Look Around! There's Beauty Here.

Hi y'all,

This week is a little two-fer - you get my banana oat flour pancake recipe and a new mixtape made specifically for you all. The pancakes are my secret recipe we make most Saturdays when we have time, and the playlist is part of a monthly(ish) series I'll be doing here, so I hope you enjoy both. Feeling crazy? Listen to the playlist while making the pancakes, you animal.

• "I did stop believing a lot of times, but the next day I always woke up and fought for it again." Tuning into pro cycling keeps rewarding me with incredible sports moments and narratives I would have otherwise missed. Last weekend's Paris-Roubaix (highlights) was another one of those reasons to watch, proving to be one of the most entertaining races I've seen in my relatively short window of fandom. Wout van Aert, who it feels like everyone was rooting for, had been chasing this win since 2018 - two podiums along the way only made finally getting there, in dramatic fashion, pure cinema.
• A little slow to report here, but I've got a couple more to check off my You haven't seen X!? movie list. Both Top Gun: Maverick and The Shawshank Redemption are now movies I can say "oh yeah, I've seen that" when people ask. My micro reviews are in the post, but I'd say Top Gun would have been 25% better had I seen it in theaters (still really fun, though) - but I've been thinking about Shawshank ever since I watched it. Really shouldn't have taken me so long. How did I miss it?? Oh, also there's a great Rewatchables pod covering it as well.
• This photo series by Joel Meyerowitz, called Cape Light, is one I keep returning to. It documents life near the coast on Cape Cod. The way he captures light, scenery, and objects - keeping humans as background dressing rather than centering them - makes these photos feel untethered from any specific time or place. They feel to me instead to belong to some corner of our collective nostalgia. They feel like scenes happening just off screen of a beloved '90s movie, except you can't quite remember which one, and you have the nagging feeling they're actually twenty years older than that.
• Oh well, look at that - my little hipster indie rock sphere is as easily manipulated into liking music as any other fanbase. For those of you who haven't seen it, Geese - a band that has been one of the more exciting indie rock bands this past year - has been accused of "psyops-ing' their way to fame - essentially employing a PR firm to create fake accounts in order to prop up their music and performances. The discussion around it has been interesting, and nobody I've read has done a better job discussing it than Eliza McLamb in her piece Fake Fans. I really enjoy Geese - they were maybe the best show I've seen in the past year and I in particular like Cameron Winter's solo stuff - especially Love Takes Miles. So does she. Her piece comes from a place of wanting this music in the world – but her perspective as a touring musician who swims in the same ecosystem adds real nuance to the discussion around why bands like Geese do this kind of thing. Her line "But perhaps there's nothing to be ashamed about. Or, there's no need to be more ashamed of the tactics created to get through the world than of the world itself" stuck with me and adds some grey to the conversation around the online economy of the music industry, our discourse, and our collective inability to correctly sus out who's real and who's not. And because the article is so good I figured I needed to check out her music as well. I really liked this track.
• Talking of music, Macy and I have been on a bit of a heater with shows recently. Two in ten days is very much above our average, but when The Format begins touring after a 20-year hiatus, you show up and make sure to sing along. Like last week's Voxtrot show, The Format joins that short list of bands I never thought I'd get to see live because they'd broken up. Glad I was wrong - a real trip down musical nostalgia lane. They put on a great show, seeing "First Single (You Know Me)" was incredible, and I'm just going to pretend the lead singer never went on after this band to sing "Some Nights."

• Feeling off today? Not performing your best at work or in life? I've got something that might help. Enjoy the Winnebago Man.
• You get better at what you practice. Everything is practice. I've been thinking about this a lot recently - the passive things we do daily or weekly that are part of patterns we hope to change, but are silently getting reinforced, getting in their reps hoping to change them later.

'Til next week,

Joey