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100 things that made my year (2018)

Friday, January 4, 2019

After angsting for a few years over whether I’d ever write another book again, giving the “How To Keep Going” talk in March and spending the rest of the year turning it into my next book.
Getting a real telescope for my 35th birthday. Seeing the rings of Saturn and the moons of Jupiter with my own eyes.
Watching my youngest son draw. My wife embroidering his accident.
Putting together a plug-and-play studio for my oldest son. His amazing jam, “Loveheart.”
So much Kraftwerk. Buying the 3-D Catalogue set for the kids. Kraftwerk in the studio. Kraftwerk in space. Early Kraftwerk. Kraftwerk fan art. Kraftwerk mixes. Even Kraftwerk covers, like The Balanescu Quartet’s Possessed and Senor Coconut’s El Baile Aleman.
The Lang Stuttering Institute at The University of Texas. Knotted Tongues: Stuttering in History and the Quest for a Cure.
Visiting Los Angeles the weekend before Malibu burned. Driving the PCH in a stupidly large rental car. Walking El Matador beach. Finding a “correct” Mexican dive next to the Cheesecake Factory in Pasadena with Mike Lowery. Driving the 134 west from Pasadena when Ice Cube’s “It Was A Good Day” came on 93.5 KDAY. Walking around Los Feliz at night with a strawberry ice cream cone. Hiking to the observatory in Griffith Park with the Flynns. Touring the Corita Art Center. The menu at The Best Fish Taco in Ensenada. Reading Eve Babitz’s Eve’s Hollywood on the flight back. Listening to 2Pac’s “To Live & Die In L.A.” for a month afterwards.
The Bill Callahan show at the Austin Public Library.
Library tourism. The Chattanooga Public Library. The Eastham Public Library on Cape Cod.
Driving the 6A through Cape Cod to Provincetown. Clam strips. Lobster rolls. Clam chowder. Taking the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard and running into an old Austin friend in the bookstore.
Listening to Prince’s Piano & a Microphone 1983 while doing the dishes and pretending he was playing for me in the next room.
Sonia Harris’s ginger, lemon and maple syrup tea.
Olivia Jaimes’ Nancy strips.
San Francisco. Burritos in the Mission. Driving the PCH. The boys chasing birds on Rodeo Beach in The Headlands. Celebrating Jules’ 3rd birthday at Presidio Bowl.
Abandoning the notion of linear progress. Creativity as a spiral. Creativity as a renewable energy. James Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games. Giving up on genius. Not being a noun, but doing a verb. Not discarding anything of myself. Wearing many hats. Replacing that dreaded question, “So what’s next for you?” with another question: “What do you want to learn?” Shooting the arrows, then drawing the bullseye.
Thinking of the studio as a garden where ideas grow.
Hot plates. Dart Bowl enchiladas. Torchy’s queso almost every time I came home from the airport. Ramen Tatsu-Ya. Takeout from Maudie’s.
Eating Gus’s Fried Chicken with Drew Dernavich during SXSW, then walking all the way home through the greenbelt while talking to my dad on the phone.
That shopping center at Airport and North Lamar — eating at the revolving sushi bar, shopping next door at Kinokuniya, having dessert at 85C Bakery.
Cheap pies from the grocery store.
Drinking boulevardiers. Baileys on ice.
My wife’s St. Patrick’s Day feast with corned beef, red cabbage, and soda bread.
Watching Coco with the boys.
Seeing Phantom Thread in an empty theater in suburban Baltimore. Watching it at least 3 more times throughout the year, and it getting weirder and funnier each time. Listening to Jonny Greenwood’s wonderful soundtrack.
Pusha T, Daytona. The Beatles vs. Wu-Tang Clan. DOOM XMAS.
This Here is Bobby Timmons.
Every time I got to hip someone to Kenneth Koch’s “You want a social life with friends.”
Looking for like-hearted people vs. like-minded people.
Not thinking about my life after dinnertime.
Making collages. Robots from the Restoration Hardware catalog. Comics from my son’s Peanuts calendar. Swapping speech balloons.
Re-thinking art as a process of falling in love with your material. Letting the materials tell you what they want to be.
Giving it five minutes. Doing a 30-second fact check.
Thinking of the blog as a refrigerator and thoughts as nest eggs.
“…and some sausages!”
Having a bag of tricks for getting writing done. Willing to be bad. Playing with blocks when I’m blocked. Pulling cards when I’m stuck. Starting a project with a new banker’s box. Opening a fresh pack of index cards and pushing them around. Hanging a bulletin board above my desk with pictures of my heroes. Pressing the sleep timer on my clock radio. Smoking a fake cigarette pencil. Knowing that first draft doesn’t have to be good, it just has to exist. Remembering that beautiful things grow out of shit. That you don’t drive ideas, they drive you. Scooping up the residue of the process. Procrastinating. Wearing clothes with pockets.
Interviewing Mac and Laura from Superchunk.
Having breakfast with The Dead Milkmen.
Visiting Valerie Fowler and Brian Beattie’s studio.
The creative magic of diner booths and mundane retail spaces.
Hanging out with my boys in the studio. Taking them to work. Taking them to the art museum. My oldest’s amazing zines, like “How To Make Your Life Go On Forever.” Making fart collages. My youngest’s incredible drawings and his sweet singing voice. Having the boys draw side by side. Making art out of bugs. Thinking about how being a parent is like being an artist. Drawing all the ridiculous things they say.
Drawing this diagram to explain complexity and how families grow.
Real wealth.
Pop-Up Magazine at Hogg Auditorium.
Delivering a new talk, “Creative is not a Noun,” during the Scratch Conference at the MIT Media Lab.
Marvin Gaye rehearsing “I Want You” while lying down on a couch.
David Marchese’s interviews. This interview with Jaron Lanier. This interview with Kate Bush in 2005. Kevin Shields showing off his guitars. Desert Island Discs with Sister Wendy.
The ease of Spotify playlists. The Blitz Club. The Atlanta Soundtrack. Songs from every year, 1925-2018. A mix for restaurants. My 2018 songs.
David Sedaris’s Calypso.
Parquet Courts, Wide Awake!
Drag City records on streaming services.
Reading music books to take my mind off writing. Duane Tudahl’s Prince and the Purple Rain Era Studio Sessions. Lizzie Goodman’s Meet Me In The Bathroom. Paul Elie’s Reinventing Bach. Philip Glass’s memoir, Words Without Music.
Non-fiction written by poets. Patricia Lockwood’s Priestdaddy. Hanif Abdurraqib’s They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us.
Songs that make me want to break down and keep going at the same time. Jonathan Richman, “The Morning of Our Lives.” Wire’s “Outdoor Miner.” Kate Bush’s “Cloudbusting.” Gladys Knight and the Pips’ “On and On.” Schumann’s “Traumerei.” Warren Zevon’s “Mutineer.”
Keeping a diary every day of the week for over two years. Cheerful retrospection. (The why and the how.) Reading diaries, especially visual ones, and especially on the day of the year they were written. Thoreau’s journal. Tape for the Turn of the Year. The Assassin’s Cloak. The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling. Eleanor Davis’s You & a Bike & a Road. Duncan Hannah’s 20th Century Boy: Notebooks of the Seventies. Heidi Julavits’ diary, The Folded Clock.
My oldest starting a diary, only it was just stuff I say that he doesn’t like.
Re-reading James Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me and getting mad as hell.
Voting.
Iggy Pop’s cockatoo.
Feeding off the trolls and feeling sorry for them. Making an enemy of envy.
Celebrating my sixth Father’s Day. Remembering that children try out every single emotion on you first. Remembering that it’s not a vacation with kids along, it’s a trip.
Having something to look forward to. Even a bowl of soup.
Walking, walking, and more walking. Frederic Gros’s A Philosophy of Walking. Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust: A History of Walking. Garnette Cadogan’s essays, “Walking While Black” and “Due North,” Thich Nhat Hahn’s How To Walk. Taneda Santoka’s little book of diaries and haiku, For All My Walking.
Randomly coming across Rick Steves’ wonderful lecture, “Travel As A Political Act,” on PBS late at night.
Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland.
Comedian Nate Bargatze at Hilarities.
Dreaming up a sitcom about a Millennial Thoreau.
Worrying less about getting things done and more about things worth doing. Learning for learning’s sake. Trying to be worthy of my life. Remembering my heroes. Trying to find better images. Having no time for despair. Being the light or reflecting it. Staying alive and getting weird.
Checking in with death. Learning from the leaves. Remembering that “now is the envy of all of the dead.”
Surviving the dark days. Taping this Mary Karr poem on the fridge: “Put down that gun, you need a sandwich.”
Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
Art. Ellsworth Kelly’s Austin. Ed Ruscha at the Ransom Center. Jerry Saltz’s life as a failed artist and 33 rules for being an artist. David Lynch: The Art Life. Agnes Martin, Paintings, Drawings, Remembrances. Chris Ware’s Monograph. John Berger, Confabulations. Agnés Varda and JR’s Faces Places.
Having a good old-fashioned hobby. Knitting at the end of the world. Working hard at play. Working hard at making it not feel like work.
Looking at maps. (While knowing there is no map.)
Paying attention. Looking at stains on the wall. Seeing by turning things upside down. Reading right to left. Seeing moons in pancakes and galaxies in coffee grounds. Looking at the world one piece at a time. Rob Walker’s The Art of Noticing. Lawrence Weschler’s Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences. Making your own connections. Listening closely.
Keeping up the weekly newsletter and (trying) to keep up with all the good newsletters out there. Audrey Water’s HEWN. Matthew Ogle’s Pome. Anne Trubek’s Notes from a Small Press. Warren Ellis’s Orbital Operations. Nick Cave’s The Red Hand Files.
Reading good fiction before bed. Denis Johnson’s The Largesse of the Sea Maiden. Melville’s “Bartleby The Scrivener.” Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Edward Carey, Little. (And seeing his show at the Austin Public Library.)
Becoming a fan of writers on Twitter before I even read their books — people like @EmilyRCWilson and @TedGioia.
Hanging out with friends in Chicago and Evanston. Walking along Lake Michigan. Finally meeting Matt Thomas and having lunch at Lou Mitchell’s.
Being in publishing for a decade and having a million copies in print.
No line at the barbershop.
Getting my photo taken by Clayton Cubitt.
Re-watching favorite movies. Jaws (in July, before flying to Cape Cod). The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Stop Making Sense. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Top Gun. Heat. Much Ado About Nothing. When Harry Met Sally. The Terminator. The Birdcage.
Making The Last Waltz a Thanksgiving tradition.
Last-minute trip to NYC. Sunset in Battery Park then walking for hours afterwards. Stuffing my bag with bagels from Russ & Daughters and Pastrami sandwiches from Katz’s for the plane ride home. (Get two. Always get two.)
Wandering the grounds of Laguna Gloria after taking my son to art lessons. Seeing the peacocks.
The remixes of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s and The White Album.
A photograph of Paul McCartney moving his own microphone.
Music to write to. Bach. Brahms. Mary Lattimore, Hundreds of Days. Chilly Gonzales, Solo Piano III.
Remembering that I don’t have to live in public. Thinking about what can be lost when we share what we love.
Watchin’ teevee. Atlanta: Robbin’ Season. Better Call Saul. Queer Eye. The Defiant Ones. Ali Wong’s Hard Knock Wife. Grand Designs. Billions.
Nacho Libre.
Luke Pearson’s Hilda books.
Horace’s Epistles.
Watching Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown. Reading Kitchen Confidential. Giving him the last words in Keep Going.
Taika Waititi’s movies: Boy, What We Do In The Shadows, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Thor…
Thinking about how paper is a great technology.
Hanging out with Alan Jacobs at Magnolia in Waco on a long drive north.
Our trip to Cleveland.
Building driftwood sculptures with the boys on the beach.
Watching the sun set over Lake Erie.

100 things that made my year (2017)

Monday, January 1, 2018

Suggested accompaniment: my 2017 playlist on shuffle play

Taking a walk every morning because the demons hate fresh air.
Driving the California coast from San Diego to San Francisco.
Going back to Italy. Walking around Milan and Turin to Cannonball Adderly’s Somethin’ Else.
Antigua, Guatemala.
Austin’s new central library. Walking there from my house through the greenbelt.
Watching the solar eclipse in the courtyard of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Lake Michigan in the summer. The lookout at Arcadia. Sleeping Bear Dunes. The S.S. Badger.
Keeping a good old-fashioned diary. Holding my tongue and loosening my pen. Having a good place to have bad ideas. Taping guardian spirits inside the front cover. Re-reading.
Reading diaries. Thoreau, daily. Kafka. Kaethe Kollwitz. Andy Warhol. David Sedaris.
DJing a one-hour set for KUTX.
Getting more and more into to classical music. Taking my son to free concerts around town. Playing Schumann and Bach on piano. Listening to KMFA. Max Richter’s recomposed Four Seasons. Michael Torke’s saxophone quartet, “July.” Jan Swafford’s Language of the Spirit. Stories about Beethoven. Drawing comics about Brahms.
Looking at the moon. Knowing what moon phase it is based on how shitty I feel. Using Sky Guide to find constellations. 100 Aspects of the Moon. The lunar Rashomon collage chapter in Lincoln In The Bardo. Mary Ruefle’s essay on poets and the moon in Madness, Rack, and Honey.
Thinking about seasons.
Glueing one thing to another. Finding the simplest cut.
Hannah Höch.
Lance Letscher.
Being lazy. Taking naps. Lin Yutang’s The Importance of Living. Jenny Odell’s “How To Do Nothing.” Robert Louis Stevenson’s An Apology for Idlers. The song “Hallelujah, I’m A Bum!” Raymond Carver’s “Loafing.” Manifesto of the idle parent.
Buying a huge 4K TV at Costco for the bedroom and watching too much television. Binge-watching The Good Place, Halt and Catch Fire, Detectorists, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Catastrophe, and Grand Designs. Watching bad cable movies on the Roku channel.
Killing whole afternoons with 17776 and Universal Paperclips.
Going to Clark’s on a date with my wife and ordering affogato and then watching every other couple copy us.
Common Sense Media.
Listening to good podcast miniseries while working out, like Jon Ronson’s The Butterfly Effect and Damon Krukowski’s Ways of Hearing.
The digitized Corita Kent archives. Getting her GO SLO poster for Christmas.
Accepting that nobody knows what’s gonna happen and working without hope and without despair.
Chuck Berry (RIP) reciting Theodore Tilton’s poem, “Even This Shall Pass Away.”
Not waking up to the news. Not arguing with strangers on the internet. Staying out of the shitstream. Logging off. Not paying for wi-fi. (“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes — including you.”)
Bill Withers on why he walked away the music business.
Library extension.
My paper dictionary.
An “organ donor” in our neighborhood giving us an old Hammond for the music room.
A neighbor giving my wife a whole case of ginger beer and drinking Moscow Mules all summer.
Saying I could read 10,000 words on Raffi, then finding Sheila Heti’s pro file. Listening to “Bananaphone” on repeat until slaphappy.
Perfume Genius’s “Queen” and No Shape.
Walt Whitman.
Lao Tzu.
X’s More Fun In The New World.
Gang of Four, Solid Gold.
Buying a Rolodex at Goodwill for $2.
Warren Craghead’s Trump drawings.
Nathaniel Russell’s fake fliers.
Old George Carlin specials. Jammin’ in New York.
Stefan Zweig’s biography of Montaigne.
Doing something that will outlast them.
Eating perfect chicken fingers on the beach in Grand Cayman.
$7 Tex-Mex lunch specials. City Of Gold. Molly Savage’s Costco food court painting. “The Case for Bad Coffee” and “In Praise of Ugly Food” from Best Food Writing 2016. Stories about Olive Garden.
Valentina’s Tex-Mex BBQ.
Sitting in a booth at Jim’s on 71.
The new Reese’s peanut butter cups with Reese’s Pieces in them.
Cup of Calm tea.
Eating clam chowder at the Legal Seafood bar in the Philadelphia airport.
Hong Ting’s “The Fisherman’s Song at Dusk.”
Denis Johnson (RIP) on homeschooling his kids.
My friend Laura, saying, “Take it year by year, kid by kid.”
Learning how to learn again. Making lists of what I want to learn. Studying something you love in depth.
Art with the kids. Drawing skeletons. Orchestrated drawings. Raising surrealists.
Getting permission from Nina Katchadourian’s show Curiouser at the Blanton.
Soul music. Sam & Dave’s “Soothe Me.” The Impressions’ “Keep On Pushin’.” D’Angelo’s Black Messiah. Sly & The Family Stone’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On. Al Green doing “Here I Am” on Soul Train. Sam and Dave on German TV in 1967. James Gadson’s drumming for Bill Withers.
Bill Knott’s short poems. (And bonus poems.)
Jackie Shane’s motto, explained during her monologue on “Money,” on Any Other Way: “Do what you want, but know what you’re doing.”
Discovering Walter Murch and In The Blink of an Eye.
Watching old Val Lewton horror movies on Filmstruck.
Blogging every day since October 1st.
Paper.
Laura Walls’ biography of Thoreau.
Getting a new stereo and CD player. Discovering how amazing CDs sound after streaming for so many years.
Going to End of An Ear with my son and buying him Kraftwerk and LCD Soundsystem CDs.
David Rakoff’s Half Empty and his rant about Rent.
Tidying up here and there, but also embracing mess.
Slowing down.
The harp of Mary Lattimore. (And her Instagram.)
Listening to Carly Rae Jepsen really loud in the car. (Emotion and “Cut To The Feeling.”)
Books about exploring. Thoreau, again. John Stilgoe’s Outside Lies Magic. Keri Smith’s The Wander Society. Solnit’s A Field Guide To Getting Lost.
Apocalyptic songs. William Onyeabor’s “Atomic Bomb.” (RIP.) Sonny and The Sunsets’ “Dark Corners.” Tubeway Army’s “Are Friends Electric?” Kate Bush’s “Cloudbusting.”
Watching movies in the theater. Blade Runner 2049. Paterson. The Last Jedi. Baby Driver. Singin’ in the Rain.
Watching movies in bed. Get Out. The Handmaiden. The Lobster. Time Bandits. The Thin Man. My Man Godfrey. In Order of Disappearance. The Limey. Hunt for the Wilderpeople. Christmas in Connecticut.
Re-watching old favorites. Moonstruck. Lebowski. Only Lovers Left Alive. The Apartment. Heat. Groundhog Day. It Happened One Night. Young Frankenstein. Coming To America. When Harry Met Sally. Magic Mike XXL. Royal Tenenbaums. Creed. John Wick!
Starting a fight club with my recycle bin.
Seeing coyotes and roadrunners on our morning walks. The legend of Steve.
The pilot at the Atlanta airport who went out of his way to show me an art installation.
Not telling people how it’s done. John Cage’s parable about not teaching.
Edna St. Vincent Millay reading “Recuerdo.”
James Patterson blurbing himself.
How Esther Pearl Watson paints her characters nude before adding clothes.
Tana Hoban’s books about signs and symbols.
Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s “You May Want To Marry My Husband.” (RIP) Her daughter Paris’s Instagram. Paying attention to what you pay attention to.
Seeing friends during SXSW and the Texas Book Festival.
Drawing comics on the iPad Pro.
Getting to read great books before they’re released. Alan Jacob’s How To Think. Tim Kreider’s I Wrote This Book Because I Love You.
Having a weekly library routine. Going to Miss Monica’s story times at the Hampton Branch at Oak Hill with the kids and hitting P. Terry’s after.
All the funny things my oldest son said. “Your skin keeps your bones from getting dirty!” At the pool: “She wouldn’t talk to me… She must not have any teeth!” At the playground, a kid told him that Jesus was dead, and he said, “So is Beethoven!” Playing him Ray Charles: “Papa, This is making me dance!” Referring to bowling as “pinball.” Seeing our monogrammed towels: “K is for Kraftwerk!” The time he called Leonard Bernstein “Bernie Einstein.” Shouting in frustration, “Who in the world made this stupid screwdriver?? It says ‘Made In China’ but it doesn’t say who made it!!!” The time he walked in on me watching Blade Runner, and he saw Deckard eating with chopsticks, and he said, “That guy is KNITTING HIS NOODLES!” Seeing snow: “I like how snow looks in real life!” The time I told him I thought he’d like marionettes, and he said, “Does she know a lot about bones?”
My two-year-old conducting Beethoven.
Silence. Sleeping with an eye mask and ear plugs.
Teaching myself, finally, to solder. Soldering broken toy electronics back together.
Recording songs on my old Tascam 4-track with my five-year-old, with titles like “Skeleton Girlfriend” and “I Don’t Want To Be Dead (Like Beethoven Is Dead)”
An epic 30-minute UNO game with my wife.
Drinking champagne on ice in a pint glass.
A bowl of cereal when you can’t sleep.
Getting up in the night to take a pee and looking out the bathroom window at the moonlit backyard.
Giving it five minutes. Changing my mind.
Reading books.

Previous years here.

100 things that made my year (2016)

Thursday, January 5, 2017

Mozart’s clarinet quintet in A major.
Taking a walk every morning because demons hate fresh air.
Discovering and researching unschooling. Roberto Greco’s fantastic Tumblr and Pinboard archives. The work of John Holt, his books How Children Learn and How Children Fail, his 55-year-old journal entry, his thoughts on the true meaning of intelligence and how babies are scientists. John Taylor Gatto’s Dumbing Us Down. Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner’s Teaching As A Subversive Activity. Lori Pickert’s twitter. DH Lawrence on how to educate a child: “Leave him alone.” Manifesto of the idle parent.
Mulatu Astatke, Ethiopiques, Vol. 4.
Moving into a new (old) house in the suburbs. Watching the rain from the front porch. Magic in the back yard. Fixing the 40-year-old whole house radio. Taking instruction from our old ovens. Playing hide and seek in the yard. Drawing in chalk on the driveway. Lying in a hammock in the back yard. Looking out the window while doing the dishes.
Still working in a garage, but an insulated, fully A/C-ed one. Looking through my notebooks. Setting up a bliss station.
Doing my part to destroy that dumb cliché, “The enemy of art is the pram in the hall.” Trying to copy how my 3-year-old son makes art in the studio. His lettering. The way he copies signs. His art. Making masks out of Trader Joe’s bags. Collaborating. Baudelaire’s quote, “Genius is nothing more or less than childhood recaptured at will.” Toddler color theory. Do A Dot Art Markers. Crayola Slick Stix. Mid-century photos of children making art at the MoMA. Paul Klee’s handmade puppets for his son. Darwin’s children doodling on the back of his manuscripts. A fifth-grader’s cure for writer’s block.
Practicing piano. Satie. “My Favorite Things.” Prince’s “The Beautiful Ones.” Vince Guaraldi’s “Skating.” Bill Evans’ “Waltz for Debbie.” My son finishing the high E in “Fur Elise.” Pulling up Shazam, playing nonsense on the piano, and seeing what it matches. “Pianovision,” Chilly Gonzales’ word for videos of piano players shot from above.
Filling the house with music. My oldest son requesting the 5th symphony on our walks. (Later, my youngest son singing it. “Duh duh duh duuuuh.”) Drawing musical scores. Reciting the narration from Benjamin Britten’s “A Young Person’s Guide To The Orchestra” by heart. Singing all 9 minutes of Van Morrison’s live version of “Caravan.”
Plain ol’ family life. Doing obsessive dad things like inflating the tires and breaking down boxes for the recycling. Sending my son out to get the Sunday paper. How old toys that disappear for a month become new toys. My wife comparing parenting to being a green screen puppeteer. Coming up with dumb parenting lines like, “Dad is one letter away from dead” and “You can’t spell family without FML.” Complexity. Nailing down what we expect.
Michael Chabon on taking his son Abe to fashion week in Paris.
Hearing Delta 5’s “You” on the radio and discovering that every time I play it my youngest son squeals with delight and starts dancing. (The way he stomps to Caspar Babypants’ “Stompy The Bear”!)
Small victories. Sleeping through the night. Eating dinner. Not hitting your brother. Pooping on the toilet. Indoor voices. Learning to whisper.
Silence.
How Ed Emberley clears his mind.
One-star Amazon reviews.
Photos of people reading my books and my art in the wild. Seeing blackout poems in the classroom. (So many!)
Finding these huge decades-long books of Peanuts daily strips at Costco and reading them at breakfast. This website on the the use of Beethoven in Peanuts strips.
Schumann’s “Ghost Variations.”
The martian landscape of Odessa from a plane.
Strawberry rhubarb pie.
Watching Road Runner cartoons with my sons and then seeing real roadrunners out on our walks. Suburban Texas wildlife. Cicada shells everywhere. Squirrels judging me. Deer looking at me like I’m an asshole. The Texas Mountain Laurel blooming in March. Junebugs kamikaze-ing into the windows. Fireflies! The neighborhood guy with huge parrots and a COME AND TAKE IT flag. My son literally having ants in his pants. Biggie Smalls on why he wouldn’t move to the suburbs.
Rooting for escaped animal stories.
Getting a projector, making an A/V cart, and watching movies huge on our bedroom wall. Awesome old movies, like Ball Of Fire, Laura, and The Palm Beach Story. New-to-us stuff. What We Do In The Shadows. Chef. Ex Machina. Enough Said. Iris. Love & Mercy. Weiner. Spotlight. The Big Short. Vernon, Florida. Old favorites, even better than we remembered. Chinatown. Stop Making Sense. Grosse Point Blank.
Seeing movies at the Alamo Drafthouse, solo, or with a friend. Hell or High Water.
@NitrateDiva on Twitter.
Finally taking the Black Friday bait and getting the Seinfeld box set.
Reading comics when nothing else feels right. Chester Brown, Mary Wept Over The Feet Of Jesus. Daniel Clowes, Patience.
Finding books that my kids love that I love to read, too. Jon Klassen’s Hat Trilogy. Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad.
When my wife says, incredulously, “You’ve never seen [X]?” and then watching X and loving it. (This year: You’ve Got Mail.)
Beethoven’s late string quartets and sick burns.
Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlists.
Taking things apart to see how they work. Showing my son the piano’s guts.
Walking the riverwalk from the San Antonio public library to the art museum and all the way up to the zoo.
The Bill Murray method of drinking champagne.
Chance operations. Throwing dice. Turning the dictionary to random pages. John Cage, Silence. Tossing coins and consulting the I Ching. Getting a Rider tarot deck and pulling cards. Jessa Crispin’s The Creative Tarot and her tarot newsletter.
Collecting envelopes with security patterns.
Reminding Siri to take revenge on my sons in 30 years.
Standing in the Costco produce fridge in August.
Accepting that creativity has seasons. How somebody asked Marcel Duchamp what he was working on and he said “just breathing.” George Carlin on taking time to figure out what’s next. Figuring out what I’m really working on.
Robert Irwin’s hat: “High mileage, low maintenance.”
The brief return of @JennyHolzerMom.
Stress relief. Getting overwhelmed and watching a live-stream of the “bear cam” in Katmai National Park, Alaska. Replacing the doorknobs in my old house, one at a time, as needed, whenever I was losing it.
Long-neck ’ritas.
Calvin Trillin’s question, “Did you clean your plate?” The chicken-fried steak at Jim’s Restaurant on 71. The sides and fried chicken from the Golden Chick next door. No line at Rudy’s BBQ. Chinese delivery.
Desire lines.
Saying “it wasn’t for me” and moving on.
Discovering the work of William Steig, especially his book, Shrek.
A terrific story about typewriters.
Wasting time, even though you know there’s not a lot of it. Joe Brainard’s “People Of The World: Relax!” World of Tomorrow: “Do not lose time on daily trivialities.” Hagakure: “Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily.” Jim Harrison: “‘The danger of civilization, of course, is that you will piss away your life on nonsense.”
Putting on an art show at Mule Design in San Francisco. Lunch at House of Nanking. Staying at Wendy and Caroline’s place, warming up by the firebowl. Walking around Potrero Hill. Talking to a fellow dad from Texas in Christopher’s Books. Lunch by the ocean with Ted. Lying on a couch in Wendy’s studio overlooking the bay, reading David Hockney’s Cameraworks.
The word “nitwit.”
Reading about con artists. Steering clear of the exact recipe for remaining a horrible person forever. Finding lessons about dealing with Nazis in books as different as Steve Silberman’s Neurotribes and Sarah Bakewell’s At the Existentialist Cafe.
Turning to poems. Maggie Smith, “Good Bones.” Philip Larkin, “The Mower.” Allen Ginsberg’s “America.” Emily Dickinson’s “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark.”
The work of Ursula Franklin. The Real World of Technology. The Ursula Franklin Reader: Pacifism as A Map. Her idea of society as a potluck supper—we all bring our best dish.
Garry Shandling saying, before he died, that America needs to hit rock bottom. Morris Berman’s bleak trilogy about the crumbling of the American empire: The Twilight of American Culture, Dark Ages America, and Why America Failed. The future politician at the playground shouting “This is my territory!” but it sounded like “This is my terror tree!”
Taylor Swift summing it all up: “I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative, one that I have never asked to be a part of.”
Turning your eyes into a sewage treatment plant. Finding inspiration in mundane retail spaces. Pee-Wee Herman on his favorite Walgreens. Andrew Bird on finding inspiration in Costco. Zan McQuade on how to learn to love the mall. Fast food joints as third spaces.
Good albums. Finally getting that Frank Ocean record. Solange’s A Seat At The Table. Lambchop, FLOTUS. Frank Sinatra, In The Wee Small Hours. Brian Eno, Before and After Science. Leonard Cohen, You Want It Darker. Chance The Rapper’s Coloring Book on a flight to Chicago.
The Ohio Players.
Ali Wong: “I don’t want to lean in, I want to lie down.”
Chappell Ellison’s weekly twitter roundups, her Cartoon GIFs twitter, and epic thread of her favorite Vine videos.
Being completely sucked into the voice of Marilynne Robinson’s novel Gilead. Her interview with the president.
Good TV. Atlanta. The Americans. Mozart in the Jungle. Fleabag. Silicon Valley. Soundbreaking. Fargo. Catastrophe. Better Call Saul. OJ Simpson: Made in America. The Night Manager. Chef’s Table France. The Great British Baking Show.
The Longform podcast.
Moonlight. Getting out of bed to take a leak and seeing the moon out the bathroom window. The moon through binoculars. Can, “Moonshake.” Looking up at the stars as often as possible. Watching meteor showers in the courtyard. Looking for the moon, and my son saying, “The moon isn’t awake yet.” My son seeing the supermoon and saying, “Papa, the moon looks like the sun is shining!”
All the other beautiful, grumpy, wacky things my son said. The musical threats. “I’m gonna put a bow on you and string you like a violin.” “I am going to beat you like a percussion instrument.” The insults. “You got a big ole butt!” The exclamations. “Electricity is coming out of my penis!” “I used that rock as a toilet!” The complaints. “I can’t walk. I’m out of walking steps.” “I don’t like sunscreen. I don’t like anything.” “I want to fight this drawing.” “We’re not going anywhere today all the places are closed.” “No tub time! I’m working on my book.” “Get out of here! Leave me alone! No talking during the symphony!” “I want to go back in the house. My music is killing me.” The observations. “The toilet in the lunch store was not so loud.” “This place smells delicious!” “I don’t like the grocery, but I like Papa’s studio.” “Mama, I have an idea in my head!” “Harmonicas are in the woodwind section, papa.” “Thunder sounds like kettle drums.” Seeing his first remote-controlled car: “You move it without your hands!” Seeing an old movie: “The pictures are black and white and silver—not colored in.” Training him to say, when he sees an ad on TV, “They’re trying to sell us something.” The time he said, “I want to disappear!” and my wife said, “Join the club!” The time I played him “777-9311” and he said, “Is this jazz music?” The time I asked him if he thought Beethoven drove a pickup truck, and he said, “No, he just played the piano.” The time I asked him if he wanted to go to the fire station and the candy store and the bookstore and he said, “No, papa, there is work to do.” The time I asked him if he had a good morning and he said, “The morning is still going.”
The way he, a native Texan, says words like “hair” with two syllables. The questions. “What music is mama going to listen to on her way to the grocery?” “How did you make this lovely dinner?” “Can you tell me what I want?”
The meatloaf dinner at 24 Diner.
Hong Kong french toast.
Avoiding human vantablack.
Recording on my old Tascam 424 four-track cassette recorder.
Carving pumpkins.
Shrimp and grits.
Walking through the airport with Miles Davis’s “Solea” on my headphones and feeling like the baddest ass alive.
The soundtrack of Stranger Things. Discovering the Austin synth scene. Visiting the store Switched On. SURVIVE. Xander Harris.
Fred Rogers on why you’ve already won in this world.
Nathaniel Russell’s fake fliers.
Cartoonist Liana Finck’s instagram.
Mourning Prince with these amazing mixes of deep cuts. Mourning Bowie with all the guest DJ sets, like Iggy Pop’s.
Great songs, old and new. Leonard Cohen’s “Is This What You Wanted?” Wilco, “Impossible Germany.” Grimes, “Realti (Demo).” That vaporwave classic. Sonny & The Sunsets’ “Green Blood.” Jackie Shane’s monologue at the end of “Any Other Way.” Otis Clay, “Trying To Live My Life Without You.”
Peanut butter shake season at P. Terry’s.
Good pre-dream reading. Grimm’s Fairy tales. Tove Jansson, Moominland Midwinter. Joy Williams, Ninety-Five Stories of God.
Seeing the Leap Before You Look show about Black Mountain College at the Wexner. Reading the beautiful catalog. Seeing the Pond Farm exhibit at SFO.
Finding out the delightful link between two of my favorite books: Studs Terkel’s classic Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do was conceived when his editor read Richard Scarry’s What Do People Do All Day? and thought there needed to be a version for adults.
Watching the World Series with my Cleveland-born wife.
Meeting people for lunch.
Losing the afternoon to a long phone conversation.
Going out once in a while. Beers with old friends in Cleveland. Third row seats at Elvis Costello at the Moody Theater. Mark Mothersbaugh at the Contemporary Austin.
Talking to strangers. Discussing the Ramones with a panhandler.
Interviewing Box Brown at Bookpeople. Interviewing a bunch of great illustrators at the Texas Book Festival. Another interview with Chase Jarvis.
Dismissing the knuckleheads in the Oasis: Supersonic documentary and then listening to What’s The Story, Morning Glory? for 3 days straight.
The difference between libraries and schools. Visiting the main branch of the Richland Library in Columbia, SC, their amazing children’s room, their new Steal-inspired maker spaces, and revisiting my time as a librarian when speaking at their staff day. Identifying the public library as the American institution I most want to protect and support.
Scanning my library card barcode and putting it into a Dropbox folder so I’m never without it at the self-checkout machine.
Sound on Sound Fest weekend. Eating at Curra’s with The Dead Milkmen. Eating so much BBQ with my friend Christy that I popped a button on my jeans and had to go next door to the Elgin Wal-Mart and buy a belt. Visiting my first Buc-ees’.
My first-come-first-serve barbershop putting up a whiteboard so you can sign in and not worry about who got there before you or after you.
Re-learning cursive.
Long emails from retired English professsors.
Christmas Eve feast of the seven fishes.
Staying married for 10 years.
Books.

100 things that made my year (2015)

Friday, January 1, 2016

millions of years have been about average let this year go

Grilled pimento cheese with red onion and tomato sandwiches.
Crying on airplanes.
Watching Buster Keaton’s The General with J Dilla’s Donuts as the soundtrack.
Writing on balancing motherhood and art. Sally Mann’s Hold Still. Sarah Ruhl’s 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time To Write. Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation. Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts. Elena Ferrante. Writer Maureen McHugh on how she’s probably changed more lives being a mom and a teacher.
Debbie Chachra’s “Why I Am Not A Maker.”
Thinking about the relationship between artist and audience. What, if anything, we owe each other. Coltrane on what you give to the listener. Wendell Berry’s “Warning To My Readers.”
Jez Burrows’ Dictionary Stories.
David Lee Roth’s Crazy From The Heat.
Thinking about long-term creativity. Roger Angell on what it’s like to be 93-years-old. Women artists in their 70s, 80s, and 90s. David Hockney on making art at 77.
Using Twitter’s “People You Follow” search to learn about new things.
Spending more time on a private Slack channel than any other social media site.
The crazy story of how I became friends with world-class violinist Vijay Gupta.
Good music. The Velvet Underground, Matrix Tapes. Kraftwerk, Computer World. Captain Beefheart. Elvis Costello, Trust. Royal Headache, High. Sleater-Kinney, No Cities To Love. Sly and the Family Stone, There’s A Riot Goin’ On. Van Morrison, Veedon Fleece. Kurt Vile, b’lieve I’m goin down. Mac Demarco, Another One. King Sunny Ade. Fuzz, II. Madlib, Shades of Blue. Yo La Tengo, Stuff Like That There. Gary Numan, The Pleasure Principle. Wilco’s The Whole Love. Pandora jazz stations.
Getting into classical. Listening to Beethoven with my son. Mitsuko Uchida playing Mozart’s piano sonatas.
Singing my son’s favorite songs: Little Anthony’s “Shimmy Shimmy Ko Ko Bop,” Jonathan Richman’s “The Wheels on the Bus,” James Brown’s “Hot Pants,” and Buck Owen’s “Tiger By The Tail.”
John McPhee’s essays on writing.
Looking at the world through the eyes of my son. Looking at kid’s drawings. Looking at drawings that look like kid’s drawings.
Finding a newspaper clipping from a friend who passed away.
Emily Dickinson.
Knowing I don’t deserve it and keeping on. Giving thanks. Writing down prayers. Drawing prayers.
Morning mind maps.
Seeing Kehinde Wiley’s show in Fort Worth.
Dumb Amazon reviews.
Nutty medieval paintings.
Brian Eno’s concept of “Import and Export” and starting from unpromising beginnings.
Meeting Edward Tufte.
Going on a two-week vacation to Rhode Island. Reading in the hammock. Stones from Moonstone Beach. Walking trails. Outdoor showers. Newport. Walking around Providence. RISD with Ben Shaykin. A rainbow over the Dunkin’ Donuts. Monahan’s and Matunuck Oyster Bar. Rhubarb pies from the farmer’s stand. Fire pit smores.
Seeing boredom as a luxury.
Coming home and putting a new spin on old work with the newspaper popouts.
Glitch rugs, quilts, and embroideries of microbes.
Peppermint tea.
T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets.
That hour or two with my wife after the kids go to bed.
Bourbon.
Putting out The Steal Like An Artist Journal. Going on tour and perfecting the talk. Having such good fans that we had a great turnout at every event.
Watching my work go out in the world. Seeing how people are using their journals. Heather Champ’s 30-day journal marathon. This photo.
Saying “it wasn’t for me” and moving on. Knowing there are several potential reactions to art.
Being a tourist in my own town.
Practicing cursive. Jennifer Daniels on why Microsoft Word sucks. Hallie Bateman’s handwritten Pen Parade newsletter. Knowing when you should write with a pencil and when you should use a keyboard.
Clive Thompson on reading War and Peace on his iPhone.
Looking for the helpers.
Sophia Lauren making pizza.
Posters by the Stenberg Brothers.
Watching Road Runner cartoons, Robin Hood, and Singin’ In The Rain with my sons.
Warren Ellis’s story about Nina Simone wanting “some champagne, some cocaine, and some sausages!”
Walking three and a half miles with a double stroller every morning.
Going to the library with the boys. Reading James Marshall’s George and Martha, Souther Salazar’s Destined for Dizziness!, Blexbolex’s, Ballad, and Richard Scarry’s What Do People Do All Day?
Doing mundane suburban stuff with my wife and the kids, like walking the mall and having lunch at the Nordstrom’s cafe, feeding the ducks at the pond, fiddling with instruments at Guitar Center, scoping the view from the top of a parking garage, eating hot dogs at Costco, etc.
Playing a guitar with four strings. (Who needs more strings than fingers?)
Rainbow makers.
TSA pre-check.
Redesigning my website so I don’t have to think about it for a few more years.
Getting an original Wayne White painting for my birthday. (Related: having an amazing wife.)
James Sturm’s Market Day.
David Markson’s “anti-novels.”
Watching Spongebob Squarepants and reading Carl Hiassen in Florida. Seeing Salvador Dali’s pixelated painting of Abe Lincoln at the Dali Museum.
My son sharing my obsession with signs. Recycled signs. Hacked signs. Signs of danger. Borrowing life advice from an old Spaghetti Warehouse sign.
Getting up in the middle of the night to see the blood moon over Gdansk, Poland. Looking at the moon. My son telling me it’s following us. Pluto! Getting binoculars for Christmas.
Speaking at LucasFilm and seeing the Marin headlands.
New York City. Walking the Highline at sunset. Running into Kelli and Frank at the Whitney. Walking the Hudson at sunrise. Neue Gallery with Maria K. Brooklyn bagels. Paulie Gee’s pizza.
Good television. Broad City. Fargo. Louie. Justified. The Americans. South Park.
Having people make you a list. Adam Koford’s list of favorite old movies. Making a soul playlist for my friend Mike.
People getting fed up with authenticity nonsense and artisanal crap. The Search For General Tso.
Jon Ronson’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed.
Accepting that a life in the arts is like Groundhog Day and that “tomorrow is another day, another chance to work and play.” Accepting the dailiness of it all. Getting up on The One. Edward Tufte on how to have better mornings. Tim Gunn’s Sunday routine. David Letterman’s paper cups. Azealia Banks’ 3 a.m. routine. Forgetting the noun and doing the verb.
David Allen’s Getting Things Done. Buying a filing cabinet and practicing inbox triage.
Not worrying too much about productivity. Christoph Niemann on the importance of inefficiency. Agatha Christie on having messy notebooks.
Trying to be a teacher while remaining a student. Re-thinking art education. Sister Corita Kent. Paul Thek’s Teaching Notes. John Waters’ RISD commencement address. Robert De Niro on being screwed. Draw It With Your Eyes Closed: The Art of The Art Assignment. Re-mystifying art. Wendy MacNaughton on Periscope. Teaching blackout poetry workshops to high schoolers.
Being real about money and fighting the “do what you love” crowd. How Deerhoof makes a living on the road. Having 90,000 Instagram fans and still serving brunch.
Looking at art. The woodcuts and paintings of Felix Vallotton. The work of Margaret Kilgallen. The work of Hedda Sterne. Jim Darling’s airplane window drawings. Penelope Umbrico’s Flickr suns. Paul Thek’s 96 Sacraments, butterflies, and notebooks. Georgia O’Keeffe’s watercolors. Paintings by Souther Salazar. Paintings by Matt Forsythe. Animated GIFs by Lille Carre. Paintings by Shane Walsh. Flying saucer paintings by Esther Pearl Watson. The illustrations of J. Otto Seibold. Paul Klee’s arrows. Drawings by Andy Warhol. Watching Saul Steinberg and Tove Jansson draw. @rabihalameddine’s Twitter feed.
Texting my wife when we’re in the same room.
Long phone calls with artist friends.
Paper. The work of Kelli Anderson. Gay Talese’s love of collage. Articles with headliness like “Don’t write off paper just yet” or “Paper notebooks are as relevant as ever.” Nick Bilton on seeing the value of print books after his mother’s death. Merlin Mann on the problem with fancy notebooks. Neil Gaiman’s notebooks. Basquiat’s notebooks.
Great writing about art. Dave Hickey’s lectures, Air Guitar, and Pirates and Farmers. Blake Gopnik on Corita Kent, Andy Warhol’s student work, and Andy Goldsworthy’s throwing sticks.
Oliver Jeffers’ dipped paintings.
Grimes’ demo for “Realti.”
Music stories. Synth Britannia. John Seabrook’s The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory. How the Eurythmics recorded “Sweet Dreams.” How two white synth geeks helped Stevie Wonder make his best records. The producer who got Ace of Base’s demo stuck in his tape deck. Elvis singing to an actual hound dog.
Learning how to be a better parent. Andrew Solomon’s, Far From the Tree. The best parenting advice: “Don’t Kill Them.” Thinking about toys for children. Raul Gutierrez on the best kinds of toys.
The power of a simple kitchen timer.
Sharpening pencils and sniffing them.
Buying a house. Never spending another second on Zillow. Courtney Barnett’s “Depreston.”
Animals attacking drones.
Ron Swanson on creativity. Kimmy Schmidt on following your bliss. Crazy Eyes on her writing process. Marty McFly on creative frustration. Dana Scully on genius.
Oliver Sacks on a motorcycle.
The inside cover of ZZ Top’s Tres Hombres.
Unpretentious restaurants. Maudie’s. Mi Madre’s. Tam Deli. Little Deli. S&H Donuts.
Detroit-style pizza from Via313.
Record shopping as therapy.
Los Angeles. The Last Bookstore. Echo Park with Vijay. LACMA with Adam. Mexican with Mike and Erika and the gang. Taking the train to Pasadena. Seeing the Martian at the ArcLight with Jamie.
Tove Jansson. Moomin comics. Being Moominpapa.
Patrice O’Neal, Elephant in the Room.
Watching movies. Mad Max: Fury Road. Creed. Only Lovers Left Alive. Don Hertzfeld’s World of Tomorrow. Sullivan’s Travels. John Wick. Magic Mike XXL. Das Boot. Far From The Madding Crowd.
Re-reading books like Slaughterhouse-Five.
Re-watching movies. No Country For Old Men. Road House. Best In Show. Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Jurassic Park. Moonrise Kingdom. Zoolander. Moonstruck.
Doing it yourself.
Figuring out how to stay alive.
Turning the ship around.
Hot fudge sundaes with nuts and whipped cream.
The birth of my son Jules.
Taking a nap.