Often, my days are unremarkable, consisting of gentle repetitions: coffee brewed in the same chipped mug, a screen flickering through hours of work, the small consolations of reading in the afternoon light. I do not say this with complaint—ordinariness is, in many ways, a structure for interiority, the silent spine of daily life. But then, quite unexpectedly, a day arrives with a glimmer. A ripple in the fabric. Something happens—and I find myself suddenly living within the story, rather than merely around its edges.
This weekend offered such a glimmer.
1. OK Go and The Adjacent Possible Tour, with The Stone Foxes
There are few things as tenderly thrilling as encountering a piece of your childhood, grown and reshaped, years later. Thanks to Econojam—my faithful supplier of vinyl and analog serendipities—I received two tickets to see OK Go, a band I adored when I was fourteen. The discovery had been a chance one: I’d wandered the aisles of Tower Records in Makati with enough pesos to buy two CDs, eventually selecting OK Go’s self-titled album alongside, I believe, something from Incubus. A perfect pair of adolescent anthems. Now, I can say I’ve seen both bands live—proof, perhaps, of some quietly fulfilled promise to my younger self.
The venue was The Regency Ballroom, one of those delightfully faded places, still heavy with the ghosts of its own grandeur. What I’ve always loved about such repurposed architecture is the peculiar intimacy it affords: the way sound curls around the old mouldings and chandeliers, the nearness of the band to its audience, the sense that art has interrupted something once stately and made it vibrant again.
OK Go performed with a kind of earnest theatricality—color, confetti, laughter—and between songs, they were hilariously self-aware. There was even a Q&A session. A small boy asked about their technical rigging with the fervor of a young engineer, and the band responded with warmth and delight. I, too, appreciated this pause for technical reverie.
The Stone Foxes opened the night with a swaggering, bluesy set—a sound somewhere between the White Stripes and Black Keys, but with their own West Coast lilt. They brought fiddle, harmonica, and heat. It was music for a dive bar mythologized by stories your older cousin once told you.
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2. Love, Death & Robots, Volume IV
I had been anticipating the latest season of Love, Death & Robots, a series I admire for its brief, luminous intensity—each episode like a jewel turned quickly in light, catching new angles. Chapter IV arrived with a curious number of cat-themed entries, which amused me.
My favorite, by far, was For He Can Creep, an animated adaptation of Siobhan Carroll’s 2019 story. A poet. A cat. A pact with the Devil. The animation gave it an otherworldly charm—strange textures, fluid movements that danced between whimsy and dread. It is rare that contemporary animation so well captures the interior tension of a written story, the pacing of prose reimagined in color and timing. I did, however, miss the return of the three robots who wander the relics of human extinction with deadpan wit and melancholy—a kind of automated Greek chorus to our downfall.
3. A Walk in the Heat
And then, the most earthly thing: we walked to the park. It was hot. The kind of thick, immodest heat that makes fabric cling and trees seem too full of their own sap. We took the dog and aimed for 10,000 steps, as if ritual and repetition could refine our gut biome and cardiovascular fate.
There’s something grounding about these walks—both mundane and essential. Each step a testament to something intangible: discipline, care, quiet intention. The dog, mercifully, enjoyed herself. I tried not to wilt.
𝐃 𝐗 𝐌 𝐈 𝐍 𝐈 𝐐 