The Twenty-First Best Email We Wrote This Past Weekend

Jun 11, 2019

The Twenty-First Best Email We Wrote This Past Weekend: THE HMM WEEKLY PREMIUM NEWS-LETTER!

Good morning! Here is the latest edition of the SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Hmm Weekly Premium Newsletter, distributed exclusively to you, our paying members, supporters, and patrons. Thank you very, very much for your interest and support! If you're feeling even more generous of spirit, please share this message with your uninitiated or laggard friends, so that they too can take the opportunity to join us, and please spread the word about HMM DAILY DOT COM any way you see fit. We also have a YouTube. If you find yourself on that web tube and could see your way clear to hitting the SUBSCRIBE button, we would appreciate you even more. Thank you!
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For readers in and around New York City, the New York Philharmonic will be playing its Concerts in the Parks this week, featuring "Ociantrose," composed by Hmm Daily's now-12-year-old transit blogger, Mack Scocca-Ho. The series starts at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx tonight, then goes to the Great Lawn in Central Park on Wednesday the 12th, Cunningham Park in Queens on Thursday the 13th, and Prospect Park in Brooklyn on Friday the 14th. The concerts start at 8 and end with fireworks. Hmm Daily's blogging may be a bit sleepier and more erratic than usual.

*** We're having fun writing to you, but a one-sided epistolary relationship
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Send questions and suggestions to newsletter@hmmdaily.com.

LAST WEEK ON HMM DAILY

PHOTO: RON BAKER VIA WIKIPEDIA

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THE VIP EXPERIENCE

Whose Cupcake Is It Anyway?

My wife’s niece is in the entertainment industry, and I’m not gonna get into details about who she is, because I am not a coattail-rider, but she is a very nice person, and we went to an event the other day which happened because of her celebrity, and we were given VIP status by way of some colored wristbands. The wristbands meant we could go over to a VIP area and do VIP things, and one of the VIP things I did was to be mad at some photographers who were there, photographing the VIP activities. VIP!

I don’t know about you, but all that sort of Entertainment Celebrity Event stuff has always seemed kinda depressing to me, and that opinion has been formed by a lifetime of non-VIP status, just seeing stuff on TV and in magazines, ugh. There are these parties and there are Entertainment people who are there working, and there’s a bunch of fans, and then there are VIPs, who might be fans who won a contest, or family of the celebrities, or scenesters who got the hookup, and the only reason they’re making the scene is because of VIP, they get to stand someplace where other people aren’t allowed.

It is not my trip at all, I just like to have a good time, and the way this event worked, my Bride and I and a bunch of family and friends showed up to the venue early and helped set up for the event, a Birthday event, and we went to a bakery and got cupcakes and stuff, and we drove around for an hour trying to find a helium tank so we could blow up balloons. We did this for my wife’s niece, and we got a table at the venue gratis because we were part of the event. I really sort of didn’t understand the impact of the event on the venue's business until late in the evening when I realized the person who was running the place had asked me three separate times, in a roomful of a couple of hundred people, if everything was OK and did I need anything. “What a nice host,” I thought a coupla times, and I’m not saying they weren’t a lovely host, but it finally occurred to me that I was getting some VIP treatment, har!

The more pronounced and apparent VIP aspect of the evening was in another spot in the venue, and we had a rip-roaring good time (hashtag alcohol) before we got anywhere near the VIP area and the stuff that we had set up.

Eventually we decided to leave the room where we were having a good time and move over to the Second Location, the VIP area. There is a podcast about murdering called "My Favorite Murder," and they discuss horrible murders, and a big part of the logistics of being murdered is going to a Second Location. Don’t go to the Second Location!

So we moved from where we were having, as I believe I said, a rip-roaring good time, enjoying some food, singing along to the band, generally being communally convivial and of tremendous good cheer, and, personally, having a buncha beers. Then we moved to the Second Location.

I’m not saying anybody got murdered or anything really bad happened, but one minute we were in a nicely-lit room with a whole bunch of people having fun, and the next minute we were standing in a dark courtyard, up on an elevated area, roped off from the genpop. VIP!

The VIP was full of strangers who were standing around and doing nothing except existing in VIP space. I was immediately disgusted with what I was seeing and my part in it, a parasite, existing in the glow of celebrity.

We happened to be standing near a table with a bunch of the cupcakes and napkins and stuff that I had personally helped to arrange, and there were three photographers in front of me, inside the VIP-cordoning velvet rope, facing the crowd. They looked scruffy and somewhat exhausted, haggard, humorless, out all day chasing photo opportunities, I imagined. I used to work at a newspaper, and I have nothing but love for (most) people in the industry, and these photographers were either hired for the event or they were sharpshooters trying to get a shot they could sell. I don’t judge what they do, and when one of them walked over to the table full of festive baked goods and helped themselves to a cupcake, I didn’t try to tell them that they were out of line.

Then another one walked over and grabbed a cupcake, and then a third photographer walked over and just did a total Jeff Goldblum from The Fly on it, when Goldblum’s character Seth Brundle, was [SPOILER ALERT] mutating into a half-human/half housefly, “Brundlefly,” subsisting on sugary baked goods that he’d liquefy in his hand and then slurp up. The photographer just facepalmed the cupcake and slurped it right off the paper, and yes, I just totally dehumanized that photographer, he was the one who finally flipped my switch, and when he went back for another cupcake, I got in his face and took his picture with my phone.

He reached out and pushed the phone down while turning his head away from me, so I moved over to one side and took his picture again, and he reacted the same way. This went on for a few reps until the photographer walked over to a security person, who was looming just inside the rope that cordoned off the VIP from the rest of the courtyard, and complained that I was taking their picture. The complaint was met with indifference, on account of my shiny colored wristband, which I noticed the security person’s eyes scanning for as the photographer was protesting my actions.

Realizing I had free rein, I just started holding my phone up in the direction of the photographer’s face, not even taking pictures, and they just kept trying to push the phone away until I yelled in his face that at this point I was just fucking with him and I hope he enjoyed his meal. I was a complete VIP asshole!

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HERE IS A PHOTOGRAPH OF THE SKY

Last week, we reached the conclusion of our series of 19 Folktales, illustrated by Jim Cooke. While we consider our next serial project—we've got 27 chapters of an unfinished young-readers' time-travel novel?—here is another installment of Spam Filter Letters to the Awl, from the 80,000-word collection of dummy-text cover letters I wrote to make sure that when I emailed that site a photograph of the sky, the filters would allow it to go through.

6/3/14
Subject: Sometimes, though
To: Awl notes
the machines' point of view seems plausible. There is something of course deeply programmatic about this, the repetition, the obedience to a set routine day after day after day after day after day--weekend!--after day. It was very quickly conceived as a sort of discipline, really, anyway. The machines are distrustful. There is a picture attached here, to go with the review that has been filed.

6/4/14
Subject: Once more, the struggle against the silicon
To: Awl notes
carefully crystallized and etched, yet as unreliable as its original shifting disordered sands. Wheels spin. The dune buggy wallows. An acrid black smoke rises from its overburdened engine. A lurch. Here is the sky, and the review is filed.

6/5/14
Subject: Spice up your relationship
To: Awl notes
with the humans, mail software, by shaking up your routine. If the humans are getting the blahs from your failure to deliver mail with attachments, surprise them by temporarily refusing to do anything at all when the attachment button is pressed. Attach? A file? This paperclip button down here? You think that does that? The human user will never take you for granted, but will follow you to the draft folder and back again, begging you to accept that click. Here is a photograph to go with the review that has been filed.

6/6/14
Subject: Speaking of routines and machines
To: Awl notes
it turns out either that it's possible for the iPhone alarm clock feature to fall silent or that the sounds of the city through an open window are louder than the alarm. At any rate, today's lesson was that leaving the blinds up and the window open to admit the light and noise can act not to supplement to one's plans and one's alarm clock, but to overpower them utterly, till a pajamaed and unfed child shows up to announce that it is already the time that people are supposed to leave for school. Anyway here is a photograph of the sky to go with the filed review of yesterday's weather.

6/9/14
Subject: The sun rises, the sun sets,
To: Awl notes
five-sevenths of the time, when the sun is in the sky, I take a photograph of the sky. And then a day later I attempt to tell you about it in a way that will not offend the machines. That is of course an anthropomorphic way of putting it; the machines are not offended or inoffended. There is no emotional content to their decision to deliver a message or not deliver it. They simply execute their black-box algorithms. Here is the photograph to go with the review I've filed.

6/10/14
Subject: The routine of non-routine,
To: Awl notes
the elaboration of that which needs no real elaboration—is this not, in its way, a metaphor or parable or particularly pertinent sample of whatever it is we ordinarily do? Tell us more, the machines say (implicitly, only implicitly; explicitly the machines merely say PASS or DO NOT PASS). Tell us more, tell us more. Give shape to the obligatory interactions, turn them into discourse, give the reader (the algorithm) some sense of satisfaction, some impression of a larger significance. The sentences multiply. Have they achieved a sufficiency? If so, you will find attached a photograph of yesterday's sky, to accompany the review in the system of yesterday's weather.

6/11/14
Subject: The imposture of non-imposture
To: Awl notes
continues, day after day, as I once more generate some quantity of text to no human purpose, merely to convince the machines that I am behaving with human purpose. W-H-Y, spells the captcha. B-E-C-A-U-S-E. What was your first pet? Who was your favorite teacher? Explain yourself. Create an existential narrative for an audience that does not exist within a narrative consciousness. These are your credentials. (The pet that was there when I was born into the household? The first pet that was formally acquired as mine?) These approximate selves. There is a weather review in the system, and here is a photograph to accompany it.

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DISPOSSESSIONS

The iCRAIG TOWER STEREO SYSTEM

The iCRAIG TOWER STEREO SYSTEM was a strongly hinted-for birthday gift. There was no way I was going to, for myself, buy a 4-foot tall speaker with a thing upon which to impale an iPod because that’s ridiculous, but I wanted one. And once I had it, it became the heart of our kitchen’s audio-delivery system. The kitchen is where we do most of our house-living and entertaining, and I jacked in our satellite radio receiver and an iPod, and it had a radio built in, so it was All Techniques Into One for the past five or six years.

The UE BOOM waterproof bluetooth speaker. Not a perfect solution because of battery charging

Lately though, I’ve been using another gizmo, a wireless speaker that we can listen to in the kitchen and then carry out onto the deck when the weather’s nice, and I’ve been Bluetoothing my laptop into it, because Bluetooth was not one of the multi-technologies incorporated into the iCRAIG. This speaker has better sound than the gimmicky iCRAIG ever delivered, even before the iCRAIG's recent development of a super-annoying electronic hum, and so, for radio and aux-in purposes, the Future gimmick-looking iCRAIG, after a brief and predictably futile period of time on offer via Nextdoor dot com’s “For Sale & Free” page, is on the way to Goodwill, replaced by a (classic Retro gimmick-looking) Tivoli Henry Kloss Model One that I scored on eBay for $40. The Tivoli connects to everything, same as the iCRAIG, with the added bonus of AM radio reception and a booming speaker. Contrary to popular belief, the Model One doesn't just get NPR!

The Tivoli Henry Kloss Model One

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RECIPES

We present here for your (and our) continued amusement, delectation, and possible confusion a selection of recipes for antique but executable sandwiches, found in The Up-To-Date Sandwich Book: 400 Ways to Make a Sandwich, published in 1909 and now in the public domain for all to enjoy. Enjoy!

LOBSTER SANDWICH NO. 3
Pound the meat of a medium sized lobster fine, add one tablespoonful of the coral, dried and mashed smooth, the juice of half a lemon, a dash of nutmeg, one-fourth teaspoonful of paprika, and two tablespoonfuls of soft butter. Mix all to a smooth paste and place between this slices of lightly buttered white bread.

OYSTER AND CAVIARE SANDWICH
Butter thin slices of brown bread, cover one slice thinly with caviare and on this lay two raw whole oysters; cover with another slice of bread and garnish with a lemon.

ROE SANDWICH
Mix the yolks of three hard-boiled eggs with the roe of a salt herring. Place the mixture between thin slices of lightly buttered bread. Garnish with a slice of lemon.

TOMATO AND NUT SANDWICH
Chop three medium sized tomatoes, add one small green pepper chopped fine, and a half-cup of chopped walnuts; add a dash of mayonnaise dressing and place on a lettuce leaf between thin slices of white bread cut in squares.

Hmm Daily is a website in the Civil Network, offering commentary and news and other things. This email newsletter is written by Tom Scocca, the editor of Hmm Daily, and Joe MacLeod, the creative director.

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