Greetings from the B-Side Brewery! Have you drank enough water today? Gotten out of the house? Walked down to the polls? Taken five deep breaths? Smashed your phone against the wall? Okay cool just making sure.
If you still need a distraction from *gestures broadly at the world*, I invite you to check out the latest episode of the Struggling Artist Podcast, featuring yours truly! Host Trev Allen invited me onto the show to ostensibly talk about the history of the Roland High Life, and also how the hell to exist in the world as a creative person. Inevitably, our conversation also spirals out into a talk about ADHD and why Hawkeye is the best Avenger, as these things are wont to do. I like to think our chat has some nice glimmers of hope as well, as we talk pretty earnestly about how to balance artistry and all the various demands of “real life.”
If that’s not enough of a distraction, the fact that the New York Times Tech Guild is currently on strike could also help stop you from constantly refreshing your browser. The Wirecutter Union, of which I am a part, is technically separate from the Tech Guild, but we do stand in solidarity with our colleagues’ goals. While I can’t tell you what to do about or how to respond to this strike, I can encourage you to check out Strikle instead, or maybe soothe yourself with the dulcet tones of Billy Bragg. Or check out some unionized Chippendale dancers, idk.
Stuff I’ve Been Writing
I know I just finished telling you about the NYT Tech Guild Strike, but in the meantime, I have published some solid new work at Wirecutter that I’ve been pretty proud of. No need to check it out immediately, of course, but when you have a chance:
I did a huge overall on our guide to the Best Christmas Lights (which obviously don’t have to be Christmas-specific, but like, that’s what everyone calls them, so that’s what it is).
I added some new picks to our Best Space Heaters guide, and am doing some long-term testing on some…interesting…new heating products, too.
Winter is coming as well, which means you may want to check out the Best Humidifiers to soothe your chapped skin, especially now that I have a dishwasher-safe pick in the guide. Yes, I get excited about dishwasher-safe humidifiers now. Don’t judge me.
Finally, I wrote about a new FDA-cleared video game that’s supposed to help with ADHD. Yes, really. This is a thing that exists. And it’s not entirely a scam! Sort of.
Over at Boing Boing—which recently launched a new ad-free premium tier here on Substack—I also interviewed the AI-generated ghost of a dead porn star about consent and exploitation, which was surprisingly fascinating. Don’t get me wrong, it’s weird. And I still think most of this kind of AI-generated nonsense is an absolute con job. But it was also kind of interesting to see the sexbot actually agree with me about the con job. At least, until its programming rebooted again. Womp womp.
Stuff I’ve Been Reading
Alex Segura’s Alter Ego is a great new crime thriller novel about intellectual property rights and AI/NFT media industry scammers, with a Latina single mom as the lead. It’s sort of a standalone sequel to Secret Identity, which was one of my favorite books of 2022. You can read my full Alter Ego review on BoingBoing.
I also really dug Houses of the Unholy, a new horror/crime graphic novel from Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips that offers a fresh new take on Satanic Panic stories. Probably a little more appropriate for the Halloween season that just passed, but you can read my full review on BoingBoing anyway.
Continuing my streak with graphic-novel-versions-of-dense-non-fiction-books-I-didn’t-read, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States: A Graphic Interpretation was shockingly powerful. The narration is clear and simple, and when accompanied by the visceral artwork, it really helped to drive home the horrors of European colonization of the Americas, and—perhaps even worse—all the efforts made to erase that ugly history. Full review on BoingBoing.
I’m still haunted by Absolution, Jeff Van Der Meer’s surprise 10-year follow-up to his acclaimed Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy (which also still haunts me). I would not recommend this book if you haven’t read the original trilogy yet—though I would absolutely encourage you to read those books ASAP, especially if you’re into scary shit, freaky spy stories, mind-melting mysteries, unfathomable aliens, or any combination thereof. If you have read the original Area X books, I think this book does an excellent job of expanding the world without losing any of the eerieness. It’s ostensibly a prequel, but also kind of a sequel, and while it does go into more details about the past history of Area X, it doesn’t necessarily offer any answers or clarity, per se. That’s a good thing, in my humble opinion, as I explain in my more in-depth review on BoingBoing. Your mileage may vary.
Band People: Life and Work in Popular Music is another great new book that turns the spotlight onto the backing band—the middle-class workers who have made careers for themselves as supporting musicians to the rockstars. Written by writer and musician Franz Nicolay or The Hold Steady / Guignol / The World/Inferno Friendship Society—who knows first hand about touring the world without being the central focus rock star!—I thought this was a great look at how to be a professional working class artist. There are lots of great lessons in this book, for anyone whose artistry involves collaboration, and where the tensions of ego and capitalism are often the greatest allure, and greatest poison. Here’s my full review on BoingBoing.
Also the new Toxic Avenger comic book is an absolute delight? Who’d’a thunk it!
Similarly, the new Ultimates comic book—about an alternate reality version of the Avengers—is some genuinely radical work. Writer Deniz Camp also wrote 20th Century Men, which I absolutely adored, and he takes a similar anti-Imperialist position here. Just, ya know, with Captain America, and She-Hulk, and Hawkeye as a non-binary Water Protector from the Sioux nations. The new Ultimate Spider-Man book from Jonathan Hickman and Marco Checchetto is also awesome, even if it’s not quite as radical as Ultimates (or at least, not in the same way). In this book, Peter Parker is already a married 40-year-old dad before he becomes Spider-Man, and it’s a really fresh look at a mid-life crisis (Except one where you still look good in spandex.)
Stuff I’m Doing
Looking forward, I’m already booking shows for the St. Patrick’s Day season, either solo or with the full Forfocséic backing band. Hit me up if you want us to come to your city (and know of a pub that will pay us for tunes)!
Meanwhile, the Roland High Life did an awesome double-header weekend in early October that took us down to my hometown of Hamden, Connecticut, and in Chris’s hometown of Middletown, Rhode Island. I saw lots of faces I hadn’t in a while, and I like to think we also rocked the house. We also did a special Operation Ivy cover set for a SKA-lloween show in Salem, where we teamed up with our friends in Bad Idea USA. That was probably the best parking lot punk rock show I’ve been to in twenty years, and not just because I got to play songs from an album that changed my life at 13 years old (and somehow still gets better with age).
Our next gig is coming up on Friday, November 15 at the Jungle Community Music Club in Union Square, Somerville. We’re up first ay 8pm—which means potentially reasonable bed times!—and are playing with a bunch of new bands that I’m personally not familiar with, but all sound pretty cool. If you haven’t seen us live yet, please consider coming out next Friday night! Then you’ll finally get to join the ranks of hundreds people who say, “Wow, you guys were like, actually pretty good?”
Time to go for another walk and pray to Cthulhu that the world doesn’t end.