WI Day 4 - Saucers, Servicemen, and Safehouses
Today I started out by heading back to Milwaukee because there was an open mic that sounded fun tonight and somehow there was also a cool art museum in the city I hadn’t visited yet.
On the way from Madison to Milwaukee, my first stop was to get some morning joe at SchoolGrounds Coffee in Cottage Grove. SchoolGrounds is not your average coffee shop though, because, in addition to having great coffee, they’re also housed in a historic schoolhouse and serve as an art gallery to boot so your eyes and your imagination get to be delighted just as much as your taste buds.
After getting my morning caffeine fix, my next stop was the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Wauwatosa. This funky UFO-looking church is one of the last buildings to be designed by Frank Lloyd Wright before his death. While spaceship might be the first thing to come to mind when you see the building, the architecture is actually inspired by very traditional forms from Greek Orthodoxy, mainly the cross and the dome, and incredibly almost every surface in the construction is curved in some way which gives it a really soft, natural aesthetic that is as impressive as it is totally bizarre. Wright never lived to see the church completed, but its unique design is a testament to the fact that he never stopped pushing architectural boundaries right up until the end.
The church wasn’t open while I was visiting, but I looked up photos online, and the inside is just as bit as show-stopping as the exterior:
After getting back to Milwaukee, I’m embarrassed to say my first stop was very much rooted in irrational anxiety. I try to focus on more fun parts of the trip, but spending a year largely alone in a car wasn’t always great for my mental health, and for whatever reason I got really stuck in an anxiety spiral today. When I had been arrested in South Dakota, my arresting officer offhandedly mentioned that the day before she had had to perform an emergency delivery for a pregnant woman with HIV. Now the odds of me being exposed to HIV from being in the same backseat (where I’m 90% the delivery didn’t even take place in) are astronomically slim, and why I chose to get all hung up about this nearly two weeks later I truly don’t know, but I just couldn’t get my dumb brain to rest so even though it was very ridiculous I decided to stop by a free clinic in Milwaukee and get a blood test. It’s important for me to recognize that I wasn’t being particularly rational because I know the stigma around HIV/AIDS is still so great, but, in reality, many HIV+ people can still lead totally happy, safe, full lives. I only mention this at all, in part because it’s probably good to be honest about my mental health, but mainly because two things happened at the free clinic that I thought were very funny so I wanted to share them. One, the whole time I was there they were just playing Divorce Court marathons on a loop in the reception room which I thought was a hilariously unsubtle suggestion to some of their visitors, and, two, when I explained why I was there, the sweet, older Black woman taking Blood samples just started laughing right there, shook her head, and said, “Oh honey… you don’t need to be here.”
Unsurprisingly my test came back negative, but all that worrying got my appetite worked up so for my next stop I decided to get some lunch. I went to a place that had come highly recommended to me called Fuel Cafe in Milwaukee’s artsy Riverwest neighborhood. The restaurant is a very hip sub shop and cafe with great coffee, delicious sandwiches, and funky art on the walls. I got the Toasty Cheesy Tomato sandwich, which is essentially like a pizza turned into a sub with melty mozzarella and provolone cheeses, tomatoes, shredded lettuce, and Italian herbs all on a fantastic toasted baguette. It was simple but perfectly executed which made for about as satisfying a lunch as you can hope for.
Just a block up from the cafe was a small art gallery and community venue, that my aunt’s husband recommended I check out because he used to play with his jazz band there. The Riverwest Artist’s Association lived up to the hype with some eclectic but impressive local arts. My favorite pieces included: a very grumpy looking jellyfish; a haunting piece made by superimposing ghostly cut wooden trees over a landscape photograph; an amusingly bizarre print of a statue of a nude woman with the head of a horse; a very surreal and dreamlike portrait of a man; a fascinating abstract multimedia piece that plays really interestingly with texture and geometry; and then a simple but lovely Wisconsin landscape painting. It was a really beautiful hodgepodge that shows just how many talented people might just be waiting to be discovered in your own back yard.
After the art gallery, my next stop was a relatively new specialty art museum called the Grohmann Museum. Opened in 2007, the Grohmann is part of the Milwaukee School of Engineering and features the world’s largest collection of art detailing the evolution of human work and labor. It’s a really beautiful mix of the sublime and the mundane, as the collection features artwork that raises the everyday toil of daily life into the realms of high art. The collection features pieces from the Dutch masters dating back to about 1600 up to contemporary pieces, and it makes for a really a unique museum-going experience that blends a lot of interesting history into the aesthetic pleasures.
Right off the bat, the Grohmann seeks to wow visitors as they enter with a grand spiral staircase that is sandwiched by a mosaic mural of different laborers on the ground and a loftier, spiritual painting on the domed ceiling. Both murals were made by German artist, Hans Dieter Tylle, and they make for a job dropping first impression. Sadly, the photos I took of the murals were lost in a phone malfunction, but I found some pictures online that show off Tylle’s handiwork.
I started at the top of the museum and worked my way down, which meant I got to begin with the incredible rooftop courtyard. The courtyard features different sculptures of burly boys at work, another mural by Hans Dieter Tylle, some lovely gardening, and really spectacular views out over Milwaukee. I don’t know that you can say this about many places, but the roof alone was truly worth the price of admission.
Getting into the main collection, the galleries were structured around different professions.
The first profession under the spotlight was not what I would have expected but I was thrilled to see a group of portraits of instrument makers that were rendered with the same unreal attention to detail as their subjects put into their work. My favorites included: a wise old craftsman in his workshop by an artist whose I didn’t write down unfortunately (left); and a portrait of a piano maker with the craziest pipe I’ve ever seen by Oscar Beckert.
Up next was a series of paintings related to medical professions. On the more modern end of things, my favorite piece was this sweet Norman Rockwell-esque painting called The Apothecary by Vida Gabor in which a kindly pharmacist assists the tiniest old lady in the world.
In all the Pre-1900s paintings of medical arts however that sweetness was gone, and in its place were some of the most hilariously horrific paintings I’ve ever from a time where science wasn’t quite so far along as it is now. People are stabbing themselves, teeth are getting ripped out in the street, and even the man just having a wart removed from his foot (top row middle) looks like he experiencing the heights of torture. These scenes look like they’d fit better in a Saw movie than a medical journal, but they are fascinating historical documents that really really make you glad to be alive now.
One funny antiquated medical practice that kept popping up was called Uroscopy, a practice in which doctors would look at a big ol’ glass of pee and compare it to a wheel of 20 different colors of urine (don’t know where they got the number) in order to diagnose any number of different diseases and ailments. There’s virtually no truth to this being a legitimate medical practice (with the exception of bloody urine using being a bad sign and brownish urine being linked to jaundice) so it was essentially just guess work like a much grosser crystal ball. I got a big kick out of how these artists chose to render old men staring intently at pee in otherwise beautiful backdrops, and while reading more about uroscopy I also discovered that a 17th century physician submitted a report that diabetic patients had sweet-tasting urine, which is apparently a true fact due to excess glucose in the blood being excreted through urine, but how he discovered this and why he bragged about it is probably best left as a wild mystery.
Next up was series of bucolic scenes of early European tradesmen in scenic countrysides. My favorites included: a scene of a master barrel maker overseeing his cooper shop by Carl Wilhelm Kolbe; a scene of a traveling snake-oil salesman capturing the attention of a bunch of suckers called The Quack by Gerrit Dou; and a dramatic scene of laborers transporting a giant log by horse and buggy by Wilhelm Lommen.
Next up, I traded in the wide-open outdoor spaces for steamy, hazy scenes of blacksmiths at work. These paintings did a really incredible job capturing the palpable heat in the air of the forge. My favorites paintings were: a stoic portrait by Carl Ostersetzer of an artisan smithing solo; and a sweaty group scene by an artist whose name I didn’t record.
Combining the backbreaking metal work and the scenic vistas, the next set of paintings were all about railroad workers. I like that the idea of the railroad has such a place in the American consciousness that these paintings include more surreal modern pieces side by side with more realistic paintings from when the tracks were first lain. My favorites included: a barren landscape where tracks are just being laid down; a powerful scene by Leonhard Sandrock of railroad workers using a tool called the adz to smooth the plates that the rails are tied to; and a more dreamlike Pop-Art-y piece of a modern worker tearing up railroad planks.
These paintings were accompanied by a stunningly detailed bronze sculpture of a railroad worker by Ludwig Spiegel called Crankshaft Smith, which I can only assume was the subject’s wrestling name.
Next up was one of the museum’s prized possessions, a fantastic Norman Rockwell piece called the Bookworm which shows an absent-minded going about his errands only to become quickly distracted by a good book. The painting itself is classic Rockwell with every detail meticulously rendered to bring the character to life, and it actually is an homage to another painting we’ll see later in the museum by a German artist named Carl Spitzweg who was a big influence on old Norm.
Next up it was back to the sweeping vistas with more scenes of outdoor labor that looked as beautiful as the work looked miserable. These paintings differed from similar scenes of outdoor labor in that they highlighted female laborers out harvesting and gathering crops, collecting seaweed, and tending fields. These paintings made for a fun counterpoint to the otherwise very masculine works in the museum, and they served as important historical documents that women entering the workforce is far from a purely contemporary phenomenon.
Moving back to male field workers, one piece that really stood out to me was this beautifully impressionistic painting of a man cutting reeds by the Dutch painter Cornelis Vreedenburgh (what a name).
Next up was a special showcase of works by Carl Spitzweg, the excellent German Romantic painting who was a big influence on Norman Rockwell. Like Rockwell, Spitzweg’s paintings have an astonishing attention to detail and a richness of characterization that captures so much about his subjects in a single image. While many of the works were of various workers, they were also included in the museum’s collection as a tribute to the German heritage of the men and women who first settled in Milwaukee.
My personal favorites of the Spitzweg collection were two hilarious character sketches. To the left is a piece called The Cactus Lover in which a short pudgy bald man admires a cactus that seems to perfectly mirror his stance. To the right is a piece called The Poor Poet in which a delightfully curmudgeonly poet sits on the floor because he can’t afford a bed and has to stuff an umbrella in the roof to keep it from leaking. Surely it’s in no way a statement by the artist on trying to make a living in the arts.
After the Spitzweg collection, the next series of paintings featured works of nautical laborers which allowed for some really stunning seascapes. My favorites included: a smokey scene of barges and tugboats by Erich Mercker; a dramatic scene of fisherman trawling the watery depths by Georges Jean Marie Haquette; a peaceful scene of two men working together to mend fishing nets by Max Liebermann; and an impressionist scene called Raftsmen at Rest by Willy Hugo Demmler, who is perhaps the only German artist named Wilhelm to voluntarily go by Willy.
Next up were some rugged scenes of man and machine clearing roads for massive construction projects. In these works as in so many of these paintings, it’s crazy that such backbreaking labor can be rendered through such delicate brushstrokes. Highlights for me included: a scene of men trying to push a giant boulder off a mountain road by the incredibly Russian Ivan Alekseevich Vladimirov; a study by Erich Mercker of a construction site for a bridge near Stuttgart, Germany (where my parents used to live!); and a gently gauzy painting of a steamroller on a lonely country road.
Combining the nautical themes and the heavy machinery of the past two series, next up were some giant scenes of bridges and barges. The bridge scene to the left was by Fritz Muller but unfortunately I couldn’t find the name of whoever painted the more modern shipyard scene on the right.
Amid all these paintings, their was a display of bronze sculptures with one oddly tender scene of a farmhand laying down slop for a pig by the great Rosa Bonheur really standing out.
Next up was a special exhibition highlighting spectacular black and white photos of railroads around the mid-20th century by an Illinois artist named Wallace W. Abbey. This exhibit really blew me away, and each of Abbey’s photos looks like a window back in in time to a world that doesn’t really exist any more where so much of people’s lives depended on rail travel. Even without any cool historical significance, each photo was just masterfully composed with beautiful contrast between the dark and light colors and a palpable sense of mood that reminded me of German Expressionist prints and film noir. Really amazing stuff.
And for a fun Milwaukee connection, one photograph featured a train yard underneath a gigantic Schlitz billboard proudly proclaiming them “The Beer That Made Milwaukee Famous”.
Next up it was back to the old grindstone with paintings of stonemasons and quarry workers hauling huge slabs of marble. These pieces really captured the natural beauty of the natural materials while not shying away from how intensely difficult it must have been to quite literally move the earth. Highlights included: a sweeping view of a quarry amidst a bare backdrop; a whimsical collection of small scenes of the various stages of marble work from Carrara, Italy by Charles H. Poingdestre; an almost biblically grand scene of a marble pulling team by Friedrich Nerly the Elder; an impressionistic scene of a team working a quarry in Germany by Erich Mercker; an amusing scene of a mischievous looking stonemason taking a well-deserved rest by Jean-Matthias Schiff; a gorgeous oil painting of limestone kilns by Walther Kerschensteiner; an impressively well-illuminated scene of a stubborn horse ruining a day’s haul of marble by Wouter Verschuur; and a mellow scene a man sawing a large block of marble into more usable chunks by Otto Thiele.
These paintings were complemented by a dynamic bronze sculpture a muscled figured breaking stones by Jean Verschneider that was particularly striking.
In a bit of a left turn, the next series of paintings all featured more fantastical scenes of work from the Bible. I like that these pieces allowed the artists to stretch out beyond pure realism while still grounding themselves in lifelike human toil. Highlights included: a bustling depiction of the construction of Noah’s ark which seems like more of a family affair than a one man job in this version of the story; a striking portrayal of the doomed Tower of Babel spiraling up to heaven as painted by the Circle of Gillis van Valckenborch; and lastly a scene where I’m not sure what’s going on or who painted it, but judging by what seems to be an abundance of snakes I think it might be of the plagues from Exodus. Whatever’s going on, it is a really fascinating painting.
Up next we were back in the realms of realism with a series of paintings dedicated to various tasks around the farm. Compared to the earlier paintings of fieldwork, this series had a more serene and romantic gloss to them which was certainly stunning to look at but maybe a tad idealistic. Highlights included: an expansive misty landscape with bushy cows working a field; an earthier scene of women harvesting hay by Julien Dupre; a sweet scene of a young girl preparing a picnic for her lunch break by Carl von Marr; a richly detailed painting of a stoic family of potato harvesters by Ludwig Knaus; a cute scene of a little girl trailing after her farmer father called When Janet was a Child by Carl von Marr; and a gorgeous painting of a wine harvest by Peder Severin Krøyer which reminded me of Renoir.
Near these paintings were two pieces highlighting some of the industries that Milwaukee is famous for. To the right was a mundanely gruesome scene of a family slaughtering a pig for a meat by Mattheus van Helmont (note that the matriarch of the family seems to be giving the painter a look that says “why are you drawing this?”), and to the right is a stately steamy portrait of brewers stirring the mash by Eugène Decisy.
Throughout these galleries there were some really incredible sculptures which really seemed to capture the action and dynamism of the work being done by each subject. My personal favorites included: a really clever sculpture of a Japanese sawyer made out of ivory and wood by an anonymous artist; a tremendous bronze sculpture of a cowboy riding a bucking bronco by Frederic Remmington; a seemingly underdressed fieldworker with a scythe calling out an end to the working day by Bruno Kruse; a scene by Henri Levasseur of rippling men straining to pull up a heavy load; a very sweet and angelic bronze sculpture of a young woman harvesting grapes; and a cabinet filled with unpainted porcelain sculptures of various different kinds of workers, which had a sort of ethereal quality with just the soft white of the ceramic.
One particularly striking piece was this beautiful marble relief depicting ironworkers pouring molten metal:
Next up were some grander historical paintings of ancient kings and armies. Sadly I didn’t write down who made either of these pieces, but I like that in the middle of the intense scene to the left there seems to also be a naked man falling off a balcony totally unrelated to the main events.
Next up were some interesting pieces of fellas digging for minerals. To the left was a dreamy impressionistic scene of men gathering amber on a beach, and to the right was a rather dark scene of men digging up a graveyard to start mining the ground.
Next up we moved to more industrial pieces depicting work in cramped mines and bustling factories where the sweat of the laborers, the smoke of molten metal, and the clanging of machinery were practically tangible in each work of art.
My favorites of these paintings tended to be more modernist rather than the more realistic pieces. These included: a gritty kinetic painting of a steelworker straightening a hot plate by an anonymous painter; a stunning and emotional painting called Misfortune in the Mine by Getty Bisagni; a wild scene painted by Josef Jünger of burly men dragging a giant slab of molten iron across a factory floor dressed surprisingly dapper minus a lack of shirts; and a crisp almost futuristic seeming portrait of a welder by Lee Frederickson as part of the Public Works of Art Project branch of FDR’s New Deal.
These paintings were accompanied by a very grumpy looking foundry worker pouring out a ladle of molten metal.
Among the more industrial paintings were a number of pieces more focused on capturing the impressive landscapes and settings than the workers in action, which still served to capture the general bustle and intensity of the work. My favorites included: a smoking coal field getting hosed down; a hazy train yard by Erich Mercker; an almost ghostly painting of a steelworks at night by Hans Kortengräber; a gentler more impressionistic painting of a coal field by Erich Mercker; a very sleek and modern industrial scene by an artist whose name I didn’t catch; a lonely barren oil field by Viggo Langer; a stately architectural painting of an Art-Deco-y brick building in Milwaukee; and a dark and ominous painting by Arthur Paetzold of a smoggy skyline above an industrial site.
In some contrast to these industrialized landscape paintings were some more fantastical and peaceful scenes of a more rural bustle. These included: two richly detailed river landscapes by 17th-century Belgian painters Lucas and Marten van Valckenborch which are also thought to be some of the earliest known examples of a depiction of an iron forge in art; an impressionistic scene of a grainfield with smokey chimneys hinting at industrialization in the background called Bread and Iron by Fritz Gartner; and a pastoral scene of a small town being constructed in the European countryside.
The last section of the museum I visited was dedicated to Milwaukee industry. This included an incredibly photorealistic print depicting the Allis Chalmers (a Wisconsin machinery manufacturing giant) by a young Aaron Bohrod who would go on to be celebrated for his more surrealist paintings.
Not content with simply showing artist’s representations of industrialization, the museum also featured an authentic ASEA robotic arm used to assist in automating manufacturing which is pretty futuristic. On the one hand, it’s sad to see jobs lost to automation, but on the other hand, after looking at so much artwork dedicated to manual labor you do have to appreciate how much safer it must be to make some of these processes machine operated. Automation can definitely walk a fine fine line delicate between being intended to ease the burden of laborers vs. purely profit-driven at the expense of those same laborers.
Next up were a series photographs from local factories and building sites. I’m not sure who took the spectacular black and white photos to the left, but the dramatic contemporary photo of the construction crane on top of a sky scraper was taken by an artist named Trevor Suarez.
Last but not least was a series of very sweet portraits of different local workers but sadly I photographed the art poorly and the artist’s name was too blurry to read. They have a really lovely photographic quality to them that really captures each subject’s personality.
After watching all those guys in the paintings work so hard, I had quite an appetite by the end of my museum-ing so I decided to go grab some dinner. While walking to the restaurant, I’d selected I passed this strangely captivating abstract sculpture called Mixed Feelings by Tony Cragg. In the piece, two amorphous towers of bronze seem to erupt out of the ground and twist around each other, and while it’s not exactly pretty in the traditional sense there’s something about the motion, the textures, and the glint of the bronze that does make it sort of majestic in its own strange way. It also just makes me happy that the city is still commissioning contemporary public art because even if it a piece like this isn’t your cup of tea, it shows that people in charge are still fostering and valuing different kinds of talent and creativity and that’s always worth something.
For some more old fashioned public art, I also passed by the Pabst Theater, which like the good Captain Pabst intended, really is a spectacularly beautiful bit of ornate architecture that almost looks like it’s been transplanted into the city from another era.
The restaurant I decided to go to for dinner was called Safe House, and it’s a big goofy themed restaurant inspired by spy movies and the world of espionage. I’d heard good things about the food, but mostly I’d heard that the experience was a can’t miss.
Establishing a tone of subterfuge right off the bat, the entrance to the restaurant (tucked into an alley way naturally) doesn’t bear the restaurant’s name but rather features a sign for International Exports Ltd. 779 Front St. Obviously I was delighted by such deep commitment to a very silly bit.
Upon entering the nondescript fake entrance to the restaurant, visitors enter a waiting area where they are asked if the know the secret password. If you do not know the password (and it would be very unlikely if you did), you are then asked to “prove that you are not an enemy spy” by doing a silly dance with props. After the dance, you enter the main restaurant where you discover that there’s a CCTV broadcasting the dances people do in the lobby to the rest of the restaurant which is a pretty solid prank.
Throughout the restaurant, the walls are decorated with a mix of genuine espionage memorabilia, ephemera from different spy movies, and more winking pranks like doors to nowhere and secret passageways. Every waiter calls you “Agent”, the bartenders are also magicians, and you can solve puzzles on your table to win little prizes. It’s all delightfully absurd, but again the commitment to the theme and the theatrics is admirable and if you’re willing to embrace a bit of foolishness it makes for a fun and unique dining experience.
Highlights from the restaurant’s collection of secret agent gear for me included: an actual missile just casually tucked behind a TV monitor; a recreation of Check-Point Charlie that used to be on the border between East and West Berlin; an actual two-way mirror which was a pretty freaky thing to turn on while another guest was reading the information on the other side of the mirror; and a display case purporting to contain Saddam Hussein’s actual pistol though it did look more like something from an old cartoon.
My personal favorite piece was a giant wall sized puzzle, which reminded me of a Mad Magazine cartoon. If you pressed a button on the wall, the giant panels would shift around and depending on the configuration of the panels there might be appear to be one more or one less agent in the image and the goal of the puzzle was to figure out who was the extra. It was so goofy and inventive, and I liked how interactive the whole restaurant was.
In case all the espionage made you forget, Safe House is also a restaurant and a fine one at that. For dinner, I got the Blacklisted Chickened Tenders which were blackened and sautéed chicken strips with a funky Cajun Orange marmalade, which was delicious and tangy though a tad spicy for my frail Irish palette. I couldn’t come to a fancy spy restaurant without ordering a fancy spy cocktail, so I got the Agent MKE (the abbreviation for Milwaukee) which consisted of brandy, orange sour, bitters and cinnamon syrup, topped with soda and Luxardo cherry, making for a refreshing and tasty twist on a classic Old Fashioned.
For dessert, I went to a fantastic local ice cream shop called Purple Door Ice Cream, which specializes in inventive homemade flavors. The craziest sample I tried was a take on the cocktail the Bees Knees, which was made with a mixture of lemon, honey, gin, and juniper berries. It was really creative out there, but quite tasty. While I loved getting to try the more interesting flavors, I ultimately was just in the mood for something classic and got a vanilla chocolate chunk cone which simple but perfect.
From there, it was on to tonight’s open mic which was at a really cool venue called the Art Bar Cafe, which lived up to each part of the name with lots of local art, coffee and pastries, and a full bar. I was actually quite glad for the cafe element, because I didn’t see on facebook that the time of the mic had changed so I was wayy too early. I was grateful then to be able to get a great cup of coffee, and then just have a nice place to sit and write while I waited for the comedy to commence without even having to leave the bar.
I really loved the spot, but easily my favorite thing about it was that when I went to go to the bathroom I was greeted by this wild explosion of religious art and landscape paintings tiled all over the walls. It was super surreal and it just made like the place’s offbeat vibe all the more.
When the mic did begin, it was worth the wait with a great host named Nate Ford, who had a really positive energy that really lifted everybody up, and there was a small but super supportive crowd who I think were there to support one of the younger comics out for the night, but whom seemed to enjoy everyone.
My favorite comic of the night was a comedian named David Louis, who had been a headliner in Milwaukee and was preparing to move to Chicago. He had the confidence and ease onstage of a natural performer, and my favorite bit was an extended story about how he was supposed to be headline a club while the town was having a big Kite Festival. It was a longer bit, but there’s just something so funny to be about a grown man getting fake mad and yelling “That’s my main rival? A kite festival!”
Other Highlights included:
Nate ford - If I went to college I'd probably go to bible college because you only need one book. They say having sex with a condom is not as good as having sex with a person
Dan Lang- My mom's friend was in a ski accident and my mom said "we should get him a car… and a ski magazine"
Mara Caruso- Milwaukee is like an ugly person
Mike Longoria- I got pulled over for not having a seatbelt by a cop who was riding a motorcycle without a helmet.
My own set went well, but I mostly remember spending hours after the mic just hanging outside chatting with the other comics. That was often the best part of a lot of mics, and I’ve found that just getting to hang out and joke around with other funny oddball makes you feel much more at home wherever you are.
Favorite Random Sightings: a license plate that enigmatically just said “4 Ball”; a farm advertising “Party with a Pig”; a car dealership hilariously called Carface; an ad for cleaner asking customers to “Suds your duds”; a poster for a performer named DJ Han Cholo; a man wearing a horrible t-shirt that inexplicably said “Who’s Jizz is this?” (I do not understand the intended market for that)
Regional Observation: The further outside the city proper you get, the neighborhoods get artsier but also more obviously hard up which is a bummer that those two things seem to pretty consistently go hand in hand.
Albums Listened To: 3001: A Laced Odyssey by Flatbush Zombies (an audacious debut by three young Brooklyn rappers who trade verses back and forth as seamlessly as classic Wu-Tang); Unknown Album by Various Artists (this is a string of random songs I got off mixed CDs that my sister left in her old car when it became it my car in high school; today I just listened to Baby I’m an Anarchist by Against Me!)
Joke of the Day:
A man was brought to a hospital with heavily fractured bones. The doctor in the intensive care unit asks him, "Are you married?"
"No, I've been run over by a truck."
Songs of the Day:
Strange video but I’ve always liked how their flows complement each other
A good old fashioned punk sing along