I did not know Patrick Haenelt very well. I played a show with him once. (You can see it below.) He was kind and thoughtful, and that stuck with me.

Later, while we were online, he often disagreed with me. But his POV was amazing: he was always warm, always wanted to know more, and always offered a more caring, sweet, and thoughtful perspective, in comparison to my own loutishness.

I don’t know what I can do by way of offering condolences to anyone who is affected by this loss. I’m merely someone who was lucky enough to share a bill with him. Realistically, I had so much more to learn from him. What is left can be gleaned from the work he left behind.

I’ll be thinking of his friends and family tonight.

Today is the two-year anniversary of the release of an album that only one person will ever hear.

Can anyone help me with an appointment on the 22nd? I am getting dental surgery at 11 AM, and will probably need a ride back. (And, most likely there, too, so my car is not stranded at the dentist’s office.) I will offer cash or trade for your services, if you can help me out. (The 22nd is a Tuesday, if that helps.) What do you say?

More Data.

“Sometimes … I felt just like a telephone repairman, even thought I didn’t look like one.”

I’ve never seen this footage before.

“Passing notes in history class.”
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210616-how-the-forgotten-tricks-of-letterlocking-shaped-history

Remember wiki-racing? Reading randomly through wikipedia articles, following the most interesting link that you come across, then reading more stuff until you click another intersting link, not back tracking but just moving forward through new interesting links… until you find yourself well beyond where you once were, reading about things you didn’t intend to read.

I first heard the phrase in 2004, at PSU. A lot of classmates were talking about wiki-racing to pass the time between classes. Not too much later I finally started a MySpace account, because everyone at KPSU was on MySpace, and wanted to friend me.

Anyway, here’s a page I find myself racing toward over and over again, these days.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out

Do you have an old CDJ that you are not using, that you want to get rid of / sell?
One of mine died…

Kat and Obadiah are the best. You two rule.

Zing.

Been thinking about this book lately. Before the phrase Cancel Culture existed, the phrase used to describe the same thing was, “public shaming.” Historicaly, public shaming was only reserved for the worst people, who needed to be removed from society by collectively agreeing that this person should be ostracized. In the mid 2010’s, it became briefly in vogue to publicly shame people who had had made a few mistakes, but were not examples of the worst in humanity.

Jon Ronson wrote this book in 2015, determining that public shaming was still bad, but for some reason it was still in vogue. He worried that we would get to a point where genuine crime would be conflated with misspeaking, which could be disastrous for culture at large. While not suggesting that we give genuine monsters a pass, the notion of publicly shaming just anyone for any mistake they make is certainly wrong.

Fast forward to now…
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/So_You’ve_Been_Publicly_Shamed

All the ladies love Green Arrow more than Batman.

What a time to be alive.

I loved this movie. More than I should be allowed.

I THINK all the folding and stapling is done? Maybe?

It’s an old-fashioned stapling party! Woo-hoo!

Available at the Rich Treasures DIY Pop-Up! (featuring the work of Austin Rich): Musical Postcards! Individually, or as a set at a discount! These colorful cards contain 3 hours of music by four different projects: Mini-Mutations, Spoken Word, and a single each by space-grunge combo Shot Reverse Shot, and the punk stylings of The Eleven-SixtyFours! Limited quantities, and otherwise only available to Lemonade Stand Supporters. Find out all about them, and why you shouldn’t miss this event, here.

https://austinrich.org/2021/06/15/rich-treasures-pop-up-musical-postcards/

I talk too much. I post too much. I think too much. I don’t know how to just accept “now” as it is.

“Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.”

– William S. Burroughs

Oregon.

Happy Birthday to the most important person in my life, Marla! Here she is with her best cat, Feyd Rautha. Thanks for making everything so much better than it has been.

Observation: it takes me less time to write and record dumb three-chord punk-riff bullshit that I didn’t put any thought into, than it does to produce my over-thought, concept-heavy, too-many-samples, clearly a negativ-jam type music. Both are very fun to play, though. But one is s lot easier, by far.

My own skill level is trying to tell me something that I have been afraid to admit for a while. Hmmmmmmmmm.

“Recalculating…”

Damn. What a dumb time to live on the west coast.

Makin’ Merch for my Rich Treasures DIY Pop-Up! (featuring the work of Austin Rich) event at the Art Department. It’s been an ink-and-paper weekend.

When I am very old, and can’t remember what I did with my life, I will have some cellular memory I folded and stapled many things in my life, but I won’t know what, or why.

There are so few songs that actually capture a philosophical POV that I agree with. This comes very, very close.

“I love the sound of background noise
I wanna hear the crack in the singer’s voice
Fingers moving on the fret board
Every time he plays a new chord
I hear his friends hanging around
I hear him play an instrument he just found
I hear a low buzzing sound
I hear his parents hanging around
I hear his parents saying “turn it down”
I hear his parents saying “turn it down”
I hear his parents saying “turn it down!”

Cool your warm jets, Brian Eno!

Slap dash for no cash!
Those are the records I like
Slap dash for no cash!
When something doesn’t sound quite right.”

I forgot that Art Brut is better than all other musical endeavors

It’s time for a brand new episode of 20 Minutes Into The Future: A Max Headroom Podcast, where we discuss the classic episode of Max Headroom, “Body Banks,” directed by Francis Delia, the director of the “I Lost On Jeopardy” video! This is a good one, and was a much needed dose of humor for us on the day we recorded it. (For a behind the scenes peek: we recorded this episode on January 6th, just after the capital riot had started. This conversation served as a good way to not focus on the horrors that were happening in real life by… discussing a horror movie episode of our program.)

If you’ve never seen this show before: this episode is about people being kidnapped from the fringes of town to be used as organs for rich people who are dying. This is juxtaposed against an advertiser negotiating for screen time. There’s a LOT to talk about here.

Find out just who, exactly, has “The Look,” and enjoy this new episode of our program.
https://20minutesintothefuture.org/2021/06/13/06-body-banks-abc-s1e3-body-banks/

Wanna join the 6 PM Zoom Party? Message me for the link…

Every year.

Never gets old.

Tonight! We’re having an early Zoom Party. (Starts at 6 PM.) You could do this, and something else afterwards. We watch an episode of this seminal piece of 80’s cyberpunk, the hosts make MST3K style riffs throughout the show, and we chat casually before / after the show about the cocktails we’re drinking. It’s a pretty causal, pretty fun way to get your game on before you go out tonight. Message me if you want the invite. This one is gonna be fun!

https://www.facebook.com/events/1127038881128709

Entry-Level Functionality is what you call the effective productivity of any new-hire at a give company.

The opposite is called Executive Dysfunction.

It occurs to me, only with hindsight, that The Ex were the greatest punk band of the modern era.

I just remembered the whole “soup for my family” meme.

Wow, that was terrifying.

Knowing you could do cool things that people would love if you had the resources, but instead you just look like a jerk with dumb hair and an annoying hobby in music that no one understands.

“No one will ever care about any art you make as much as they care about some shitty TV show you hate.”

If only I had friends instead of insomnia.

In preparation for the Rich Treasures DIY Pop-Up! (featuring the work of Austin Rich), I spent the day sorting and cataloging merch. There’s a lot more than I thought, and in some cases, certain items are in a more limited quantity than I thought. There’s still more stuff coming, and I’ll be making some unique items too. But it was good to know what’s lurking in the banker’s boxes.

Thank you, Dangerous Minds. I needed a good chuckle.

This one sort of slipped though the cracks, but we have a great, short, off-week show for you, where we discuss the subject that is on the lips of every city planner in America: Smart Sewers! 

Starting around 2018, a number of stories have popped up at the need to improve the infrastructure of sewers, some of the oldest technology, with small sensors and other “wired” technology, for a variety of reasons. This story seems particularly Max Headroom, so we discuss this, our upcoming Zoom Party, and a variety of other relating things. 

We do hope to see you at the ZOOM Party this Saturday. We have a lot of fun, and we hope you will, too.

https://20minutesintothefuture.org/2021/06/06/smart-sewers/

In my “perfect movies” list: Gremlins. Today is the anniversary of its release in theaters. I’ve sort of lumped it in with Christmas, but it was / is a Summer time, fun time film.

Today, anyway.

I got this e-mail with a photo of my most recent musical postcard, and this message:

“Hi Austin!

I wanted to drop a note and let you know how much I LOVE getting these!

Between you and Dylan Houser I’ve now got a little collection that constitutes a whole new format….

From Vinyl, to 8-Tracks, Cassettes, CDs, Digital, and now QR code tune postcards!”

I also got a request from someone else to stop sending cards, as they didn’t want to be associated with “ACAB” sentiments.

You win some, you loose some.

Resomnia

Unsomnia.

Outsomnia.

Insomnia.

The first Terminator movie is flawless. No fat, no wasted moments.

Just perfect.

I only met Leah Gold once. She came to see me play when I opened for Mark & David in Seattle on Halloween, one of the best night’s of my life. Leah was so nice, and seemed very interested in my project.

But we had spoken several times before that, on the phone, which led up to this interview. I had a vague notion of who she was creatively (as a bit of a SubGenius nerd), but when I heard she was making a movie about The Weatherman, I was immediately fascinated. This was the only time we spoke where I was recording, and it was a wonderful conversation.

I think I mention this in the show: I had intended on following up with her, after the film she was working on was completed. We traded a couple messages about that, but it was a tentative, future idea. Not ready for “now,” anyway.

She was warm, wonderful, and open. You don’t always get lucky enough to meet people like that.

Goodbye, Leah. I’ll always feel like there was one more thing that we could have talked about.
https://anywhenanywhere.com/2018/04/17/leah-gold-i-was-even-a-trapeze-artist-for-a-year-and-a-half/

Goodbye Leah. I wish I knew you better than I did, and the little I got to know you was very, very cool. I was really hoping to connect again, to follow up on some things we talked about. Now I only have the memories.

Here’s to hoping your family can find some comfort in this strange and awful time.

Why can’t people be like cats?

I think I’m the only one I know who isn’t ready to go back to the way it was. This pandemic changed me in a big way. I don’t want to go back.

I’m proud of a lot of things, but I don’t think I’ve ever written anything better than this riff with these lines. Maybe I can do better someday, but this is pretty good. (The Eleven-SixtyFours)

This is gonna be a lot of fun. Thanks again to the Art Department for letting me set this up! Cool art, rare merch, out of print things available for this event only, and new things that you can only get at this event. Records, tapes, CDs, ‘zines… and more! I hope this fits into your schedule, because this might be THE public appearance I make this summer, so I would love to see you there.
https://artdepartmentsupply.com/blogs/news/austin-rich-pop-up

College used to be cool.