Tag: David Lemieux (Page 5 of 8)

Dear David Lemieuxseumofnaturalhistory,

Hi. How are you? I’m fine. How’s Canada? I see you will be legalizing marihuana soon. That’s lovely for you. We elected a urinal that likes to watch teevee. But I’m glad for you about the pot thing, honestly.

As always, David, I write as a fan and admirer. Your stewardship of the Dead’s catalogue has been consistently excellent, from your Picks (the latest of which, volume 22, was just announced and has already sold out) to box sets ranging from large to massive; you also oversaw the return of the fabled Betty Boards which will surely fill release slots for years. Like I said, I’m a fan and I’m on your side.

You need to be careful on Twitter.

You have recently signed up for the service–they make it very easy to get an account–and sent out some exploratory tweets. (I knew they were your tweets because I could hear the wind.) Many people rushed to follow you, and like and retweet you; that was fun, wasn’t it? Felt good, right? Hey, man: I know. I went viral once.

It was terrible and the site crashed and liberals yelled at you.

GET OUT OF THE OPEN LETTER. I don’t want David Lemieuxgoogaipan to think I’m weird.

He won’t notice.

Shh. Anyway, David, I just wanted to pass along some advice about Twitter now that you’ve joined, some things to keep in mind:

You’re gonna get 80’s Truthers Dude, it’s gonna happen. I can’t believe it hasn’t already, that some nut with a boner for 4/12/83 didn’t pigeonhole you second you signed in. You need to know that this will happen to you, David. It’s gonna be like the Dead.net forums times a billion.

When it does, there are three courses of action:

A) If the 80’s Truther is reasonable, you can explain the reason why the show he’s touting (which coincidentally happens to have been his first show) isn’t suitable for release.

B) You can block the person.

C) You can issue a SAVAGE BURN™. These are to Twitter what combos are to Street Fighter: if you hit the buttons in the right order, then you can rip your opponent’s spine out with your first move. If your SAVAGE BURN™is savage enough, it may make Buzzfeed and you will be hailed, along with Chrissy Teigen and whoever’s running the Wendy’s account, as the greatest bard of our time. Huzzah for you, David! (Seriously, don’t SAVAGE BURN™ people.)

Avoid tweetstorms if possible

The tweetstorm is the newest symptom of Global Warming. Twitter has a 140-character limit. It’s good for jokes and observations, and it’s an excellent platform to link to other sites from. However, Trump’s election has driven people so insane that they’re now using Twitter to post conspiracy theories the length of Infinite Jest (including the footnotes). What’s more, even if the tweetstorm has validity, the format makes it look like a conspiracy theory dreamt up in an opium den run by John Le Carre.

They all start the same way:

And then they get progressively pithier and abstract to the point where if you don’t read the whole thing it just looks like gibberish:

Sometimes they go off the rails for a few:

Just stay away. Looking at tweetstorms–or, God forbid, liking them–only encourages them.

Retweets totally equal endorsements People put this in their little bios, but it turns out not to be legally binding. Please do not be retweeting porn stars and Nazis.

The frog is not your friend If you see a cartoon frog, you are in danger. That frog is trying to trick you into saying something it can use against you. Do not trust cartoon frogs.

Do not anger Black Twitter They will drag you. Do not anger any part of Twitter, actually. Half of everyone on the service is just there to yell at people when they fuck up. But seriously never even mention Beyoncé. You do not want the Beyhive’s attention.

Memes are not magic I don’t know how down you are with the kids, David. They have these things. They’re called memes. They’re not for us. Do not meme. Maybe you’ll see a meme–say, Dat Boi–and think that it would be a good way to advertise the latest Dead release. It would not. Please do not meme.

Good luck on Twitter, David. May the retweets be ever in your favor. As always, my best to your wife, Regina, and your lovely children Gordie, Girl Gordie, Jean-Luc, Northstar, Fleece, and the twins, Micki and Bobbi.

Sincerely,
Thoughts on the Dead

…

…

…

Dave?

“There was a second shooter.”

I’m gonna leave you alone.

Enthusiasts, I am investing in myself, and in us; I have put a portion of the t-shirt profits back into the business.

You bought headphones.

Exactly! Can’t make t-shirts without listening to the Dead; can’t listen to the Dead without headphones; needed new headphones. It was an investment and I will be claiming it as such on my taxes, should I pay them.

Playing with fire there, buddy.

Oh, I’m sure the IRS has a sense of humor.

Right. So, what did you get?

Honestly?I got exhausted. The process was enervating. The world has become the scene from Moscow on the Hudson where Robin Williams goes to the American supermarket for the first time to get coffee, and there’s a massive wall of every brand and flavor you’ve ever seen, and he’s overcome and collapses. There’s too much choice, and too many choices.

You started looking up reviews, didn’t you?

Of course.

And reading the comment sections.

God help me, I did.

Always a blunder. Did you solicit help from friends and associates?

From men and women of the highest caliber. People whose opinions I respect.

What did they say?

They all said that the headphones they owned were the best headphones.

Weird coincidence.

Well-meaning, all of them. But then my brain started talking to me.

Shit.

Right. My brain showed me this photo of Dead archivist David “That’s No” Lemieuxnitsaspacestation:

The man’s a silver fox.

They’re called silver moose in Canada.

Ah. And your brain brought up this fairly uninteresting photo for what reason?

He’s wearing headphones. And my brain was all, “Dude. That guy listens to Dead shows for a living.” And I said that there was more to his job than that, but my brain was at least a little bit right.

It wasn’t entirely wrong, no.

And then my brain said, “Just do what that guy does,” and I said, “Those are a little more than I wanted to spend, Brain,” and then I began counting things around the house and hearing voices and I forgot how numbers worked and my brain went, “DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT I CAN DO TO YOU? DO WHAT I TELL YOU AND BUY THE HEADPHONES,” and I clicked the “Purchase” button and felt much better.

That didn’t happen.

In a way, it did.

Don’t blame things on your brain. You are your brain.

Right. Who am I speaking with right now?

…

Point granted.

Thank you.

Did you really buy the headphones that were out of your budget because you saw DL wearing them?

THE MAN IS A PROFESSIONAL DEAD-SHOW LISTENER!

You’re special.

Yeah.

You’re the victims here, Enthusiasts. The Lost Post (it’s been capitalized) was yours, it was your birthright; the Devil snatched it from you. Once again: you are all victims. I suggest you start on your memoirs immediately.

As I mentioned, the 2000-words (so many words!) were an overview of the Dave’s Picks series, but do you think that’s all there was? No, no, a million times no: the post spread and unfurled this way and that. To where, precisely, did it get to?

Excellent question.

It was in English for sure. 100% guarantee it was in English, plus a couple words I made up that follow the rules of English but are not technically English. Was the English good, and in the correct order? Possibly, some, in bits and pieces: we can assume that the punctuation was idiosyncratic and far too many semi-colons were used.

Were the Powerball number cyphered into the dick jokes? Did I confess to my many crimes? Did I commit many further crimes? Are there others out there like me? Should we fight crime? How much crime? Gotta leave the police some, after all. Did I team-up with other super-heroes and fight a pre-determined amount of crime?

What’s the frequency, Ned Lagin?

First there is a post. Then, there is no post. Then, there is. That shit’s kinda heavy if you don’t think about it, or you’re a gullible white person on drugs. (If you ever want to get a gullible white person to sign over his power of attorney to you, give him drugs and then have a really foreign guy say deep bullshit at him for a while. Loosens him right up; he’ll sign anything.)

There were congratulations to David Lemieuxssolini for the high quality of the series that bears his name, and words of respect and gratitude for his hard work. I showed the world what DL looked like when he began answering the whistle that started his shift down in the Choogle Mines:

Look at that smile, that cherubic face unburdened by the years, the toil, the dank of the Choogle Mines. That’s a Canadian ready to shovel the walk and face the day. Look at his eyes! They twinkle and dash, like elf purse-snatchers. He has joie de vivre, which is French for “a hat on.”

This is a screencap from Dave’s latest Seaside Chat:

He did this to himself for you people.

The whole post was crammed full of stuff like that: I would neither exaggerate, nor lie to you. (I totally would, and I frequently do.)  There was hilarity, sure, and pithy bon mots (the pithiest), and perhaps even words to live by. I mean: that’s on you, the words-to-live-by thing. You’re allowed to live by any words you want. If you disregard the author’s intent hard enough, you can live by a VCR repair manual.

That would be silly. In fact, that would be outrageous and I am now angered. Allow me to now lash out at you, Enthusiasts, and accuse you of things. None of you helped me. None of you even asked if I needed help! How dare you.

Saw this coming.

I J’ACCUSE YOU.

You profess to have respect for the English language, and then you do things like that to it.

You have a problem with my j’accusing the Enthusiasts?

Oh, God, don’t conjugate it.

Fine: I’ll just talk about my j’accusations.

KUH-CHACK

KREEEEEEEEEEEE

TIGERNOISE

MRONCH NOMNOMNOM

…

Did you just walk into a tiger cage and then the tiger ate you?

Yes.

I like when we do that. It’s fun to do stuff together.

I hate you.

Anyway, there was more of everything and a little bit on top of that, but nothing’s gonna bring it back. (Dead reference.) There were, however, two points I made that have been alluded to in the Comment Section. I shall address them, and then we shall never speak of this again. It’ll be the ’72 studio album that never happened, or one of Aristophanes’ lost plays.

(I am just like Aristophanes.)

First: DaP 12 from Colgate. I don’t remember the specifics, but I went out of my way to couch my criticisms as personal and preferential; my language was conciliatory; weasel words were employed willy-nilly. My argument was this: Keith’s PLONK PLONK PLONK PLONK four-to-the-bar box chords are not just annoying, but mixed so high as to be so distracting that the rest of the music is lost to me. It was, I said numerous times, just my opinion.

And then I was cyber-bullied and stripped of my First Amendment rights by some SKWs (Social Keith Warriors) in the Comment Section. When other people disagree with my opinions, I feel like I’m being opinion-shamed; that’s wrong, because opinions come in all shapes and sizes. Some opinions are beautiful and true, and others are dumb as shit, but all opinions are beautiful. Even the ugly ones.

Plus the whole disappearing post thing has me cranky, so I am choosing to double-down on my argument: Dave’s Picks 12 is the musical equivalent of putting a cat in a cannon, and then firing the cat at a brick wall. Not fucked-up cat, either: real cute fucker. Cuddly, purrs, the whole nine yards.

And depending on far away the wall was, the BOOM and the SPLAT might be almost simultaneous: BOOMSPLAT. Or perhaps the sound would be more like a SHPLORF. No, not SHPLORF: it would be wetter. What about PLUNF?

Please stop. Please stop firing the cats at the wall.

I’m not actually doing that.

You’re doing it in your head, and I’m in there with you.

I want to know what it would sound like if you shot a kitty out of a cannon at a brick wall, and a thought experiment is the only way to do it. Even if there is a video on the innertubes, I don’t want to actually see it.

…

There’s a video.

There’s probably a whole site.

Move on.

And second: a request has been made for a definition of “80’s Truther.”

80’s Truther [Brentus veritasus] – This small but vocal verbose sub-species of Deadhead is identified by two core beliefs.

1. The 80’s were the musical high point of the Grateful Dead’s career.
2. David Lemieux and Big Dead are keeping this information from the world.

The 80’s Truther is found in forums and comment sections everywhere, but can be reliably sighted at Dead.net with the announcement of each new release from the 70’s.

Now, the 80’s Truther is not to be confused with the First Show Proselytizer, even though they often overlap. Also, just by the very laws of math, some FSPs have to be right when they say that their first show was the best show EVAR. Somebody’s first show was Veneta; at least one guy got dragged to Cornell and then got on the bus. But, you know: most FSPs want to preach to you about how ’92 is a truly underrated year.

It should further be noted that the 80’s Truther needs to believe there is a conspiracy afoot to be properly labeled as such. There must be a blithe disregard of any excuse about how “the tapes are shit,” or “Garcia falls asleep during Crazy Fingers,” or “the tape is shit and Garcia fell asleep during The Wheel.” No, these things can’t be true. It’s gotta be personal. David Lemieuxligatawny has it out for the 80’s. For reasons.

It was a good post, but now it’s in its own reality and won’t take our calls.

Was it ever here at all?