tanlines, trackpants, Storm King, collagen
12 things I've consumed + The Best Thing I Ate All Week
🌝 12 THINGS I’VE CONSUMED
🥢 Eating snacks with chopsticks
Empty calories.
They’ve been engineered for us to gorge with gluttonous abandon. Instead of totally shelving the BjornQorn, why not eat your snacks more mindfully? Pick up a pair of chopsticks & eat your popcorn one at a time.
My shirt isn’t greasy, my belly isn’t achy, & my dignity is still intact.
🍳 A very nice scale comparison
I am terrible at understanding sizing, just in general. Which is why this Misen carbon steel pan scale is so great.
Eggs are my favorite food, so I’ll opt for the 5 egg pan (I think I can fit 6).
🎸 Resonant
An excerpt:
The trouble with people who resonate with us seems to be that inside each of us are many different people and histories that vibrate at different frequencies, and as rare as it is to stumble into someone who can speak to just one of them, it feels tragically rare to find someone whose disparate selves can shake apart the many different parts of us that sing at different frequencies. Often when I had felt that I had found someone who so deeply resonated with some part of me, I later saw that there were parts of me that dampened who they were, and parts of them that dampened who I was. And when I’m with someone who so deeply resonates with one part of me, it can be confusing and painful to feel the other parts lay so silent.
This, I think, is the challenge in finding precious people — it’s hard enough to listen for people who resonate with us; to find the one who can stir up a chord seems at times a mathematical impossibility, like trying to fit two puzzle pieces together in some 10-dimensional space. But I’m hopeful that, perhaps by paying careful attention to the sounds of my own strings and listening carefully to the vibrations around me, I might be lucky enough to notice when someone so deeply resonant with me is in my midst.
🌻 Field Flowers - Louise Glück
🕯️ A candle in a communal bathroom
Aesop hand soap is an expected accessory at fancy restaurants, but I don’t buy into it. When you apply really fragrant soap, the residual scent may overwhelm your nose when you return to the table & eat your meal.
Instead, light a beautiful candle in the restroom. The scent is more ephemeral, better smelling, & more visually appealing than an Aesop bottle securely affixed to the wall of the restroom.
🥤 Can you imagine?
✍️ A poem
If you were a mountain, you’d have the highest peak
If you were a baby, you’d have the most pinchable cheeks
If you were an owl, you’d have 20-20 vision
If you were a surgeon, you’d have the thinnest incisions
But you, my friend, are beyond the best
In fact, it’s true, you have my favorite breast
😈 Gremlins
An absolutely wild movie.
🧴 Sunscreen application
There is a slew of competing skincare products in the market— slickly designed packaging with brigades of dewy brand ambassadors. I have an esthetician friend who prescribed a simple routine: drink lots of water & always wear sunscreen.
Simple enough. But then there are so many sunscreens! I prefer the Trader Joe’s Daily Facial sunscreen for, well, my face. As an $8 Supergoop! knockoff, it’s really great. Neutrogena for arms & neck. I do need recommendations for hand sunscreen. Tips?
😎 Tanlines
Speaking of sunscreen…
🧊 Wine on ice
I recently attended an event with an open bar. Which is to say that the bartenders were cranking out drinks with the imprecision & speed of overwhelmed caterers. I ordered wine & the bartender quickly scooped an entire glassful of ice & poured the wine over the cubes.
Perplexed, I made a face. She paused, inspected my bemusement, & asked, ‘Wait, did you want your wine dry?’
👑 Storm King
Storm King is such a special space.
Just a few hours north of the city, Storm King is ‘a 500-acre outdoor museum where visitors experience large-scale sculpture and site-specific commissions under open sky.’
But an About page on their website can’t articulate the beauty of the landscaped hills, meadows, & forests. It is a joyful experience, wandering the museum & discovering the large-scale installations & sculptures arranged throughout the expanse.
Supplied with BLT’s, snacks, & cider, Ash & I picnicked in a meadow amongst sculptures & the song of cicadas. I’d love to go one more time in the Fall, if any of y’all wanna taste some clean air & take a picture with a Three Legged Buddha.
🍅 A very tasty BLT
An Otway baguette
Farmer’s market thick-sliced tomatoes
Crispy bacon
Kewpie
Iceberg lettuce
💃 Nooriyah | Boiler Room London
This is one of my favorite Boiler Room sets.
Nooriyah bring out her Dad to start the show, as he strums an intro into her DJ set.
Nooriyah was born in Saudi Arabia, grew up in Japan, & now lives in the UK. So the set blends a vibrant range of sounds into this set.
She’s coming to Brooklyn 10/3 if anyone is in the mood to dance :)
🎁 3 GOODIES I WANT
🛫 Charcoal Studio Pleated Trackpants - $139
If you wear jeans on an airplane, I have questions.
Denim doesn’t really ~ breathe ~ & hugs your crotch with uncompromising rigidity. Denim on a 5-hour+ flight is a wild proposition. I’ve struggled to find an alternative, but I think these pleated trackpants are the answer.
First, this company is rad. Front Office was founded by Australian surgeon, Ken Sakata, who taught himself how to make clothing during the pandemic. He began his career in clothing by designing merch for a fictional team, Queensland Football Club. He gained media attention when folks realized the joke. He noted: “I think it’s funny if a fake football club makes the best merchandise in Australia.”
His brand has evolved past merch into really beautiful menswear e.g. overshirts, jackets, trousers with a focus on fabric. On his TikTok, he details the inspiration for these trackpants, Samurai hakama pants, which is really cool. I love the pleats & the cut. Now I just need a vacation to test out their flight performance.
👟 Magliano Polisportiva 2000 - $791
$800 is arguably pricey for a pair of sneakers but
…
I’m worth it.
🎒 Randoseru Cowhide Backpack - $670
Per the NY Times:
For nearly 150 years, many Japanese children have begun elementary school with the same style of backpack, called a randoseru.
Carrying the bulky bag to school is not required, but the near-totemic status of the randoseru dates back to the 19th century, during the Meiji era
Shopping for the randoseru is a ritual that starts as early as a year before a child enters first grade. Grandparents often buy one for their grandchildren as a commemorative gift. The leather versions have an average price of around 60,000 yen, or $380.I think I can channel my Japanese heritage to rock this backpack. Thoughts?
🦪 THE BEST THING I ATE ALL WEEK
“Everybody brings wine. I bring bread.”
When Larry David attended a dinner party, he opted for a baguette instead of the de facto dinner party contribution of a dry chenin. I admire the zag, but I think I can do better.
Rigor Hill Market in Tribeca sells the cookie dough of my favorite dessert. Their cookie consists of brown butter, buckwheat, chocolate chip, & sea salt. I surprised Ash with a roll of cookie dough & we spent the next few weeks baking cookies with the ease of slicing a round from the log & heating up the oven. Salty & decadent, the uneven chunks of chocolate melt across the cookie surface. At home, you top the cookie with your own sea salt.
So duh, these cookies were The Best Thing I Ate All Week. They are also the perfect gift to bring to your next dinner party.
🪤 THE FINAL WORD
Still digging the newsletter? Like & share it with your friends (please)!
- jefe
But I can explain
I wear jeans on a plane lol