A Dispatch From the First Days of my 30s
A reading list, emotionally potent shows by Mclusky and Porno for Pyros, and meals and meals with friends and family.
What I’m Reading:
Here’s Why Jalapeño Peppers Are Less Spicy Than Ever
The mass production of hot sauces has led to a neutering of the spiciness of jalapeño peppers. Various theories are posited in this article, including but not limited to desires for bigger and prettier peppers and the food industry’s desire for a more predictable and mild pepper that can be spiced to spec with Oleoresin capsicum extract.
The Snake with the Emoji-Patterned Skin
The New Yorker’s Rebecca Giggs explores the utterly bizarre world of ball python designer breeding. One particular breeder, Justin Kobylka, has mastered breeding these ball pythons for specific patterns. Rare and eye-catching patterns now fetch dealers oodles of money and ball python enthusiasts are part of a culture with eerie similarities to sneakerhead culture.
Leaked U.S. Cable: Israeli Would Have “Catastrophic Humanitarian Consequences”
Well, at least some people in the U.S. government seem to understand the horrors that an Israeli offensive on Rafah would unleash.
Conspiracy Theorist Mark Robinson Wins North Carolina’s GOP Primary For Governor
HuffPost usually writes pretty solid and unflinching headlines, but this one understates the depravity of Mark Robinson, the GOP’s candidate for governor of North Carolina. Robinson has engaged in Holocaust denial, referred to Michelle Obama as a man, spouted extreme Islamophobic beliefs, and accused Beyoncé of Satanic beliefs. All in all, Robinson is a pretty solid representation of where the modern GOP is headed, so it’s best to familiarize yourself with him now.
For the Minnesota Timberwolves, winning finally feels real
Ohio-based writer and poet, Hanif Abdurraqib, wrote a wonderful piece with real emotion and insight into the Minnesota Timberwolves and their fanbase, and get this — he did so for ESPN! I’m a Rudy Gobert DPOY Fraud Truther, but I’ve got a soft spot in my heart for Anthony Edwards and the long-suffering Wolves’ fanbase, and Abdurraqib is a brilliant writer that ESPN was lucky to have for this piece.
Big blue cities are embracing conservative anti-crime measures. Here’s why.
The answer to the “why” of this piece in Politico is simple: vibes. But because Politico is more interested in the horse race of politics than it is reality, it isn’t until the sixth paragraph of this article that a reader is informed that crime is down nationwide!
Former New Yorker and New Republic writer, Osita Nwanevu, reviews a recent book about the Biden administration, titled, The Last Politician, written by Franklin Foer. Nwanevu pays particular attention to anecdotes that Foer recounts about Biden’s reluctance to embrace leftist and progressive policies that his staff supports.
The Strange Death of a Boeing Whistleblower
No doubt, you’ve heard of the recent “suicide” of former Boeing employee and now deceased whistleblower, John Barnett. This article in The American Prospect paints a rich picture of Barnett’s life and you, like most sane people, will finish this article and feel confident that Barnett was a man who had 0 intention of killing himself.
Nvidia Wants to Replace Nurses With AI for $9 an Hour
I’d like to think that kind, decent people see that most applications of AI are creepy, inhuman, and immoral. Because everything is awful, Nvidia is patting itself on the back because of their plan to cut costs and cut humans out of healthcare in favor of AI nurses. Tight, tight.
Stone Skipping Is a Lost Art. Kurt Steiner Wants the World to Find It.
The world of stone skipping is an utterly bizarre one filled with characters who devote their lives to finding the perfect stones for skipping and then throwing them onto a body of water that will disappear those same stones. This article gets into the science of what makes the perfect rock, the philosophies that guide stone-skippers, and the politics of stone-skipping competitions.
What I’m Drinking
At a friend’s birthday party, a bottle of Arak, a Levantine anise liquor, emerged. I’d not had Arak in quite some time and was delighted to find that I still enjoyed it. Arak is best served with water to dilute it and a few ice cubes to chill it. Arak, served right, has a slightly syrupy texture that compliments the strong anise flavor. I had several glasses of arak that night and suffered little from it the next morning. There’s something about anise that recalls medicinal flavors, but my bullshit theory is that those same qualities make Arak more palatable the next morning for your body.
What I’m Eating
A really nice thing about having family in town is that it almost always leads to some nice meals. My dad’s recent visit was no exception. Of particular note were meals at Karzcma, Cafe Mogador, and DOC Wine Bar.
Karzcma
Nick of Marinara, my dad, and I shared a plate of pierogies and the fried chicken roll stuffed with mushrooms. The chicken was a little tough, but the pierogies were perfect, and my pickle soup was rich and hearty.
Cafe Mogador
Cafe Mogador is something of a Williamsburg institution. I’ve had multiple friends work there and despite being a fan of Arab and North African food, had not yet made my way there. My dad, Nick, Tommy, and Adam shared a platter of hummus and falafel, and some halloumi. I enjoyed a Mergeuz sausage sandwich but was most satisfied by the side of fries I had with cumin ketchup. I’m a ketchup hater and thought this riff on a classic was quite welcome.
D.O.C Wine Bar
D.O.C. Wine Bar is a Sardinian restaurant tucked into a quaint and romantic building with a brick interior and cavernous vibe. My dad and I started with the saffron arancini served with a pecorino cream sauce. I could have eaten nothing but arancini, but my main was my highlight — fregola in pistachio pesto with mascarpone.
The good eating didn’t end when my dad left town. Last Friday, we celebrated my friend’s birthday at Le Saaj, a Lebanese restaurant in Bay Ridge (this is also where the arak came into play). The food and drinks were all paid for beforehand so the food never stopped coming out. I was bowled over by the fattoush, the Lebanese cheese rolls in filo dough, and the lamb skewers.
The next morning, I had breakfast in Sheepshead Bay’s Opera Cafe Lounge. I’m spending more time in South Brooklyn recently and was delighted to learn of a well-regarded Turkish restaurant in the middle of a very Russian neighborhood. Opera was operating at high volume when we arrived, but our food came out only minutes after we ordered. The chicken shish and the shepherd’s salad were the highlights.
A few days later, I finally made my way to Ridgewood’s Mama Yoshi Deli, a new Japanese deli that has gotten rave reviews from my friends. I got overwhelmed and got the spam grilled cheese on a milk bun as well as a bowl of tuna poke. My friend, Malcolm, got the spicy chicken katsu sandwich. I’ve attached a photo of it below:
In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been deceived by the poke bowl in the fridge display and should have gotten the chicken katsu, but that’s what next time is for.
Last night, I went with a group to Red Hook Tavern to try their legendary burger. We started with the steak tartare, oysters, grilled prawns, and the blue cheese wedge salad. The tartare was solid. The oysters were served with pebble ice over pickle juice, hot sauce, mignonette sauce, and lemons. The wedge salad we ordered with bacon on the side, which turned out to be a huge slab of perfectly cooked bacon that we cut into chunks. The burger, as promised, was memorable, albeit a little undersalted for my sodium-addled brain. As our companion, Pat, described it, the burger’s patty was the most beefy beef you could ever taste.
What I’m Thinking:
I’m 30 now. I celebrated my birthday last week by going to and playing shows and eating nice meals with my dad, who came up from Mexico for the occasion.
Marinara played Hart Bar on the 6th with our friends, Lucky. All Marinara shows are a blast and this one was no different. The next two nights I went to two shows: Mclusky at Warsaw and Porno for Pyros at the Hammerstein Ballroom. Both shows were extraordinary.
My dad showed me Mclusky’s music when I was a teenager. Mclusky was brawny, brash, and funny as hell, and they are one of my dad’s favorite bands. Mclusky broke up in 2005. I had several Mclusky phases over the years and when they announced a reunion tour in 2022, I made sure to buy tickets. I was set to see Mclusky in LA that year before they canceled the tour. The reason for the cancelation hit me hard: Mclusky’s guitar player and singer, Andy Falkous, was suffering severe hyperacusis and tinnitus.
At some point in the early months of 2021, I noticed something weird with my left ear. I’d call out to my baby brother while we roamed our family home’s backyard, and I’d recoil at the sound of my voice because it felt like someone was crinkling a piece of paper inside of my ear. The crinkling started happening more frequently. Barking dogs became super aggravating. If I talked too loudly, I’d wince at the crinkle. The unpleasant sensations escalated until I left Mexico — the crinkling went away completely stateside and came back within a day or two of my returning to Mexico in November.
When I went back to the US four weeks later, the crinkling was worse than ever I left rooms where people had loud conversations. I was agonized by the clattering sounds of silverware and plates when I’d put away dishes. My girlfriend at the time learned to speak to me in a near-whisper when she lay down on my chest. I couldn’t even imagine how I’d react to playing an electric guitar plugged into an amplifier, let alone the sound of drums and the rest of a live band.
Reluctantly, I Googled my symptoms. Everything pointed to hyperacusis, the very thing that would lead to Mclusky’s tour cancellation. Hyperacusis horror stories are terrifying — one well-known musician committed suicide after extreme hyperacusis made him terribly sensitive to common noises; a couple who suffered from hyperacusis moved out of the big city to avoid noise; some hyperacusis victims felt nauseous at certain sounds.
Still, I refused to stop living because of discomfort. I was not insured and even if had been, I was reluctant to follow this thread to its logical conclusion — when I had heart arrhythmias in high school, I learned how expensive it is to hypothesize and run medical experiments without the guarantee of a firm answer. So when my ex and I went to see LCD Soundsystem for her birthday, I finally invested in quality earplugs.
Those earplugs allowed me to have a great time at the show. I felt no pain that night or the next day. This is great, I thought to myself, perhaps I’ll wear earplugs more. Over the next two weeks, I wore the earplugs more and more often until they were in for most of my waking hours. One day, I left them at home. All of a sudden, mundane sounds were unbearable. The screech of passing subway trains led to a violent sensation in my left ear. I avoided unnecessary conversations.
Then came the moment that made me think that my life as I knew it was over: I stood over the toilet and as my stream hit the bowl, my ear crinkled and I cringed. How would I ever play music with friends again? How would I ever walk into a crowded restaurant again? How could I live like this?
This story actually has a happy ending. When I visited my family in Mexico that Christmas, I saw a few ENT doctors. The first one was a slobbish, arrogant quack who listed a laundry list of symptoms I must be feeling — none of them matched my experience — and concluded that I was allergic to something in Mexico. The second ENT was patient and thoughtful. He did an audio test on me and concluded I’d had a slight loss of hearing at 500 hz in my left ear and that I did not demonstrate any symptoms of long-term hearing loss — typically, humans lose their ability to hear the highest frequencies first. This ENT prescribed me some mineral and vitamin supplements that pretty much fixed me up, somehow, within a matter of weeks.
I’m not totally out of the woods with my left ear, but my bouts with hyperacusis are mild and manageable. Sometimes certain frequencies cause a crinkling — the sound of the metal scooper gliding across KD ice when I grab ice for the bar, for example — and now and then I’ll feel air blow out of my ear like a trumpet. I wear earplugs religiously at concerts now. The crinkling does get worse at high elevations.
What I learned later is that I made a grave mistake using earplugs nearly 24/7. A hyperacusis sufferer who has become more sensitive to sound needs a safe level of exposure to sound to not become overly sensitive to sound. Extreme cases of hyperacusis can be very tricky to manage or improve upon without well-thought exposure. What human has the time and money to dedicate themselves to daily audial therapy to retrain one’s ears to certain frequencies and volume levels?
To bring it back to Mclusky: when I learned that hyperacusis was the reason for the tour’s cancellation, I assumed they might not play music again. If Falkous’ hyperacusis symptoms were bad enough he couldn’t tour, how long would it take for his ears to get right? Would they ever get right?
Falkous is ok now. But he’s made some changes. The first sign: plexiglass panels around the drumset to reduce sound exposure. The second sign came a moment after their first song of the night, “Fuck This Band.” At first, I thought this song was an unusual way to start the show — “Fuck This Band” is a slow and calm song that moves around a repetitive bassline. The song never really builds to anything or explodes into a bigger moment, it just repeats and repeats and then it ends. But when it ended, Falkous grinned and put on a pair of industrial-grade noise-cancelling over-ear headphones. Now the fun begins, his smile seemed to say, and they launched into a heavy song.
What followed was one of the most fun and inspiring shows I’ve ever been to . Mclusky played like a band with something to prove. Their bass player Damien Sayell, (a recent addition to the band, I later learned), attacked his strings with 200+ pounds of rippling biceps and forearms. Damien stomped, jumped, and headbanged to each note he strummed and he probably exerted more physical effort in a single song than most bass players will during an entire tour. Between long, drawn-out notes, he’d swivel his hips and swing his pick hand (left, but playing a right-handed bass flipped upside down) above his head as he sang along to the songs.
Despite not being the original bass player who wrote these songs, Damien’s stage presence perfectly embodied the song’s brawniness and silliness. In between songs, he’d flex his chest and shoulders menacingly at the crowd. At one point, he unsheathed his biceps from his sleeves and kissed them to roaring approval from the crowd. This shouldn’t have worked, but my god it did. The highlight of the show and the Damien Experience was Collagen Rock, which I’ve linked to below:
Enough about the bass himbo. The far more emotionally complex and intriguing figure in Mclusky is Andy Falkous, their lead singer and guitar player. Falkous is about 40 pounds lighter now than he was during Mclusky’s 1996-2005 run. He’s greying now, but he yelped and screamed his lyrics with impressive vigor. In between songs, his commentary and banter were acerbic and reserved. He poked repeated fun at the Libertines and their fans, took a piss at his own songs, joked with Damien, and cut down hecklers with gentle and cutting barbs at their expense. Falkous’ sense of humor informs Mclusky’s lyrics, which can be arrogant and hilarious, take for example, the first verse of “To Hell With Good Intentions.”
My love is bigger than your love
We take more drugs than a touring funk band
Sing it
My love is bigger than your love
Sing it
My love is bigger than your love
Sing it
My band is better than your band
We've got more songs than a song convention
Sing it
My love is bigger than your love
Sing it
My love is bigger than your love
Sing it
And we're all going straight to hell
My dad is bigger than your dad
He's got eight cars and a house in Ireland
Sing it
My love is bigger than your love
Sing it
My love is bigger than your love
Sing it
“Gareth Brown Says” is another exemplary Mclusky song. Its first line is: “All of your friends are cunts, your mother is a ballpoint pen thief.”
Now that you’ve got a sense of Falkous’ stage presence and lyrics, you can imagine how endearing it was to watch him break character for a minute and express gratitude to the crowd. Falkous meant it when he said how much it meant to him to play this show and it showed in the force with which he and Damien and the drummer, Jack Egglestone, played each note. It’s been nearly 20 years since Mclusky was an active band and now that Falkous is nearly 50 years old, they’re probably playing bigger rooms than they did during their peak. That’s special.
But what really moved me was knowing what Falkous has been through with hyperacusis. I imagine that Falkous had the same thoughts I did during my worst moments of hyperacusis: will I ever play music again? Is the life I know functionally over?
When you’ve faced the possibility of your life’s greatest love ending for reasons out of your control — because your body is going to war with you — how could you not be infinitely grateful not just to play live music again, but to do it in front of a happy crowd of thousands of people? That’s special beyond words.
The night after Mclusky, I went to see Porno for Pyros at the Hammerstein Ballroom. I came away from that show touched in a similar, but different way. Since elementary school, I’ve been an avid fan, to an embarrassing degree, of Jane’s Addiction and all of their various side projects. Porno for Pyros is the second band of Jane’s singer, Perry Farrell. Porno for Pyros hasn’t toured since 1996, so this was the first chance I’d had in my life to see them live.
I’ve seen Perry Farrell live a few times since 2007, mostly in Jane’s Addiction, where he has consistently been the band’s weak point during shows. Perry changed as he got older and seemed to lose his sense of what was and was not cool. It showed in his Liberace-esque costumes from Jane’s 2000s-era reunions. It showed in his clumsy, unfunny banter in between songs. And where it showed most was Perry’s singing. Jane’s tuned down a whole step to accommodate Perry during their 2009 tour with Nine Inch Nails and he still botched lots of notes a night.
Drugs and rock’n’roll will age a man prematurely, so it’s not a terrible surprise that Perry’s voice aged badly. But to see him become so deeply uncool sucked. Perry’s musical endeavors outside of Jane’s Addiction and Porno for Pyros have been forgettable at best and embarrassing at worst. But something about the last few years seemed to change Perry and recent interviews indicate that the death of his close friend, the Foo Fighters’ Taylor Hawkins (a long-time Jane’s fan who apparently begged the band to reunite), really brought about that change.
Perry was 62 when Hawkins died. He’s 64 now and has determined that his body has a shelf life and thus, it’s imperative that Porno for Pyros and Jane’s Addiction put a proper bow on their legacies. What that meant for Perry and the other members of his bands was realizing that the grudges and petty disputes that broke them up were small in the grand scheme of things and were the grudges of younger men with bigger egos.
So that’s the context for this Porno for Pyros tour. I’d heard some mixed reviews about the tour’s early shows. Perry seemed out of it in a concerning way, according to some reviews. A 64-year-old rocker can’t get his shit together and be presentable on stage for the final tour of one of his bands? Yikes. But apparently, the shows got better as the tour progressed and what I saw was quite magical.
I made a point not to listen to P4P before this tour because I wanted to be surprised by these songs again. And that’s what happened from the very first note — I noticed that I knew nearly every word of these songs.
I marveled at the explosive, playful, and melodic drumming of Stephen Perkins, who bashed a huge drumset with bongos and various hand percussion instruments that supplemented his rack and floor toms. Perkins is also the drummer of Jane’s Addiction, but in that band, his hand is steadier, whereas, in Porno for Pyros, you feel as if he is singing through his drums.
I nearly cried watching Peter Distefano, the guitar player of Porno for Pyros. Pete beat testicular cancer late in P4P’s original heyday. The band broke up shortly after and he got off of drugs. Despite being a great guitar player, Pete never really played in any other bands of note. He’ll gig around LA in a low-stakes band with Perkins and former Minuteman bass player, Mike Watt, who also plays in Porno for Pyros. Pete also has a band here in New York that plays instrumental rock. They played Bar Freda two years ago, to give you a sense of how little material success they’ve had. Not that I think Pete cares. But for whatever reason, Porno for Pyros is the only band of note that Pete has played in and you could tell from his first strum of the night just how much he loves playing these songs and how grateful he was to be on stage in front of loving fans.
Pete glowed between songs. You got the sense he might break down in tears at any moment, he looked so happy. Pete extended his guitar solos in some songs and you could see the amusement he got out of each flourish of his whammy bar and how much care he put into each long strum. When Perry talked to Pete after songs and would call him over, Pete would beam at Perry and laugh at his stories like they were the oldest of friends.
Mike Watt, who joined Porno for Pyros on this tour, sat on stage left in a chair. He came out on crutches and can no longer stand for shows. And yet, Watt, ever the consummate professional, chose to do this tour with his friends. He too, clearly loved playing these songs, and he spent much of the show smiling and locking eyes and beats with Perkins.
And then there was Perry. I think because this was the final Porno for Pyros tour, Perry really prepared for these shows. In the past, I’ve seen Perry reach for notes that he can’t hit anymore. I’ve seen him try and find new, lower notes within the song’s key, only to botch those as well. But on this tour, The band played the songs in standard tuning again and Perry didn’t miss a note despite looking and acting more frail than ever.
Perry Farrell in his youth was as electric a frontman as you could find. He slithered, jumped, yelled, shit-talked, and dominated the stage with a quality that many have described as shaman-like. But in his old age, Perry is more judicious with his movements. He moved gracefully about the stage with slow, cautious steps that reminded me of an aging cat navigating a couch’s narrow ledge.
Where it got weird, however, was Perry’s banter in between songs. At one point, Perry announced to the crowd that 22 years ago today, he’d met his wife. The crowd started cheering, only for his wife, Etty (who is a backup singer and dancer on stage for Porno for Pyros), to grab her microphone and say, no Perry, we got married 22 years ago today. Perry looked surprised. The crowd laughed and Perry started again about how lovely he was when they first met. Etty soldiered on. We met here at this venue for the first time in 1997, Etty insisted. Perry gave up at that point and let her finish the story, but he looked frazzled.
Later in the night, Perry seemed to get quite somber in between songs and said something under his breath about how sad it’ll be that we won’t be doing these songs anymore. The mood changed. Perkins, the drummer, says loud enough for people in the front to hear, hey Perry, let’s focus on friendship right now, ok?
Perry recovered, however, and he was actually quite funny for the rest of the night. The way Perry talked and told stories from then on reminded me of a trip to California where we celebrated my grandpa’s birthday. By this point, my grandpa had had a few strokes and his memory loss was pretty severe. I was effectively a stranger to him, but he was happy to have me and these other strangers (my dad, his wife, my baby brother, a few of his sons, my dad’s sister and her daughter, etc) at the dinner table celebrating the birthday that he’d forgotten he was celebrating.
So that’s who Perry reminded me of, my grandpa in his 80s, aware of and mostly unbothered of who he was but no longer is. I got the sense that Perry understood how lucky he was to be on this stage even as he struggled to get around and remember important details about his life. But Perry’s occasional signs of gratefulness couldn’t compare to the joy I felt watching Pete, the guitar player. The crowd cheered at Pete’s guitar solos, people in the front bowed down reverently after some songs, and gave him love that he so clearly appreciated.
The highlight song of the night was “Blood Rag.” This song was an old jam that Jane’s Addiction would occasionally burst into during their song, “Pigs in Zen”, and was later repurposed as a Porno for Pyros song. On the record, “Blood Rag” is a fine song. It’s just never been one that I go back to. But this live version I saw was powerful. “Blood Rag” is a simple and very minimalistic song. The structure of the song is verse/chorus/verse/chorus/verse. The verses are built around a burst of snare and toms that loop and syncopate with an atonal, slap bass riff. Pete barely plays in the verses, save for a few stabs of chaos and noise. Perry sings over that verse and in the chorus, the drums move to a half-time, open hi-hat groove. Pete and the bass hold chords in the chorus while Perry sings, “No way,” as his voice decays into a cascade of echo that swirls around the other instruments. I’ve linked to a version of “Blood Rag” from this tour below:
A few nights later, my band, Kela, played a show at my bar. We did a good job setting the room up, limitations and all, but I ended the show annoyed by the state of my completely shot voice.
I felt a little like Perry Farrell of yore, reaching for notes I could no longer hit, panicking, and modulating incorrectly to compensate for what my body would not allow me to do. Still, the bar looked quite nice and it was a joy to play in front of friends and family.
What I’m Doing
Celebrating can be exhausting and after two weeks non-stop, I’m happy to take a break. Marinara and Kela may have shows coming up late next month, but there’s nothing immediate on the docket in my life, save for an early April reservation at Eyval.
I’m going to spend much of the next few weeks working and I’m happy to announce that the bar where I work is debuting a new menu today. I’ve attached some photos of it below and those of you who want to cross the digital threshold and visit me IRL should send me an email for more details!
Maitake mushrooms in a guajillo BBQ sauce.
Shishito peppers with kimchi aioli.
Our house smash burger and bulgogi beef burger.
Bok choy salad.
Charcuterie with mortadella and picked cauliflower.