Every Friday night around 5PM, before I’m about to make our pizza night martinis, I turn on KUTX and listen to “Old School Dance Party” — the “Happy Feet Dance Party with ever-lovin’ John E. Dee playing the music that got you in trouble.”  (More recently, Confucius Jones has been taking over as host.)

One of the things I absolutely love about Old School is that the DJs never try too hard to be hip or obscure or anything like that. Most of the tracks they play are certified bangers and stuff you’ve probably heard before. (“It’s a grown folks thang!” as John E. Dee says.)

For this month’s mixtape, I basically wanted an “Old School” episode to play poolside. I named it “In a (Summer) Funk” because summer is not an easy time around here. You got to keep your shit together, and it helps to remember the rules of Funk: “Keep it on The One.” (The artwork came from some repurposed holiday cards made by my friends at Butler.)

You can listen to the mixtape on Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube.

Filed under: mixtapes

Buy the book

Finally — finally! — after 7 years, there’s a new book of mine out in the world: Don’t Call It Art: 10 Ways to Create Like a Kid Again is now available wherever you buy books.

Don’t Call It Art is a creative liberation handbook of art lessons I learned while being a studio assistant to my two young boys. It will teach you to unlearn what you’ve learned, give yourself permission to be bad, and treat yourself with the care of a loving parent so the wild 4-year-old in you will come out and play.

Publisher’s Weekly said it’s “cheery,” “upbeat,” and “full of fun, wryly witty wisdom.”

If you’d like a peek inside, I shared an excerpt in today’s newsletter.

Hope y’all love it. (If you do, a 5-star review on Amazon or Goodreads goes a long way!)

Buy the book

My latest mixtape captures my attempt to get over the depression and anxiety that can accompany “The Gulp” in between when you finish something and finally push it out into the world. (Don’t worry, it has plenty of bops!)

It’s also the first time I’ve ever given a mixtape an epigraph. (From James Hollis’s Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life.)

You can listen to the mix on Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube.

The latest typewriter interview is with Brad Neely. Several people told me this is the best one yet.

From my letter, “Fledging season”:

I spent an afternoon scanning diaries from 2023 for a speaking gig and I came across all the spring entries from when we had owlets in our backyard owl box. I was obsessed with those owlets and I couldn’t help comparing them to the two young humans we had in our house, except the owlets developed at super speed: They hatched in April, and by this time of May they had already fledged. (To fledge is to leave the nest after you get your feathers.) Our youngest is fledging from elementary school later this month. Counting down the drop-offs we have left. Fledging season.

I can’t stop making zines! Issues #6 and #7 of my Deleted Zines from Don’t Call It Art are available for free in today’s newsletter.

I’m doing a very limited number of events to promote the release of my new book Don’t Call It Art.

Monday, June 1 in Austin, Texas: BookPeople, 6PM. Details here.

Wednesday, June 3 in Nashville, Tennessee: Parnassus Books, 6:30PM. Free event, but registration required. RSVP here.

Monday, June 8 in Cleveland, Ohio: Cuyahoga County Public Library, Parma-Snow Branch, 7PM. Free event, VIP tickets available. Details here.

If you have questions about any of the events, please contact the hosts through the events page.

Author David Epstein makes his public drawing debut in the latest typewriter interview!

The snails have returned! And I shared some recent snail mail in the newsletter.