- Craig Mod in his TOKIO TŌKYŌ TOKYO pop-up newsletter: “I am always astonished by kindness and never astonished by cruelty, and in this way my mind feels broken.” I’m astonished by both.
- Artist (and my acquaintance) Noah Gunther’s portfolio site.
- The launch of the new installment of Wilcoworld Radio. (Have I ever mentioned that I love Wilco’s longstanding domain name, and that it’s a .net? Wait long enough and just about any trend will come around.)
- The array of small, red heat shrink tubing shrinking under a heat gun’s stream, undulating like a coral reef.
- News of Yukihiro Takahashi’s death. His song “Flashback” is one of my favorites of all time.
- Dry Cleaning at Thalia Hall 🤩
- I feel skeptical of the “everything is a story” / “all artists are storytellers, regardless of medium” way of thinking. Aren’t some works just a little burst of sensory information? Is everything really two-dimensional in time?
- Casey’s twenty-eighth birthday!
- The Gulf War vet at the karaoke bar, buying everyone drinks, toasting to his dad’s birthday.
- Abraham Joshua Heschel: “The task of religion is to be a challenge to the stabilization of values.”
- The train rider in Champion-brand graphic sweatpants rocking out to Bob Seger’s “Night Moves” in headphones on repeat, playing air guitar inches from Dad’s face for the entirety of the train ride, lifting our spirits.
- Landwerk No. 3 by Nathan Salsburg.
- The gutter of La Cienega Boulevard in LA, rushing with rainwater like a small river.
- The impossibly adorable website for Whirly Birdie, a font.
- The banjo on stage, untouched, teasing, during Dad’s fourth night at Largo.
- The construction worker installing a round, recessed ceiling light which dangled in front of his head, appearing as if it were his head.
- Skywoman’s systems for sharing ag-business knowledge and lifting others up. Inspiring, I think, to people in other industries who have a desire to open doors but have so far only done so informally.
- The story of Papa Roach’s “Last Resort” [see 2023-01-03].
- The truth about bears’ fecal plugs.
- Louise Glück, via Austin Kleon: “To get born, your body makes a pact with death, / and from that moment, all it tries to do is cheat.”
- The Lyft driver who described bringing his favorite Beastie Boys CD (The In Sound From Way Out!) to massage appointments to listen to it during massages.
- Dad’s first show of 2023 at Largo!
- The phrase “grift-positive.”
- The woman with an uber-hip buzz-and-sidelock haircut that kind of resembled Chasidic payot.
- Popehat Report’s “Clarifying Some Common First Amendment Terminology.”
- George Saunders: “We are making a series of playful gifts to send out into the world. (Playful but serious. We don’t just spit them out. We labor over them, to make them seem playful, playful in service of the deepest things.)”
- Delicious anniversary dinner with Casey at Ørkenoy.
- Ringing in the new year at Constellation as Natural Information Society reached an exuberant fever pitch.
- PriceMaster.
- Charlie Engman’s AI-assisted visual work. [Via Phoebe.]
- Winterbloom’s Big Honking Button synth module.
- My last show of 2022: the Hungry Brain with Liam Kazar.
- Driving to stow away my drums at 3AM or so. The fog on the streets, the radio tower blinking.
- Darryl McDaniel’s (DMC’s) energetic, encouraging NPR interview about his recent children’s book, growing up, and therapy.
- Indigenous Energy’s initiatives for Native American energy sovereignty.
- The bruise on my right palm from wielding an audio pin crimper all day.
- Ryan Pollie’s “Live at the Creek.”
- Christmas Day with the Walkers, and lighting the menorah with Casey’s agnostic/secular family (with Karen’s beautiful homemade menorah).
- Stumbling upon, and feeling thankful all over again, for Marianne’s kind post about my 2011 photo book.
- The Wilson Trailer logo.
- The concept of Rip Medical Debt is interesting and to the extent it works, I admire the people organizing it, but we need the full cure (universal healthcare) in addition to the Band-Aid (debt relief).
- Annie Rauwerda, AKA Depths of Wikipedia: “I’m all about cutting open the bean.”
- Laurel Schwulst of Firefly Sanctuary: “I’ve had a dream to have some kind of ambient notification in both the physical and digital spaces [of Firefly Sanctuary] to allow for more cross-pollination of presence. For example, maybe a light shows up in the corner of the apartment to indicate that someone is on the website, or a light in the corner of the website to indicate that someone is physically in the apartment.” Cool!
- Laurel’s notion of “find the others” adding to my motivation to write about my life again, to cut through the “this is narcissistic” barrier.
- A day inside with Casey’s family, avoiding the cold.
- Sammy’s 23rd birthday!
- Dad in Pitchfork: “There’s no way to overestimate the benefit that universal healthcare would have for everybody … This is an obscene stress to put on peoples’ lives: not just the worry of getting sick, but the worry of going bankrupt because you’re sick, and the denial of even taking care of yourself or getting checked if you’re sick, which grows out of that fear. It’s a totally dysfunctional way of living.”
- Liam Kazar surprise-opening for Whitney at the first of their Thalia Hall holiday shows. A fun cap to the tour and prelude to our end-of-year show at the Hungry Brain on December 30!
- Playing improvised drums-and-electronics music at 24 Hour with Sammy.
View older posts in the archive →