Quickies

🎯 I can’t handle nine months of having to listen to undecided voters, the most indecisive, uninformed people in our nation. Please don’t force me to obsess over these freaks who probably take five hours to decide between mozzarella sticks and nachos.

🎯 The end of Pitchfork is more than a media story. It's a death of expertise story. We don't trust scientists, the CDC, the courts, Ivy League institutions, elections, or the Church anymore. We go to doctors and tell THEM what medicine to give us. It’s all "do your own research” as religious mantra. So why would we still trust some guy with a mustache, too short pants, and a messenger bag to tell us if Kurt Vile’s new side project is any good?

🎯 We all turned ourselves into "personal brands" while forgetting one crucial thing: Everybody hates brands. Why? Because they constantly spout soulless, generic, focus-grouped, PR'ified dullness. Having a personal brand just implies your words get the same kinda reaction as a "thoughts and prayers" tweet from Tide. Congrats?

🎯 "Heroin chic" is why Gen X dudes don't trust mainstream media. For a decade, the media insisted dudes liked waif ladies with bodies shaped like teen boys. And men were like, "Um, huh?" Thank god for the sole truthteller willing to speak up for the silent majority: Sir Mix-a-Lot. ❤️🍑

🎯 2024 Rodney Dangerfield: “I deserve respect. I have overcome my impostor syndrome. My wife is sleeping with another man, but that’s okay because we’re poly. You know my doctor, Dr. Vinnie Boombatz – he doesn't believe Covid exists and has a very intriguing podcast sponsored by BetterHelp.”

🎯 "Peacock" is a fun word because you're not allowed to say either syllable on its own, yet it's fine to say them together. The real question is how long a pause you can take between syllables before you "violate community guidelines."

🎯 Considering how much they portray themselves as tough guys, it's pretty funny that the only Republican with balls is Liz Cheney.

🎯 Triple-texters stress me out. Look, I'm still replying to the first one. Chill for a sec.

🎯 "Is metadata really that powerful?"
"OK, let's say there's a guy who texted a girl 5 times without getting a reply. Would you need to actually read the messages to know what's going on there?"
"Nah, I 100% get what happened."
"That’s the power of metadata."

🎯 No one online is actually upset. They are lonely and desperate for human connection. So they perform outsized emotions hoping to get a shred of attention (good or bad) in order to avoid facing the bleakness of existence in our dystopian society. PLEASE SHARE, LIKE, & REPOST!

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🎯 "Trust the science," said the Hollywood celebrity. Ah, yes. The science that made it so you can’t blink and your skin looks like a balloon about to burst? That science, right?

🎯 Life is basically just being your own tour manager.

🎯 We act like Big Tech regulation is too complicated but one simple thing could fix so much: Pass a law that platforms must allow users to export their data/social network at any time (which they can then port to a new app). If you can’t fix the highway, at least give us some offramps.

🎯 Still blows me away they put big screen TV's in car dashboards and we all went along with it. My Uber driver is watching reggaeton videos and this one's got a bunch of girls in a hot tub and now I'm in the backseat praying like a missionary.

🎯 It's weird how much people hate the "mainstream media" considering practically everyone in it has already been laid off. It's like ranting about the dinosaurs taking up too much land.

Comedy

🃏 I performed at Beacon Theater on Saturday night. Helluva venue. Pics/details here.

🃏 I post clips of my standup (and more) at Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and YouTube.

🃏 2/9/24 - NYC: MISGUIDED MEDITATION WITH MATT RUBY. A comedy happening with live visuals/ambient soundscape. Promo code PLANTS for $10 early bird discount.

🃏 2/10/24 - Morris Plains, NJ at The Dojo of Comedy (tickets). I will sweep the leg (comedically).

🎟️ MORE TOUR DATES (HEADLINING)
2/23-24 Steamboat Comedy (CO) | tickets
3/2 Priam Vineyard (Colchester, CT) | tickets
4/19 Comedy House NOLA (New Orleans)
4/26 Cheshire Craft Brewery (Cheshire, CT)
6/14-15 Denver Comedy Lounge (CO)
6/16 Boulder Comedy Show (CO)

🎟️ NYC SHOWS
EVERY TUESDAY | Hot Soup @ Comedy Cellar (FBP)
EVERY WEDNESDAY | Good Eggs @ NY Comedy Club (EV) – discount code: SCRAMBLED

Music musings

🥁 Heard a story that I love: When Chris Stein from Blondie first heard about The Ramones he thought they must be a Puerto Rican band. Like they were all guys named Ramon. 😂

🥁 The time of death for rock 'n roll? When bands started requiring an American Express presale code to get concert tickets.

🥁 "I really hate how the tech industry reduced artistic expression into simple sequences of numbers. You can't rate art on a score of 1 to 100. Lame!"
-People mad at the collapse of Pitchfork, which rated art on a score of 1 to 100

🥁 Read this definition of a jazz bar that cracked me up: “Music teachers playing for other music teachers.”

🥁 Boy band idea:

🥁 Algorithm alternative: Find an artist you really love and then find out who they really love and then find out who they really love and...

🥁 “We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery, for though others may free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind.”
-Marcus Garvey in 1937
…DAMN. WE GONNA HAVE TO CANCEL BOB MARLEY FOR PLAGIARISM NOW TOO!?

🥁 Billy Corgan, Rock God Interrupted (2010) on licensing music:

[Corgan] mortgaged his past, accepting a sum that can safely be assumed to be in the millions to sell the rights to “Today” — the Pumpkins’ first hit — for a Visa ad. He is unapologetic about the sale of a song he calls “sacred,” arguing that it completes his independence from the major-label system. “As I stood there with the white flag on indie island, everybody else blew by me, including all the indie bands that were licensing their music,” he says. “I realized I was living in the Nineties, still living up to those old codes. Pete Townshend basically told me, ‘Who gives a shit? Who gives a shit if Mary Lou lost her virginity in the back of a car to the song? What’s the difference between whether you sell it on iTunes or a CD through a commercial?’ ”

🥁 It still frustrates me that Radiohead went from writing the most gorgeous songs in the world to sounding like a fried computer glitching over a keyboard with a dying battery while a guy in therapy keeps repeating himself.

🥁 “Old soul” always sounds like BS. That’s why I prefer to say “Orbisonian.” Because Roy Orbison was always 67, even when he was 23:

🥁 Ted Gioia on how Bing Crosby + microphones changed singing.

Before Crosby (let’s call it B.C.), the more famous you were, the louder you had to sing—because your audience was so large. (Opera still bears the lasting mark of that rule.) But after Bing, the exact opposite was true. For the first time, a skilled vocalist could entertain a huge crowd, but still sing in an understated, conversational manner.

But few singers understood this at first. Most considered microphones as a tool for amplification, not a pathway to a different way of singing. And even those who grasped the potential were often unable to take full advantage of it—doing so required them to re-learn all the basics of their craft, from melodic phrasing to syllabic enunciation.

🥁 I’m always so impressed when the Rolling Stones plan a tour and the tour dates are like “October 2024.” It’s like damn, you geezers sure are confident that everything‘s gonna be fine in six months. Most people that age don’t even plan two weeks in advance because, y’know, hips.

🥁 Rihanna + Natalie > Taylor + Travis

🥁 HOT TAKE: THE FIRST NU METAL SONG IS SABOTAGE. THAT’S RIGHT. THE BEASTIE BOYS ARE TO BLAME FOR LIMP BIZKIT.

🥁 I am human…

Up ahead: Quotes re: Barbie, ants, Pitchfork, & Kierkegaard. And music musings about Beck, Rick Rubin, the Beatles, etc. ...