1. The Meat Puppets at The Phoenix Art Museum.

When we’re fans, we establish a relationship with the creators we love. Sometimes it’s enormous, sometimes momentary, but it’s a relationship nonetheless. Mostly it comes from loving their art. Sometimes it’s place. When the creators are from your hometown, they’re part of your tribe, and when the local act becomes a national one—whatever that act is—there’s always that little voice saying, Yeah, but I knew them before you did. So you love them a little more. For me, that pretty much sums up my relationship with the Meat Puppets, three guys who started playing in Phoenix around 1980 and the band I’ve felt closest to in my life. I love them. Curt and Cris Kirkwood went to Brophy Prep. They made the Jesuits proud! I started going to Meat Puppet shows in the early ‘80s, and for the next ten years I saw them pretty much whenever they played: tiny clubs, bigger venues, art houses, house parties—parties where they played and parties where they were just hanging around. Years later came Nirvana. On MTV Unplugged, Kurt Cobain brought Curt and Cris onstage—“the Brothers Meat”—and played three of Curt’s songs, introducing a weird little Arizona band we’d been following forever to the rest of the world. But I knew about ‘em first! Last Friday I went to the Phoenix Art Museum to see the Meat Puppets play acoustically, something I’d never seen them do except for those few extraordinary minutes with Nirvana. I almost didn’t go. I don’t particularly enjoy watching the musicians I grew up with get old, mainly because it reminds me that I’m in the same boat. But that’s also why I went. There aren’t an infinite number of Meat Puppets shows left for me—or, for that matter, them. After more than forty years of watching this band evolve, I had to catch them one last time.

2. The Audacity.

Silicon Valley, California. Dysfunctional relationships. Geniuses. Toxic people. Billionaires. The Audacity throws all of them into the same space and then we wait to see who destroys whom first. At the center is Duncan Park, a tech CEO desperately trying to save his company, and JoAnne Felder, his therapist, whose own ethics get increasingly difficult to defend. Then Zach Galifianakis wanders in as Carl Bardolph, a semi-retired billionaire tech legend who somehow manages to be ridiculous, pathetic and frightening at the same time. That’s pretty much the trick of the whole show. These are people with enough money and intelligence to change the world yet can barely navigate a marriage, raise a kid, maintain a friendship or sit through a therapy session without causing collateral damage. The Audacity is tragic and funny in equal measure—especially when you’re not entirely sure which is which.

3. To Smithereens.

Rosa, the depressed drifter, and Paul, the art critic and fetishist. After meeting in a somewhat sleazy midtown movie house—Paul puts his hand on Rosa’s thigh, which goes way better than you might expect—the two become a thing. A thing that eventually leads to Rosa’s entry into professional wrestling. And here’s where it gets even better: Drexler actually wrestled professionally herself, briefly, as Rosa Carlo, the Mexican Spitfire. She’d actually lived inside this strange little world. I haven’t laughed like this reading a novel since maybe…since this novel. It’s funny and dirty and strange and smart, and every few pages Drexler wanders into something you don’t expect. There’s a page-and-a-half riff on R. Crumb that stopped me cold—to the point it made me wanna turn that passage into a synaesthesia press broadside. This is 1972, remember, which makes the seriousness with which Drexler considers Crumb all the more striking. Then there’s the wrestling world itself: women whose bodies don’t behave the way women in novels were traditionally supposed to behave, lesbian relationships and a queer subculture Drexler simply allows to exist. Reading it fifty-four years later, it’s striking how little she feels the need to explain or apologize for any of it. Calling To Smithereens an early queer novel may be too neat a label for a book that resists labels at every turn; queerness, gender, fetish, power and performance are simply part of Drexler’s world—and in 1972, that’s interesting all by itself. The only thing that might be better than the book is its publisher, Hagfish, which has finally brought To Smithereens back into print. Their mission statement tells you almost everything you need to know: “We publish out-of-print and overlooked books that people have called gutsy, scuzzy, pervy, and beautiful.”

4. Naked City.

I know what you’re thinking: Oh sure (groan)…who hasn’t heard of Weegee? Of course anyone who’s reading this knows Weegee. My point? Sometimes it’s great to revisit the people we love, and sometimes we love them so much it’s over and over and over. For me that’s Bukowski or Jesus’ Son or Hemingway’s posthumous Paris memoir or anything Big Star or Miles Davis or Led Zeppelin committed to wax. When I go into my bookstore to pull something I’ve sold, I’ll inevitably stumble across a book I want to revisit, grab it, and spend the next day or two with it. And then I sell another book and start the process over again. This time it was Naked City, specifically the 75th-anniversary edition published in conjunction with the International Center of Photography. Weegee’s the greatest street photographer who ever lived. Part of what made him great was understanding that getting the picture meant getting there first. We all know that. But turning the trunk of his ’38 Chevy into a makeshift darkroom so he could develop the pictures on the spot and get them to the newspapers before the news was news? That’s fucking badass. And, it turns out, an art unto itself. In fact, the whole operation was a work of performance art before anybody called anything performance art. And then there are the pictures themselves. Other photogs shot New York; Weegee saw what New York looked like at three in the morning, when something had gone terribly wrong, and turned it into art. And to this day, there are pictures Weegee made that, even after looking at them a hundred times, still take my breath away.

5. The Digital Darkroom.

I’ve finally started printing my own photographs to sell. Not sending them somewhere. Not uploading a file and waiting for a box to show up. Actually sitting in front of my Canon PRO-1100 and trying to make the photograph I see on the screen come out of the machine looking the way I think it should. Turns out the digital darkroom has its own particular ways of making you feel like an idiot: paper profiles, color management, banding, clogged nozzles, head alignments, blacks that aren’t black enough, skin that suddenly looks yellow and a printer that occasionally seems to have developed a personal grudge against me. But the harder part isn’t technical. It’s looking at a portrait I made ten or fifteen years earlier, holding the finished print in my hands and asking myself: Is this actually any good? I think some of them are. I stand by them. But there’s still that little voice wondering if I’m pretending to be something I’m not. Photographer. Printer. Artist. Whatever. Maybe that’s just another hurdle. You make it. You learn how to print it. And somewhere along the way you have to learn to trust it.

Thing 1: Horsegirl.

Chicago’s Horsegirl makes me excited about music again. Not that music doesn’t excite me anymore—but, honestly, not as often as it used to. Let’s face it: popular music is, for the most part, a three- or four-part variable equation. Vocals. Drums. Bass. Guitar. In 2026, finding something genuinely new to do with those four things ain’t quite as easy as it might have been in, say, 1966. Or even 1986. Not that it was ever easy. But Horsegirl sure makes it sound easy. Nora Cheng, Penelope Lowenstein and Gigi Reece understand noise, space, repetition and restraint in a way that feels instinctive rather than studied. (But since they covered The Minutemen, they did study…and study well, I might add.) Their latest record, Phonetics On and On (what a great title, huh…as is their debut), somehow sounds both familiar and completely fresh. They know the history without being trapped by it. And here’s the part that really gets me: they’re barely into their twenties. There’s something wonderfully wise-beyond-their-years about Horsegirl, but without any of the self-consciousness that phrase usually implies. I get the feeling they’re not trying to show me how smart or hip or cool they are. They just play.

Thing 2: The Defeated.

I really loved The Defeated, the series set in the absolute chaos of Berlin immediately after World War II. And 1946 Berlin fascinates me: a city physically destroyed, its institutions shattered, millions of people displaced and four victorious powers trying to figure out what comes next. It’s basically a breakdown-of-society movie…sans the zombies. (That’s why I love zombie films so much.) This also continues what I’ve come to recognize as the seemingly inevitable Middle-Aged Dude Obsession with All Things World War II. Guilty. But lately I’m less interested in the war itself than in what happened five minutes after it ended. Everybody knows Hitler dies, Germany surrenders and the Allies win. Roll credits. Except nobody actually got to roll the credits. Berlin became a free-for-all for its citizens, the occupation armies, the refugees, black markets, hunger, prostitution…crime and murder and revenge and people simply trying to stay alive. And then there were the Soviets. I’ll go out on a limb here: what makes the Russians such evil fucks? Although history makes it abundantly clear that The Evil Fuck Business has never belonged exclusively to anybody. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times—each time with as much sarcasm as I can muster (especially after watching the evening news): Ain’t we a terrific species?

Thing 3: I Do Know Some Things.

I seemed to have pretty much grown out of my poetry phase. It started when I was an undergrad English Lit major at Arizona State and really took off when I stumbled onto Bukowski and the Beats, sometime around 1988. For the next twenty years or so, I read a lot of poetry. And then I was just kinda over it. Oh, sure, I’d read a poem every now and then. More then than now. Which isn’t to say I don’t still love poetry. Which is a double negative and probably not the best way to say what I’m trying to say. What I’m trying to say is that I recently walked into a bookstore and saw Richard Siken’s I Do Know Some Things sitting face-out on a shelf. Smart bookseller. The black cover, Siken’s name and that title in a kind of Basquiat-esque scrawl got me to pick it up. Then I read the first poem, “Real Estate,” which took my breath away. And the rest of the book is just as good. It reminds me a little of Horsegirl. Just when you start thinking maybe you’ve heard it all—or read it all—and you’re getting a little bored with the whole show, something comes along and reminds you why you loved the thing in the first place.

Thing 4: I’m Not Dead Yet.

I’ve hit the point when aging stops being theoretical. Cancers & strokes & heart attacks, oh my! Now what? I was diagnosed with non-diabetic neuropathy, the diagnosis coming after a series of electric shocks through my legs, beginning at my heels and working their way up behind my knees. Each one was a little worse than the last. About 1/2 way to my knee I asked The Doctor’s Helper, “Are people OK with this?” “Do you want to quit? Because we can quit if you’d like.” “People quit?” “Oh yes. All the time.” Which got me wondering. “Do they cry?” “Some do.” This will be interesting. Then the cold sweats kicked in as I waited for the next blast. Each one more extreme as she made her way to the back of my knee. Which is when I asked, “Can I make noises?” She was fine with that. So I did. Because the back of the knee shock was, by far, the biggest one. And lying there making noises as she started electrocuting the other leg brought me back to the summer of 1986, which I spent in Guanajuato, Mexico, learning the language and history. At a picnic one afternoon, some kids stood in a circle holding hands while an electric current passed through them until somebody couldn’t take it anymore and broke the circle. Forty years later, lying on a doctor’s table in Arizona, I finally understood their game. And I didn’t break the circle.

Thing 5: The Algorithm vs. Wandering Around.

I’m increasingly convinced that the things I like best are the things I wasn’t looking for. I didn’t walk into a bookstore looking for Richard Siken. His book was sitting face-out on a shelf, I liked the cover, picked it up and read a poem that blew me away. That’s discovery. The algorithm is something else. The algorithm knows I like Bukowski, so here’s more Bukowski. You watched a World War II documentary? Congratulations, you now apparently want to spend the rest of your life watching Nazis on YouTube. Listen to one band and Spotify will happily introduce you to fourteen other bands you’ve never heard that sound vaguely like them. It’s useful. It’s also kinda boring. Ever get the feeling we’ve gotten really good at eliminating chance? We search instead of browse. We order instead of wander. We ask for recommendations based on things we already know we like. Which I get. And which is probably why I still love flea markets and record stores and used-book shops. You have to wander. Most of what you encounter won’t interest you. And then something does. Something you didn’t search for. Or were you? Something nobody recommended. Or did they? But it’s something the algorithm didn’t know you wanted.

And until five minutes ago, neither did you.

THING 1. MIM.

The Musical Instrument Museum sits on a stretch of North Phoenix that, in my mind at least, will always be desert. Fifty years ago I was riding dirt bikes out there. Literally. In MIM’s exact spot. Now that desert is home to one of the most remarkable museums I’ve ever visited. Leave it to an old dude to get sentimental about a patch of dirt mixed with dry washes, Saguaros, and Palo Verde trees. If you’re visiting Phoenix, MIM is worth at least half a day. If you’re an instrument junkie, it borders on being a destination all by itself. I had no idea so many instruments existed, let alone that someone had managed to gather them under one roof. You can wander from Swedish nyckelharpas to giant Belgian orchestrions to Roy Orbison’s Gibson ES-335 “Dot” he played during his stint as a Wilbury. Pictured here is an instrument I picked up in middle school, mastered by college, and have abandoned since: the Air Guitar. Its placard identifies as being made of “Nitrogen, Oxygen, Argon, Carbon Dioxide, and dreams.” Which is exactly why I played it: “Whole Lotta Love,” “Free Bird,” and just about everything on Van Halen’s first record were my early influences. Oh! Surprise bonus—the Chicken Posole soup. I came for the instruments, got sidetracked by an Air Guitar and left thinking about lunch. All in all, a pretty great day.

THING 2. The Bibliography.

Right now I’m finishing up a bibliography of the synaesthesia press. “Checklist”?  Feels like a better word? “Bibliography”? Maybe a little too formal, a little too academic? I dunno. What I’m really trying to do is document what I’ve published over the last thirty years before I forget everything. I’ve been surprised by my reaction to the project. Part of me is genuinely proud. Proud of the books. Proud of the authors. Proud of the broadsides, chapbooks, oddball Voltas, and all the strange little things I’ve published. Looking back, I can see threads running through the whole thing: Bukowski, Brautigan, Wallace Berman, Billy Childish, small presses, found photographs, letterpress printing. The other part of me wonders: is the whole exercise self-congratulatory? And if any of this really mattered, wouldn’t somebody else be writing it down? Probably not. The truth is that every publication has a story attached to it, and stories disappear faster than books. So for now, I’m trying to save the stories while I still remember them all. Now if I could just find find my copy of Harold Norse’s Sniffing Keyholes.

THING 3. Narvik. 

I watched Narvik and thought it was terrific. Not terrific “for a foreign film.” Or because it’s a foreign film. It’s terrific, period. Before watching it, I knew almost nothing about the Battle of Narvik. Somehow this chapter slipped through my WWII cracks. Which got me thinking: why do many middle-aged and older men—particularly white dudes—pop a boner over World War II? Patton Oswalt said something funny about that, but I forget it now. But that’s not what stayed with me about Narvik. Beneath the battle scenes and military history is a brutal moral question: would you save your own child if doing so meant betraying an Allied position to the Nazis? Not a spoiler alert, BTW. If you have Netflix, check it out.

THING 4. Marilyn In Manhattan: Her Year of Joy.

One of the (many) books on my nightstand right now is Elizabeth Winder’s Marilyn in Manhattan: Her Year of Joy. Like everyone, when I think about Marilyn, I think of sadness, addiction, loneliness, and the way her story ultimately ends. The idea that there was a year in which she was genuinely happy was enough to make me pull the book from the shelf. Here’s a Marilyn who is finally beginning to discover her own strength, independence, and sense of self. A woman trying to stand on her own two feet. Of course, she had to find her way to Manhattan to do that. Where else does a person go to reinvent themselves? (OK, shout out to San Francisco). My favorite scene so far comes before Marilyn even leaves Hollywood. Her roommate, Shelley Winters, invites a Welsh poet named Dylan Thomas over for dinner. Thomas proceeds to drink everything in sight before deciding he needs to get to Charlie Chaplin’s place in Calabasas, where The Party is underway. So Dylan goes. And Shelley goes. But Marilyn taps out. There’s your one-act play.

THING 5. Early Girlie!

In addition to Scot Sothern’s Sweet Adeline, I’ve been working on Early Girlie! and, if all goes according to plan, it will be available in July in an edition of 100 copies. The project grew out of a small box of anonymous color slides from the 1950’s I found years ago on one of my many flea market adventures. Most are “cheesecake” pictures—ordinary women posing in an era when even mildly risqué pictures could get you into some serious legal trouble. For example, all the pictures in Early Girlie! are pube-free. What always interests me isn’t the photographs—but the people and circumstances behind them. These were clearly commercial images, probably produced by a single photographer working with professional models. My guess is he started out in a camera club and either found a producer willing to back the work, or he (she?!) had enough money of their own to pay the models and recover the investment by retailing the finished sets. Bettie Page’s name is one of the few that survived the era. Most didn’t. I’ve always been fascinated by the small details that history leaves behind. Give me a name and I can spend an afternoon chasing it. There’s almost always a terrific story behind an unknown name. Unfortunately, in many cases the photographs survived while the names of the women who posed for them and the photogs who made them did not. Early Girlie! is a small square format featuring selections from the slides along with what I’m calling an “addendum” written by Eric Kroll laid-in to the book. Like many of the projects I enjoy most, it sits somewhere between photography, found imagery, vernacular history, collecting, and bookmaking. It’s also a reminder that sometimes the best publishing projects begin at a flea market and not with a manuscript.