pill bug

yeah hi.

ok so since I wrote this post, about things closing and how that sucks and I don't know how to appreciate things right or something, two restaurants and a record store within 1/2 mile of my place unexpectedly closed. This is the vibe right now. This is a time of everyone failing despite their best efforts because money is worth pocket lint

who's doing ok? i want to know. landlords? You'll do great when everyone's homeless, you coalhearted toads you.

Meanwhile this weird thing (this thing? this?) surpassed 100k total views. The stats must be a lie, right? nobody's reading this. Anyway we're going back to bartering with goats, alright? if you don't have any goats you'll have to starve. It's goats or nothing.

totally stole this image from the web

If you've read a post or two prior to now you'll know I sieze up under stress like a pillbug

I've had so much free time and I can't get anything done. A friend said to me recently "you already know how to starve. You just have to learn to make art at the same time." This is true. I don't think I'll ever learn though. Destined to live up to about 15% of my potential. 

Tell me some stories of successful people who sat around and picked their nose until they were half a century old. Inspiring! this is what i need. send postcards of Grandma Moses paintings and ..just found a cute "artists who got started VERY late in life" ad forward click bait buzzword listicle (ew, ew) and one of the artists cited wasn't recognized until their 30s. no no no no no. that's not how this works

Grandma Moses and – oh boy man, it's is "30 is old" articles all the way down. what the hell gen z/alpha, what, whoever the fuck you are. Is it illegal to write listicles if you can conceive of adulthood? grow up. 

WHO???? find the late bloomers and send me postcards about them. I'm just getting started in life. All those bands I went to see were just candy. I didn't even entertain the idea of being an adult until now. Let me live the rest of my life in peace. jerks.

April Fish Day 2: The Jackassening

 an assortment of photos I found today in an April Fools' Day google image search

(OG Fish Day post here)

ITS DIFFICULT / AND THEN ITS DONE

Weird having lived in one city long enough to see almost all my favorite joints close.

My first heartbreak here was the Nova Express Cafe on Fairfax, and the one that hurt me the most personally, probably, was the C++ 24 hour punk rock coffee shop in Glendale (rules on the wall: "don't come in and be a drunk fool. tip or make coffee at home"). I'm guessing I've mentioned both before but I don't know if I'll bother to check. Another tough loss was the Cat Club on the strip, because André and I had once driven Dee Dee home from there - I had just met him once prior, and I had my one and only heart to heart chat with him on the way to his place. (me: "Dee Dee, why don't you drive?" him: "I don't trust myself not to do something stupid") This is also where the public memorial was for him after his death, and when Arthur Kane walked in, André leaned in and said to me: "that man is a living legend."

Living in a city of constant change as they all are, and especially in the throes of capitalism destroying all our good things, knowing anything could go bankrupt and split at almost any time, it's counterintuitive that I do this thing with a few special places, and that's make a point of visiting them infrequently, so they don't lose their magic (Toi Thai is the pique example of this dumb behavior - I've gone twice in the past six months, but really only because the first of those two was with a friend who passed away not long later, and I couldn't bear that to be my last current memory of the place)

So here's something I still only do at most only once every couple years: sit for an afternoon and read all the notes in the magic chess table at the Alcove cafe. I sincerely hope that place *does* close, and greedily I can purchase that table and take it out of commission and love it forever privately before it fills with self promotion and fuck yous. but for now: it still remains a spot where (mostly) people leave love letters and affirmations and off the cuff well intentioned poetic nonsense.

I sometimes stick a note or two in there myself, and this time I did something I haven't done before: maybe I'm going to hell - a principled documentarian should only observe - but I took a note home. It just really spoke to me.

Some favorites (for the sentiment, the humor, the handwriting, whatever) from this last visit, below. They do obviously get purged every couple years (individual drawers at different times, as they fill beyond usability, probably) and slowly regenerate. Some have dates written on them and these go back to late 2021. A barista told me the owner keeps them all and hangs his favorites in his office. I love that after all these years they don't say anything about it. There's no paper & pen at that table or anything - people discover it on their own, write on and with whatever they can find: napkins, coffee sleeves, notebook pages, lipstick. Either your curiosity leads you there, or it doesn't. And it's not an artsy weirdo hangout. The desserts are pretty good but the Magic Table is the magic (a name many people have given it, possibly independently of each other, over the years).

(good call ditching that apostrophe, Jenna)

depends on what you're using it for?

(thought i might have drawn this for a sec)

before i got to this one

(after)

(ok to live on timid island if you like)

+ cats. duh

(Magic Table product placement)

well, there it is.