I dunno, I guess I’m going through a bit of a mid life crisis. I’m 45, which, if I’m lucky, is pretty much smack dab in the middle of the ~4500 weeks I’ll have on this planet, and all the things that sound like cliches are kinda true. My hair, which has always been black and thickly luxurious, is much thinner than it used to be. I’m still waiting for my Mitt Romneys to come in, though. And now I have shitty quarantine long hair that’s usually in a little man bun like four years after the trend. So yeah.

Leading up to now, Jen and I were separated for a year back in 2019 - 2020, and I was pretty much resigned to the fact that I was going to be another 40-something divorcee. That was a damn wake up call. That whole experience made time slow down and stretch out much like how years felt when I was a kid. So much shit packed into one short year that felt like 3. Happily, we worked things out and I feel like I have a new lease on life. Being on the edge, just about to fall off, can really wake your ass up. I don’t want to fuck things up again.

So, lots of changes have been and will always be in order from now on. Therapy, meds, mindfulness, yoga, all the usual stuff. And I suppose this newsletter is part of all that. I’ve always been reluctant to share anything because what the hell does anyone care about anything I have to say? But, I guess one good thing about getting old is the increasing ability to say “fuck it” and care a bit less than I used to.

So, hope you enjoy. Smash the like and subscribe button, etc, and reply if you want to talk about anything here!

Shit I’m…

Reading

  • The Dark Forest - book 2 in the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy. I’ve never read much science fiction in the past, but these are pretty cool. If you’re not familiar, it’s written by a Chinese author, and the translations are pretty interesting. They feel much more … I dunno, descriptive than books written in native English. There are some cool concepts at play, and the second book is quite different from the first.
  • The Daily Stoic – yeah, I know. Cheesy self-help, pop-psychology, Broicism™, blah blah. But I dunno, it’s just a nice way to start the day (when I remember to). Ultimately, it’s just a good reminder to not sweat the small shit and just pay attention to the things you can actually control. Seems obvious and easy, but, brains are not very smart. A minute to learn, a lifetime to master, etc.

Using

  • Obsidian – basically just a plain text / markdown editor. But, they’ve managed to get pretty much everything right with how I’d want to build up my collection of ideas and notes. There’s a whole “Personal Knowledge Management revolution” going on right now, mostly credited to a rediscovery of the Zettelkasten method and the popularity (and subsequent downfall?) of Roam Research. Basically, it’s taking a bunch of notes and easily linking them together from the text so you can have your own mini wikipedia or something along those lines. I’m a nerd who loves new apps and tinkering and this shit is right up my alley. The rabbit hole goes deep, and it’s flexible enough to look and act pretty much however you want if you put in the time with the right themes and plugins. It’s pretty much emacs for normals and I’m here for it.
  • Raycast – this is pretty much the latest iteration of the whole launcher app idea that started with Quicksilver back in the day, which led to Launchbar and, most recently, Alfred. Those are all great and, in my opinion, necessary tools for using a computer, but Raycast feels like the next generation of the idea. It’s based on javascript, of course, and has a built in extension browser, etc. But, it also incorporates the nearly-ubiquitous command-k command palette approach to things you navigate to, and has the ability to interact with web APIs baked right in. This means you can do things like create Jira tickets right from it instead of having to open that piece of shit in your browser.

Wearing

  • Cardigan – I got this cardigan for Christmas when it was on sale and I shit you not, I’ve worn it pretty much every day since. This plus my house shoes makes me feel like Mr. Rogers. My friend Zac described it as “feral” and that feels about right.

Automating

  • Home automation – I’ve gone all in with HomeKit since everything I have is Apple for the most part. This means at any given point it’s hard to tell if I just misconfigured something, the network is being crappy, or if the house is haunted. HomeKit doesn’t have as much stuff out there as Alexa and whatnot, but Homebridge makes it pretty good. for the most part, though, it’s Hue and Lutron lights that turn on and off by themselves using some Aqara motion sensors. I’ll write some more specific stuff about all this in future issues.
  • Personal automation – this is mostly just stuff around using shortcuts to automate things. The main thing lately is using focus modes to automate things like turning zoom, my webcam app, and diffused light on for video calls and whatnot. I’ll write some of this up in the future as well when I have it more dialed in.

Listening to

  • Luminist – Metroid Resynthesized — this is an album I’ve been looking for since I was like 13 or whenever I first started playing Metroid on the NES. That game’s music has never been surpassed (Marble Madness comes close) but the only renditions available that I knew of were the actual 8-bit game music and the band covers like The Advantage, Minibosses, and Stemage. I loved them all, but when I heard this Luminist version it was like a layer of grime was taken off of the music. It’s a perfectly faithful rendition, just more lush and high resolution, and pretty much perfect.
  • Messa – Close — a friend excitedly recommended this to us in our music slack describing it as a mix of doom, atmospheric goth rock, and straight jazz. Which, hell yeah. First listen… hmm. Second listen, ok there’s some cool stuff here… Third, fourth listens, HOLY SHIT. It’s incredible. Definite contender for album of the year.

Cooking

  • Superiority Burger – our 8 year old wanted to go vegetarian, so I’ve been trying out a bunch of recipes. I remembered that Brooks Headley (of Universal Order of Armageddon, Born Against, etc.) is now a world famous vegan chef who invented a veggie burger that’s veggie/grain forward instead of pretending to be meat with beet juice blood and whatnot. He’s based in NYC, but his Superiority Burger had a popup here in Portland a few years ago. Unfortunately, I found out about it too late. So, I found a recipe online and made it a few weeks ago. It’s pretty involved, but damn good. Give it a try!

Seeing

Live music is back, and I’m like a pig in shit. Here are some shows I went to recently:

Yob — My first show after 2 years of quarantine. What a way to come back. The drummer from Brothers of the Sonic Cloth was filling in for the tour, and he was killer. As usual, a crushing and beautiful experience.

Shiner — I discovered Shiner 20 years too late during Covid. After falling in love with Hum’s Inlet album, Shiner was a revelation. The Egg is an amazing album, and when I saw they were going to be playing Doug Fir when I was at the Yob show I mad a mental note to go, but of course forgot. Luckily I got an email or something reminding me about it, and man am I glad I did. They sounded great, played for a long time, and were heavy as hell. They even played a few encore songs.

Jonah’s Onelinedrawing opened, which was kinda funny/weird. He’s the singer from Far doing a solo singer-with-guitar thing. Not really my jam, and he’s pretty extra. He did play a version of the good Far song, which was cool.

Back story: I payed drums for Gehenna back in like 1995 for a small west coat tour with Integrity. We hooked up with Far and Damnation AD for a couple shows. One of them was at some line dancing club in Sacramento. My drums were on the tallest drum riser I’ve ever seen. There were like 30 people there or something. While we were playing something happened and the club wanted us to stop for some reason. We kept playing the song we were in the middle of and Jonah was freaking out telling us to stop. He probably didn’t want the show to get shut down because they hadn’t played yet or something. He ended up unplugging out amps like a dickhead. So yeah, that’s Jonah.

Deftones — the first “big” show since lockdown. I bought the ticket like 2 years ago and it was postponed a few times, but it finally happened. It was at the Moda Center where the Blazers play, which is pretty wild since the last time I saw them was in like 2012 at the Crystal Ballroom with Alex.

The opening band was called VOWWS and they were whatever. A two piece guitar + keyboards thing trying real hard to be goth with trench coats and stuff. Pass.

Next up was Gojira. Las time I saw Gojira was at the Hawthorne theater opening for Devin Townsend Project, so seeing them in a huge venue was pretty wild. They’re really fun live and they know how to work an audience. They’re famous for their weird guitar slidey screechy thing and wild double bass drumming, but I never realized how they can get down with some four-on-the-floor, meat and potatoes headbanging stuff. Pretty fun.

Then Deftones came out. Apparently it was the first show of their whole tour, so basically the first time playing a show in like 2 years or so. The sound was pretty crap for the first few songs, but it got better and they got more into their groove. It was pretty funny seeing how they guitar player is still a dude wearing big ass baggy shorts and long hair, Chino is Chino, and they had a new bass player after Sergio from Quicksand quit last year. They played Diamond Eyes, which was what I was mainly hoping for. They also played one of their songs from the deep Nü Metal days.

Monolord — Jen bought me tickets for this show at Dante’s for my birthday last year, which was awesome because I had no idea they were even touring. I’d never seen them live, but have played the shit out of their albums over the last couple years (especially the instrumental versions that are excellent work music).

First up was Simple Forms, which is the bass player from Yob’s side band with his brother on vocals. They were pretty cool and pretty unique.

Then Firebreather was up. They’re pretty much Sweden’s answer to High On Fire. Pretty ballsy. I need to listen to their album some more.

Then Monolord took the stage. A power trio’s power trio. Their drummer had his UNFUCK EVERYTHING shirt on and signature slicked back hair, and the bass player was dressed like a Scandinavian Les Claypool or something. The guitarist/singer looked the regular part, skinny with long ass hair. He had one of my favorite tattoos I’ve seen too.

They fuckin' brought it. Crushing riff after crushing riff for more than an hour. It was everything I hoped it would be.

Earthless — first up was Dommengang. They played pretty great psych rock stuff, and their drummer was super fun to watch. The guitar player kinda looked like a young Michael McDonald, hell yeah. Apparently they’re from Portland too, pretty cool stuff.

Earthless took the stage and proceeded to do like a 20 minute mellow intro buildup thing. Honestly, it was getting kinda old. Like, I know 20 minute songs is their thing, but this was kinda ridiculous and a bit boring.

Finally, though, they started to ratchet things up. Building and building and building until things started to hit ridiculous levels of energy and shred. It was pretty glorious. A couple encores as well. I should have known better than to doubt them.

Sunless — a tiny metal show at a shitty bar (High Water Mark).

Nature is healing.

First band was Magdalene. The guys I’m currently playing music with used to be in this band, but quit for Artistic Differences or something. They were pretty cool. Their album is rad.

Next was Aseitas. The dudes in the band were super nerdy and one of the guitar players had a ridiculous medieval axe looking guitar and dangly feather earrings. They were pretty great. Just super technical nerdy shit that I love.

Then Noctambulist, the band touring with Sunless played. They were pretty good death metal, not really my thing.

Then Sunless came on. Holy shit. I’ve loved their albums for a few years now, and I kinda equated them as a newer, younger Gorguts. I wasn’t really anticipating their live show though. Their bass player is a tall nerdy guy with glasses, a beard, and dreads that literally go down to his shins and a six string bass (of course). The guitar player looked like a cross between Nautas Kaupas and Hank Schrader from Breaking Bad wearing a black leather jacket. The drummer was a Normal Looking Dude.

They started playing, and it was pretty unreal. The guitar player is singing and doing these wildly technical single note picking parts the whole time. The bass player sets up his dreads to hang in front of them so they’re almost sweeping the stage while he lays down gnarly bass lines. And the drummer was technical perfection. I was pretty much blown away.

All of this for like 35 people.

The guitar player I’ve been playing with was there for the first few bands. Unfortunately he missed Sunless because the girlfriend of one of the first band’s members threw up her entire stomach on his girlfriend’s nachos and she was bummed out and wanted to leave.

Drawing

A few weeks ago I decided to start drawing as a hobby. I haven’t really drawn since I dropped out of Pratt back in 1998. I had the classic “you’re not good at drawing” childhood and never tried to draw until I decided I wanted to get into graphic design after taking a chemistry class I hated my first semester of junior college. I figured I had to be able to draw to be a Real Designer, so I took some basic classes at the JC. After a bit of instruction I realized I wasn’t too bad, it was just a matter of learning how to see differently. Then I transferred to Pratt and got put into an advanced drawing class that was pretty much all life drawing, which I had never done before. My teacher, Mr. San Felipo, had some pretty intense “not quite my tempo” vibes, literally removing me from my seat so he could draw instead of me because my shit was so bad.

But, I learned a lot.

Then I dropped out and pretty much never drew again. For a lot of people, drawing is “therapeutic” or relaxing or whatever. For me it’s the opposite. While I’m drawing my heart rate increases, I feel nervous, and I catch myself holding my breath for no reason. Basically, super high anxiety, judging myself the entire time.

So, I’ve decided to stop all that nonsense and just draw. I went out and bought an iPad mini with an Apple Pencil and I loaded up the copy of Procreate I bought years ago and never used. Interestingly, I’m way more apt to draw on an iPad than in a paper notebook because the thought of ruining a nice notebook makes me even more stressed, so this has been perfect.

And, dangit, I’m having a ton of fun. Rediscovering my abilities 24 years later has been pretty cool. I took a couple Skillshare classes (that link will get you and me a free month) on Procreate and portrait drawing, and they were surprisingly helpful. I’m feeling like I’m in The Zone™ for the first time in ages. I actually look forward to drawing, which is really new for me. I have a lot of practicing to do, and maybe someday I’ll get up the courage to use color, but I’m going to try to stick with it this time.

Here are some recent sketches I’ve done, and I’ll post more in future issues.

Laughing at

  • Jerry Garcia — we haven’t lived in southern California for 14 years or so now, but after 30 years there it runs deep. Jerry Garcia (no, not the Grateful Dead dude) is a comedian from Huntington Park and he looks pretty much exactly like my great uncle Dickie and hearing him talk feels like a warm blanket. His HBO special is called “It’s Not My Weekend” and it rules.

Learning about

  • Building A Second Brain – my work has a personal development budget that’s normally for things like attending conferences, and for some reason I’ve never used it during my six years there. So this year I realized I could buy a bunch of online courses and subscriptions to educational things. One of the things is the Building A Second Brain course. It’s basically an organization system for keeping track of all your projects and life areas and stuff and a methodology for making sure you just write shit down and put it some place you’ll be able to find it so you don’t have to keep it in your head. Not having more crap swirling around in my head sounds good to me, so hopefully this helps a bit.
  • Youtube – I’ve been paying for Youtube Premium™ for year snow mostly because I don’t want my kids to see their crappy ads when watching stuff and the few times I’d click on a Youtube link I wanted no part of sitting through 45 seconds of a Geico ad or whatever. But I think I finally realized that Youtube kind of rules if you find the right stuff. I mostly watch nerdy shit I’m too embarrassed to link to here, but I finally get it!

Watching

  • Raised by Wolves – this is an interesting sci-fi series on HBO about some atheist androids (lol) who were sent to a remote planet to raise some atheist babies after they lost a war to the fanatically religious Sol worshippers.