- A Case Oats show at a coffee shop.
- Sleeping with an external hard drive purring on my desk, backing up.
- The Pocket Change drum album by Nate Smith.
- The frozen marshes in Wisconsin and Minnesota.
- Little geysers of clementine juice spraying on the car window while I peeled one.
- In the din of noises from a huge construction site, you sometimes hear a few regular hammer hits, which makes me think: it’s amazing that anything so micro-level and unmechanized is part of building something so big.
- The sound tech with a Gretsch shirt, two Gretsch tattoos, and a son named Gretsch.
- The good Jewish pickle at a coffee shop in Sheboygan, WI.
- A winter classic: a dump truck full of snow.
- Deliberately stepping on tortilla chips, which had spilled on the asphalt, for crunch-feel.
- The little hairs of mold in the tiny space between two wooden beams in a 118-year-old opera house bathroom — like stalactites.
- The older woman in a coffee shop who told me I have an “excellent head of hair.”
- Using Neosporin (autocorrect: “bro’s potion”) that had expired in 2006. That is, vintage 2006.
- Sneezing tea all over myself and my laptop.
- Writing while wearing an offbrand Snuggie.
- Tim Kreider’s “On Smushing.”
- The blown-out speaker in a gas station pump ad TV sounding like the teacher in Charlie Brown.
- Hearing “Take Me to the River” by Al Green for the first time since my Big Mouth Billy Bass childhood.
- Taking Basil to see Santa at the vet.
- Doing sound for a band with an EWI player.
- Getting woken up by two phone calls and a text that said “Ri hard this wayne can u call me I have some plumbing problems I need u to look at.”
- A really great-feeling show with Liam Kazar at the Hideout.
- Tooth Gallery, a “travelling gallery space exhibiting small artworks installed in [designer] Che-Wei Wang’s mouth.”
- George Saunders’ Guardian essay about “what writers really do when they write.” 😍
- “Any work of art quickly reveals itself to be a linked system of problems.”
- The blue latex glove on the ground near Chicago Theater.
- “Still At It,” a beautiful New York Times Magazine photo essay about New Yorkers who have been doing the same job/craft for decades.
- A really really really nice 24th birthday:
- Breakfast in bed from Casey.
- Getting to play “The Late Greats” with Wilco, a reprise of my 13th birthday when I sat in while they opened for Neil Young at Madison Square Garden.
- Birthday cake with band ’n’ fam.
- The delay between when hot water hits your hands and the pain of its heat.
- The license plate “JAZZMOM.”
- The young jazz players at a local jam exchanging phone numbers.
- The super sweet ushers at Chicago Theater and their uniform capes!
- The Christmas tree in the corner backstage, spooky-looking and beautiful.
- The garbage truck whose technicians had put found art in the frames where official signs normally go.
- Hiccuping and accidentally farting. Repeatedly.
- Another really fun Cosmic Country Showcase with Sully, Dorian, Liam, Sima, Macie, Andrew, Grelle, Tasha, Tim, a bunch of featured guests, and a surprise three songs with Dad.
- Learning amazing facts about the deepest-diving ocean animals on Neal Agarwal’s “The Deep Sea” website.
- The look of the comb jelly.
- Playing with the neighbors’ dog Burt.
- Delivering gifts and cash to underprivileged families with the Unconditional Giving / Letters to Santa / 24 Hour people. (To help year-round, visit Onward House and Unconditional Giving.)
- Visiting an apartment with a Scarface collectible gun display, a Sopranos-themed Last Supper-esque painting, and a parrot.
- Asking a grocery store employee about Hanukkah candles and getting directed to a section of Virgin Mary devotional candles instead.
- Karaoke at a 4AM bar frozen in 1993.
- All those moments where you “feel” a text arrive without getting a notification from your phone, and the kinda superstitious belief that those moments could be evidence of long-distance, telepathic, emotional communication.
- Watching Saxondale with Dad and Sammy.
- Expecting that, in the new decade, critics may make more generalizations because it’s easier to do so when the decade has a catchy title like “the twenties.”
- Playing in Sima Cunningham’s Aux Thom New Year’s Eve party at Constellation. The funnest.