Literary Recommendation: Mens Vogue

I never thought I'd be recommending the international edition of Mens Vogue for literary influence, but I am. I was perusing the magazine section of Skylight Books and began reading the English version of Vogue Hommes International. It was dedicated to older men. As a man who is getting older, I was interested. They featured male models of old, well the 1980's, and I remembered those faces who I saw on billboards and magazines in my youth. They were still handsome. Even with wrinkles and lines, these men held up.

I was more thrilled to see to see features on Don Delillo, Martin Amis and John Waters. There were also interesting pieces on desinger Giorgio Armani and artist Ed Ruscha. A photographic essay on Iggy Pop was also quite entertaining.

Run out and get this issue right now! It'll serve up hours of good reading.

Book Rec: Catching Fire

When I hear that an anthropologist writes a book, I groan. I think of some dry piece of writing with a ton of citations. I don't immediately think of it as thought-provoking, illuminating or quickly-paced. However, Catching Fire, How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham was exactly that.

It was our book group pick and I dreaded reading it, but a few pages in, I couldn't wait to see what would happen. Wrangham postulates that the act of using fire to cook our food led to our development as humans. Cooking makes food easier to digest--raw meat would take hours to eat and process in our systems--and helped develop our brains and bodies.

What I most enjoyed about this book was that I truly wondered what would happen next. Like a good novel, I wondered how the hell did we get from ape to man. Oh, I know the theories from school, how we slowly evolved over time, from four-legged creatures to two-legged ones, but this books provides a missing link: cooking!

I know eating "raw" is in these days, with some claiming it to be healthy. Afterall, monkeys and apes eat things raw. Well, it turns out that if monkeys and apes actually had a choice, as some examples illustrated in the book showed, they much prefer cooked food over raw.

I'm never taking my stove for granted again.

Get Centric

Please come and support this reading! I'll be sharing the mic with Monica Carter, Glenn Kessler, and more. It's curated by the amaaaaazing Hank Henderson.

November 18th. Read more here.

When the writing hurts, paint!

Sometimes writing hurts. It just hurts. The sentences are slow going and the words feel like boulders being upchucked from my throat. However, I commit to being creative every single day. If the writing doesn't do it, it's performance or redecorating or cooking or sewing.

Well, performance can be harder to come by than writing. There are only so many ways I can move the couch. The recipes and spices run out. That cumbersome sewing machine just gets too heavy to take out of storage. The great thing about being creative is finding other ways to be creative.

Over the Summer, I started painting. After admiring those who do it, I gave myself permission to try it. Got some canvas, paint and brushes, and away I went. It's been fun and relaxing. I even sold one to my brother in Texas!