've heard a story firsthand about a celebrity's experience being called in for jury duty. I'll avoid any identifying details, but I can say that they pointed out to the court that their status as a public figure made it difficult for them to act as a juror, in the event that the defendant recognized this celebrity. The judge allegedly tried to downplay this celebrity's level of fame, though that strategy might have been jeopardized by the claim that several employees at the courthouse asked for this celebrity's autograph. And, no, they were ultimately not chosen for the jury, but it's an amusing little tale.  —Batts

"The Number" by Woods

from Songs of Shame, 2009

You get your number called, and you're on the jury. That's how it works. I would know. I've seen jury duties on the television. That one show, right? With the guy who thought he was on a jury, even though it was all fake. Boy, that show really dropped the ball in the last episode, didn't it? Way too much pat-on-the-back bullshit. Let the dude understand that he was on a TV show, and then let him ride off into the distance. We don't need to see him get every single hidden camera pointed out to him. Oh god, what was the name of that show? Was it just Jury Duty? I forget. I fucking hate TV shows so goddamn much. Except New Girl. That was a good show. Remember when Jess was on jury duty, sequestered, and the smoking hot [whatever her name was, I forget and am not looking it up] replaced her for like six episodes? Shit, what's her name. Was she the one in Jennifer's Body? Oh wait, Megan Fox? I mix her up with someone else all the time. Olivia Munn, I think. Which one was on New Girl? I don't know. Honestly, I don't really care. I hate TV. I love music, though. This is a good song.  —Joe

"The Trial" by Pink Floyd

from The Wall, 1979

I told everyone that I had jury duty on the days leading up to it last week. It was my big piece of small talk. I was lowkey very excited for it and bummed that they didn't need me. Because how often do you get to be on a jury? Sure, maybe it will be boring, but maybe it will be really interesting? Maybe you'll get picked for an actual jury! You get to do your civic duty and hang out with random strangers, deliberating someone's fate—a wild way to spend a weekday. I also like how the jury commissioner can send you a letter like, "Hey, babe, I need you call off work on Monday. Maybe you can help us solve this crime?🧐😇🤞💛 Thankssss!!" In all honesty, I think it could be a really educational and interesting experience. There is a running joke that people want to get out of jury duty. If you are one of those people, have you actually sat on a jury? Is it really that bad of an experience?  —Gloria

NEXT WEEK: "The Mixtape" — Songs whose titles could be titles of a Seinfeld episode, i.e. they follow the format of "The _____" (chosen by Joe)

Love Is Not Enough, Sunny

Opening this album is like opening a firehose: it hits you all at once and you need to back off and come back at an angle to appreciate the pieces. The visualizers full of old men with beards staring deeply don't help. I've learned from previous weeks, and I understand that context is highly important for listening to any album. So my thoughts listening through the week:

Doing the dishes: Not bad

Cleaning: Surprisingly good

Walk around the block: Not great

Driving mindlessly: Good

Driving with road rage: Great

Yoga: Surprisingly good again

Pilates: Slightly better

At the gym: Where the author meant it to be listened

At the sauna post-gym: Great; Helps tune out the gay stuff

On the bus back from the gym: Great; Helps tune out other stuff

Working on boring documents: Highly distracting, even though I don't know what they're singing, or because I do

Working on a strongly worded email: Motivating

Laying flat: Surprisingly good

Overall, strong. I can't really understand heads or tails of what they're talking about the whole album, and that's ok. The riffs kick ass. The opening track and "Gilded" particularly stick around. "Distract" is the most on-the-nose track. I go back again to those ancient men, staring. This album is in and out in about half an hour which makes all the relistens as simple as going for a stroll. That's something to converge on.

II, Sunny

You consume enough various media and you may come to think Karma is a sort of heavenly judge concept. You do good things, good things come to you; you do bad things, you get punished. But that conception is adding a level of judgment that doesn't exist in the actual idea. Karma is more simply just action and reaction. Like Newtonian action and reaction, but also including your thoughts and feelings. If you throw a ball at the wall, it will bounce back. If you hurt someone, they're likely to hurt you back—you could code this as good and bad, but it's much closer to getting hit by a door in the face because you swung it too hard. A matter of metaphysics.

Pat created real Karma back whenever by not reviewing II, Karma that has come back to have me here at this Southern metalcore album. I just don't "get" what Maylene is going for, I guess, and I don't particularly love the main singer's timbre. It's not awful; I found some charm on multiple listens, and some of the guitar licks stick with me. Maylene, I'll agree with you on this: Imagination is reality. Be careful what you send out in the world, it'll always come back to you.

II, Pat

The entire time I listened to "The Day Hell Broke Loose at Sicard Hollow," I was waiting for the acoustic guitar to drop out and the drums to start. I waited eagerly, almost nervously, for hell to break loose. But it never did. I think that's actually a phenomenal way to frame it. Hell breaks loose as a trickle, not a flood. By the time we notice, we're up to our necks. 

II is a very fun album. Definitely the kind of album that lends itself to activity. I can't imagine listening to II in a stationary setting. Those drums (goddamn do I love drumming in metal music), bass, and anguished vocals make you want to move.

I listened to II while driving, which is an ideal scenario. Here is my itinerary:

• From home to the CVS Minute Clinic to get my ear examined. I've had a headache for four days at this point. Turns out I have an effusion from seasonal allergies. I buy some Allegra-D. ("Memories of the Grove," "Dry the River," "Plenty Strong and Plenty Wrong," "Darkest of Kin")
• From CVS to Kimberton Whole Foods. The organic market, not to be confused with Whole Foods. I feel like coffee and a baked good, but not from Dunkin. Dunkin fucking blows. On my way in, I see a sign on the door begging customers to stop returning Amazon packages at this location. I buy a chocolate chip muffin and an iced americano from some hippies. ("Raised by the Tide")
• Shit! Just remembered I need to buy a phone charger. Drive to Walgreens on my way home. ("Wylie," "Death Is an Alcoholic," "Everyone Needs a Hasting," "Don't Ever Cross a Trowel")
• Drive home. Sit in my driveway to finish the album. I'm invested by now. ("Tale of the Runaways," "The Day Hell Broke Loose at Sicard Hollow")

Pat's Rating: ✝️✝️✝️✝️❌️

Four out of five gospels losing the truth

II, Joe

So it was that Dallas Taylor ended up in front of St. Peter at the pearly gates of heaven.

I am witnessing it on April 3, 2026, but it's probably a lot farther into the future. It was the ATVs that finally got him, Dallas. Those pesky, dangerous little fucking machines. St. Peter's seen so many ATV victims that he's got a legion of 'em up there in heaven, all of them revving engines and squealing tires around on the clouds. Our boy Dallas'll join 'em, eventually, if he's lucky. Being against wearing a helmet is not a roadblock to eternal glory (though we often encourage the humans on earth to wear them anyway, just in case).

Dallas sees St. Peter and the pearly gates and, being a good ol' Christian boy, recognizes it for what it is immediately: judgment. He can't remember the accident that led him here, because that's not how dying works, but he knows enough to assume what happened, and in the space between opening his eyes and approaching St. Pete who's holding his golden clipboard and golden fountain pen, he attempts to find peace in the end of the known and the beginning of the unknown.

Pete, he looks at Dallas and can tell what he's thinking because he's seen the look countless times before, and he puts the clipboard down and meets Dallas and says, there there, hush now, son, no need to be worried, you'll be in there soon. And Dallas, as they usually do, says something like "have I been good enough for heaven?" and Pete shakes his head and says, now don't you worry about that, son, let me take care of it. You are a human. You are flawed. That is okay. We can't possibly make that judgment here at the gates of heaven, or else no one would ever be allowed in. And don't fret, if you were going to end up in hell, you'd open your eyes and see flames and burning flesh. You're here. That's where we start.

Dallas is confused but meek, and it takes him a minute to formulate the question. He doesn't want to offend. But finally, he speaks up: "If you, St. Peter, are not casting judgment, nor deciding who's going into eternal glory and bliss in the comforts of heaven, then, well, what exactly would you say you do here?" And St. Peter smiles even wider. For Dallas, like billions before him, has it all wrong. Humans are so innocent, it's really precious. Pete explains that, well, it's not that he's judging someone's moral character for the basis of whether they pass through the gates or not... but he is making a judgment. And that judgment encompasses everything. Everything you do and didn't do, everything you create and everything you destroy, down there on earth.

And so, in the case of Dallas Taylor, St. Peter is here to offer judgment—as inconsequential as it may be, ultimately—on the Southern groove metal that Dallas Taylor and his bandmates created in their time on earth.

The first thing Pete makes clear—and this is important for Dallas Taylor specifically—is that the so-called "Christian" aspect of the album have nothing to do with the judgment. St. Peter doesn't think that being a good or thoughtful person has anything to do with religious beliefs, despite the fact that, yeah, uh, he is "living" proof that the Christ folks were right all along, that there is a god and that he has a right-hand man chilling outside of heaven offering artistic judgment. None of that actually matters. If there was anything "Christian" about II, Pete wouldn't care, and that's if there was, which he's not even sure there was anyway. So there's that.

The second thing Pete wants to share is that he thought the album was fucking fun as hell (figuratively speaking, of course, because he's heard some shit about hell, the real hell, and it does not sound fun at all). Peter's had misgivings about the trappings of this metalcore thing since it first started cropping up among the musicians coming to heaven, but, in his eternal judgment, the "Southern" aspect of Maylene and the Sons of Disaster's music does a great deal to both smooth over the harsher aspects of the genre, and also add something new and interesting to its sound. It's like if Lynyrd Skynyrd had survived the plane crash and started to add metal's crushing guitar sounds to their music. (Not that St. Peter is complaining about that plane crash—Skynyrd is one of his favorite heaven bar bands right now. They are crushing it up here in the clouds on a nightly basis!)

"Okay, I think I get it" says Dallas. "You just want to chat with me about what you think about it, ya know, my life and all that, but you already know that I'm fit for heaven, because I'm here at the gates. So the question has already been answered." Pete answered in the affirmative. You understand now, son.

But now that you're here, I do mean to mention one aspect of your music that I always admired. "Admired?" says Dallas, blushing. He had no idea that the music on earth made it up this far. Yes, responded Peter, we have access to all your earthly fineries and furnishings up here. And here's what I liked the most about it. I liked the story. You said that this band was "based" on Ma Barker's sons, and whether they were going to find peace in the afterlife? You can surmise why I'd be partial to such a myth.

Dallas responded, "Well, being a good ol' Christian boy, the idea of eternal damnation was always on my mind from a young age, and I was just curious as to what happened to these guys who were gangsters, killers, but also, ya know, momma's boys. They had the capacity to show love in certain ways, and inexcusable cruelty in other ways. So what did that mean for their souls?"

Pete nodded. He'd thought about it too. He said that the music was a lot better because of the story, and he appreciated it. I liked all the mentions of the "mother" figure, he said. It made sense that they'd still be singing about momma in the afterlife. That, like the Southern rock riffs and gang singalong choruses, softened the texture of the music just enough so that it became palatable. Which is not something you'd normally find on a metalcore album, that's for sure.

"I'm ready," says Dallas. Peter nods, and beckons him forward. But then Dallas stops and looks up. He says, "St. Peter, I don't know if I'll have the opportunity to ask this question once I pass through the gates, so I'm going to ask it now, if that's okay." Ask away, son. "Did... did Ma Barker and her sons make it into heaven? Are they here? Will Maylene and the Sons of Disaster be able to play a concert for them? I always wondered. It would give me a sense of closure, I think, to know the answer to the question that my (second) band presented to the world."

St. Peter immediately answered, didn't even pause. Oh no, no. No. Ma Barker and her sons are burning in hell. You know they killed a bunch of people, right? No. No heaven for them. Sorry. But we're glad to have you here, Dallas. Step on in.

GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5