Everything's Wrong, Well, It's All Right

Roughly 100% more Goo Goo Dolls content than I originally expected 🤷

CW: Death, again, I’m sorry about that but as the ever-brilliant Dame Sophie said when I told her I was In The Shit again emotions-wise and was just going with it, “I think we’d all suffer less if we allowed ourselves to suffer more.” Party on, sadness.

I truly was not going to write anything about grief this week despite being all-consumed by the fact that a week from yesterday is the two year anniversary of my best friend’s Alli’s death. As I geared up to write this, I realized it was two years ago tonight that I saw her for the last time. At that point I was driving into New York weekly to see her, usually spending the night and driving back to Northampton early the next morning. She had just decided to stop all but palliative treatment. She asked me to sleep in her bed with her; her husband Ben went and slept on the couch, telling me she had been “a real party girl” as of late and loved staying up into the wee hours.

She had almost completely lost her short term memory and kept asking me where Ben and the kids were. I’d tell her Ben was on the couch and the kids were sleeping and she’d roll her eyes and go “See?! See?! I can’t remember anything!” and then ask me again five minutes later. Exchanges like that were just part of spending time with her by then; we still joked and laughed like we always had, listened to music and watched action movies, sent out for cheeseburgers and milkshakes. She wanted to cut out cartoons from The New Yorker for her son to “have a good laugh over” later and by the time she fell asleep there was a stack of them on her nightstand. I didn’t really sleep, I just lay beside her and listened to her breath. When the morning’s first blue light came through the window I got up and walked through her empty Brooklyn neighborhood and drove home. Last weekend I was in New York for a show of Dave’s and we ended up driving through that neighborhood for the first time since she died. I wasn’t ready for the surges of longing and nostalgia and anger and I just shorted out and went prophylactically numb. I try not to do that, but it happens.

I hadn’t thought all of this through until today and it came through because of the Goo Goo Dolls. Nothing surprises me anymore; everything is tangled up and raw and the connections between missing Alli and what Katie Wojciechowski called the “magic & melodrama” of Buffalo, New York’s surprise ‘90s pop sensation. And yes, you should indeed watch this 2004 triumphant rain-soaked hometown throwdown performance of “Iris” even if “Iris” isn’t your Goo Goo Dolls song.

This is still another Goo Goo Dolls song! This one’s from 1995!

My Goo Goo Dolls Song is “Two Days In February,” which is from their 1990 album Hold Me Up. I know it because it was on a mix that Alli’s older brother Todd made for her that we listened to all of the time in high school. We even had a special funny voice for saying “Goo Goo Dolls” when it came on and felt extremely confused and slightly cool when they suddenly broke through a few years later in such a specifically mid ‘90s way.

[I’m more of a “Slide” person when it comes to Big Goo Goo Dolls Hits From 1998, although I never would have admitted to any Dizzy Up The Girl love in 1998 because I was 22 and an insufferable snot about most things. In fact, I probably complained about how City of Angels was even more of a crime against the perfect, flawless Wings of Desire because of CITY OF ANGELS’S USE OF “IRIS” and no, I’ve never actually seen City of Angels despite being a bit of a Cagehead and it turns out that this scene uses a different, calmer, acoustic version of Iris. Anyway…]

One of the aspects of losing Alli that has been a surprise to me is that it feels like a terrible break up. So many songs are about losing someone and while they’re usually not talking about someone DYING, the all-encompassing sense of, well, loss that is now a constant companion makes every song about missing someone who’s not around anymore a song about Alli. Around the first anniversary of her death, I heard and fixated on the song “Old Town” by Phil Lynott. I don’t think Alli knew this song, but I think she would have liked it, particularly the twinkly piano, the “ola!” part, and the horn solo. The chorus is “this boy is cracking up / this boy has broke down” — so simple, so effective, despite not being a boy. I was cracking up! I had broke down! She did indeed “play it hard, play it tough…But that's enough, the love is over.” Then ol’ Phil sings “I've been spending my time in the old town / I sure miss you honey / Now you're not around.” It still busts me up so much. I got a similar feeling today after reading Katie’s amazing “Iris” ode and suddenly remembering “Two Days In February,” which I hadn’t heard in about 30 years. I listened to it and it was like Alli was sitting next to me again, here on earth and young and alive with our whole lives ahead of us. It turns out “our whole lives” didn’t mean what I thought it would.

I hung your picture on the wall and that's all it is
I break my fingers to make a call and that's all it is
I know you're living way out west and I don't think that I confessed
Everything I feel

You say you got no faith in things that you can't see
Well I'm sorry I ain't there with you but you ain't here with me
And I'm down in all my fears
But I ain't crying no tears over you

Cause everything's wrong
Well it's all right
Everything's wrong
Well it's all right

Dames Nation: Keeping It Classy-fied

A tote bag that reads "NORMAL HUMAN ITEMS"? 🤖 A t-shirt that inspired the 2011 cult classic film "CABIN IN THE WOODS?" 🐺🦄 Bumper stickers for people whose lives are basically one continuous existential crises? 😨 All this and much, much more can be found at Cousin Wigu's TopatoCo Shop!

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Did you, too, immediately wonder if Lachlan Fucking Murdoch is more of a Kendall or a Roman? Congratulations, we have the same brainworms and The Independent is here to “help.”

We all got some good schadenfreude this week when Jann Wenner was swiftly removed from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Board for being an extremely loud racist, sexist idiot instead of just keeping the quiet part quiet like most of his ilk; everyone saw through Joe Jonas’s drippy attempts to besmirch Sophie Turner, who calmly responded by going out for drinks with Taylor Swift and then suing Joe’s dumb ass for keeping their kids from her; and then just yesterday David Brooks complained about airport food being $78 while neglecting to mention that an extremely generous amount of whiskey had made up 80 percent of his tab and the internet just snapped because we’ve had enough of his nonsense, food-related and otherwise, and naturally Joyce Carol Oates joined in.

Menopause party!

Sophie and I used to enthusiastically chat about “the long tail” back in the early aughts when we were both getting library degrees [yes, we’ve been Like This forever] and this Slate article by Sam Adams says the end of Netflix’s DVD rentals signals a lopping off of said tail. I dunno, I’m going to keep renting DVDs from the library and buying ones I particularly like and I hope you will too.

This weekend there will be a new Drugstore Cowgirl for paying subscribers. I got three different Target scents with varying degrees of coffee notes in them! Are they any good? Do we even want to smell like coffee in the first place?! To be determined!

I smell amaaaaaaazing…