Los Angeles had its coldest February in 132 years, so, weather-wise, we had an uncharacteristic visit. Last time I was in Malibu was the weekend before it burned in November last year. Returning this week, what was remarkable was all the new growth coming out of the hills from all the rain. Bright neon green contrasted with the blackened palm trees. Meanwhile, Griffith Park looked like San Francisco…
“Recently, I phoned Levitin. He told me he suspects that humans during the Trump era are unwittingly re-enacting the rat experiments that James Olds and Peter Milner did in the 1950s, wherein the creatures repeatedly pressed a lever to feel an electric jolt to their reward centers. The poor subjects became such hostages to gratification that they stopped eating, drinking, even having sex. Eventually, they died of exhaustion.”
—Jennifer Senior, “Our Brains Aren’t Designed to Handle the Trump Era”
“The people who lived in the portal were often compared to those lab rats who kept hitting a button over and over to get a pellet. But at least the rats were getting a pellet, or the hope of a pellet, or the memory of a pellet. When we hit the button, all we were getting was to be more of a rat.”
—Tricia Lockwood, “The Communal Mind”
Old pocket notebook, meet new pocket notebook. For the guardian spirit, I decided on this painting of Salt-N-Pepa by Frank Morrison, from the book The Roots of Rap.
If you pre-order the book before midnight EST April 1, my friends at Workman will send you a free 8″ x 10″ print of my blackout poem, “Overheard on the Titanic.” (“I mean yes we’re sinking / but the music is exceptional.”) Details here. Pre-order sale is now over! (If you want a mini 6″ x 6″ print, tear out the page in Keep Going.)
Here’s a closer look at the print:
One of my favorite little art books to show the kids is photographer Inge Morath’s Saul Steinberg Masquerade, a collection of portraits of people wearing Steinberg’s paper-bag masks. (More from the book here.)
Here’s a mask Owen and I made when he was pretty small out of a Trader Joe’s bag:
Steinberg also made these funny little single sheet masks with just a spot for your nose. I’ll make one sometimes if we’re goofing around:
My pal Wendy is a big Steinberg geek, too — here she is entertaining Jules with a napkin a year ago in San Francisco:
The other day I reminded Owen of the book’s existence, and the next morning he surprised me in the bathroom:
Never gets old.
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