Illing When We Should Be Chilling

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Growing up in the 80’s and 90’s I played some early-gen video games from time to time. In that era’s version of video games, the objective was usually to steer a pixelated object through various ‘levels’ of other pixelated nonsense. A frog through traffic, an Italian plumber through mushroom and lava filled dreamscapes; those were the scenarios. As you, the player, piloted your little pixelated cartoon through each ‘level’, the degree of difficulty would increase. Life can be kind of like a 90’s video game at times.Continue reading→

Vanity Ikea Hack

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Hello friends. It’s been a while since I have written about any DIY nonsense over here on the Jake.News. But I figured that since the Jake.News channel is probably more credible than many of the other news sources out there in the year of our lord 2025 (and what at year it has been already!!), it was about time to drop some slightly above mediocre (depending on who you ask) design yadda yaddas. So here we go- I call it Sweden meets Catskills.Continue reading→

Michelada ZPZ

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In keeping with prior years, B and I go dry for the month of January. It’s a nice little reset and after about two weeks, we both typically end up wondering why we ever drink at all. But this is New York, so somehow it is almost impossible to avoid. The tricky part about navigating dry January used to be making excuses about why I can’t go out with friends. Now that I have a 10 month old child, that is no longer a challenge. What I struggle with these days is figuring out what to drink when going out to eat. Yes, water is an option. I’m a huge fan of staying hydrated. In fact, I typically drink plenty of water when I’m out to eat, in addition to whatever else I’m imbibing. But when I’m dining, I like a beverage with some flavor that can compliment the food, or at least reset the palate.Continue reading→

Good Reads — Trouble Boys

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On any given Monday night, more likely than not, you can find me bellied up a at certain north Brooklyn establishment enjoying some happy hour oysters for dinner. In all honesty, I rarely make it for HH anymore, since I’m typically getting my little one bathed and ready for bed during that slot of the evening, these days. But I still make it a point to pop over after the little guy is sawing toothpicks. In the years since establishing this weekly ritual, I have made some friends, namely the gentleman who holds court behind the bar on Monday nights. He, and I have heavily overlapping musical taste and often chat about such. My discovery of this book was a product of one of those conversations.

Like many of the bands I discovered in my youth, the Replacements were already over by the time I was introduced to their music. Notwithstanding the fact that I would never be able to see them play live, I was a fan. I picked up the “Pleased to Meet Me” album on CD at some point, and even followed Paul Westerberg’s solo career for a while after seeing the movie The Singles. But I’ll admit that I didn’t really know much about the band prior to reading this book: “Trouble Boys, The True Story of the Replacements” by Bob Mehr.

The Replacements, or the “Mats” (short for “place mats”) as they called themselves, had a rough (ROUGH!) existence as a band. Their story is not some sort of underdog conquers the world, feel-good, happy ending-type. It is one of self sabotage and wasted brilliance. Just the same, it is an incredible tale. Mehr really gets into the weeds a little more than necessary with some of the peripheral characters, but overall his writing is easily digestible. I had a few stop-starts while reading this book, where I had to put it down for a few weeks during times where I was taking in particularly dark segments of the text. But this book also caused me to revisit the band’s entire catalogue, which is now all very accessible on streaming platforms. If you are a fan of 80s-90s alt rock, I strongly recommend checking this one out.

2024 Recap in Photos from Jake’s iPhone

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Family Photo | Courtesy Sazbi Erdei Private Collection

It’s that time of year where I load all of the photos saved to my iPhone from the calendar year into a video editor and play them back at 1/4 of a second per frame. It goes without saying that, for me, the most meaningful event of 2024 was the birth of my son. He is by far and away my most photographed subject of the 2024 recap vid. Some other notable events from the year are:

  • The solar eclipse in April. At our place in the Catskills, we experienced about 90% of total coverage, which was pretty cool. As a bonus, we watched it with my parents, who were in town to meet their new grandson that week!
  • Something that was probably only exciting to me- we finally painted the Catskills place. I never liked that baby blue-ish color that it was painted when we bought it. But it was new paint and we couldn’t really justify spending the cash to paint over it just because I didn’t like the color.
  • Something that was initially only exciting to me, but B eventually came around to- we built a garage. I should say, we had a garage built. I would have loved to have done the whole thing myself. But it would have taken me years of weekends and evenings. I did get to learn to operate a giant excavator though!
  • I completed marathon number 15.
  • Final item to mention is that after over 10 years of working in midtown, I’m now sitting in the Flatiron District. Still getting used to it, but overall positive. Biggest change is not being able to run in Central Park at lunchtime anymore.

Happy New Year!