🐦 Greg's Newsletter Is Nice Today [No. 069]

10 things I've been thinking about.

Hey so welcome to Greg's Newsletter. Very excited to share edition 69 with you all—hope y'all are nice today.

I'm here this week with a nice little "10 Things I've Been Thinking About". It was inspired by my friend Alex Prosperi, who is funny, smart, and has started writing his own stuff over at Medium. He posted 10 funny things after the NFL draft. That made me want to write 10 things here.

There is no real theme here.

1. Blue Jays are absolute assholes. Monsters masquerading as birds. They do look cool.

2. Animal Crossing is a wonderful game.

3. Owning and taking care of a real life house/home (almost a year in) while playing Animal Crossing is wild. Like in AC it’s a good idea to clear all the weeds from your island early on so that each day, when new ones pop up, you only have to pick a few and they’re obvious and it’s easy. I look out at my yard and gardens like “wow! that’s the way to do it!”

4. I can not emphasize enough how unreal Questlove’s live sets have been. How comforting and entertaining they are. We are lucky. Check The Roots’ YouTube for recordings.

5. Questlove spun a post-Roots show in Detroit in like 2007/2008 that was a Dilla tribute set. Black Thought even popped into the DJ boot to spit over his selections. This was a special, special thing. One of Dilla's closest confidants/experts/friends, doing a Dilla-only set (wayyyyyy before that became a thing). IDK if it wasn’t promoted the right way, or what. But the crowd attendance and enthusiasm did not match the emotion and magic of what he was spinning. I fell like I was in tune, but also my friends and I decided to take a bunch of tequila shots and get quite obviously drunk. Especially obvious in that particular crowd/club. I took a bunch of photos that I can’t for the life of me track down. One of them is of one of my best friends dancing his ass off, right in front of Quest. I did not realize it until a while after, that Questlove basically photo bombed it by sticking his middle finger right in view of my annoying camera. Which was 1300% deserved. I have a photo with him afterwards. I don’t think he was pleased. Thankfully, after 130,000 shows (seems about right between The Roots, his DJ sets, and Fallon) that’s not one likely remembers. We had fun, but it’s hard to think about disappointing him after 12+ years. Sorry, Questlove.

6. Our neighbors across the street are getting a divorce. About a month ago, I got home, he was across the street. I said “hey! how’s it hanging through all of this?” And he told me. Selling the house, and all. We never got close, but it was brutal to at least not be able to go in for a hug. What a time to deal with that.

7. Rachel and I had a “cereal day” a few weeks ago. I bought Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Fruity Pebbles. 2% milk. CTC remains the greatest cereal of all time. Fight me.

8. I’ve been going on lots of walks. They rule.

9. There’s a running internet joke about people like me making sourdough starters (well, my brother Nick) and starting podcasts during all of this (I restarted my radio show—give it a listen). It’s legitimately awesome to see people do that stuff! And it’s also so, so, so, OK to NOT pick up a side hustle. A side hobby. Getting by is good enough!

10. I legit want to make friends with these Blue Jays in my backyard. They’re kind of like an unattainable “cool” group of assholes that I want to change and be like “hey! some of you definitely have an artsy side and you, Stephanie, you see the world how it should be, not as it is.”

OK, until next time. I love you all.

GB