10.05.2026
It's October! I'm starting my blog titles with a 1 instead of a zero! And I'm almost at a full year of weeknotes!!! Time flies! And I did a lot of fun stuff last week so I have a lot of good things to write about.
Saw two concerts last week! First was Ninajirachi. I Love My Computer was my favorite album of last year so I was chomping at the bit to see it live.
Two openers at this one, 2charm and MGNA CRRTA. 2charm was super fun, I really liked their album that dropped earlier this year and they had great stage presence. They were shirtless in uggs doing pushups on stage and the crowd was loving it. Probably the biggest crowd I've seen at an opener in a long time! Super fun. MGNA CRRTA I was more meh on unfortunately. They're definitely good DJs and had danceable tracks but their songs just weren't that memorable.
Ninajirachi was sooo much fun live, she played pretty much everything off the album along with new singles and new remixes plus some of her old stuff. Her music makes me feel the same way I felt listening to Porter Robinson for the first time which is the highest compliment I can give to EDM. Good crowd too everyone was dancing and having a great time. Went home with a vinyl copy of I Love My Computer too :)
Ok next was GORILLAZ!!! My second time seeing them (and second time seeing them with my friend Tim)! Their openers were KILLER... Deltron 3030 and Little Simz! I missed Deltron when they were touring their album last year so I was telling my friends we had to make sure we were there early to see them and they did not disappoint. I only wish they had played for more than 20 minutes! Little Simz was amazing too, she really knows how to command the stage and I gotta listen to her stuff more because I was loving it.
Gorillaz themselves were amazing as always. Special guests (Bootie Brown, Pos from De La Soul), a great sounding band on stage and a really varied setlist. We were in the balcony too so I was able to really test out the zoom lens on my new phone and the results were shockingly good. Less good: the one person in our section who was standing motionless for the entire show and was blocking our view. But still fun! I hope I can see them again sometime.
Friday I got invited to a Girls, Gays and Theys Smash Bros tournament at my friend's place. I hadn't done a smash tournament since college but I somehow came in second place (losing to another guy named Sean lmao). Was a great time! Also was nice to finally be able to go to one of these since my friend invited me a few times prior and I've always had plans. He's got a cool apartment and his friends were also very cool and fun to hang out with so I'm excited for the next one.
My big thing last week though was spending the weekend in NYC!! Mike Mignola is doing another exhibition of artwork and I really wanted to go down and see it. It just so happened to coincide with when my friends Michelle and Kelsey were visiting so we decided to link the trips up and my friend Shawn joined us as well. Took the Amtrak down Saturday morning and met up with the group at the gallery once we dropped our bags off and had a slice of pizza on the street.
The exhibition though... WOW!!! Mignola's my favorite artist so I'm a little biased but seeing his stuff in person is just such a different experience than seeing it printed in a book. Especially his paintings! I'm used to seeing Mignola art in black and white but seeing the lighting and use of colors in these paintings were unreal. I took photos but they don't really do them justice.
Lots of other cool stuff in there like ink drawings and comic pages. I had the idea of potentially saving up and buying a piece when this show was announced but getting there all the stuff I'd actually want to buy was just a tad out of my price range (NY gallery prices LOL!!). I did get a signed copy of the catalog though! Very cool and very inspiring!!
Mostly hung out in Chelsea for the rest of the weekend since that's where the gallery was. Popped into a few more open galleries in the neighborhood and did some shopping at Chelsea market. It was a really beautiful day out so we found a nice little cocktail bar called Wildflower and had drinks and snacks outside and just caught up for a while. Was really nice!!
Sunday was super rainy and gross so we ended up at the Whitney for a long time. Shawn was really hyping it up and I had never been so I was excited to check it out! Tons of good stuff in there, my favorite though was all the artwork by Minnie Evans. She was totally self taught with just everyday materials and she made these insanely cool surreal drawings and paintings. She had kept her first two drawings and they really spoke to me. Something about the simplicity of it but the attention to detail with all the different patterns. So cool. Also really inspiring!!
It was so gross out so for the rest of the day we just kind of got food, I picked up a babka from Russ and Daughters to bring home, and we hung out waiting for our trains to come. Very fun weekend and I'm feeling like I should start drawing again. We'll see!!