Hotel Chelsea (11.07.23)

Onstage at Hotel Chelsea, having fun, doing tunes. Photo by Kat.

Hey there. Zak here with a post with no news bullet points. It's a rare event on this blog in recent times, but I enjoy being able to write in a format that's more in the style of how I prefer to communicate. More like a human being, as opposed to a robotic regurgitator of information.

So yes, we'll use the excuse of my having done my monthly show at Hotel Chelsea in Second Life on Tuesday night, and we'll instead write a bunch of other shit, and we can hopefully enjoy the outcome together.

Hey, How About That Election?

Despite having covered this in detail in my daily Random News report, I'm still too elated to stop talking about Tuesday night's amazing election results.

The very brief recap is that despite a lot of doom and gloom reporting heading into Election Day, damn near every Democratic candidate and cause won their respective races. From reproductive freedom in Ohio to the Governor's race in Kentucky to the entire legislative assembly in Virginia, Democrats performed far above expectations.

It's a reasonable hope that the same factors driving these electoral victories -- reproductive freedom, the anti-MAGA movement and more -- will carry over to the 2024 general election.

Ohio voters came through in a big way to support reproductive freedom.

Hey, What About Those Alarming Polls?

Ha. Another big point proven Tuesday night. Polls don't vote; people do. And it's becoming more and more obvious that polling methodologies that had produced accurate results for decades are nowhere near as trustworthy today than they were just a few election cycles ago.

Just one thing of note to consider in that regard: the grand majority of polling is done via phone, and a lot of it is still via land lines. Who has land lines? Older people who tend to be more conservative. And who picks up a cell phone for a random number, much less takes the time to answer 30 questions from a bored-sounding volunteer or polling agency?

"Polls look bad for Biden," said a news agency based on respondents who picked up this phone.

What you get are these skewed results that in recent years have vastly underestimated the engagement of younger, generally more liberal voters. I should also add that while polling is often focused on pitting candidates against each other, when it comes to issues, people can be all over the map. Plenty of the folks in Ohio who voted for reproductive freedom last night don't consider themselves Democrats, I promise. But they also won't support candidates who use support for forced birth as a main campaign platform.

Hey, How About That Show?

Ah yes. So, just as those election results started coming in, I had to drop what I was doing and perform some live music at Hotel Chelsea for my first-Tuesday-of-the-month show. Side note: this show always falls on election night, and there have been times that I considered canceling it in order to glue myself to the Internet to monitor what was going on as the votes were tallied.

Side note to that side note: I am an actual paid subscriber to Washington Post, and I find their election coverage to be among the best, both in terms of speed and accuracy of their reporting. But there are plenty of places to get election info. Also, my Hotel Chelsea show is at 5PM SLT (the same time zone as my own in reality here in California), so really I'm not missing much when I wrap up the gig at 6PM and start hunting for information.

People enjoying my "Songs of Autumn" set. Photo by Kat.

But back to the show itself. There have been a good number of years when, in November, I do a special set I call "Songs of Autumn". They're usually not songs about the season itself. Instead, they are tunes that reflect the introspective, sometimes melancholic, sometimes optimistic feeling of fall itself. I decided a couple of weeks ago that this year would be good for said theme, and planned my set list accordingly.

A couple of notes in that regard. First, yesterday was the 80th birthday of one of my biggest influences as a musician and songwriter: Joni Mitchell. I wasn't going to let that occasion pass without doing some of her music, which of course was appropriate for my autumnal theme, and honor her as such. Second is that last Friday (November 3), the final new song by The Beatles was released. It just so happened that the mid-tempo minor key feel of John Lennon's composition "Now and Then" fit in seamlessly with the rest of my set. I'm probably not the first person to cover the song, in Second Life or elsewhere, but it felt like the right thing to do.

Random pic of me for no reason.

Hotel Chelsea set list...

Carey (Joni Mitchell)

River Man (Nick Drake)

Blew The Dust Away (They Stole My Crayon)

Half Moon Bay (Sun Kil Moon)

*Now and Then (Beatles)

The Last Time I Saw Richard (Joni Mitchell)

Hannah Sun (Lomelda)

Always Tomorrow (Zak Claxton)

Don’t Let It Pass (Junip)

How Lucky (John Prine)

Lost Cause (Beck)

Help Me (Joni Mitchell)

*Indicates the first time I've performed this song in SL.

Massive thanks to the folks who hung out for this show, with extra super duper thanks to the following who helped support it!

AnkareedaNightStar Resident, EastYorker Resident, cristoofarr Resident, Richy Nervous, Corwyn Allen, Kat Claxton, my terrific manager Maali Beck, Hotel Chelsea manager Shyla the Super Gecko, and Chelsea's great staff.