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Unable to find anything resembling a narrative flow in The Work this morning (perhaps it has something to do with my mysteriously-vanished cutting board) but I can, if nothing else, provide you with some sonic brilliance:

ARCHITECTURAL REVERB, by Alejandro Morse – transportive evocations of time and place:

SEEING WHAT REMAINS, by Temple Ov Saturn – Joan Pope's latest Temple Ov Saturn record continues her music's trend of becoming a rotation staple; her weekly newsletter is, likewise, an essential visual feast of her art from the week previous:

BREATH BY BREATH, by Fred Hersch & Crosby Street String Quartet – meditative piano-meets-strings beauty from a master:

LIGHT CAUGHT THE EDGES, by From the Mouth of the Sun – I've become hooked on this duo's work over the last week. While this is the one that grabbed me, all of their work is more than worth checking out:

LIVE AT MONTREAUX JAZZ FESTIVAL, by Anna von Hausswolff – been looking forward to this live set from one of the most intriguing artists out there for awhile and it doesn't disappoint. Spectacular:

I'll update WRT the vanished cutting board should it reappear as mysteriously as it vanished; the day awaits.

Of jacketed crocodiles revived

Started FAR CRY 6 yesterday and Guapo, the jacketed croc with a penchant for ripping off legs, is by far my favorite character, having already neared the levels of bemused adoration heretofore reserved for Cheeseburger ("on account of the diabetes") the bear and Hurk: many a minute I've whiled away petting and feeding (and reviving) Guapo between bouts of freedom fighting or whatever it is that I'm supposed to be doing on my still-unclear path towards what I'm guessing will be the same ending as every FAR CRY, my choice of shit choices culminating in a shit solution for the people of (insert fictional mapworld overrun by the dictatorial atrocities of occasionally excellent – Pagan Min – and/or occasionally disappointing – Giancarlo Esposito, so far - forces of villainy) but hey, we'll always have Guapo while, meanwhile (ha), in other startling news: fell asleep during last night's BOBA (he really is a staggeringly uninteresting crime lord) but managed to wake up long enough to start TED LASSO: ok, everyone, you were right; the day awaits.

Further procurements / when Carol recommends, you listen

Having finished my month with Victor Hugo's LES MISERABLES (after it being in my to-read stack for 25 years) – so very worth the month – and sung the praises of isolarii yesterday, thought I'd log a few more of my recent procurements in this space:

  • Godard, BREATHLESS, on Blu: more of an addition to the library than a first-view as I hated it when I watched it 20 years ago and loved it when I watched it 20 days ago which meant I needed to own it. Random (when pigs fly / hell freezes) aside: Criterion should offer discounts on the the Criterion Channel based on how many of their films you purchase on disc after watching them on the Channel. In a perfect world...

  • Fernando Pessoa, THE BOOK OF DISQUIET: read about Pessoa and his stories written as alternate selves in a recent NYRB article on Richard Zenith's (the translator of THE BOOK OF DISQUIET) biography of Pessoa and couldn't resist experiencing Pessoa for myself. Near the top of the to-read stack.

  • N.K. Jemisin & Jamal Campbell, FAR SECTOR; Joe Ollmann, FICTIONAL FATHER: two recs from Carol Tilley when I posted to Twitter about wanting to expand my comics horizons; when Carol recommends, you listen. (I've got Carol's other rec, Ram V and Filipe Andrade's THE MANY DEATHS OF LAILA STARR, on preorder). Started FAR SECTOR last night – best Green Lantern in ages? I think so. Also, picking up some serious Michael Burnham vibes from Sojourner Mullein; in the event that this ever becomes a series / film, DISCOVERY’s Sonequa Martin-Green would be the perfect Jo.

  • Roz Chast, CAN'T WE TALK ABOUT SOMETHING MORE PLEASANT?: been a fan of Chast's NEW YORKER cartoon work for years and, embarassingly, only learned about her book-length comics memoirs via her recent PARIS REVIEW interview. Given the current (and seemingly interminable) familial situation, felt like the right time to read it.

  • Lynda Barry, SYLLABUS: to pair with her MAKING COMICS as I start adding (horrifically drawn) comics – the rechristened/rebooted INFORMALITIES – to the newsletter, a series of comics created primarily to work my way through Barry's books and satisfy a lifelong creative dream, no matter how horrid the outcome.

Speaking of NL: move to a paid, $4.99/yr subscription is complete; paywalled story/essay access now a “pay-what-you-want” tip-model on Ko-Fi. Still working out details and finding a more effortless method but, for now, this will do.

More recommendations always welcome; the day awaits.

BROKEN RECORD / leaving beta

Greetings, Monday: omicron has yet to arrive in this household, though with K being a (twice-vaxxed, once boosted, and KN95’ed) teacher in the midst of this redstate hell, I’m resigned to it being only a matter of time.

But, in non-plaguery/ohgodiminthisplace news:

Spent the last few drives - to nowhere, to Level 8-4, to the pharmacy that finally fulfilled a CGM / implantable bluetooth signal interrupting device / anti-theft tag / low-blood screecher, to home after flight from in-law Christmas (awesome Christmas haul (COMPLETE CALVIN AND HOBBES and COMPLETE FAR SIDE and LEGO Batwing FTW) aside) – absorbed in Rick Rubin's two-part BROKEN RECORD conversation with Neil Young (Part One / Part Two): Young’s total and frank absorption in his work, how he thinks of it, his ability to sing praises – and openly discuss failings – when warranted, his voluminous archivings – part of me wondered, when Rubin brought up the why of Young's penchant for archiving, if Young's T1D and its requisite lifelong self-data hoarding made him more inclined to keep records of everything he ever did – and recall of its minutae – is nothing short of an inspiration. Do check out both parts.

In The Work, a MainFictionThing logic issue I discussed in yesterday's newsletter has been worked out; thank you, mindmapping. Speaking of, the shift to paid – yes it’s time to start charging money for (some of) my work; I’ve only been in beta for the last 15 or 20 years – is moving ahead well. Switch flipped by Weds if not before then; the day awaits.

Newsletter Sunday / Links 0063

I continue to revel in the fleeting satisfaction of my MARIO KART victory, one each – sweet, sweet detente. This week’s MacroParentheticals is inbound, +/-60; in the meantime, enjoy the random etc etcs that found their way to my brain over the last week:

Daily read, daily run, weekly return to Level 8-4: the day awaits.

Once more unto the MARIO KART uncle/niece warzone, dear friends, once more

Important update, 1545: my niece won one Grand Prix, I won one; our cold war continues.

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Failed miserably at SEKIRO and returned to my beloved and left-hanging-since-early-December-because-of-HALO YAKUZA series (somewhere in YAKUZA 4, second Saejima chapter) only to arrive at the Saejima/Kiryu throwdown: a trial-by-fire-relearning of controls thus ensued (though deflection training in SEKIRO – a game in which I still have no clue what I'm supposed to do – made the transition back not as terrible as it would have been otherwise). Either way, I have returned, as Saejima, to Kamurocho, and am presently drifting about between random bouts of street violence and fisticuffs.

In other gaming fail news: In-law PlagueMas (raincheck being cashed) this afternoon which will yield the return to the epic MARIO KART war between my niece and myself – a war which, it would seem, will be continuing in a new game – but at least Ed Brubaker has joined Bruce Timm's upcoming animated Batman HBO Max show so it'll be even more awesome than it was going to be, a meagre balm for my banana-strewn and tortoise shell ego-wounds.

Must buy Switch. Must defeat niece. The day awaits.

PHYSICS(!) / FETT / 200 DOLLARS(!)

In addition to Christmas decor being tucked away and drains unclogged and hands still attached after garbage disposal fixings at Level 8-4 and masked nonagenarian (he’s good) visits undertaken, things of a creative nature have moved forward, finally: victory is mine – for at least the next hour or so.

Other things (some from yesterday brought here because I wanted yesterday to be its own thing and not my usual cacophony of semi-ritualistic blathering): a brainless, post-campaign completion dive into HALO INFINITE yielded – as we careened over a mountain in our damaged Warthog – my favorite UNSC proclamation in the 20 years I've been playing the series: SUCK IT PHYSICS! ... I remain fascinated (amused? bemused?) by my neighbor's pathological need to take his garbage out 24 hours before pickup: hell, high, water, plague, etc etc – on Thursday morning, it's out there and there it stays until late Friday morning week in, week out: such is the way of The AC, apparently... BOBA FETT episode two was a vast improvement on the first, though I'm still not in love with it; that said, Temura Morrison as Lex Luthor needs to happen... and, perhaps in the understatement of the year, SEKIRO: SHADOWS DIE TWICE is fucking hard.

(That said, also: SUCK IT, PHYSICS!)

RIP Peter Bogdonovich: WHO THE DEVIL MADE IT remains one of the great books on cinema, a hardback edition being among the prizes in my library – and PAPER MOON one of the greatest films of all time, I WANT MY 200 DOLLARS; the day awaits.

Of Days

I have been glued to the news three times in my adult life (not counting elections of celebration or of heartbreak); 9/11, the Boston Marathon bombing, and the Capitol Insurrection, the latter at the kitchen table while I assembled a Lego dump truck for my 95 year old grandfather agog as the horror unfolded at the behest of the orange tumor and his fascist death cult of don-drones and sycophants. A year later, I remain agog though wholly unsurprised; the dump truck, similarly, remains on my grandfather's shelf (though I do have to move the dump bed every few weeks via phone remote control for him; display purposes, variety, etc etc).

Three reads worth your time this morning, as we head into this day of days:

Consider the economic profile of the 716 people arrested or charged, as of Jan. 1, 2022, for storming the Capitol. Of the 501 for which we have employment data, more than half are business owners, including CEOs, or from white-collar occupations, including doctors, lawyers, architects, and accountants... Only 7 percent were unemployed at the time, almost the national average, compared with the usual 25 percent or more of violent right-wing perpetrators arrested by the FBI and other U.S. law enforcement from 2015 to mid-2020... only 14 percent of those who broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6 were members of militias...; 86 percent had no affiliation... In other words, these were people who had something to lose when they went to Washington and carried out this violence.

The day, this day of days, awaits.

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I am alive and, as I’m still rearranging the deck chairs (as it were), I’ve decided to resurrect EarBliss here on Wednesdays, make it a regular feature and, like any half-respecting comic book series, start over with a new 0001: these are – in no particular order – the albums that have made my ears happy over the last few weeks:

INNOVATION, by the [law-rah] collective:

May your ears enjoy themselves; the day awaits.

PlagueState notions year 3029

Thinking back to that time of innocence (half an hour ago), that time in which I had designs on writing a whole thing about something else, a time before I read this morning's Ohio Capital Journal piece – a piece with which I agree wholeheartedly – and decided that I wanted to echo and add my own notions upon its sentiments: Ohio's leadership – a term I use loosely here, having glimpsed it only once in the last ten years I've been back in this godforsaken cesspit of my birthing, that once being March 2020, when actual difficult decisions in the interest of public health were made by a Republican without regard to the whims and delusions of a fascist death cult filled with halfwit zealots I wouldn't trust to know where to stick a thermometer – has been, in the last two years, an abject, myopic failure; to echo George Carlin, fuck (every last one of) the fucking fuckers: this place has tried to kill me too many times to count over my lifetime and I'll be damned if I'm going to let a bunch of mindless anti-whatever-might-do-some-good Don-drones do what my blood couldn't do on its own.

I miss you, Amy Acton; the day, or whatever it amounts to, awaits.