Tony Stella was an incredible talent. Years ago I commissioned him to make an alt cover for SHE RIDES SHOTGUN, which he did in perfect Tony fashion. RIP

Monk parakeets appear to building nests in Oak Woods Cemetery, which happens to be the burial place of Harold Washington, who was a fan of these birds — as depicted in this mural on 53rd Street.

SHAFT

"Architectural Digest? Come on in!!"

The first underdrawing of the first page of my first lyric zine seems to be finished, can you guess the song? Now I just have to find out if I can ink it without wrecking it. Twenty or so more drawings to go.

Slightly diminish a book Scantily Clad Lunch

Watching the King Kong first-of-its-kind laserdisc commentary, again on Criterion Channel, & have learned 1) an early draft had "a great deal of anti-Semitic humor" & 2) the first screenwriter got $77,000 in today's money & Ruth Rose $2,600 for rewriting the whole thing from scratch in 2 weeks.

Eagerly cracking open the Criterion Channel Emile de Antonio collection like the Cold War nerd I am. “You have to accept you have very dad-tastes in media,” @prairiehamster.bsky.social told me the other day, I don’t know where he gets that from.

A piping plover flies around Montrose Beach this morning.

Not a teacher but everywhere I look in every age group it’s “I’m entitled to my own facts & nobody is ever allowed to tell me I’m wrong.” When actual reality really slams this country in the collective face with a nail-studded 2 x 4 a lot of people won’t psychically survive it.

If bluesky doesn't work out I'm not going to another social media platform I'm starting a numbers station

The thing I really appreciate about Vimeo’s on-demand platform is it’s so slow & bug-addled & makes you jump so many needless impossible hurdles to just find & rent anything that you go “you know what, fuck it, maybe I’ll try again in a year or two” & then Tubi is right over there & free.

We've replaced the atomic engineers with line cooks. Let's see what happens

Today in 1960, the Soviet Union shot down a CIA U-2 reconnaissance plane over Sverdlovsk piloted by Francis Gary Powers. The Eisenhower administration initially lied to cover up the true purpose of the mission but was forced to admit the truth when the Soviets produced both Powers and the wreckage.

With the dismantling of the VRA, this May Day I remember the sit-in protests in STL MO that preceded the CRA by +20 years. Led by black women at the height of Jim Crow, black Missourians would spend 2 decades defeating segregation of major restaurants and key downtown businesses with people power.

Some notes on Prismatic Ground 2026–particularly the wonderful films of Parine Jaddo—for Not Reconciled, which you should subscribe to if you care about this sort of thing notreconciled.substack.com/p/prismatic-...

Reading an early ‘90s comics collection with an incredibly condescending “I usually wouldn’t go near all this non-U funny-animals nonsense but…” Gaiman forward & fella you couldn’t do Pogo or Carl Barks’ Donald comics if your life depended on it, take a seat.

Powderpuff mimosa coming up outside an abandoned factory in East Austin, on another May Day in a country that doesn’t celebrate either variant

Sumer is icumen in, holy shit it’s cold.

3 decades of Complete Peanuts to go but of the volume intros so far, the worst is Daniel Handler—all tired Lemony Snicket schtick & no comprehension of Schultz—& the best Lynn Johnston, simultaneously a tender eulogy for a friend & “we cartoonists are weird difficult people & he was no exception.”

We need a super supreme court that's one notch higher than the supreme court and it's just one impossibly exhausted old history professor who hates everyone.

Driving past several gas stations can confirm the forecast Great Lakes price leap, up to $5/gallon (oh sorry, $4.99 & 9/10) overnight. My personal prediction is $7/gallon locally by July but whatever, my morning commute is only 10 minutes & I’m surrounded by assholes needing to touch a stove.

Given that discourse-juicing article about how “we” should all start smoking “again” apparently appeared in The Cut I think you should just go “ah, right, this is a women’s fashion & lifestyle rag & one thing nicotine famously does is suppress the appetite” & move on.

trying to play peekaboo with my child but he's a European diplomat: me: where'd daddy go? baby: we must articulate a post-daddy vision of strategic autonomy me: peekaboo! baby: my historic relationship with my father is stable despite recent troubles

Favorite first time 📽️ views, April: The Temple Woods Gang The Wind Is Driving Him Toward the Open Sea Michael Clayton This Happy Breed Dancer, Texas Pop. 81 Youth in Fury Lord Thing A Page of Madness Moonstruck Smoke Signals

My only comment about the latest technofascist ass-noises about creating free-standing artificial boy-babies-only wombs to knock us foul bitches off our perches forever is that a few weeks ago I finally read "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" & I can't tell you how richly satisfying the ending was.

I say it again and again: Because we don’t learn the real history of this country, we do not understand what this country is capable of. After 1870, 22 Black men served in Congress. By 1901, because of racist SCOTUS rulings, electoral coups and election cheating and violence, there were none.

You know what was all rage in the middle of the 2010s? Interviews with posh actors and other celebs who were bleating that posh people are the only folk it’s acceptable to be mean to, and how Something should be done. And I’d say Something has been done, alright.

We must break the supreme court

Big news for the Motor City.

I hate those days when I feel like the nihilists Make some good points, dude

TONIGHT: A behind-the-scenes Muppets extravaganza, feat. a 60 Minutes profile from '79 & a syndicated special from '81 shot by future cinematography star Roger Deakins! PLUS Charo, casseroles, futuristic rock bands, & a 98-year-old Public Access veteran! Streams LIVE on Tues, APRIL 28 at 7:30pm PT!

Good morning, friends!

Dunno which disco / dance nerd needs to hear this but a regular atendee of the Loft has been uploading recordings of Mancuso he recorded on his boombox and uploading them to mixcloud www.mixcloud.com/soulfulsteve/

Working my way though that Fantagraphics Humble Bundle of The Complete Peanuts, starting with the 1999-2000 comics & working backwards until it starts feeling more like I remember it as a kid. I’ve found it, the last phase with real sustained multi-strip plotlines & such was 1983-84.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Hey guess what art is a fucking miracle amid all of this so get into it

Sunday mood

Happy Miss Congeniality Day to all who celebrate!

It's Your Daily Imani+!☀️ Saturday, April 25, 2026 Imani and Pippin are confirmed present at Montrose today. 📸: Grace Palacio (Pippin, Montrose Beach, April 16, 2026)

a flag right outside the US Capitol that reads, "Rambo 2 Happened For Real"

Me & the four people who read me:

Some folks here love to solemnly intone "there is a lot of ruin in a nation" but I suspect unilaterally destroying the global economy & then turning the gun on ourselves might blow through quite of a lot of that faster than anyone imagines. Oh, well! We asked for it.

14 volumes of traveling willburys bootlegs & it’s all tv commercials sung in cartoon voices & fart noises — greil marcus calls it “the oldest, weirdest america”

You spend years learning the dark and subtle arts of espionage and some staffer named Braeydaen Geech or whatever is posting the plans for updating the nuclear arsenal on a Fortnite chat

Car in front of me at a red light with a D.A.R.E. state license plate that’s also a vanity plate reading COBAIN: “Hm, I wonder if this person is around my age?”

Jumpy, just remember all of this is an illusion