Are you ready for a floaty throwback to the ’60s? Kishi Bashi, a violinist who has played with Regina Spektor and Of Montreal, just came out with a solo album, Omoiyari, and it is luscious. Its opening track, “Penny Rabbit and Summer Bear,” soothes from its opening note, cultivating the feeling you get as a kid when a grown-up reads you a story. While the sounds are comforting, the story is dark– the album is an exploration of Japanese internment camps and their parallels to America’s current phase of white supremacy– but the message remains hopeful, insisting that with time comes progress. Keep that tangly philosophy in mind as you listen to poetry about Penny Rabbit and Summer Bear.
First, there was the rock climbing gym. Innocuous, fine. Then there was the archery studio, also indoors. Now blowing past all lines of reason is the axe-throwing lodge, the latest venue designed to cultivate the sense of a simpler time– cause there’s no way to transport yourself to the woods like hunkering down in a warehouse in Gowanus with PBRs on a second date.
Those whose childhoods included the cracker-and-processed-meat-round magic of Lunchables will be interested to know that there’s a new development in the Kraft-sphere: Brunchables. Now, before you go grocery-hunting, please know that they’re considerably worse than the original: grey breakfast sausage is meant to be placed on a flour brick that’s way less exciting than crackers, and for dessert, you get a mildly evil-looking blueberry muffin, reminding us all that just because you can pun it, that doesn’t mean you should run it.
If you’re really that desperate for brunch, a canned Bloody Mary is the true solution. Just saying.