Do you remember where you were when Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, won a fourth term?
No? Maybe for you, this was a non-event, concocted by conservative media with the legacy media playing sous chef. I spent three days in Dana Point, Ca., where McDaniel fended off Harmeet Dhillon (above, right) and Mike Lindell (above, left) played out. My dummy lede, the text you slop together until you get the reporting to replace it, said that McDaniel’s re-election was never really in doubt. Congrats, dummy. It wasn’t, and the member-based, donor-hungry conservative organizations that forced the fight didn’t make converts. The election was lost when most of these members took office. During the vote, I overheard John Fredericks, the self-named “Godzilla of Truth” who has built a Mid-Atlantic following with his MAGA radio shows, imagining a two-year struggle to replace old-school state party chairs with America Firsters. It may have started already; the chair of the Maine GOP was thrown out this weekend, after her vote for McDaniel.
Before the conference, I was in Chicago, covering the race for mayor; afterward I was in Phoenix and Tucson, to cover the race for U.S. Senate in Arizona. Not much downtime, and a small chunk of Wednesday was spent being kicked out of the resort hotel where Republicans were meeting by security that were told that the party wanted all media out. This was very stupid, not worth getting into detail here, and it’s not a major inconvenience to fight a little for access. It was mostly just strange, because only conservative reporter Kerry Picket and I were subjected to the policy. If you’ve seen this episode of TV, imagine it lasting much longer, and with the security guard being allowed to go on living. (Can’t be angry at the guy, he’s following orders.)
Subscribe to the other, hard news newsletter, and you’ll read about Arizona this week. I was surprised at how optimistic Democrats were, apart from the always-evaded issue of whether the president should run again. The interviews with Rep. Ruben Gallego were conducted in his campaign SUV and at an eegee’s (no capital letters, like e. e. cummings), a local chain that specializes in 1) dense, vitamin-fortified water ice beverages and 2) Italian-style subway sandwiches. Why that combination? It sold well to construction workers, which there were a goddamn lot of in Arizona in the 1970s. This will not be the focus of the story, but like many people, I can get interested in local fast food chains - why this one became McDonald’s, why that one never got out of Sioux Falls, what drives man to consume more than he needs to live. The fries come exclusively with ranch dressing.
The Best Thing I Read: For pure enjoyment it was “The King in Yellow,” a story story compilation by Robert W. Chambers that’s endured because of its influence on H.P. Lovecraft, who gave him a few paragraphs in “Supernatural Horror in Literature.” Chambers doesn’t come off that well in the essay. His “eldritch land of primal memory” borrowed terms and concepts from Ambrose Bierce, and in Lovecraft’s view he wasted most of his talent. “One cannot help regretting,” he wrote, “that he did not further develop a vein in which he could so easily have become a recognised master.”
I agree, but Chambers is actually a smoother, less ponderous writer than Lovecraft in some of these stories. (Lovecraft isn’t always ponderous, but okay, we get it - the narrator is horrified even to contemplate what he’s telling you.) He doesn’t have Lovecraft’s gift for description, but he makes things happen more quickly, creating characters we’re interested in as we wait for bad things to happen. The Weird Fiction language is even more jarring when it comes after typical, modernist prose. “The Yellow Sign” does this best, as two lovers are destroyed by the discovery of forbidden knowledge. (No, he’s not the first person to tell a story like that.) How’s this for a character’s stricken final thought: “I knew that the King in Yellow had opened his tattered mantle and there was only God to cry to now.” How’s this, describing how the lovers’ minds were changed by what they read in an eldritch text:
Night fell and the hours dragged on, but still we murmured to each other of the King and the Pallid Mask, and midnight sounded from the misty spires in the fog-wrapped city. We spoke of Hastur and of Cassilda, while outside the fog rolled against the blank window-panes as the cloud waves roll and break on the shores of Hali.
Fun stuff. Also finished “Abolish the Family,” by Sophie Lewis; “Atomic Habits,” by James Clear; “Mindviscosity,” an art collection by Matt Furie; and two graphic novels, Terry Moore’s “Serial” and Garth Ennis’s “Rover Red Charlie.” Clear’s book came highly recommended from Ed Zitron, and it’s a genuinely good self-improvement book, getting you to think deeply about your automatic behavior and bad habits. I don’t want to share much here about my new strategies to break bad habits, but if they work? Oh yeah, I’ll post about them. Look how many copies this thing sold!
“Abolish the Family” was best as a history of the communist idea, and the period when it really caught fire on the left. It had faded before my reporting career began, and only came back last decade, but conservatives have published much more about it than mainstream media outlets; conservative media is reporting on what post-monogamy people are posting about themselves. “Mindviscosity” is wordless, but takes some time to get through attentively. “Rover Red Charlie” is Ennis’s spin on Grant Morrison’s spin (“We3”) on “Watership Down,” with a small pack of dogs navigating some sort of madness-induced human apocalypse. Not as affecting as Morrison’s, and meaner, with a scene of villainous cats drowning and a fighting bulldog keeping a human as a slave. This is disposable stuff to read between serious books; when it hits, it can become a movie. Same with “Serial,” my favorite Moore store in a while, a nice bounce-back after the insane super-group action series “Five Years.”
The Best Thing I Ate: The cabeza burrito from Buena Vista Market in Dana Point, which I stopped at two mornings in a row. I treat a burrito like a day ration, and knew both days that I’d mostly be in a hotel lobby staking out people and talking to them whenever they had time. Savory tortilla, well-flavored meat, assaultive hot sauce. Did you know it’s been nine years since the Five Thirty Eight Burrito Bracket? Such time was it to be alive.
The Best Thing I Saw: Merchant Ivory’s “Quartet” was, for them, deeply unsettling; a lot better than its reputation, because it doesn’t have a reputation. Totally forgotten, as Isabella Adjani’s other 1981 Cannes competitor, “Possession,” becomes a genuine cult movie. Most fun I had looking at a screen, though, was with ACG’s review of “Forspoken,” what looks to be a real dog of an AAA game. I came in knowing some god-awful dialogue clips (“I just moved shit with my freakin’ mind!”) and nothing else, barely believing how poorly the game was designed. Gaming is the hobby I’m least in touch with, because it’s the most addictive, and I’m looking for more good criticism.
The Best Thing I Heard: Television’s “Glory,” the first song that played back in my head after I saw that Tom Verlaine was dead. My early musical tastes were absorbed from the dominant music magazines of the 90s (Rolling Stone, Spin, New Musical Express, MOJO); from the videos played on “Beavis and Butthead” on MTV; from the teacher who left VH1 running when my cohort of sixth-graders was waiting for the bus; and from a few music critics who I discovered online and eventually befriended IRL.
Television, I think, got sold to me by Mark Prindle. I counted on him to guide me from the Sub Pop, pop-metal, and prog bands I’d discovered to the 70s and 80s post-rock that the good 90s bands grew up on. One was The Fall, and one was Television, and I don’t remember where I stopped exploring this kind of music, but it was after I’d paid real American money for eight Jandek albums. The serious music mags recommended it, Prindle described “melodic guitar solos” with “absolutely no directionless wankery,” and I found the “Marquee Moon” CD at HMV for £7.
“Glory” started off the band’s second record, “Adventure.” It felt more like a discovery, because no one on earth thought it was an improvement on “Marquee Moon,” and if you’re a 17-year old rock dweeb you get convinced that everyone else missed what you can find. I still listen to this record more than the first, because it’s warmer and less desperate, and explains why Verlaine, unlike some of his contemporaries, stayed vital and inventive well into the 90s. “Carried Away” has become my favorite song on the record, but “Glory” grabbed me first - the sprightly guitar solo that starts at 1:49, and the plucked six-note melody that joins the chorus when it’s over.
Read Robert Christgau. See you next week.
I loved the "can't be angry at the guy he's following orders" line. Wow that local chain almost had me but for the fries with exclusively ranch dressing, thank God us east coasters know how food works.
The book excerpt was fantastic, really great imagery there. Ennis' work always interested me from one of the ghost rider runs he did.
Surprised you do the self help books and that you weren't a kerrang guy in terms of 90s music mags. I always liked Christian self help, where breaking bad habits leads you closer to godliness and a miracle in your relationships/career, justified by verses out of exodus that relate to people trying to flee slavery. Great entry here can't wait to read next weeks!