Ahead on Differential

This is the Ahead on Differential Daily Dispatch, issue #8.

I.

I’m not too proud to admit that I’ve spent the vast majority of my shift today bawling my eyes out at YouTube compilations of displays of sportsmanship. Like “Rainbow Road,” I don’t know why it’s such a reliable tearjerker. They’re not even great compilations; in the videos I sampled, the voiceover was generally lacking, the sequencing didn’t make sense, there was barely any context given. I wouldn’t follow these channels under any circumstances. Doesn’t matter. Waterworks, on. It all started with pulling up David Freese’s walk-off home run in Game 6 of the 2011 World Series and it just escalated from there. I was this close to just plugging “animals react to returning owners” or some such thing, but thankful I pulled out of the skid. I don’t know, man, I’ve got to kill time at work somehow.

II.

I first encountered Kiwi comic Guy Montgomery in 2014 during the first season of The Worst Idea of All Time⁠, a podcast where he and his friend Tim Batt watch notorious turkey Grown Ups 2 every week for a year and chronicle the erosion of their sanity. Since then he’s bounced around the Antipodean variety show circuit, appear on Taskmaster NZ and the Aussie version of sketch improv show Thank God You’re Here, among others. His magnum opus, though, is Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont-Spelling Bee, a gleefully absurd comedy game show that grew out of a COVID-era YouTube show and a live 2023 edition at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. The sets look like castoffs from The Price Is Right circa 1974 and “silly” doesn’t even begin to cover some of the spelling games played. There are five seasons available across two networks (one in Australia, one in New Zealand), and it’s simply the best shit.

III.

I think there’s only one of them left. I don’t know if it can see me but it sure as shit can smell me (on account of all the shit smeared on me). I think its legs are compromised enough that he will not stand much longer; its shins look like a bundle of spent drumsticks shoved into a tube sock. I lock in; you must always lock in. I run as fast as my gashy feet let me. Now it definitely sees me. I jump and connect with a flying knee and knock that sucker’s head clean off his torso. I put my fingers in the orifices bowling-ball style, and I jam the skull into the nearest recycling bin. I mutter, to no one, “touchdown.”

IV.

I haven’t listened to an album today, so I’ll reach back into the archives and recommend an old favourite. When I first got back into buying music on physical media, one of the first albums that was glued inside the changer was Animals by Pink Floyd. I have had Dark Side of the Moon in my life for too long for any other Floyd album to be my favourite, but Animals may be their best, and certainly ⁠Roger Waters’ best and most statement as a songwriter. Like, “Pigs (Three Different Ones)” is the shit, even if it’s a hair unsubtle. But me, I’m a David Gilmour guy. “Dogs,” man. That’s the one. That’s two, count ‘em, two recommendation of albums from 1977 thus far, and brother, you can expect a bunch more by the time I’m through.

#dd

This is the Ahead on Differential Daily Dispatch, issue #7.

I.

I should start dressing like a middle-aged Italian man. I should give an honest chance to good loafers and nice watches and linen shirts that aren’t from Old Navy. I should learn the art of sprezzatura, which is a contradiction in terms, or maybe a zen koan for the denizens of Milan Fashion Week. I should get sunglasses that aren’t from the dollar store (ah, but Billy Gibbons, the patron saint of cheap sunglasses, does kind of have a funky grandpa look about him, what with the Nudie suit jackets and big-ass beard). Middle-aged Italian men don’t wear sweat-crusted Colorado Rockies baseball caps, because of course they don’t. Middle-aged Italian mean look like they know where to get the best anything in town, from the best tailors to the best sandwiches. Middle-aged Italian men know what to do with a god damn kerchief.

II.

Despite the proclamations in the prior paragraph, I don’t follow a ton of people online whose lane is fashion or menswear or anything sartorially-centered. But “not a ton” is greater than zero, and if there’s one person who’s had the biggest impact on the way I’ve thought about clothes, it’s Percia Verlin. In all likelihood, I was introduced to her in one of the YouTube algorithm’s occasional fits of benevolence. The video that was served up to me was one of her “city boy” videos, where she discusses the subgenre of Japanese streetwear influenced by Ivy League prep and American/European workwear. Lots of denim and neutral colours. A lot of brands I’ve never heard of, can’t afford, or can’t fit in. But what it does give me is a heuristic for clothing myself in a way I think is cool, and that’s not nothing.

III.

I just shaved 15 pages off my manuscript and included three poems that weren’t in the original. Most of the cuts were either off-theme or shorter poems that just ate page count for nothing. Some nature poems got the boot, but some of them stayed on board because they had kind of a “cli-fi” bent to them. I can make that work, even though it’s not something I set out to write consciously about; I guess I just have the effects of climate change on the natural world top of min for some reason. Most of the stuff with spaceships and rockets survived. I wonder if the “intermission” with the poems about The Gambler and Watership Down will survive in their current state. My “intergalactic love song in five parts” is the one that, candidly, I’m afraid will get fucked up the most in the editing process. I know it can be better, I just have to trust that another person might know how.

IV.

In a prior post, I alluded to keeping up with new music releases thanks to a few subreddits I follow. But I also keep up with new music the old-fashioned way, which is following music critics whose taste in music is simpatico with mine. One such writer is Steven Hyden, inventor of the five-album test, late of Grantland, currently at Uproxx, and also the co-host of the recently-revived Indiecast. He’s the one who introduced me to AoD Hall of Famer Brian Dunne (dig this profile from a few months back), and now he’s introduced me to a band from Oakland called Mildred and their debut album Fenceline. Hyden frequently talks about “patio music,” and Fenceline is just that, an album of pleasant, ragged rockers that mosey along, a perfect companion to a beer or a joint on a patio.

#dd

This is the Ahead on Differential Daily Dispatch, issue #6.

I.

I just lost to my Scrabble tutor by 189 points. He bingoed four times early in the game and bingoed out for good measure, catching me with a full rack, including the Z. You wanna see? Here you go. You may just see a series of words; I see a god damn crime scene. Someone was murdered on this board: me. But then I look at the engine's analysis to see if I played like shit, because I definitely feel like I played like shit, but all it says is “Well, you missed WEEDIEST, but otherwise, you played quite well. Awesome, even.” Didn’t I blow the endgame by emptying the bag when I played H(I)M, allowing Josh to bingo out? “Nah, you were dead meat already, the play was correct.” It seems I have yet to internalize that I can lose, get dogwalked even, and still have played well.

II.

I’m not so cool that I crossed paths with Cameron Lew, aka Ginger Root, back when he had shorter hair, covering Glen Campbell and Isaac Hayes in his 2004 Honda Element. No, I got on board circa “Loretta,” like a god damn normie. There’s a lot I admire about Lew and his work: his musical omnivorousness, his virtuosity, his ardent dedication to the aesthetics of the VHS era, the handmade feel of his output on record and elsewhere, and his vision of Ginger Root of more than a music project, but a self-sufficient multimedia ecosystem. To than end, he’s recently returned to the land of YouTube covers with Saikoro Music, a musical game show of sorts inspired by Japanese travel shows à la Suiyō Dōdeshō where the song, instrument budget, and shopping location for the episode are determined by the roll of a die. The spirit of Toaster Music lives on.

III.

I don’t know if this snippet will ever find a home, so it can live here:

The Great Steel Gull is perched on the lip of the highest building in the neighbourhood not meant for commerce or worship. Its darting ball bearing eyes chart the dance of debris below. “The wind moves, but never uses,” it laments, pointing its iron beak towards the river. “I could put all this to good use. O pebbles! To aid digestion. O garbage! To make into clapboard for my bungalow. O baseball caps! To broadcast my various fandoms, and thus self-actualize.” A rebar feather gets dislodges and clangs onto the roof of the Abribus. “Everything ends. I am familiar with the ghosts 1994, 2004, 2024, 2054, and forever more. Everything I care about gets carried away by the likes of you, like the smell of every bagel eggs and cheese I’ve ever eaten.”

IV.

I’m not above jamming a little lo-fi hip-hop to relax/study to despite not having had to study in over a decade and being more tightly wound than a mandolin string. Even though a lot of the music in the genre runs together (I’ve actually alluded to this on an old post), I like it on the whole, and you can tell that these bedroom producers have two north stars: Tokyo’s Nujabes and Detroit’s J Dilla. Now there are producers in the genre I like, some of whom I might even write about in the future, but few have come close the achieving the dense technical and emotional collage of Dilla’s Donuts, the fucking Citizen Kane of beat tapes. To even call it a beat tape feels reductive: most beat tapes don’t feature this level of cratedigger taste, production chops, and thematic cohesion. It is the LP that launched a thousand producers, including a bunch working with little more than an old copy of Logic and an MKP Mini clone.

#dd

This is the Ahead on Differential Daily Dispatch, issue #5.

I.

It was bound to happen. We’re well into June. Spring has fully given way to summer. With summer comes the heat, and with the heat comes humidity, and with the humidity comes the banshee wail of my pores. I don’t have to be outside much during my commute; I’d peg it at 30 minutes round trip. But in the dead of summer, I morph into a sweat elemental. I’m not out here working the land of anything, I’m just standing on the corner waiting for the crosswalk light to turn green. I’ve thought about being a towel guy, but that would mean having to lug a whole-ass towel around in addition to my work stuff. No, this is just something I’ll have to endure, just as I’ve endured it my whole life thus far. My kingdom for drier summer days.

II.

Matt Sweeney is an indie-rock long hauler. He’s been gigging since high school, where he played with Ween drummer Claude Coleman in Skunk. He’s probably best known for his work in Chavez, Zwan, and the Hard Quartet, his prodigious session work (he's played for everyone from Adele to Iggy Pop), and his numerous production credits. The first time I encountered Sweeney was on his show Guitar Moves, where the picks the brain of guitarists as stylistically diverse as Sturgill Simpson, J. Mascis, and fuckin’ Keith Richards. My favourite episode features Sweeney’s high school pal Dean Ween; if it were possible for a YouTube video to reek of beer, sweat, and smokes, it’s this one. I don’t know if Sweeney is what I would call a crack interviewer, but he’s attentive, affable, and curious, all great qualities in a host. I love this show.

III.

I try to shoot this pixelated sun. This lens has other plans. I know I’ve done it once before, though to be fair I was way closer to the glitchy star, because my tripod stood on your old balcony at Babel Heights, floor two hundred and three. I still recall the chipping purple paint, the way you stood there, stock-still, like a saint unbothered by the miracle they’ve just performed. That porch, that building, you? Now dust.

IV.

Ah, surely you didn’t think I’d bring up Guitar Moves for nothing! The show is where I first heard of Welsh guitarist Gwenifer Raymond. She’s an American Primitive-style fingerpicker in the vein of John Fahey, but the person she reminds me of the most is Leo Kottke, what with the fanciful song titles and machine-gun playing. Her most recent album, Last Night I Heard the Dog Star Bark, was one of my favourite albums of 2025. I gave a listen to her album prior, 2020’s Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain, and while it was every bit as eerie and droney as Dog Star (the first track has a perfect metonymic title: “Incantation”)⁠, it’s much more patient in terms of attack and dynamics. It’s totally virtuosic but not clinical: Raymond is an expert at setting a mood with her playing. It’s extremely evocative stuff. I can’t wait to check out her debut from 2018 to complete the set.

#dd

This is the Ahead on Differential Daily Dispatch, issue #4.

I.

I’m on an 11-game losing skid at Bagel Club, an informal get-together of Scrabble players held at a bagel shop downtown. I started this event in part because my new job keeps me from attending the city’s flagship Scrabble club, and I’m in sore need of over-the-board practice. This losing streak is really testing my faith in my abilities. It doesn’t matter that I see and play JANITORS or JAUNDICE or NICENESS. It doesn’t matter that if I were to play those 11 games over again there’s no way I’d go 0-11. All that matters is that this sample size, however small, is my reality. The game too often feels like it’s something that’s happening to me and not something that I have any control over, even though I have control over some of it. I hope the streak comes to and end, but it’s the hope that kills you.

II.

The Mount Rushmore of Pittsburgh is as follows: George Romero, Roberto Clemente, Girl Talk, Fred Rogers (also shout out to my friend and honorary Yinzer Chris Mello, go Knicks). I can’t think of another person in the history of television with a higher approval rating than Fred Rogers. A titan of children’s programming, a champion of public broadcasting, a Peabody Award winner, and a beacon of hope and calm when the world feels like it’s perpetually on fire. So it seems fitting that now, amid a sea of AI slop and prank videos and whatever atrocity MrBeast is up to at the moment, that Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood finally launches its official YouTube channel. Turn on, slow down, and chill out to one of these proto-How It’s Made segments.

III.

Let’s try some diarism:

Two hydrophobic blankets and a jug of enzyme neutralizer. Soak the rug, the fitted sheets, all of it, with the stuff. My girl can’t stand it. She has had enough of worrying if something smells like piss or not. It’s everywhere. Who lives like this? I spend a hundred bucks on Feliway, some supplements to chase the nerves away. I might not get these cats to best friends, just as long as this pissing contest ends.

IV.

You know how it is sometimes: you’re reading about the Clash’s 1985 busking tour of the UK, entertaining delusions that you and your poetry buddies could still pile into a rented Toyota RAV4 and rock the coffeehouses and used book stores of the Windsor–Québec corridor. You notice that the Clash’s original drummer Terry Chimes, who played on the first album from 1977, returned to the fold in the early 80s, only to leave again for drug reasons before the busking tour. You keep reading Chimes’ Wikipedia page and learn he went straight from the Clash to Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, which must’ve done wonders for his drug problems. You then think, “I’ve definitely heard of Johnny Thunders, I wonder what this album of theirs sounds like.” You read a little further and learn that the first pressing of their 1977 debut album—their only album, in fact—had such a shitty mix that there’s been a cottage industry of remix attempts over the last five decades. The world simply needs to know how good these guys were. You pull up the cleanest, crispest version of L.A.M.F. by the Heartbreakers that you can find, hit play, and conclude that it fucking rocks. It’s sleazy and glammy and catchy as shit; it sounds way more like prime Stones than the Sex Pistols. You now have a new contender for your favourite album of 1977, which is already chock full of classics. What a wonderful problem to have.

#dd

This is the Ahead on Differential Daily Dispatch, issue #3.

I.

I love going to the mall. Any mall. Even shitty ones. There’s a dying mall a short walk from my home. Passing through its doors is like stepping into a portal back to 1994. You can buy Turkish rugs in bulk there if you so desire. If deadstock Levi’s and dollar store candy is more your speed, brother, you’re in luck. There’s a maze of corridors in the rear or the building that houses various offices, clinics, and practices. Each hallway has a street name, but the address numbers ascend and descend willy-nilly, so they’re not much help in terms of navigation. Imagine the Backrooms with nurses and lawyers instead of monsters and apparitions and you’re getting close. There’s a bar on the premises but I shudder to think who drinks there.

II.

Here’s my dirty little secret: everything I write on this blog can, in some way, shape, or form, be traced back to two people: Jason Kottke and Austin Kleon. I’m not saying that I jack material wholesale from these fellas; that would be uncool. What I am trying to jack is their spirit of curiosity and curation. Most of the cool shit I bump into is through those two guys, and this blog is my small way of returning the favour. Kleon talks about a sending a “daily dispatch” in his book Show Your Work. This very series, this flurry of activity, was spurred by an anecdote from David Bayles and Ted Orland’s Art & Fear, which Kleon included in his new book, Don’t Call It Art. The story contrasts two groups of ceramics students, one graded on the quantity of their output, and the other on the quality. This series is just me trying to generate a bunch of pots.

III.

I had a snippet of a Pheobe Bridgers tune stuck in my head wile taking a shower. That’s all it takes to start writing: some image or some cluster of words will stay lodged in your brain, and you develop more images and clusters of words from there. It’s very nonlinear in that you rarely ever start at the beginning or the end; the first thing that comes to you is the middle. Anyways, the working title for this thing is “An Interactive 3D Hologram of Sandra Hüller:”

Computer, wake up and listen to me: run sandrah.exe

I’ve had this dream before I’m at the movies being lulled to sleep by screen after screen of logos for European production companies

then Sandra Hüller, illuminated by the key light of the gods, says  “I can’t help you  ‘cause I don’t know you  and anything I say  is something you’re already thinking anyway”

IV.

Part of the magic of browsing used CDs is that you can’t set off with a plan. Since the stock is always changing, you never know what’s going to be available for purchase (except for that stack of like 14 copies of Achtung Baby that never seems to shrink). As you’re making your way through the stacks, you’ll find albums you recognize, sure, maybe even a couple you put in your mental “maybe” pile. But every now and again, you’ll run into an album that stuns you to a stop, like you’ve rediscovered an old friend’s photograph you thought long lost. The best three bucks I spent this week was on a used copy of Now Here Is Nowhere, the debut album of Dallas space-rock band Secret Machines. I read about this album in Blender magazine in 2004 and have loved it ever since despite never owning a copy. Now I do. I fucking love this album. Of course I do, it’s a sci-fi concept album. It sounds huge. Josh Garza is on some John Bonham shit here. Brandon Curtis is patient zero for my love of the fuzzy, mid-neck, high-in-the-mix bass attack. RIP to the one, the only Benjamin Curtis on various guitar-shaped noises.

#dd

This is the Ahead on Differential Daily Dispatch, issue #2

I.

I thought I'd make it at least one week before hitting the wall. But no, here I am, on issue number two, scrambling to get something down. As I'm writing this, I'm on the subway to the poetry open mic I co-host. Last I heard, both of tonight's features have cancelled. While Oops! All Open Mic Readers nights can be