Mike G.

This is everything I listened to on Thursday, April 18th 2024. This is my day in half hour chunks:

8:00 AM: Wake up—fail to do so.

8:30 AM: Wake up successfully. Read emails in bed. My insurance auto-payment was declined for the second month in a row because of card control settings I’m sure I had no hand in creating

Fig. 1: The view out my bedroom window. Not particularly photogenic today.

9:00 AM: Take a shower, throw laundry in the washer, log on to my WFH job. I am wearing a pair of Dickies I got two summers ago that do not come even remotely close to fitting my waist, meaning I always have to wear a belt and never tuck my shirt in. I don’t consider this a problem because 1) I paid good money for them 2) it encourages me to shed some weight (results have varied) and 3) no one actually knows the button isn’t closed. Except for you, the reader. That’s a secret between us.

9:30 AM: Thank Me Yesterday for leaving Me Today an extra cup of coffee in the fridge. I’m out of beans, so I’ll need to venture out at some point. I think of a photo I saw of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin with their dog. It’s that dog from the Chris Van Allsburg book The Garden of Abdul Gasazi. I don’t know what the breed is actually called. It will always be the dog from The Garden of Abdul Gasazi to me.

Figs. 2 & 3: Serge and Jane and the dog. An illustration from The Garden of Abdul Gasazi.

10:00 AM: Told by a Microsoft widget that there is “very high pollen” today with an icon of a red flower spewing poison. Does not bode well.

10:30 AM: Make my bed, because although you can’t see it it feels like you can. My housemate Alexa’s cat takes this as an invitation to sit and stare out the window. Have a conversation with my friend Ava about the impending Amazon data center energy crisis in Northern Virginia. Work progresses, slowly.

11:00 AM: The cat trills at a passing airplane (?). Listen to the new Still House Plants album, had heard good things.

Fig. 4: The Cat at her post.

11:30 AM: By the Mandate of Heaven it is a Soup Day. Lunch is oyster mushrooms, ramps, udon, miso broth, gochujang and oyster sauce (I’m out of soy sauce, lock me up). Cooking record is Acetone- 1992-2001.

12:00 PM: The soup is great. Soup is forgiving, patient, autopoietic. Heat and time unfurl great complexity from simple ingredients. I devour it with my camera off on a Zoom call. The laundry makes its way into the dryer.

Figs. 5 & 6: Lunch before and after assembly.

12:30 PM: Find out Dickey Betts died, feel guilty like I willed it into existence by listening to a bunch of Allman Brothers earlier in the week thinking “man, they’re almost all dead.” Birds chirp louder than normal.

1:00 PM: Try and fail to play “Jessica” on the drums in between calls. Today’s practice is “Offline P K” (syncopation), “Divine Hammer” (pocket), “Turkey Vultures” (tempo) and the almighty “Boys Are Back in Town” shuffle. Make dinner plans with my friend Audrey and inadvertently cause her to run into someone while texting.

1:30 PM: Walk to Ultimo at 15th and Mifflin for beans. I don’t bring headphones because I feel like I expose myself to too much noise as it is, and it’s nice to hear the wind. This is my route:

Fig. 7: A connected graph of my afternoon errand, drawn against the back of Kick Magazine issue no. 1

2:00 PM: Acquire beans from Ethiopia with notes of melon (?), a hot coffee that comes free with the beans to cool in my fridge for later and a Spindrift Arnold Palmer I’m morbidly curious about. My credit card is declined which leads me to believe I messed something up futzing around with card control settings this morning. I worry I can never show my face at that location again. I may need to move.

2:30 PM: More meetings for work. The Spindrift Arnold Palmer is just fine. The choice to make the tea unsweetened was bold and misguided.

Fig. 8: The image that stares back at me during work hours.

3:00 PM: Do nothing new in particular. Listen to Splash Blade via Andy Loeb’s Instagram. It’s quite good.

3:30 PM: Have my second cup of coffee and create several mounds of clean clothes to fold once work is done.

4:00 PM: Regret the decision to not buy snack food. I’m out of peanut butter, so tortillas dipped in labneh, everything seasoning and hot sauce will have to do.

4:30 PM: Do a repetitive task for work, one repetitive enough that I can throw Mad Men on. I’m in the middle of a rewatch, S4E11. SCDP just lost the Lucky Strike account—Roger Sterling, when will you learn!

5:00 PM: Pete and Trudy Campbell have a beautiful baby girl.

5:30 PM: Get dressed to catch the northbound 2 to This Corner for a zine workshop run by my lovely friends at Pet Riso. I’m wearing an airbrushed shirt my buddy Kirby made because it seems in-theme for arts and/or crafts. I didn’t find time to lay down on my acupuncture mat after my run last night and my back lets me know.

6:00 PM: Arrive at the workshop. There’s beer and friendly faces and lots of scissors and glue.

Figs. 9, 10 & 11: My shirt. Friends! A corner view of This Corner.

6:30 PM:

7:00 PM:

7:30 PM: Have been too busy under the spell of zinemaking to update my log. I create a series of collages about the very real link between plants and the shipping industry and midcentury geopolitics (I just pasted things I liked together like a small child). Enjoy a couple beers. A good time is had by all.

Fig. 12: The zine I was told looked like a classified document, so I leaned into that.

8:00 PM: Wrap up the workshop and hangout. We all steal a Dum Dum from the bowl kept for hair appointments (my weapon of choice is always blue raspberry, the flavor created by a food dye lawsuit). I’m transported back to the barber shop that smelled like cigarettes where my hair was cut as a child. I think I had memory-holed that it was called “King Feathers,” Christ.

8:30 PM: Walk to Bella Vista for dinner listening to circa-2015 orgcore.

9:00 PM: Walk to dinner continued, convinced for a second that “Leather and Lace” is the greatest song ever made. Time evaporates on Lombard between 11th and 8th.

Fig. 13: A cake smashed on the ground on Lombard.

9:30 PM: Goof off at Kampar with my friends Audrey and Thérèse and drink a rice beer. Get ready for wonderful Malaysian food to arrive at our table.

10:00 PM: Have a lovely dinner. Discussion topics include the ability of indie sleaze to be commodified and capital gains tax.

Figure 14: Audrey and Thérèse and our spread at Kampar.

10:30 PM: Split an Uber home with Thérèse. The driver plays Janet Jackson.

11:00 PM: Listen to old cabaret music (the good kind) before forcing myself up to brush my teeth and wedge my retainer into place. Drank more than planned but thoroughly enjoyed my night.

11:30 PM: Watch this video in bed and chuckle. Chug some water as insurance for the morning. Slowly drift off to sleep, content.

Mike is a South Philly import via Western NY. You can find him in the fifth row back at Lightbox or on Instagram as @jawn_cocteau.