Shloshim V'Echad

That translates directly in Hebrew to "thirty and one"

If you’d like to listen to what I did while writing this, check out the Miles Davis album, Sorcerer.

Bond, James Bond.

After watching the documentary on the music of 007 I was immediately motivated to watch all of the bonds again (or for the first time). My guess is this will come up in the next few Weekly Appetizers.

While it was informative and fun (minus a few spoilers since I haven’t seen all of the movies), it did put me in a weird mood that inspired a bunch of writing I’m not comfortable sharing, at least not in this forum. It doesn’t fit. In my head I have this map of how my brand fits together with y personal writing, career, etc. It should probably be cohesive and this newsletter is the closest thing to a blend that I have so far.

Initially I kept a travel blog on my website but that has slowed a lot recently. I kept other personal writings on tumblr and then moved them to my website. Work related things would go on LinkedIn and I even wrote a web3 essay on a blockchain blog site.

I have journals and now OneNote pages full of things ranging from short stories to book ideas. I can kind of tie them together under the guise of popular culture but that’s not quite right either. I’ve also not done anything of note that a memoir makes sense.

I hope that in writing this I will somehow find the write way to sort through it all, piece it together, and share. At least one person might enjoy it and I think the process would build a nice web between all of the disparate ideas thus far, probably some benefit in that.

Anyways, here’s my rant about a rant.

Back to normal…

I’ve got an HBO subscription for the month since I bought a Roku stick. I already finished House of the Dragon and it hasn’t even been a week. Here are some thoughts.

House of the Dragon

I have to say, I am impressed. I barely heard any good things about this show. I hadn’t heard bad things either. Unlike GoT, people don’t volunteer that they’re watching it but will gladly chat if you ask. It’s certainly not as moving as GoT. They did ramp up the gore however. The classic tension and plotting remain but is a little more predictable since we’ve seen how GRRM stories play out. Also, we know the outcome (at least in the long term) so our previous knowledge changes your perception of what is going on. Your brain is attempting to tie the pieces together the whole time and it makes for a different watching experience. "Is this person related to this person?” “Aren’t these people in power there?” Etc..

On the whole, it felt like a budget version of GoT, even though some things like the dragon CGI was very detailed. While overall the quality is a bit lower, the story is compelling and I am looking forward to the next season and also plan to read the book(s).

I’ve got about 3 weeks left so if there is a show/movie on HBO I must see, please let me know.

Decorating the House

One of the things I notice when sitting on the couch and watching the aforementioned programming is that my walls and living room are bare. I’m in a new apartment so it can’t be helped.

I want to stay minimalist and not amass too many things all at once. For not only budgetary reasons, but I think it looks better, and more practically, if I find myself moving again, I don’t want to deal with a ton of stuff.

Two things I’ve been drawing inspiration from (at least trying to) is art and jazz. Art makes sense, I went to countless museums on my little European tour and was reinspired to dig in to a few styles I like (or began to like). Also, over the years, jazz has filled the cracks into my Spotify between my more constant listens. I’m not going to decorate with anything related to Death Metal but jazz is tied a bit more to culture and is a lot more décor friendly, especially as I’m filling my apartment with a bunch of midcentury modern hand me downs.

Moreover, procrastination and curiosity blend wonderfully as I look for decorations or furniture pieces and find myself in full exploration mode online digging into artists, movements, and backstories online.

For example, I started looking for prints I might want to frame. I stumbled across the Guggenheim website that allows you to learn and browse their collection. That was the end of decorating/shopping for the night. Instead I started “researching”…

I haven’t finished my explorations there, but some favorites (new and existing) are Mondrian, af Klint, and Kandinsky. These are building out my fandom among some of my longer held preferences like Miro and Dali. I know these are monster names, but I’m admittedly not deep enough to know more obscure artists. I can tell you I generally prefer more abstract and busy works than your classical religious portraits or still lifes. Someone said that brands are just as much (if not more) about what you aren’t than what you are — I think related to fashion. In this case, I’m still trying to boil down the wide varieties of things that I like to understand the connective tissue. Sounds like my writing.. The only way to do this is to see more and review the things you’ve seen. The preferences will show.

I do see some parallels between the art and music that I like, it’s faint, but it’s there. Of course it depends on mood and a whole lot of other factors. This is why I wish I had figured out a way to build my universal taste engine. It would just take so much computing power and data to work…perhaps one day.

Anyways to break up all of this text, here is a little bit of what’s in and out of my “brand”.

In:

Out:

This doesn’t mean I don’t like the artists in the out section or that I love every piece by those who are in. Simply that those pieces don’t fit. Most artists of any form don’t bat 100% to any particular fan — if they do, I find their claims somewhat dubious and they’re using that artist as a way to demonstrate their personality, which is particularly fraudulent I think.

Amazon Fresh, last section, I promise.

Do you remember Home Grocer? As a kid, there was about a year or two before the .com bust that we had our groceries delivered, it was an amazing revelation to me that signaled the future was here. Flash forward 20 years and we’re still only just getting there. However, as I set up my apartment, I’ve already found myself using Amazon Fresh a lot, delivering my kitchen staples within a day. It’s not available in all metro areas, but I think they are starting to scale out. There are new Amazon Fresh stores in addition to the existing Whole Foods which builds out their network. The drivers already are going through neighborhoods daily with packages and I’m sure they have built out their urban networks that it makes sense. The distances they can cover are much more significant than Gorillaz or some of these other delivery apps since they are not 10 minutes or less. The competitors need an insane value prop to compete, which is how they ended up with this super fast instant delivery model. I can’t wait to see how this builds out, I think it’s a great connivence that many don’t realize until they tried it. Going to the market isn’t ever going to end. For produce, it’s best to see it. For the butcher or fish monger you want to speak with them and understand what you’re getting. But with things like cereal, olive oil, etc.. what does it matter?

That’s all for today, enjoy your week!