i don’t have a cute little tuesday remark this week, but nevertheless, tuesday is here. tuesday waits for no man. there we go.
great start to the week this week! the IPCC put out yet another report that essentially amounts to what we all already know: we’re currently locked in to being slightly fucked, things are definitely going to get more fucked, and nobody is actually doing anything about it.
i’ve written rants (or is it a “screed” if it’s written? maybe rants are verbal) in this very newsletter before about climate reporting, collective problem solving, blah blah blah et cetera and i’m not going to get back into it again. the solution is to become a communist, and to get as many of your friends to become communists as it takes to do enough communism at a large enough scale to create a planned economy, and then use that state power & planning to forcibly halt fossil fuel usage and mandate a transition to energy sources that won’t kill us all. this isn’t a joke, this is what every climate scientist in the world agrees on at this point. capitalism is incompatible with humanity surviving the 21st century. call it socialism if that sounds nicer, whatever. do mutual aid projects too, they save lives, but that’s treating symptoms. the planned economy is the key piece.
so that’s the scoop!
on friday i went to the first live music show i’ve been to in oh probably 18 or 20 months. i’d gone out with a woman the night before who mentioned the concert, and i said oh who are you seeing, and she said tune-yards have you heard of them, and i said oh hell yeah that should be great, and she said wow nobody else i’ve talked to has heard of them, and i made some kind of remark i’m sure and took another sip of my cocktail, and then the next evening about 2 hours before the concert started she texted me to say her friend had bailed and would i like to go with her instead, and despite having only met her 22 hours prior, i said yes that would be great.
loud concerts with mask requirements maybe aren’t my favorite genre of second date but it was really pretty incredible to realize how much i’d missed them. like when you’re running errands all day with kind of a slight headache feeling irritable and wondering which muscle aches are because you hit the gym the previous day and which muscle aches are just going to be there forever because you’re in your 30’s now, and then you take a sip of water for the first time in 18 hours and don’t stop drinking until you’ve finished the whole glass and are like, oh, yeah, that was the problem.
it was a great show. i would say i am a casual fan of their music rather than an enthusiast, but i really like their hits, and boy did their hits hit. my concert dance moves are rusty so i was relying on the white guy at a concert standby of kind of swaying around in time to the music with one hand in my pocket and one hand holding a drink and occasionally jumping up and down a little bit if things got extra rowdy. but it made me want to buy tickets to every show on the venue’s calendar. it made me want to drive straight to goodfoot and grab a shitty whiskey ginger and hustle straight out onto the dance floor. it made me think about buying a guitar for the one millionth time this year.
and as long as we’re on the music tip, i’ve had ‘trap door’ by stars stuck in my head for two weeks now so check that out as well. stars and the album leaf, the two bands it’s cool to reference right now.
1. painting
this might be a fun one this week. i still don’t have a real read on how much stuff i’m allowed to cram into one of these newsletters but this one might be image-heavy.
here’s a slightly different starting point. i have half a dozen of these little moleskine notebooks orbiting my life at any one time, i think i’ve written a list of all of them before for this maybe, and sometimes i’ll actually use them to do some sketching. sketching on paper is still easier for me in many ways than digitally. i doubt that will come as a surprise to most of you. but i haven’t started a piece this way in quite a while.
from paper, into my iPad, where i can roughly sketch over them. from here i just picked one.
very first blocks, starting to get color in there. starting in grayscale is very helpful for values and contrast, but for me it’s usually then even more of a challenge to get color involved than it would be if i started from scratch.
kind of blue and pale. remind you of anyone? me neither i’m not sure what i meant there.
i fiddled with the contrast and hues, knocked down the saturation in the back and brought the values darker as well. through the course of this i paused several times to add a slight overlay layer with an orange-to-violet gradient. like a thin glaze. depending on the blend mode it can really help bring the colors closer together so they feel more cohesive. it feels like cheating, kind of, but it isn’t. there’s no such thing as cheating.
brightening some things up and getting more contrast in there. you may have noticed that a lot of my tall conifers end up with red points. this does not usually exist in nature. also i chopped off that far left mountain’s top because it wasn’t working with the tree in front of it.
here you can tell the overlay is doing a lot of work. from here to the final there’s even more hue / contrast adjustments, and i added a little tent and a camp fire. and some scrub brush in the front to help with the framing. scroll up for the final.
2. poem
treasure poem - summer 2020
we locked all our princesses away
for safekeeping —
an abundance of caution,
and by the time it was over
you’d be a fool to imagine
we still had the keys
3. vegan reuben
i guess i could just say “reuben” at this point, right? i think you all kind of know the deal by now. i’ve made these before, and last year in november ish i believe, i spent a couple weeks working on different seitan recipes and brining methods, seeing how close i could get. i didn’t really document any of those seitan experiments but there’s always next time. anyway i had some leftover seitan half-loaves in my freezer and now that i’m saying that, i wonder how long seitan keeps in the freezer.
seitan with pickling spice crust, vegan worcestershire, horseradish, chili sauce, kraut, rye bread, onions, cheese (Chao), mayo, and hot sauce
onions + all the other things you’d expect get combined into the russian dressing. adjust to taste.
slice up some seitan and lay it out at roughly the right size for the bread. cook it up for a few minutes on one side, carefully flip the assemblage, and then throw a slice of cheese on top, cover with a lid, and toss a little water in there to steam it up. yum. melty.
rye, lightly toasted
russian dressing on both pieces, then plop the seitan and cheese down
top with a ton of sauerkraut. i like to heat mine up a little bit but dealer’s choice.
voila!
4. let’s remember some shows
i was going to write this section about second dates and how much higher pressure they are than first dates. but i couldn’t remember enough of my second dates to make any kind of interesting list. write your own jokes here. don’t send them to me.
i got asked recently what the best show i’ve ever been to is and while i think generally speaking these kinds of questions are very similar to asking people about their dreams (i.e. perfunctory almost to the point of being rhetorical and more of a way to steer the conversation back to the interests of the asker than out of any genuine interest) i thought it could be interesting for some people who have not thought about these bands in a long time.
the other interesting (“interesting”) thing about these lists is that my memories of these shows are so context-dependent… i can pull a handful out of thin air but more often, i’ll be doing something completely different and something will remind me of an amazing show i saw 8 years ago that i otherwise would have completely forgotten about. so, grain of salt, etc. but here’s a list of 5 really good shows i’ve seen, maybe the best.
the antlers touring ‘kettering’ in 2009 ish. i was in undergrad in boulder, had just recently heard the album, and went to the show expecting a cheap night of sad sack music. but in fact, they fucking rocked. like, rocked out. i’ve never heard such a transformational performance of an album.
caribou, also probably 2009-2010. caribou is another group i would not expect to put on a kickass show, i was expecting more of a dj set type vibe, but they had 2 drummers. 2 drummers! with full drum kits. the vibe was insane.
reptar - maybe 2010 or 2011. i’ve seen this band a couple times and their albums get kind of old and repetitive but seeing them in the tiny basement of some shitty bar in denver, the lead singer’s energy is undeniable. plus the music is fun
m83 touring whatever album that was that midnight city was on. the rest of the concert was great but the absolute highlight was their performance of ‘sitting’, a track i had never heard before from an album i didn’t know existed. people went nuts.
the album leaf, two or three times 2009-2012ish. this is stretching it - these guys always did an amazing show, great visuals, lighting cues, etc. - but the main reason it’s on the list is every time we went to see them, we got thai food at the place up the street beforehand, and every time, the guys from the band were in there eating too. also one time someone right in front of my friend collapsed on him during the show and they didn’t stop playing. that’s not necessarily positive i guess but it’s certainly memorable.
i think if you asked me next week most of these would still be on there. but i’ve seen some great portugal the man shows too. lcd soundsystem was great. this will destroy you. the national of course. the midnight. i should start a scrapbook.
okay well that’s it for this week. have a good week everyone. see ya next tuesday. bye.
Hey, I was at those first four shows. They indeed rocked. What a time to decide to social media creep on people I haven't kept in touch with. Liked & subscribed.