jello shots, Fiona Apple, Matisse, snails

12 things I've consumed + The Best Thing I Ate All Week

I love how the Photo Booth features haven’t changed in 15+ yrs.

🌝 13 THINGS I’VE CONSUMED

🧑‍🍳 A kitchen poem

What does it need, a squeeze of acid?

Watch the oil, beware of acrid.

Here, hold this spoon & take a sip.

There’s turmeric in it, don’t let it drip.

Out the kitchen, you’re in my way.

I’ve got pointy utensils if you choose to stay.

👞 How we make our shoes - Grenson

I’ve been eyeing very expensive leather shoes recently & have been wondering… why do they cost a month’s-worth of rent in Akron, Ohio?

I love this 11 minute video from renowned British shoemakers, Grenson. Shoemaking is a technical process that requires precision & time; there aren’t shortcuts to producing a pair of beautiful leather loafers.

Rent or loafers? Choose wisely.

👏 People who clap after workout classes…

Thoughts?

🧱 Mutina brick

I love brick. It reminds me of home. It’s timeless, low maintenance, & durable.

Mutina is a group of designers who work exclusively with ceramics. They’ve created a few collections of bricks, interlocking puzzle pieces that can be used as partition walls. I really dig the flexible configurations accomplished by the various collections.

💧 ONLY drinking tap water at a restaurant

If you only drink tap water at a restaurant, you need to live a little.

If you don’t drink, fine. Order a sparkling water. Or, a bitters & soda. Hell, an Arnold Palmer or a Mexican Coca-Cola.

You are more interesting than tap water.

☠️ Bone Music

Per undercoverosh:

After WW2, Stalin banned the consumption of any western music in Russia. He only allowed native Russian based composers and artists.

Despite this ban, there was still a devoted group of fans who wanted to get their hands on Western media. Smuggling was off the table meaning their only other option was creating their own records.

A 19-year-old sound engineer created a way to press bootleg records of Western albums, the only issue was the lack of physical vinyl to press them on due to post-war shortages.

One day he found out that discarded X-rays were a viable substitute. The next 20 years after his discovery was spent rummaging through hospital trash bins and pressing over a million copies of bootleg ‘bone music’.

🐌 The Snail - Matisse

SNAIL.

✍️ George Saunders: what writers really do when they write

From The Guardian:

When I write, “Bob was an asshole,” and then, feeling this perhaps somewhat lacking in specificity, revise it to read, “Bob snapped impatiently at the barista,” then ask myself, seeking yet more specificity, why Bob might have done that, and revise to, “Bob snapped impatiently at the young barista, who reminded him of his dead wife,” and then pause and add, “who he missed so much, especially now, at Christmas,” – I didn’t make that series of changes because I wanted the story to be more compassionate. I did it because I wanted it to be less lame.

But it is more compassionate. Bob has gone from “pure asshole” to “grieving widower, so overcome with grief that he has behaved ungraciously to a young person, to whom, normally, he would have been nice”. Bob has changed. He started out a cartoon, on which we could heap scorn, but now he is closer to “me, on a different day”.

How was this done? Via pursuit of specificity. I turned my attention to Bob and, under the pressure of trying not to suck, my prose moved in the direction of specificity, and in the process my gaze became more loving toward him (ie, more gentle, nuanced, complex), and you, dear reader, witnessing my gaze become more loving, might have found your own gaze becoming slightly more loving, and together (the two of us, assisted by that imaginary grouch) reminded ourselves that it is possible for one’s gaze to become more loving.

Or we could just stick with “Bob was an asshole,” and post it, and wait for the “likes”, and for the pro-Bob forces to rally, and the anti-barista trolls to anonymously weigh in – but, meanwhile, there’s poor Bob, grieving and misunderstood, and there’s our poor abused barista, feeling crappy and not exactly knowing why, incrementally more convinced that the world is irrationally cruel.

🐠 Microwaving fish

You’re going straight to jail.

🌅 Late Fragment - Raymond Carver

The last poem in the last book that Raymond Carver ever published before losing his battle to cancer at the age of 50.

🧘‍♂️ Puking as a form of mindfulness

You are most attuned to your body when you vomit.

You are wholly present as you grip the toilet bowl, I promise.

🔪 Fiona Apple - Hot Knife

“HE EXCITES ME must be like the genesis of rhythm

I GET FEISTY whenever I'm with him”

I love this video so much. A sparse arrangement of percussion & piano accompanies Fiona’s multitracked voice.

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson if that matters to you.

Oh, & the video includes her sister.

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🎁 3 GOODIES I WANT

🤠 'May 1963' Cowboys Print - $220

Per The Negative Collection’s website

• The Negative Collection is a unique site that has scoured flea markets and auction houses for forgotten negatives and Kodachrome slides and then makes high quality, limited edition prints from them.

I love this print. It reminds me of desert nights, where it’s 94 degrees at 7pm. Where the owls keep watch & the snakes crouch under rocks. Where the full moon casts long-limbed saguaro shadows. Where your skin burns red & ice is just as important as water.

🕺 Solid Wiggles 30-Piece Jello Shots - $90

This past week, Spring cast us a coy smile. A high of 55 degrees yesterday is now 36 degrees today. But Spring is no longer past the horizon. I can see Her if I squint.

So it’s time to plan a party. Brooklyn-based Solid Wiggles is the duo of Jack Schramm (a mixologist) & Jena Derman (a pastry chef). These zhuzh-ed up jell-o shots are beautiful, in part because of a centrifuge used to achieve a transparent clarity. They then use a syringe to inject opaque jelly into the squares, creating patterns of psychedelic colors.

And they’re supposed to taste good, too. I’m interested in the Painkiller & the Whiskey Sour.

🕯️ Ikea Tealight holder - $.49

While I do harbor a deep fear of incineration, I’m deeply mesmerized by the movement of flames. At $.49, I could afford to purchase a few of these tea lights & arrange them throughout the apartment.

One idea: put a few in the bathroom. Turn off the lights. Turn on the shower. Light the candles. Bathe under the flicker of candlelight & pretend you’re a medieval princess.

Separately, this candle won’t fit in a tealight holder, but I think it’s rad…

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🦪 THE BEST THING I ATE ALL WEEK

I eat fast food a few times a year. The general appeal is fueled by ease, exasperation, or beers. Taco Bell always sounds good, but then you take a closer look at the crumble of ground beef. McDonald’s fries always sound good, but then the fries are flabbier & saltier than you remember. Maintain low expectations or just remember that actions have reactions.

So when I ordered Jubilee Market’s $2.55 smash burger, I did so with a sense of apprehension. At $2.55, how does the math add up? Was it just a frozen White Castle burger reheated & repackaged? Sold in a cafe attached to the grocery store, the burger is served on a Martin’s potato roll (so, it’s about the size of a slider). With grass-fed beef from the butcher downstairs, garlic confit, a slice of American cheese, sliced pickles, & special sauce, it’s a classic no-nonsense burger.

Fat, salt, acid, heat. You’ve read the book. The burger is so delicious, suspiciously so. In interviews, the CEO, Young Kim, explained that he wanted to offer a burger that was affordable & reminiscent of burgers from his youth. The burgers are essentially sold at cost. The profit margin is $.05. The idea, maybe, is for the burger to be a loss leader & attract diners to then shop at the grocery store. I don’t know how sustainable the burger will be, but it’s absolutely The Best Thing I Ate All Week & I’m not asking any further questions.

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🪤 THE FINAL WORD

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- jefe