Archive: September, 2025

It may be obvious that I've not written about parenting or the school situation this year. That's partly because the situation is evolving, and it's partly because it's mentally and emotionally draining to even think about much of the time. The weird thing is that I can legitimately say that things are better... and worse.

Our boy was accepted into a very exclusive program that works with kids who have ASD and associated things like ADHD and anxiety, provided that they don't exhibit violence or self-harm. There are about as many staffers as there are kids, all of which are in high school. What this means is that the ratio favors more individualized attention and actual execution of an IEP. We're hearing from teachers almost daily, not always for positive reasons, but the level of communication is extraordinary. If I had to guess about what makes high school difficult for him, some of it was the social aspect, which is greatly reduced given the small class sizes. Because he processes certain things slowly (but not everything, we're learning), he can get behind, but not nearly to the extent that he did last year. His grades are significantly improved, not because it's easier, but because already the teachers see different ways and strategies to help. It's awesome.

That said, there are factors that make everything simultaneously harder while things are better. Start with the fact that teenagers are a hot mess of hormones and defiance, and from an emotional maturity standpoint, he's still a year or so behind. But the bigger problems fall into two areas that are hard to correct. The first is that he has leaned into a demand for accommodation at every turn, shunning accountability in the process. It started in the school he did for grade six, a private school that in retrospect was more of a sitter service than education. Middle school was much better academically, and in no small part because of his principal, who was transferred there from his earlier elementary. It wasn't easy, but he had people looking out for him. Last year, with 3,000 other kids, the school basically gave up trying to help and gave him exits from responsibility instead of helping him learn. Admittedly, we've probably contributed to this as well, more for our comfort than anything.

The other area is about gaming, which isn't strictly about playing games, as it's also a social outlet for him. One of the friends he made a few years ago at that terrible private school is an enduring connection. When it's not online play with that circle of friends, he's very into simulations of every kind. Roller coasters are a big part of it, but then he also gets into unlikely things like Farm Simulator. I have the baggage that my deep interest with computers as a kid was treated as a nuisance more than something to foster. While this is different, because computers are now ubiquitous and he's using it for entertainment and social interaction, I don't want to take this away from him. The problem is that he responds as an addict when he has to prioritize school work, or anything else. It consumes him. We need him to literally detox.

Even though there's less work, the homework is still contentious and stressful. Diana helps him quite a bit with math and is generally pretty good at it, provided he's compliant and engaging. She's fantastic. I've been helping him with a video game design class that he's taking virtually, and that goes pretty well. The other subjects it kinds of depends for me. Today we got through some reading stuff pretty easily, but when we went to the next bit of work on it, he flipped out in part because he didn't expect it. I was so angry that I went out to my car and sat in it for a bit. About those expectations though...

I have a growing opinion that the biggest challenge in teaching kids who are not neurotypical is that the entire focus is on accommodation without accountability. As a part of that, experts and countless amateur bloggers and advocates emphasize smoothing the path for these kids (transitions, structure, etc.) instead of figuring out how you teach adaptability and coping mechanisms. Maybe you do both, but the latter doesn't seem to happen. I'm not an expert either, so I'm drawing on my own experiences. The neurotypical world is never going to change, so it seems to me that the answer is teaching adaptation and coping. Adaptation for me in the moment is still difficult, and also exhausting, but what choice do I have but to roll with it? Applying this to my child means that I have to allow him to be deeply uncomfortable, maybe even unhappy, in the moment to help him in the long run. It sucks. I feel as if too much of his accommodation has been to help him avoid discomfort.

I'm getting better at compartmentalizing a lot of things, but parenting isn't one of them. I react emotionally, a lot, and often in anger and fear. Diana worries that my relationship with him will be poor, but he always comes around after the worst of it, usually apologetic (whether or not I deserve it given my part in the conflict). In the moment he "hates" me and believes that I don't understand him, but we always talk about it later. I've heard him say things to his friends online that imply that he looks up to me, so I take that seriously, but I can't protect him from discomfort. I just don't believe that protection would serve him.

His teachers are fantastic, but I worry about him being disruptive and disrespectful, because he has done that already. If he ever did anything to get booted out of there, the fallout would be devastating. This really is his best shot, and he's getting a legit education. It really is better, and worse, but hopefully he's 31 months away from graduating. There are positive signs too, because he takes driving very seriously. He talks a lot about working in hospitality, specifically theme parks, so my hope is that he can embrace being kind and helpful in a world that may not reciprocate that to him.

I watched the movie Swiped yesterday, which is a dramatic interpretation of the life of one of Tinder's cofounders. It's a solid movie, if a little jarring to hear Lily James speak with an American accent. Without giving a lot away, it's a familiar story as old as the commercial Internet. She gets sucked into tech startup culture, complete with the usual slides and ping pong tables in the office, a gigantic heap of alpha bros, betrayal, bad press and such. Since the real person settled with an NDA, of course they don't have the full story, but did their best to tell it from the public record. That she encountered all of the stereotypes is not hard to believe. I've seen it all as well.

Concurrently, there have been some brutal layoffs in a number of US companies, many at those that most people would not recognize. Meanwhile, Nvidia just invested $100 billion, with a "b," in OpenAI, something that defies any rational explanation, as these companies look for the problems that they're sure they have the solution for. It feels like 2000, and I wonder how it's going to shake out.

It all got me to thinking, I sure have seen my share of shit, and all of these stereotypes are true. I've been at "legacy" big tech, a dotcom flame-out, an IPO, and even a relatively stable, long-term business. I've worked for founders that were in over their head and incompetent, seasoned business leaders who righted the ship, and everything in between. I've seen examples of racism and misogyny (the worst in a non-tech company, actually). And I've met countless people, in and outside of jobs, where people are chasing unicorns. No wonder they make movies about this sort of thing.

The protagonist in the movie reaches an inflection point where, despite being driven, still wants to create a place to work that is safe and enriching. The goal isn't the exit, it's to make something durable, to leave some section of the world better off than it was. I'm sure that would be perceived as naive by most, but whatever, I like that. Being valued, respected and appreciated is what makes work worth it beyond the financial arrangement, in any job.

I wish we could focus more on that. We can't take it with us, as they say.

Meta has turned into the algorithmic rage machine. Sure, I understand that people want to double down on whatever their non-evidence based belief is. Certainly that's fucked up. Facebook was bad enough. I literally see one in 20 friend posts now. Instagram is suddenly going that direction as well, and that I expected to be more about the photographic moments that friends (and celebrities) have. No longer.

More than a year ago, I prototyped an app to simulate a "social network," as we understood it to be like 15 years ago. It's rough, it's not polished, and it definitely has not dependent on app stores, but it kinda works. I never really followed through on it.

But just as I decided I didn't want to blog on platform a bazillion years ago, why should I "social" post to the rage machine? I'm already in mostly a read-only, post for history mode. Why don't I just do that instead? If my friends are using Facebook, I never see what they post.

The hangup has always been, "But FB or Insta is where the people are." But what if they're there but I don't see their stuff? At that point, it ceases to be useful.

If my ADHD hyperfocus works out, I can build this new thing. If it really works out, I can build out the FB import, which is useful to me because I like the historical "memories" functionality. The only issue is that the people aren't there. So I'm willing to give it away to those people for life. If it gets traction, I can open it up an ask for money, but it will never, ever, be about "engagement" or whatever bullshit that means. No algorithms, no public posts, just friends, in chronological order. If it has value, cool, if not, it's not different from this blog.

Now I just need the energy and focus to do it. That's really hard, when I'm raging over the assault on the First Amendment and the general fascism exhibited by the current administration. I'm already subsidizing my sites in light of the Google monopoly. I suppose we'll see what happens.

I've had a few days this week where I found it difficult to stay plugged in and do specific tasks. It made me recall that there was a time that I viewed this as a personality flaw, but now understand it to be ADHD. The weird thing is that once I have this realization, I'm more determined to stay focused, and sometimes it works. I haven't not completed what I had to do, but it can be exhausting to get to the finish line.

That got me to thinking about hyperfocus, the potentially more positive part of ADHD. It occurs to me that I just haven't had much of it in the last year. That sucks. I realized it when it made an appearance late yesterday, as I enthusiastically threw together a technical diagram for some colleagues. I weirdly enjoy that sort of thing, and before I knew it, 40 minutes had passed.

You can't bottle or choose hyperfocus, despite what people who write self-help books tell you. But it is jarring to think that I haven't had much of it this year, other than when playing Against the Storm (yeah, still playing it!). A lot of the things that I want to complete or enjoy or whatever would benefit from the focus, but it just hasn't come to me. I wonder why.

I was never a car guy, but EV's of course really captured my imagination and interest. When we leased that Nissan Leaf in 2014, then bought a Model S the next year (fiscally irresponsible as it was), it was pretty clear we would never go back. But in many ways, I kind of loathe needing to have cars at all, but it's what we get for living in the suburbs. Having two cars totaled by shitty drivers (2020, 2024) doesn't ease my disdain for having to have cars.

But we're on the edge of a confluence of factors that I need to think about them again. First off, Simon will be legal next year. I'm not going to let him not have a car for the purpose of exploring work and social situations. High school sucks enough without having that constraint. I'm also still deeply uncomfortable with the interest rate on our newer car, at 6.5%. It's not a huge loan, but it's still awfully high. I'd like to pay it off.

The big thing that has changed, and I imagine will change even more in the next year, is that there are so many more options than before. Even last year, when we bought the second Model Y, there were no viable economic choices. We ended up getting that one for a little under $40k, which is pretty great for a range that large. Fortunately, the build quality was much better than the earlier car, too. But now, there are so many great options from most of the manufacturers.

Next year could go a few different ways. We could get Simon a cheap, used first-generation Leaf. I've seen them for like $3k, but the batteries aren't in great shape because it's very old battery tech (not lithium-ion). He couldn't go very far, but it would work. Newer, second-generation cars are around for about $10k with range over 100, and that would last him longer, though it wouldn't be ideal for the long term, whatever that might involve. I could also gift him my car, which at five years still has less than 30k miles on it, and the range is around 300 miles still.

In that last scenario, I'd have to buy a new car, with an eye on keeping it for six years or more, per our broader financial goals. Tariffs are going to make cars more expensive, domestic or not. I really like the VW ID.Buzz, but despite it not selling that well in the US, it isn't being discounted. $60k is a lot even for a novelty car. I really like the idea of having a normal sedan again. The Hyundai group cars aren't bad, but not significantly cheaper than their counterparts from others. The BMW i4, for example, is only a little more but the materials and quality from BMW are likely better. Audi is in that category too, but those are the crossover/SUV profile. Nissan is returning with the third-generation Leaf starting at $40k, but if you get the better trims, you're back in BMW territory. Model 3 would be the best deal if the idiots in Congress weren't hell bent on killing the tax credit, but politics aside, I'm still turned off by the quality problems I had.

I keep coming back to whatever the cheapest possible solution is and actually trying to keep cars for as long as possible. EV's just don't require replacement or maintenance like gas cars. If that Model 3 hadn't been crashed, it could have gone on for years. There was no meaningful battery degradation and the brakes were basically new. And yes, after having three cars totaled in my life, all because of others at fault, it doesn't feel logical to spend money on cars if you don't have to.

I've got a year to think about it.

Last night, we saw Kristin Key do a set here in Orlando (Instagram, YouTube). If you are unfamiliar with her comedy, a lot of it revolves around lesbian culture, stereotypes and such, and it is absolutely hilarious (this is a great story). Late in her act, she starts to take questions, and comes up with some of the most hilarious stuff, spontaneously, and she posts these clips online. So good.

As you can imagine, coming to Florida in the midst of the bizarre war on... sidewalk rainbows, there is some comedy there. But toward the end, she got a little serious, and expressed the sentiment that one of the most effective things that you can do is exercise what she called "joyful defiance." I like that.

Algorithms and cable news reinforce rage and anger, because it keeps you plugged into them. The "side" that seems to be against anyone who does not fit in their box of faux-normalcy wants to marginalize and shut down. But what if, despite the buckets of haterade, those being targeted are in fact exercising joy? Sure, it has the side effect of pissing them off, but it also means that at some level, the outcomes they're after are not achieved.

I know that a lot of my friends are struggling right now. It's not a great feeling to be treated as though you don't belong, don't deserve equal treatment and seemingly aren't valued as a human being. I'm not going to say that I don't know how we got here, because I do, but the disappointment in that part of the population that allows or advocates for this marginalization is heavy. But the old adage that you can't take certain things away from people may be applicable here when it comes to joy.

Last night was joyful. I've definitely never been in a room with that many lesbians, but like any group that leans queer (see also: countless coaster enthusiast events), there was joy, high-fives, hugs and a lot of shared experiences and empathy. Honestly, I never experienced that much love in church, where allegedly you're supposed to be about love. It felt about as opposite as possible to the world online, or a congressional hearing.

We can't lose our joy. I've never understood where the energy comes from to sustain hate, but joy is energetic. We need more of that, please.

I'm sure I'm repeating myself on this topic, but I really believe that one of the things that can burn you out, make you tired, make you want to disengage, is the scenario where you are giving way more than you take. I'm not saying that this isn't a noble goal, or even something that you can't derive joy from. But there are definitely times when the balance gets so out of whack that it grinds on you.

Parenting may inherently be one of these endeavors, but having children is a choice. I'm not saying that the give/take ratio can't be messed up, or that you can't feel the burn, but I do think it's something that you're more obligated to deal with. It does seem to come in waves, and they all grow up eventually, at which point you might miss the "excess give."

I know I was there with work earlier in the year. These days, I feel like the world itself is asking more of me, and I'm in no position to give what is required. And I am materially giving more than I take for the purpose of securing a better late-life, since younger me felt like I would live forever.

I just know that I shouldn't feel this tired.

Next month I have to choose a renewal term for the reserved resource instances that CoasterBuzz and PointBuzz run on. For that part of the expense, I can save about 55% per month if I commit to three years. A year ago, I committed to one year for 35% off, but that was after updating from the basic tier to the premium tier, which was necessary because of the increased load. In any case, the three-year scenario reduces cost by about $62 per month, or $744 a year. It also gets me back in line with what I was paying for the basic tier, which has less memory. And all of it is cheaper than when it was on Windows instead of Linux, which I switched a few years ago.

Both sites saw an increase in traffic overall last year, and I was starting to have intermittent memory issues, which is why I scaled up to the bigger instance and one-year commitment. My total costs are about $300 per month, and if I do the three-year, it'll be closer to $260. People say, "But you can get a site for [this much] with [some service]." They're not wrong, but given my line of work, and the fact that there are I think 16 different sites/apps running, making all of that robust isn't free. Everything is redundant and resilient, there's caching, there are off-app background jobs, an Elastic index for search, etc. Being cloud-based, I can scale all the parts up as needed without redeploying anything, too. And I'm pretty proud of the fact that average response times are under 20ms.

Believe it or not, there was a time when ad revenue (and club memberships) grossed as much as $2,000 per month, and with way less traffic (that's about $3,300 in today's dollars). Those were the days! That's why I didn't bother working consistently in 2004 and 2005, and wrote a programming book and did some volleyball coaching in that time. Because of the Google ad monopoly, there is no real competition, and there are more sites than ads that can be shown. The economics completely suck now for independent publishers. Video is probably worse, because it's also Google (YouTube), a single platform that won't even write you a check without a certain threshold of subscribers and watch time, meaning that there's an enormous long-tail of people posting their stuff while Google keeps the money.

Prior to the pandemic, for a decade, ad revenue varied seasonally, but generally fell between $500 and $900 each month, which was more than enough to cover the costs. Then 2020 hit, and it took a momentary dump, before recovering later in the year. 2022 came down though, in half, with a range of $250 to $450, then 2023 went down to $180 to $380. 2024 recovered a little, but then this year hasn't even hit $300. And keep in mind, my PointBuzz partner Walt gets half of the PB share. And this is while CB page views are up an insane 77% this year, though I don't know how much of that is robots, because the analytics also say that users are up 400%. PB page views are down about a third, but I don't really trust Google with any of these numbers. So it's a pretty sad state of affairs these days.

So with the upcoming renewal, and just being in midlife, the question popped into my head... how much longer do I do this? I started PB (then Guide to The Point) in 1998, and CB in 2000, so I've been doing this for a very, very long time. A number of regulars to the sites have died over the years. I went to a wedding some years ago where we realized that many of us met because of the sites. We did a few hundred podcast episodes before it was cool. I interviewed CEO's and industry legends. I went to a ton of media events. I've made so many friends, scattered about the country. We had a ton of events back in the day. I hosted other coaster sites for free for awhile. By most measures, the best days are behind us.

Then fold in the fact that I'm just not into any of it the way that I used to be. I don't want to use working at SeaWorld as an inflection point, because it's too close in time to the life reboot with a new-ish child and marriage. Priorities changed quite a bit. I live next door to arguably the best theme parks in the world, and mostly go to them to eat and drink. Industry consolidation hasn't been great for quality (see: Six Flags/Cedar Fair). Honestly there aren't many rides that are truly unique, and those that are (Guardians, Velocicoaster, Hagrid's) are here. The idea of traveling for the purpose of riding does not appeal to me, not when I can go places and see historic things. When I engage on the sites, it's mostly about the business of the industry, and sometimes about technology. A lot of the site regulars are in the same boat.

With all of that said, it's not that all of this doesn't serve me. Maintaining the forum app is something that I enjoy, even though there are fewer and fewer things I feel like I need to do with it. Without a "real world" application for it, I probably wouldn't maintain it. All of that infrastructure, which has a ton of available overhead, can also host whatever stuff I want to mess around with, at no additional cost. My personal music cloud runs on it. This blog runs on it, too. In a way, I'm subsidizing an Internet technology playground for myself. That is valuable to me. I don't mind sticking with it for a few more years. I'm also too stubborn to cede yet another community (or two) to the platforms. The audience that sticks around finds value in it, and prefers it to the platforms. I'm not exactly sticking it to Zuck, but it's something.

In my talk about lighting programming at the software level last year, I mentioned how my earliest interest as a teenager came from a specific light fixture model, the Vari-Lite VL2, that I saw in all of the music videos at the time. There was something really iconic about that blocky moving light. I went to some shows in the years following that used them, as moving lights became more and more ubiquitous at rock shows. It's funny that, for me, this thing that was intended to make light, but the object itself had a textural visual appeal to me. Other kids were aroused by cars, but lighting instruments did it for me.

This sentiment is still prevalent in the way that I'm wired. For example, I'm enamored by the patterns and designs found all over the newer part of the Coronado Springs resort, where we stayed in July. The textures are everywhere in the tower building. Look at this wall of lamps in the lobby, not just in the way that they're arranged, but in the texture on the lamps themselves.

I can't explain why it appeals to me so much, I just know that I dig it. Middle Eastern tile work also elicits a similar response from me. It's a subtle but peculiar feeling in my head that is some form of joy, but it's hard to explain. There are other ways that we respond to visual stimuli, like the way an attractive person may cause arousal, but that's easier to explain because it's rooted in our instinctive drive for procreation. I don't know what purpose this serves for us.

Here's an even weirder one. There's something satisfying about road cases. You know, the things that they pack equipment in so it doesn't get damaged when it moves from one venue to the next. I own a case like this.

The elegant simplicity of road cases appeals to me. The spring-loaded handles stay flush and don't stick out until you need them. The twist locks... those sure are a brilliant mechanism. Opening and closing them is satisfying. You don't even take the equipment out of the bottom of the case, it just sits on it so that you never actually pick up and move the equipment directly. And how cool are rivets?

And it's not just simplicity or patterns that appeal to me. A properly rigged camera location looks like chaos, but the thing that ends up on the screen looks precise and controlled.

Lights are all over the place (you can't see the one lighting the barrels), wires and cables go everywhere, fabric and reflectors are hanging around to shape the light, and the camera itself usually has a bunch of stuff that looks sloppily connected to it. I can't explain why that's amazing. I was recently in a theatrical venue with all of the work lights on, and I was borderline over-stimulated by all of the things that I could see.

I don't know if "visual texture" is a thing, but I know that I like to see it.

I think that I'm starting to see that too much of my contentment is wrapped up in excitement for the promise of things in the future. I'm not saying that you shouldn't look forward to things, but it's possible for that focus to swing too far in that direction. It pushes out the ability to appreciate the moment. And what's happening now is a gift, that's why they call it the present.

It's a hard adjustment to make. I know that I'm capable of being present, and sometimes it comes to me in the simplest ways. Sitting next to Diana watching TV, or interacting with one of the cats. My various bits of equipment may not always lead to finished product, but sometimes just touching it, and marveling at what it does, is enjoyable. Sometimes, even sitting outside with my lunch, alone, taking in the blue sky, can make me smile. I don't need to be on vacation to be content (though it sure helps).

Exploring this idea, about feeling content in the moment, also reinforces my theory that "will power" is generally bullshit. People like what they like to do. No amount of mind games with yourself will change that. It's not natural to force yourself to do things that you don't want to do, and it doesn't make you a better person for trying. Stop holding yourself to that standard, because it's not your standard. When it comes to contentment, sure, grownups have to do things they don't want to do, but get that done and get back to the things that make you content right now. You don't get a cookie for acting like you enjoyed doing something that sucks.

Despite running roller coaster fan sites for a very long time, believe it or not, I was apprehensive about riding coasters until I was 13-ish. Even then, I think there was sort of a psychological barrier that I still don't understand. Like when Magnum opened at Cedar Point (I was 15), it really, really made me nervous. But in my mid-20's, when I started the sites and realized I was an adult who could buy season passes, there was excitement about new rides, but no hint of apprehension. When Millennium Force opened in 2000, I was 26, and watched the construction so closely that I had modeled the entire ride experience in my mind. It was so detailed that my first ride went exactly as I expected it to go. What a strange brain I have.

Fast forward a couple of decades, and now my 15-year-old is starting to ramp up. He's actually fairly obsessed with the rides and technology, playing with operations simulations online, and 3D representations in NoLimits. But it has been a struggle to get him on certain rides. When he was much smaller, he would enthusiastically get on Tower of Terror, but now he would rather not. He's never been on Rock-n-Rollercoaster right next to it, either. And for all of the times we've been to SeaWorld, I couldn't get him on Mako, which in my opinion is the second best coaster in town (behind Guardians, of course).

But yesterday, finally, while visiting SeaWorld with a friend, Simon did Mako. Twice. Obviously after the first time, he realized that it was something to enjoy, not fear, but I resisted telling him "I told you so." When I picked him up, he said that he doesn't think he could do Millennium Force because those lap bars don't seem adequate. I explained to him that after 25 years and millions and millions of rides, no one has fallen out yet... why does he think he would be the first? "That's fair," he said (he says that a lot lately).

We've talked about quite a few rides out in the world that he thinks look interesting, but didn't really want to go on. I've told him that I would be happy to take trips to see some in real life, but he's gotta commit to actually riding stuff. I'm not sure if we're there yet, but it's encouraging. On the flip side, it makes me think back to the trips I took in the oughts to a ton of parks, and I can't say that I'm excited about the idea. There are a lot of reasons, including flying (the process, not the act of aviation), lines, weather and such. Toward the close of that decade, I started to lose interest in all of the travel-for-coasters because really the experiences aren't different enough to merit the voyage. And I say that knowing that there are a few parks I could probably ask for comps and my friends would graciously provide them. Also, and Simon expressed the same frustration yesterday, we're so used to the operational level of Disney that anything less feels annoying.

Still, there are a few parks that I think I would really like him to see in real life. I'm realizing that this window is closing quickly as he races toward adulthood.

Wednesday night, we saw Garbage at Hard Rock Live here at Universal Orlando. I am not sure of my math, but it was the eighth or ninth time that I've seen them live. It might have been the last.

I first saw the band on November 17, 1995, at Peabody's Down Under in The Flats in Cleveland, which according to their book, is only the 12th show they had ever played. The story goes that the band was conceived more as a studio project by the boys, but the record label insisted that they tour. I remember young Shirley Manson pacing around on the stage, something that she still does, but at that time she seemed timid and uncertain. She's talked about that in countless interviews since, about the way she was constantly being judged (along with every other woman in rock at the time), but she has long since run out of fucks. I think that's one of the reasons that the band endures.

Thirty years is a long time to be doing anything. The boys are all over 60, and Shirley is almost 60 with two hip replacements. Mind you, none of that is evident when you see them on stage, and they are more fierce and tight than ever. The lady up front is also singing better than ever. Still, she announced that after this tour, because of the shitty state of the music industry, this is probably their last headlining tour. More vaguely, she suggested that this was the end of... something. It's not clear if that meant performing, writing, recording or all of the above. I've since read that in the VIP Q&A they did earlier that day, one of them did suggest that they will probably not stop writing, but have no specific plans. This is why you buy albums from your favorite artists, and don't keep giving money to Spotify.

I remember hearing "Supervixen," the first song on their debut, a few months after I graduated from college, but I'm not sure where. It was not officially a single. But then I saw this video on MTV (yes, the "M" used to stand for music!) for "Only Happy When It Rains." There was this redhead with a ton of eye makeup in this blue dress and shit-kickers, and I though, "Who is this?!" My first wife, Stephanie, was still in school down in Ashland, and I remember that we brought some of her friends up to that first show. I think I took a little joy in having a bunch of college hotties meet at my house, where I hadn't moved out yet, wearing fishnets and club gear. I did not take joy in the fact that my car was leaking coolant into the passenger foot well, but my new friend was a good sport about it. Ah, to be a poor recent college graduate.

The videos for "Stupid Girl" (the chevron dress) and "Milk" (Shirley standing in the wind?) also stick out in my mind. The albums came three or four years apart after that, and I saw them on every tour, including them opening for Smashing Pumpkins in arenas. Bleed Like Me coincided with my separation, and the title track I recall felt like a reminder that everyone is going through their shit. Shirley was in a state of self-loathing, and the band wasn't getting along, and that's when they went on their hiatus. It would be seven years until Not Your Kind of People came out. In that time, I had moved coast to coast and back, remarried and had a child.

Of the post-hiatus albums, it was the sixth album over all, Strange Little Birds, that I like the most. It was noisy and weird relative to what I was used to, but still definitely Garbage. The last song on that one, "Amends," might be one of their best songs ever, to me at least. I mean, listen to it. It builds up, takes a break, builds up again and ends on this solo vocal that just hurts. And lyrically, I think it's actually kind of optimistic, the idea that you can reconcile parts of your life and move on. To me, this is the quintessential Garbage song. It uses all of their muscles. Oh, and this was during Shirley's pink hair phase, which I thought was pretty cool.

The last two albums are just OK. A few tracks on each stand out, but the albums struggle to compete for an unusual wave of great albums in the last few years. The lyrics in some of the songs are overtly political, instead of more "poetically political," like earlier work. Following the social media accounts of the band, which I think are mostly maintained by Shirley, it's not really surprising, because she is deeply frustrated with the world, something she referred to several times during this week's show.

It's hard to wrap my head around the idea that my entire post-college life has had Garbage in it. Other than Tears For Fears, who is also still making (really great) music, I can't imagine ever going to see anyone I listened to in high school. The only pre-2000 bands that I've seen after 2000 are Toad The Wet Sprocket (Epcot), Everclear (Epcot) and indirectly, Alanis through her musical (would like to see her though). The only thing that consistent in my life that I can think of is running the web sites, for 27 years.

The set list for this show had a lot of deep cuts, and it included 21 songs over almost two hours. I hadn't heard many of those songs live ever, and according to setlist.fm, three of the songs made their live debut at this show, the first on the tour. Only two from Little Birds, but that's two more than the last time I saw them in 2022 with Tears For Fears. I loved hearing "Not My Idea" and "Why Do You Love Me" because of their pronounced guitar bits. Some of the happier songs made it too, like "Parade," "Cherry Lips" and "When I Grow Up," which was Shirley's call to make your life extraordinary, and their last song.

I also deeply appreciated the lighting design, in part because I have a dotted line in my lighting journey to the designer. Almost three years ago, I pinged @gigilights on the 'Gram, because I learned that she had done quite a bit of work with the band. I asked the possibly ridiculous question, "Where do I start?" if I want to learn about design and programming. She referred me to MA Lighting's products, and after a year of experimentation and a very long wait for the German company to make more, I bought my very own console in April of last year. I haven't done as much as I'd like, as I also took a turn into CAD drawing lighting rigs in Vectorworks, but I really enjoy trying to figure out how to make lights do stuff.

I'm not sure what happens next to Butch, Steve, Duke and Shirley next, but their music produced a huge body of feels for me. I'm two decades-ish behind most of them in age (Duke is 74!), and it's encouraging to see people that age being so vital. Middle age seems less scary that way. Kinda like they made being alone during my "in between" days less scary. Whatever they do or don't do, they've had an extraordinary relationship with us fans.