PicoBlog

This song came on shuffle while I was walking around the other day. That first verse from Nas is super tough, and large professor killed the beat. It’s drumless - a nice switch up every once in a while. With that said, let’s get into today’s piece. Let’s go back to 2010. There were a few apparel brands that were seen faithfully in the culture, no matter where you lived or your style preference.

Logan Paul in a recent podcast interview shared how much he and KSI have made from their hydration drink ‘Prime’. The duo have made over $250 million in retail sales and $110 million gross internally. Paul also mentioned in the interview “in January of this year, we did $45 million.” Which is very crazy for a brand that has only been around for 13 months!   KSI and Logan Paul weren’t always friends, it shocked the world when they came out and said they were starting a business together.

Welcome to another edition of the Animation Obsessive newsletter! We’re glad you could join us. This is our agenda for the week: One — a look at how UPA created the first animated Madeline. Two — interesting animation stories from around the world. Three — a trove from master independent animator Koji Yamamura. Four — the retro ad of the week. Five — the last word. For those new to our newsletter, it goes out once a week.

Song of the week: Sauce Walka & Daringer: I’m Him No drums, all bars. My favorite song right now and I encourage you to listen. And now for today’s essay… Paris Fashion Week just passed, and everyone from Pharrell to J. Lo was in attendance to show see the next season’s latest and greatest styles. In the midst of that, it got me thinking about Virgil Abloh, which led to an insight of sorts:

Frog troublers, this is a post we’ve been waiting to write! After two too-dry seasons (2021 and 2022) and a cool spring this year, it has been rainy and now it’s hot. For forest dwellers like us, that means it’s chanterelle season, baby! Chanterelles are some of the most delicious mushrooms you can forage to use in soups, on pizzas, and—our favorite—in scrambled eggs on toast. You’ll almost never find them in stores, because they can’t be cultivated.

When 6-year-old Maddux Brown underwent a 15-minute surgical procedure his dad Jason didn’t expect the bill to empty his bank account.  Doctors had removed a concerning mole from the boy’s neck on Valentine’s Day at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, and the procedure had been a success. But weeks later Jason did a double take when he saw the bill. His insurance plan paid $3,634 and he was billed for an additional $1,908.

We are living in a golden age of things that are interesting specifically to me, like CT’s butt in a wetsuit on The Traitors and the Renesmee fetus in Dune 2. I have been consuming a lot of media recently, most of it new and but some of it merely new to the Mall Goth Cinematic Universe. Dune 2 I have now seen Dune 2 Much twice, because the first time I was so stoned I had a general impression of loving it but couldn’t remember a lot of the specifics.

Getting out of your normal life in any capacity is a healthy thing. Breaking habits. Especially in the dead of winter in New York. I was lucky enough to take a trip with my family to one of our very favorite destinations for a month. I know, that is a very long time for a vacation. This is a place we’ve been to before and is slowly becoming a second hom…

I planted way too much huacatay (Tagetes minuta) in my garden in New York. To be honest, I didn’t think it would grow as well as it did. It took off a little slow, but once it got going it hasn’t stopped and now I far more of the Andean herb than I know what to do with and it is still coming. Pest free, it’s one of the few things the deer and racoons haven’t touched in my garden and it makes for a good companion plant with tomatoes and other vegetables.