DRDB! 5: Heroes and Villains, Artists and Caretakers
Quick, before we're all mired in our habits and routines again, do something new!
I’m on Team No New Year’s Resolutions. Like I need anything new or different to feel guilty about, some other way to experience failure. It’s just fucking hard to wake up any day and live a different life than the day before. Imagine trying to steer a speeding car by abruptly turning the road ninety degrees. That car will go flying into the woods, blood and wreckage everywhere. We do not turn on dimes.
This is a simple ode to gradual change. Here’s to 2019 and I hope you nudge yourself towards a brighter future, whatever that means.
Jason Molina’s Love and Work (The Believer)
If you haven’t heard the album Magnolia Electric Co. this is a GREAT reason to change that.
“A growing resource of emotional and practical guidance for creative people.” (The Creative Independent)
Big bonus points for this oddball web layout and pixel spiral logo. There’s a LOT to look through here, but just clicking through some of these I liked “a harm-reduction guide to using your phone less” and this Mary H. K. Choi interview: “I lead with mandible and grit and white knuckles in terms of that propulsive force that gets me through anything. But I’m learning that that does not work with novel writing or long-form writing. It’s such a big thing that you’re chipping away at.”
How New York’s Postwar Female Painters Battled for Recognition (The New Yorker)
Go ahead, try to buy a print/poster by a female abstract artist. Try MoMA. I burned a lot of time trying to find something featuring Joan Mitchell, until I found out her foundation puts poster PDFs online for free. “Trees I” now hangs at my desk.
“The Good Guy,” a new short story by Kristen Roupenian (Medium)
The author of the short story viral sensation “Cat Person” is back. It’s long, novella length really, and it’s worth the minutes.
So Long, Paul Ryan, You Useless Wonk (The Ringer)
“Substantially, there’s no real difference between Trumpism and conservatism as Paul Ryan practices it. There only ever seems to be a fundamental disagreement about temperament.”
Superheroes Drinking Coffee in Costume (Twitter/@levistahl)
Don’t try to figure out how Spiderman sips coffee upside-down, just go with it.
Christian Pulisic Bought by Chelsea for €64 million (Stars and Stripes FC)
For folks who don’t follow soccer, this is BY FAR the most ever paid for an American player in the transfer market. That player is currently the best and brightest American player on the national team, is on the roster of the league leaders in Germany, and will soon be playing for one of the biggest and richest clubs in the world. The 20-year-old from Hershey, PA has a chance to make it big in a way no American has before.
Happy Belated Public Domain Day! (Internet Art Book Fair)
For the first time in two decades new works have entered the public domain, and the IABF has an in-depth spreadsheet of them. Finally I can release my dubstep remix of Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments.