These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things

Some good moments amongst all the... well, you know.

Hi friends. I hope y’all are doing as well as you can be, and that your days are filled with friends and community. Shit’s rough. I’ve been swinging back and forth between feeling depressed and angry a lot lately.

Today’s newsletter is me fighting against the urge to wallow in all that sadness and anger. It doesn’t help anyone, me included, anyone within the tiny circle of folks I have the potential abilty to help included, and it probably wouldn’t make for interesting reading either. A lot of us are sad and angry. But there’s also a lot of good in my life, a lot of small things that help me remember that this world and humanity are still worth rooting for and celebrating. So let me shout some of those things out— I separated them into three categories: art, objects, and friends.

The below comic is by Jessi Zabarsky because they said it perfectly.

So let me shout some of those things out— I separated them into three categories: art, objects, and friends.

Let’s start off with books. Here are just a handful of books I’ve read recently that I need to shout out to y’all:

Sketched Out: Artistic sketchbooks and journals unveiled (pub. Victionary) is a chonker of a magnificently designed book showcasing scans of sketchbooks and interviews on sketchbook-keeping from artists from all around the world. It came on my radar through Tom Frose, whose sketchbook pages I love to peek at. It’s living on my coffee table now and it a perfect flip through for when I’m feeling uninspired, or when I want to look at something cool without opening my phone.

Holy Lacrimony by Michael DeForge is bonkers good. I’ve been a DeForge fan for quite a long time now. Every book of his blows my mind and shifts how I think about comics. This has more of his signature unparalleled weirdo art style, all big shapes and curves and bold color choices, this time exploring the alien abduction of the saddest person on Earth.

The Oblivion Bride by Caitlin Starling is a fantastic sci-fi/fantasy novella about an arranged marriage (with lesbians!) and dangerous familial curse. I love Starlings work— especially her novels The Death of Jane Lawrence and The Luminous Dead, and it was exciting to see her return to shorter form work with the small press Neon Hemlock. I’ve just gotten an arc of her latest novel, The Starving Saints, so don’t be surprised if you hear me raving about her again soon.

Astro by Manuel Marsol is a truly gorgeous picture book translated from its original Spanish and published by small publisher Transit Books. It’s filled with wonder and melancholy, and told from the perspective of a creature that dies towards the end of the book. The art is strange and lovely— a mix of paint and collage, perfect for such an existential story. Idk it’s a very weird picture book and I can’t stop thinking about it.

How Could You by Ren Strapp is a funny and deeply relatable YA/New Adult graphic novel about a group of queer college friends and exes. Feelings are hurt. Mistakes are made. Strapp really captured the chaos and emotionality of late-teens and early twenties. Woof!!!

In non-book news, Chloe and I attended a Queer Alternative music showcase at Alienated Majesty last week. It was a Smash by Smash West event— a counter-festival created in opposition to South By Southwest’s truly gross showcasing of a weapons manufacturer at last year’s festival, among a plethora of other issues. This event, put on by Tiny Sounds and No More Dysphoria, featured trans and nonbinary musicians. Chloe and I both especially loved local band Bad Luck Penny’s set. I’m not that clued in the the local music scene, but it made me want to go to more DIY and queer shows.

We’ve been watching The Twilight Zone. I grew up watching it— both my parents love the show and we’d always watch the big marathons together. It is definitely a huge influence on my tastes in story telling. My partner Chloe hadn’t seen much of it, just a few episodes here and there over the years of dating me. But our local video rental store, We Luv Video, recently got all the season boxed sets and I picked up the first one— I’m amazed at how many episodes I actually haven’t seen (or just don’t remember)… I guess the marathons usually just played the big hits. I’m also amazed at just how solid nearly every episode is. Watching The Twilight Zone feels especially poignant right now— I chose it for the fun and nostalgia, I think it’s my only true “comfort show,” but of course it’s so much more than that, with it’s sonorous anti-racist, anti-greed, and anti-fascist undertones ringing through to some degree in nearly every episode.

I saw Bright Eyes at the end of February. They’re an eternal favorite— it’s interesting to have a band/singer stick with you, but for your feelings around them change so much. I used to be so in awe of Conor Oberst, now, like with any artist, especially a living one, I have my guard up more. I still think he’s fantastically talented, albeit troubled, but that reverence is gone. Which I think is good. I’m an artist and he’s an artist and we’re both just people making stuff, like so many other people. It was a really good show though, and made me appreciate their latest album much more.

This week I got the most lovely wedding invitation from my friends Lani and Ross. I’m pretty sure I gasped when I opened it. Having lots of artists friends means that when you get a wedding invitation it’s going to be the most well designed bit of paper art you’ve ever seen. That bad boy is up on my fridge right now, held by a felted bread and a felted carrot magnet. Yay love!

This YouTube video of a person mixing tempura paint has really been doing it for me as background noise lately.

Also— shhh! I’ve been slowly working on a just-for-me secret project. I don’t know if it’s going to go anywhere, but it feels good play around with a weird thing that no one is expecting and that doesn’t have to make me any money. >:)

I’ve started a new sketchbook— for the past six months I’ve been using this much larger A5 Midori sketchbook that I’ve already got a cute collaged plastic cover for, which I love because it gives me so much rom to play on and I like being able to keep my cover and just change out the paper. By necessity, since we ran out of that size of filler at my work, I picked up a much smaller one. There are lots of pros and cons to the size— pro: a tiny sheet of paper can be less intimidating, and I feel less precious about it; con: there’s less room to really spread out/get weird/do a big brainstorm) BUT the big pro is that it fits perfectly in my favorite Baggu crossbody bag so it’s so much easier to take with me everywhere and not have to make a big hullabaloo with a big tote (which I will then fill up with art supplies and junk and will hurt my shoulder). I think in the future I want to have one of each going since they’re both fantastic in different ways. I do really love this thin, crinkly paper and I love decorating the covers.

Does food count as an object? I’m in the middle of a love affair with this smoked truffle tomato jam. I loooove a tomato jam. I bought this one on a whim when Chloe and I wanted to have a big snack try dinner (grapes, dip, grilled globe carrots, cheeses, crackers, nuts, etc) and it was the star of the show and I’ve been having a little with some cheese and crackers basically every day as a nice little snack.

I have a new favorite sweater that I love wearing! I’m sad it’s starting to warm up here because I’ll miss being able to pull on this cozy cute cardigan. It’s from Lazy Oaf and I got it second hand on depop— it’s a nice dark green with funny little art museum-themed woven illustrations, and it’s the perfect loose boxy cut that makes me feel so cute and comfy.

Yesterday I spent the day with my friend Deanna. She works at an early education school and was on spring break, and it’d been forever since we’d really just spent a day together. We drove up to Ikea for lunch (I love those dang plant balls), then visited her school so she could check on the class pet (a leopard gecko named Pepita), and finally got a GIANT donut (Texas sized) from Round Rock Donuts. I’m not usually a donut guy, but I loooove those. We each ate 1/4 and were so full, and ended up taking leftovers back to our partners. It was just a wonderful, fun and silly day.

My friend Kat recently took me out to breakfast at SA-Ten as a thank you for me passing along my old DVD player (I got a Blu-ray player now!). If you’re not in Austin, it’s this wonderful Japanese coffee shop with a small but mighty food menu. I’d never been there early enough to get their breakfast and it was so delicious, made even better by the good company.

Are all of these about food? I visited Chloe for lunch earlier this week and also brought a surprise slice of tres leches cake to share. They have this path they like to walk on their lunch break (they work at a bookstore), where there’s a creek that is always full of turtles. They showed me a new spot they’ve been checking out that to their surprise is full of BIG spiny soft-shell turtles (their favorite) that they’ve dubbed Turtle Lagoon.

On that same lunch visit, this extremely friendly 4-month old dog wearing a diaper named Jupiter came up to us while we were eating, and their owner was like “he loves people! You can pick him up if you want.” And I did and he was so soft and sweet and wiggly. Big fan of this new friend.

My friend and coworker Annie Tate, her dog Hartsal, my dog Theodore, and I went on a long park walk to introduce our dogs and gab. Harsal was shy but sweet, and they eventually got along. It was really cute.

Finally, a couple weeks ago, my friends Morgan and Brian hosted a funeral for their dog Scribble. It was so lovely and moving— we all brought flowers for Scribble and got to chat while a slideshow of Scribble pics played in the background, and drank boba and were just there for our friends who were missing their truly unique special little cute weirdo dog. I love my friends!!!!! I loved seeing their other friends be sweet and kind to them.

A couple of final things:

On Substack— I know there’s been a lot of talk over the past year (and then some) about the issues with Substack, primarily it being a space that has allowed hate groups and misinformation to thrive. I know several artists and writers who have decided to leave the platformr recently. Here’s what I’m feeling about it at the moment: It sucks that these people continue to be tolerated (and often catered to) by so many platforms, with so much of tech being extemely in bed with the right, or at the very least bending over backwards to cater to those in power. At this time, I’m planning on continuing to do my newsletter with Substack. It’s still my current favorite way to engage with creators I like and with readers. I like the deep dives and freedom from the noisy, endless scroll, and fatigued by the constant search for the perfect platform. It doesn’t exist. That said, things could change, and I totally understand and support anyone looking for a better option.

Trans Rights Readathon: If you haven’t heard, tomorrow is the first day of the Trans Rights Readathon! To participate, read books by trans & nb authors and consider donating to trans individuals or organizations. Are you participating? If so, what are you reading? What do you think I should read?

A quick local call to action: If you’re in Texas, consider signing up to get invovled with the Texas Freedom To Read Project to help combat book bans.

Thanks for reading! What’s keeping you grounded and getting you through these times? I’d love to hear it!

Take care! Till next time—