- Groove Denied by Stephen Malkmus (via Sammy)!
- Jon Langford soloing on top of a folding chair while the Waco Brothers played in the Michigan City Municipal Band’s rehearsal and storage space.
- “Is There Any Love?” by Trevor Dandy (via Numero Group).
- The family in matching denim getting their portraits taken on Logan Boulevard.
- Rebecca Solnit’s great essay about abortion in the Guardian.
- Proposing “overwhelmth” (noun) as an addition to the English language.
- Getting flirtatiously close to Inbox Zero.
- Great Arthur Russell songs that I hadn’t heard: “Tell You Today,” “Instrumentals Volume 2,” “A Little Lost.” Like a dream.
- From Our Band Could Be Your Life: “Mr. Ginn … was so proud of his son [Greg Ginn of Black Flag] that when he’d teach classes at Harbor College, he’d often have the Black Flag insignia painted on the pocket of his button-down shirts” (41).
- In the span of thirty minutes, two separate bicyclists riding by, singing loudly and unabashedly.
- “Bielzinho / Bielzinho” by O Terno, new tropicalia from Brazil.
- How empathy is not always other-oriented; it’s also often a part of self-oriented things like avoiding embarrassment or influencing people. Imagining how other people feel doesn’t entail putting their interests first.
- How the emoji clapping trope 👏fails to a👏ccount for 👏ghosted 👏syllables.
- Mike Watt in Our Band Could Be Your Life: “We were music punk; they were social punk. […] We throw all this soft music, folk music, jazz, et cetera, not only to avoid getting caught in just one style, but also to show [social punks] that ‘See, you didn’t want any rules … this is what you wanted. You didn’t want to be told what to listen to’” (76).
- The Flag Day parade in Appleton, Wisconsin, which a resident told me is the biggest Flag Day parade in the country.
- The older people and families lining up early—with folding chairs—to watch.
- The marching band marshal spritzing her high-school-aged musicians with cooling water.
- Accepting a miniature American flag from a volunteer, carrying it a safe distance down the street, and then offering it to an older man, who interpreted it as a gift, whereas it was mostly a gift to me that he agreed to take it.
- The U.S. Army missile truck, wowing spectators by lifting the missile on its hydraulic lift bed.
- Going back to college to walk in our commencement ceremony.
- The plastic ponchos administrators distributed to grads for the rain, and the dissident students who refused them.
- The professor riding her bike in full academic regalia, sidesaddle, to meet up with the faculty procession.
- The mom who ran ahead of the grads to wipe rainwater off our plastic folding chairs with a handkerchief.
- Lee Shallat-Chemel’s awesome commencement address.
- Describing her life as a “squiggly line,” giving us permission to be inefficient.
- Telling the “don’t be afraid of failure” story in the least clichéd terms I’ve ever heard it, illustrating her life as an excessively careful, anxious twentysomething, and how hyper-vigilance can extinguish creativity.
- Ellsworth Kelly’s paintings, which I had never seen before (thanks Oona).
- Contestants in the Solid Sound Wilco Karaoke contest supporting each other with nice comments on their Instagram posts.
- Van Dyke Parks’s song “High Coin,” recorded by The Charlatans (thanks Sammy).
- Ordering kimchi soup at King Spa and receiving it literally still boiling (bubbling) hot, not sure what to do with it.
- The sparkly stickers on an older man’s cane.
- The tiny chihuahua that lives (and works?) in the auto shop by my house.
- Finding an ID badge of a private detective agency employee (marked “CIVILIAN”) on the ground.
- The fire hydrant with a makeshift drinking fountain attached to it.
- The parent and child biking and rollerblading, respectively, in the street, bike-parent pulling the rollerblade-child.
- The sickly sweet cherry smell outside—like Bottle Caps candy.
- Laura Snapes’s interview with Bill Callahan.
- How John McPhee (still) writes with a command line program that was custom-made for him by a fellow professor in the 1980s (New York Times Magazine).
- McPhee describing how he puts all the pieces of a text into order before he even sits down to write, so that when he does start, he just has to connect them into prose: “Every organizational aspect was behind me. The procedure eliminated nearly all distraction and concentrated just the material I had to deal with in a given day or week. It painted me into a corner, yes, but in doing so it freed me to write.”
- This tweet by @dontsave: “there should be a way to convey warmth in emails without using the exclamation mark. my proposal is U263C, unicode sun with rays / thanks ☼ / dave”
- Almost getting caught in an ingenious Shopify scam: emails from alleged customers asking whether a (fake) exorbitant price on your website is a typo (with a link to spam).
- Still thinking about the step-by-step example of product design thinking that Paul Ford gave in “Going Deep on a Checkbox,” an essay from his Track Changes newsletter (published in 2016 but read by me the other day).
- The man in a Slipknot shirt licking the back of his girlfriend’s neck in a bar.
- The bar bathroom poster, “How can a MAN who can hit a DEER at 250 yards keep missing the TOILET?” and the label-maker printed addendum beneath it: “Our penis [sic] doesn’t come with a scope.”
- The disgustingly under-acknowledged, life-changing magic of interlibrary loan.
- The movie Yesterday but with the Kinks.
- The bar patron explaining to me that “people get really confused when they’re enslaved [by capitalism].”
- Another bar patron exclaiming, “That job is part-time as hell!” about teaching saxophone lessons.
- Being surprised by how well Ozzy Osbourne can sing—based on “Changes.”
- The ATM machine’s little antenna.
- The drummer drumming with an electric toothbrush.
- CSS-Tricks’ mind-blowing code-painting of clouds using only SVG and CSS.
- The traffic cone placeholders sitting where the City will soon plant sidewalk trees.
- The beautiful, colorful album cover of Soul Messages from Dimona, a Numero Group compilation.
- The blood red, tiny spider (mite?) crawling on my plate of eggs.
- Rewarding myself with a carrot (behummused) after every page reviewed in a writing project.
- The singed-black (or just dirty?) latex glove on the ground [2-28-19 et al.].
- Going through computer game CD-ROMS from my childhood with Mom (Freddie Fish, Pajama Sam, Monster Maker).
- Feeling lucky that I grew up in an anti-prank household, and with more or less anti-prank friends.
- Two drummers talking about the “Diamond Light” drum beat today, one on Instagram and one in person—made me happy.
- Steffen M. Olsen’s photograph of a research team riding with sled dogs through melting sea ice, appearing like they’re standing on water (The Guardian).
- The great bass-playing on Hot Chocolate’s songs from I Travel Alone.
- The oboe-player busking in Logan Square.
- Just one leaf at the end of a branch getting pummeled by rainwater from the gutter.
- Feeling shocked, disturbed, and angry that Hannah B. gave Luke P. a rose on The Bachelorette.
- The tiny, circular patch of moss growing on our driveway wall.
- Feeling overwhelmed with happiness playing Liam’s second full-band solo show, at the Hideout.
- Getting picked up from the airport for Solid Sound Festival in a stretch limousine because, the driver said, it was the only car they had left.
- “We usually only use this for funerals.”
- Regarding the shaky ride: “It’s used to funeral speeds.”
- The traffic cone truck with a divot in it so that a worker can stand upright and drop cones to the road more comfortably.
- The air conditioning unit with a name: “Mr. Slim.”
- There being so much dandelion fluff in the wind, it looked like snow.
- Roasting in a hot tub.
- Learning about the Year 2038 problem and leap seconds on Wikipedia.
- The idea that people with the “fixer” personality type are like emotional first responders.
- Hearing All Things Must Pass over PA house music at Solid Sound and feeling shocked all over again at how contemporary its rhythm section sounds.
- The Solid Sound karaoke contest winners kicking butt and making everyone cry with their talent and earnestness.
- Milo sampling Patto (“The Man”) during his Solid Sound set.
- OHMME greeting a tiny, young fan after their set.
- Rehearsing in MASS MoCA underneath the footsteps of Solid Sound attendees on the floor above, wondering if they could hear us.
- Jonathan Richman sounding great, being funny, affirming life during his show, as always.
- Playing with Dad, Sammy, Jim, Liam, and friends, while a short rain shower birthed a rainbow right behind the audience. Dad pointed to it and said, “Look at that stupid rainbow.”