Here’s a page from my diary that I put at the top of today’s newsletter: “Making it easier.”
Gift ideas for dads & grads
It’s what folks in the book industry call “Dads & Grads” season. Here are two ideas:
1. Give them one of my books with a few crisp bills as a bookmark. (When in doubt about which book of mine to give, I suggest the deluxe hardcover anniversary edition of Steal Like an Artist.)
2. Gift them a paid subscription to my newsletter. (Sometimes it can feel weird giving digital presents, so I made an analog zine you can download, print out, fold, and customize that will explain everything. There’s even a video to show you how to make it.)
3. Buy something off my gear list, last year’s gift guide, or my yearly list of favorite books.
May 2025 mixtape
Here is a mopey, gloomy, gothy, synthy mixtape for a heating earth. A cousin to Dancing in the Ruins.
I made it from a sealed, pre-recorded cassette I got for 99 cents at the record store. I taped over the cassette’s protection tabs and then I taped over the music and then I taped over the artwork.
I wish Billy Idol’s “Eyes Without A Face” didn’t have to have the bad macho guitar breakdown 3/4 through, but that’s how it goes.
You can listen on Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube.
Filed under: mixtapes
Kubrick, Peep Show, and internal monologues
Today’s newsletter was an excuse to write about the weird experience of binge-watching Peep Show after watching and reading about 2001: A Space Odyssey: “Do you hear an internal monologue?”
April Showers (a mixtape)
After I started May’s mixtape, I remembered that I never posted April’s mix. I made it from a sealed, pre-recorded cassette I got for 99 cents at the record store. I taped over the cassette’s protection tabs and then I taped over the music and then I taped over the artwork.
This is another “sad dad bad had” mix for spring with a bunch of country weepers and other stuff I like.
It was originally going to be more tropical, starting with Michael Hurley’s “Polynesia.” (I listened to a bunch of his stuff after he died because so many people I know posted playlists and radio tributes to him.)
That Side B playlist betrays the fact that I originally had that side play out with Freddie McGregor’s cover of Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released,” but I didn’t think it fit, somehow. (And I wanted to save it for a happy summer/pool playlist in June.)
You can listen on Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube.
Filed under: mixtapes
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