Greetings From Seattle! With News!

A new Chat feature, road trip!, hanging with some writers, a Letterboxd question, a different kind of March Madness and other incredibly amazing shit!

Depending on when you read this on Friday, I’ll be in Seattle. It’s a road trip of sorts (because I’m flying, not driving) and a perfect moment to celebrate a big birthday with a friend and also get away — a thing I realized I needed when I was talking to my dog with my Foghorn Leghorn voice for, like, 20 minutes. I only wish I was kidding.

Anyway, me and Kabes — that’s my partner, KB, a thing I feel I have to keep repeating because a lot of new (mostly free) subscribers have come aboard — cashed in some Southwest points and flew to Seattle to celebrate the birthday of good friend, former TV critic and now much-lauded music biographer, Peter Carlin. We will be sharing the cheers with his partner, Claire Dederer, another amazingly accomplished writer, who just got mentioned lovingly in this New York Times story about “19 Works Of Nonfiction to Read This Spring.”

So, if you’re thinking what I’m thinking, then yes, I’m going to spend the weekend with writers more successful than I am, which no doubt will do wonders for me and my fragile psyche.

Oh, I kid. I love those two. When we’re together, Claire literally says nothing about her books when, if things were the other way around, I’d be like, “Oh, look, I just happen to have a copy of my ACCLAIMED NEW BOOK in my bag, right here. That’s strange.”

And am I jealous that Peter wrote, among many other music biographies, this particular one that you might have heard of, where the subject himself actually decided to participate when he never had before? Whatever. Who cares!

OK, yes.

But I did not pack any of that jealousy with me on the trip, thankfully. I’m taking all my meds. Besides, Peter is lovely. He has, for years, suffered me telling him that I won’t read his books until he does a biography of someone I like (which hit its zenith as a running joke when he wrote a biography of Paul McCartney and I told him that I only wanted to read the bits in there about my particular musical hero, Elvis Costello).

In my defense, Peter’s books have been about The Beach Boys/Brian Wilson and Paul Fucking Simon of all people. I mean, do you blame me? I don’t even like Springsteen all that much except for maybe two albums but I don’t begrudge Peter all the fame and money from that one. I’m fine taking the high road. Thankfully, Peter finally wrote this lovely gem of a book about the history of Warner Bros. Records, and I said to him, “Look, the title is way too long but the book is completely and utterly brilliant AND, luckily for you, I would be willing to help turn this into a drama we can sell one day to HBO.”

I am precisely that kind of friend.

(I actually stayed with Peter not long ago when he was still a longtime Portland resident — he moved when I bought my place up there, which seems a little suspicious? — and we spent a couple of days sketching out how to turn “Sonic Boom” into the most slam-dunk series ever with this pitch — “It’s Mad Men with rock stars.” (Which it is! The book reads like a drama — how rare is that for a nonfiction tome about the industry? I can’t recommend it enough). That hang-out was fun. We walked his dog, Ralph, who I adore, a lot; we had some wine in the evenings and ate great pastries in the morning; plus we argued about ‘70s rock.

Peter’s now doing a book on R.E.M., which, as you might have guessed, allowed me to say, “About fucking time.” I mean, I would totally read that one.

My birthday present to Peter is most likely going to be a thoughtful card — with my receipt from pre-ordering Claire’s new book, which, just thinking about it is making me laugh as I type this). Of course, I’ll probably get Claire’s books from Powell’s in Portland because, well, Peter moved to Seattle, so screw him.

(I actually like Seattle quite a bit — my son goes to UW. And, as you may know, I’m a huge fan of the Upper Left Coast, and even own an excellent reference book about it, which I also bought in Portland.)

Happy Birthday, Peter. I hope I one day write a book that you don’t read, which will forever give you great joy.

(And, just so there’s no confusion about my jokes here, I did one night a few years ago visit Powell’s with my daughter — one of her favorite places ever — and while she shopped I took a pictures of every book they had of Peter’s in stock and texted him the photos — and turned some of the books cover-forward. So I’m not all bad.)

But first:

Happy Birthday, Peter! I can’t wait to read…Claire’s book.

Ah, don’t ever change, TIM.

I think it was less than 24 hours after I posted recently saying I’d be open to doing some Chat sessions once Substack rolled out its desktop version, when it did just that. Great news! I mean, I wholeheartedly endorse everyone getting the free Substack app (iOS/Android) because it’s a wonderful navigator — and also formerly the only place where Chats could take place — but rolling out the a desktop version of the Chat feature still thrills me, because I’m much more likely to use that (but, sure, I was willing to use my phone — hooked to a keyboard). Here’s some of the intel:

Let’s have a group chat (now on the web)

In fact, I almost fired up a random Chat test on Thursday night just to see who would show up, but I figured that might be rag-tag and weird and hapless. And now I’m in Seattle so we can’t really do it this weekend. Next week, though, GET READY. It’s on.

(As a reminder, the Chat feature for Bastard Machine is a paid subscriber feature).

I also wanted to announce that I did a couple of things to make the Bastard Machine experience here a little better for paid subscribers (who are, to be clear, helping keep the boat afloat for me — thanks! — until the TV industry gets out of its current awful state).

First, I flipped the switch so that anyone in the paid subscriber community can now launch their own Chats, which enlivens the group and, I think, will in time be such a better social alternative than what’s going on in the greater tech world now). Caveat: I only ask that the more ambitiously pro-active amongst you wait until I launch the first Chat next week. THEN you can fire up your own. I’m all for people talking amongst themselves and I will, of course, be dropping into those as well. I think it’s a pretty cool feature for anyone who, for example, would have wanted to continue a discussion on “Station Eleven” or perhaps really expand on the post I did seeking reader input about their must-watch lists (still a favorite). Things like that would be perfect for reader-created Chats. As for that post with all the great series recommendations from you all:

A Post In the Machine.

The second thing is I enabled this new Substack feature where some paid subscribers will get an email (from me — I just tweaked the template on Thursday) that allows them to send three (3) one-month paid subscriptions to family or friends who might be interested in what I’m doing over here (as the majority of posts go behind the paywall). The nice part is it costs you nothing and your family/friends nothing to check it out for a month (they don’t even have to link a credit card) and then if they want to go paid, great. If not, they become free subscribers. Seems easy and non-annoying and apparently it’s a well-received feature among many other Substack writers. So, cool.

But the part of that feature which made me laugh is, well, I don’t really have any control of which paid subscribers get the gift certificate email from Substack. Seems weird to me, but also kind of humorous. Apparently, especially “active” paid subscribers will get one — and most people are pretty active it seems — plus newbies. I think they only reach out once every six months. Again, that’s acceptably not annoying, so I endorse.

Who among you uses Letterboxd? I just signed up because KB already has it and has raved about how it’s helping her keep track of films she wants to watch and would otherwise probably tragically forget. It also allows her to log all the movies she’s watched in the last year or two (I mean, you can log all the movies you’ve ever seen in your life if you have the time, but she doesn’t have the time). So I tried it. She was sitting right next to me. “What to you think?” Me: “I think I need to shut this computer off because these ads are giving me a headache and I’m going to throw it through a window.”

It was true.

So, the question: Letterboxd apparently has an ad-free version for $20 a year. That seems a little much for something I could, you know, write down on a piece of paper, but I’d be willing to do it if people think it’s worth the reprieve from the oppressive pop up ads (maybe there were more because the Oscars aired that weekend?) Anyway, I have rarely felt overloaded and over-stimulated quite like that from ads. So, is it worth it to pay for a year? I feel like that might allow me to get organized, be reminded, have a useful resource — and maybe use that year to get so much done, organizationally, inside Letterboxd that I could go back to regular sometime after? I don’t know. Asking for me. Anyone paying for that and what are your thoughts?

I have been to Seattle a number of times, but it’s not like I’m savvy about what’s there. I found a fantastic wine bar near downtown. I found a great natural wine (and coffee) place way back when. I’ve been to the Space Needle, etc. I’ve done some touristy things. I’ve walked all over (walking a city is one of my favorite things). I have been to great bookstores. But I would still be up for your Seattle recs. I’m only there through the weekend, flying home Monday morning. So I’ll be busy. I mean, look, I’m going to be talking to, I’m assuming, a lot of authors and after explaining what I’m doing (“Writing and…uh…waiting?”) I will feel bad about myself and want to snap out of it. So, food, drinks, shopping, coffee, whatever. If you have some suggestions or thoughts, leave them in the comments.

Look for the Chat stuff to get chatty next week.