Hello, hello.
I didn’t post here for a while because I was doing other stuff. And because I didn’t feel like it. I was traveling and working, and I was not feeling so interested in the internet. Or, like, this internet. But I’m back. Now I feel like posting; possibly because I’m procrastinating.
I haven’t posted since early Spring, so I’m not sure what approach to take. . . I thought about pretending like I hadn’t not posted, and just doing a post like Real Time Whatever. But then I was thinking about all the nice things that happened in the Spring and Summer, and I thought it would be sad to skip those. So I made a list, Top Ten Things You Didn’t Hear About Then but are Hearing About Now. And then we’ll proceed with real time real life.
Hackethal’s House Lager - In Berlin, Laszlo and I went to this restaurant, Hackethal’s on the recommendation of Joe B. (Thank you for your map, Joe!). I am not a beer freak, but the house-brewed beer at Hackethal’s was the best beer I’ve ever had. Since then, I’ve been searching for something comparable in New York. The Walker’s Amber Ale at Walker’s downtown is close but no cigar (too effervescent, strangely). This week I had a stronger contender at BKB (Brooklyn Brasserie), this new Belgian restaurant near my apartment (it looks sort of funny, but it’s actually a solid spot). The contender was a St. Bernardus. I’m glad I found this, so that I can stop taste-testing every medium to dark beer I see on a menu.
Laszlo with the Lager Portuguese Bros Trip - I went to Porto with Chris. P, Claire R., and Oliver A. in June on the occasion of a group show I am in at Serralves. It was great. Except for when I had a terrible allergic reaction to either shrimp that touched me by proxy or octopus that I ingested (Did not know that cephalopods are technically shellfish). I broke out into hives at two in the morning after all the bros went to sleep. I found antihistamines. It’s behind me now. Otherwise the trip was great. Favorite spot was one I can’t recall the name of, which is good because it was cool and I probably shouldn’t be running my mouth on Substack. Soon after we left supposedly there were anti-tourist demonstrations in the city. Not sure if traveling as an “art person” makes me more or less complicit.
Francesinha, Porto classic. Was okay-to-good. I prefer a Prego! Trout Drought - I went to Hatch’s in Wellfleet and they didn’t have the smoked trout I was vibing on last summer. They looked at me like I was crazy when I asked for it. They had arctic char, but it did not do the trick. The salmon was good. I went back two or three days in a row, asking after the trout and then had to stop. My own personal horror film.
Zurich - We went there, hadn’t been before. So clean.
We re-homed the Grey Cat (who was maybe never even mentioned on this blog. Poor guy), but now Paprika (original cat) keeps trying to pee on stuff. Not much to say about this, but it’s a huge part of my life. I can’t say it’s under control, but I just ordered a number of items from Amazon that are supposed to assist.
After the Porto trip I got obsessed with making the very easy lunch item I discovered out there: black eyed peas + tuna salad. You can kind of just freestyle and add any sort of salad-y herby thing to it and it’s pretty good. Not as good as the one in the Serralves museum cafeteria, but good enough.
Things I bought - proud to say not that many things! Mostly just these Collina Strada sunglasses. And this J. Crew top. See below. Increasingly, I’m of the mind that you really can just shop at J-Crew, The Gap, and on E-Bay and not need any other stores.
Had a rooftop bday at Francis Irv. Thank you Sam for hosting. Preceded by bday dinner at Lucien.
Fried chicken in Berlin at Henne (Alt Berliner Wirsthaus Henne). Best I’ve ever had, anywhere in the world. And I don’t even fuck with fried chicken like that.
Laszlo and I got engaged (!!!!!). I.e. Laszlo requested that I marry him, and I said yes. Feels weird to post pics related to this as they are more meant for me, him, our families, and friends, and not Substack randos. Sorry. Except this one that this random lady (thank you again, Karen!) took from many feet away while she was walking her dog.
And now, top ten other things that I can think of while sitting here in this brief idle moment. Lists are better than paragraphs:
A confession: I’m starting graduate school this fall. Art history at Princeton. One of my greatest joys is plotting out school-related purchases, and I need to remind myself that getting a PhD doesn’t mean you need a lunchbox. But I do need a good bag that won’t hurt my shoulder, and that also doesn’t make me look like a nervous wreck. You know how some bags just really contribute to your frazzled look on a frazzled day? My go-to semi-ironic Hervé Chapelier is starting to feel like it’s doing that; there is too much space at the bottom of it and anyone who catches me digging through it in public seems to give me a wide berth. . . Thinking about a vintage/used Margaret Howell bag, such as this or this. I’m not in LOVE with these though. This Balenciaga tote that I should have pulled the trigger on is off the market now. . . Ellie says everyone needs the Eckhaus Latta snap bag and that it is big enough to hold a computer, so maybe I should just do that.
I’m reading Thomas Pynchon’s V. because Alex H. was driving Andy R. and me home from rehearsal last week and the two of them were talking about Pynchon and I couldn’t really contribute anything because I’ve never actually finished a Pynchon book. So now I am reading V. I told Laszlo that I was reading it and he said, “I know.” and I said, “How??” And he told me my Goodreads account was autoupdating with my kindle reads. Mortifying. Thankfully the only other thing I am currently reading is a collection of Tretyakov’s plays.
About a month ago, I started writing a post that was partially about my love for the new wave of period dramas on TV right now, e.g. The Gilded Age and The Buccaneers, and how when I don’t have more episodes to watch, I listen to Henry James audiobooks. Possibly the least interesting thing to blog about; I think I started to try to connect my interest in turn of the century society-themed media to a sort of spectrum-y desire to understand social minutae in the contemporary but that is also a dead end. Yawn. Anyway, now that both shows are done for now, I’m back to reading my other Summer Book, Edith Wharton’s Twilight Sleep. (I recently admitted to a few people that I’ve probably read the first sixty pages of all of the novels on my bookshelf, but rarely more. I’m actively out to squash this habit.)
I got my hair straightened today and had a freaky dysmorphic reaction to getting a trim where I was suddenly near tears because I thought my hair was going to end up crazy short because my ends were so split. Then I got home and my hair was not short, but was in fact a little longer? As though it had healthily grown a tad? I don’t know what my problem is. I think it’s just that I know I was kind of being bad and not keeping up with my hair regimen, or blow-drying it like my hairstylist said to do, and have been drinking more (and the worst kind: obligatory work event drinking) and eating poorly on the road / in the final throes of summer / amidst my busy schedule. The psychic pain of my delinquency coming out in my scalp health….too much for me.
I think I might get Blundstones this fall? My friends all agree that they’re fine again. They’ve circled back to seeming generic and functional. Everyone just needs a boot, and it’s a good boot.
I impulse bought this 80s Saks Fifth Avenue leather jacket on eBay. I think I was Right:
Prob preaching to the choir here, but the J. Crew 1988 rollneck sweater reissue. . . Hit it. at $98, it’s hard to regret it. I don’t know why they made this other, “2025” style too though. A cropped version for losers?
Listening to a lot of 90s music lately. Back on Built to Spill, On Beck for kind of the first time, thanks to Laszlo. I just never loved him, but now I’m more willing. We also discovered that 90s intellectual rap is feeling kind of good, kind of bright and dense in a way that is much-needed. My hot take is that De La Soul and Callahan and Witscher exist in some sort of stylistic continuum. Arch-hipster position? Transcendent Post-irony? Ultimately, a critical hipsterism.
Uh…still working on my play. Theater is hard and good. See it in November in the city.
Um……….? Yeah, mostly just grad school and being engaged and the cat threatening to pee on stuff, redecorating and rearranging house and and reading reading reading sleeping sleeping sleeping. La dolce vita :)
A few notes, professional newsletter style. I have essays in some books that are coming out soon:
I wrote a text for Tom Burr’s Torrington Project publication, and will be on a panel about it at Dia Chelsea on September 24 with Blake Oetting and Jordan Carter. :) This book is extra cool because I like and care about so many people who were involved in this project. Good when good work is done with good friends.
I also wrote an essay for the catalogue for Kerry James Marshall: The Histories, an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. This was very exciting to write. When I was working at MOCA in Los Angeles, they did a KJM survey (Mastry) and I had a lot of ideas about it. I guess I said somewhere publicly that I wanted to publish an anti-catalog response to the official catalogue. . . Thank you to Kerry James Marshall and Mark Godfrey for being intrigued and not off-put by my bravado upon reading that I wanted to do that, and for asking me to write something. Also, to be 100% really earnest and honest, it is a huge deal to me to be in a book alongside Benjamin Buchloh and Darby English. Wowee Zowee. Anyway, the essay is called “All Blacks are Grey” and it’s about painting Black people black and drawing everything in grey and differánce, and paintings and drawings that diagram and do not represent. Recently, I revisited Henry Louis Gates’ Jr.’s “The Blackness of Blackness: A Critique on the Sign and the Signifying Monkey,” and worried that because I’d forgotten about that text and not used it, my thing was moot. But I think my thing is decent, and I actually think I don’t love that essay of his, sorry.
I thought there was a third thing I recently wrote, but now it escapes me . . . there are other things I am supposed to be working on writing. So maybe I’m thinking of those.
As often happens when I write a Substack post, I’ve quickly bored of the sound of my own voice (which, yes, I do hear in my head as I type). I’m going to try to post more regularly now that school’s back in session, literally and figuratively.
I wanted to put another playlist but I did it on Apple Music and now it won’t let me embed it and I’m too lazy to figure out a better way so, never mind. But this reminds me: One more summer thing was that I sang “Closer” by the Chainsmokers at karaoke to a bunch of Aspen Summer kids and they went crazy for “like your Roommate back in Boulder,” and I felt like Prometheus.
Okay final final thought: if bands New York and Smerz were both teams on the Amazing Race and it was like, the final round, which girl duo do you think would win?
ok one engagement pic because I look like such a geek and cannot help it:
