Knicks Morning News (2025.09.10)

Here in LA, there are fewer venues than there used to be, and the venues that do exist have bookers that are solely interested in an artist’s social media numbers. This creates a system where bands and artists are incentivized to always be pumping up those social media stats. This leads to some pretty gross behavior all around. I have former friends who I just can’t deal with anymore because of the endless social media engagement attempts.

There’s a comedian who talked about being the emcee of a comedy club event of a social media “star”. The star had a channel where they appeared as different characters and would just say the same line over and over again. The star arrives and is a complete jerk to the emcee. The crowd is packed. Emcee is excepting to do a few minutes in between acts. Turns out the influencer didn’t really prepare an act. They just appeared on stage in one character said the catch phrases, then walked off. It would take them 10-15 minutes to change into another character. So the emcee is basically stuck doing like an hour of standup, with the influencer coming out every 15 minutes for a minute of relief.

They comedian was talking about how these social media stars struggle outside of anything with an editing room.

I wish I had that kind of technology when I was younger, but on the other hand I played a lot of music in rehearsal spaces with other people, learned how to listen to other people play and coexist with them. I gained skills that you just don’t gain if you’re not playing with other people.

My eldest called me from college where she’s staying in the dorm. She said she was inside her room with the door closed. And I asked Wait why aren’t you like hanging out with everyone else in the hallway or something? I told her at least she had to leave her door open. She said no one else leaves a door open. And she walked down the hall and showed me out of the 20 or 30 rooms only one other person had the door open.

I have the exact opposite experience in college. No one closed their doors, except for like maybe one person and the foreign exchange students.

Everyone just kind of walked the halls and spoke to each other, hung out in the end whole lounge, or hung out in our common area.

I don’t want to be that old guy, but kids today live in a different world. From a very young kid, I had to interact with people buy stuff from the store, ask people questions. But kids today don’t have that much social interaction, and they seem nervous when doing so. Much like during my time you were forced to be interacting with people constantly, today’s kids are forced not to. So we all develop different skills.

How many caipirinhas , Farfa?

I’ve been making these at home, because it’s a good lazy drink. But I find if you don’t shake them, you’re drinking two shots of alcohol and then sugary-limeade. (Not that it’s a bad thing, but still…) Traditional method is to stir them, not shake.

Any tips?