Cinnamon Toast

"Unexpected Answer, Magritte, 1933

A lot of you have been asking me for a status update on the weird path near my house, where the road deadends but the sidewalk continues out to the side of the gas station. Well in late August some city guys came through to cut back the tall weeds but they didn't clean up any of the windblown trash first, they just mowed over everything and left it there to mulch. All those shredded Doritos bags made the path look like Mardi Gras the day after, all spangled, piss-wet and hungover. I sort of figured it would stay there forever but it didn't take long for the wind to take it and blow it through the fence onto the disrupted wasteland of corrupt construction on the 6-10 connector.

There isn't much about the new construction that's cute, but this is there, and it's cute:

There appears to be no controls on this little guy, which I respect.

After 3 (?) years I went to a basement gig, I couldn't resist-- the other night I went out to see Carlos Gonzalez, Asps, Suicide Magnets, and Nastura Hospitium, at "the Ridge". I never went to this spot before but at the same time I've been there a million times and I'm there now-- a basement in a house and there's a fog machine and a digeridoo and thankfully neither is active. I missed the first set but caught great sets from the rest. Asps was like a meditation on various household hums, Carlos did a skit with video that was superb of course, and Wendy SM played acoustic guitar (!) sitting down (!!) and barefoot (!!!!!). Vocals of course through her signature Suicide Magnets hysterical vibrato signal chain. I feel like one way that artists communicate a performance identity is through footwear-- Wendy's show shoes have always been Cuban heels, and they were present, just unworn, tucked neatly to the side on stage right.

I had a dream I was in a Japanese 7-11, and woke up a little bittersweet with the awareness that I was in fact 6717.61 miles away (I looked it up). Japanese 7-11 is the best, there's like actual fresh food, good coffee, beer, stationary, and it's all extremely cheap. As pictured, you can get a hard boiled egg, that's my dream coffee shop add-on. Well I didn't want to dwell on a memory so later that day I went to the 7-11 here in Olneyville and honestly it was pretty good. I got a coffee and a bag of spicy peanuts and sat in the sun outside. It's no mugwort red bean bun, but a coffee and a snack and a sunbeam, that's nice anywhere you can find it. While I was making my coffee I heard the woman at the counter laugh and say "He looks like half Boo Berry half Count Chocula!" and then laugh really hard, I have to assume that was about me. You can't get that at the Japanese 7-11, and honestly I would miss it.

I rediscovered cinnamon toast. Almost walked to the expensive bakery just for this cinnamon bun that I don't even like (too dry), then I remembered that I have bread and butter and cinnamon ready at hand. I really treasure a location where I can walk to from my house and get a little treat but some things really are perfect at home. Guess how much butter I used? The answer is: a lot.

OK while we're talking about coffee shops, I went to the best one in the city (the Speed Shop) a few weeks ago and the solitary barista / owner was playing jungle 45s on 33, it was a great feeling. The Saturday morning crowd was like 40% DJs and contemporary dance music producers and a silent look of "is this happening? do they know? I love this" flitted from one face to the next like a butterfly on a field of blossoming milkweed. Finally someone said something and after trying it the other way, the decision was made to remain at walking speed. "you don't have to flip them as often this way". Much respect!

links/misc

• Cartoonist and friend Ines Estrada is celebrating the 10th anniversary of her brand GATOSAURIO! There's a lot of cool stickers, patches, and more on her website at the moment, check it out-- [gatosaurio.com].
• I still have a good amount of these Wolfman papers left, so if you want a cool picture of Lon Chaney Jr to hang up in your practice room, study, or boudoir, order now. 3 for $10. Last week I said "boudoir" online so many times and then there was a network outage and I thought I got shadowbanned. It was two unrelated incidents though. Or was it???? (it was). [link]
• Wow I talked to more than a few people in the past month about ORB.FARM, which I wrote about on here awhile ago. DID YOU KNOW that the Orb Farm guy has a sort of earlier version of that project called SAND SPIEL? I know one of you does because I said I would post the link like months ago and then I forgot until now (Hi!). link is here: [sandspiel.club]. And then to get really wild there's SANDSPIEL STUDIO which lets you fiddle with the energy and motivation of each molecule, it's wild. [studio.sandspiel.club]. And Orb Farm is here: [orb.farm]
• Kind of related to Orb Farm / Sand Spiel, I just realized that KID PIX is online courtesy of Archive.org. You can load an emulator of an old Macintosh and run Kid Pix right in the browser, with all the sounds and everything. Damn, this really takes me back. [archive.org]

Archives of previous posts is here, in the coat room: [coatroom]

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To write me a nice message, use the contacts page: [link]

To leave a little donation to help in the maintance of this castle, OR to simply hear the sound of a large bell, which is good luck, visit the temple area: [link]

As always, if you're bugging out or need a respite from endlessly scrolling the feed, you are welcome to hang out in the castle as long as you want. :)

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