✏️ New Word Learned:
Bailiwick: a person’s or organization’s area of expertise, authority, or responsibility
✍️ Most people spend their lives trying to escape the block they grew up on; I’ve gotten mine tattooed on me. New post out now// bradley-andrews.com
The (909) used to be called the armpit of California. It is a place of widespread institutional bankruptcy, brown poverty, below average education rates, and the most crime-riddled city on the West Coast. Even the milder locations have a strange and surreal underbelly which was depicted by David Lynch of all people. Growing up, the IE had the worst air quality in the entire nation and at times I wonder if people can still smell the smog on me.
🃏 New Joke:
Question: “What did Mario say when he saw one hundred and forty-four koopas eating out of Bowser’s trash can?”
Answer: “That’s a gross!”
IYKYK
🎵 Going on record regarding My Top Five MC’s // bradley-andrews.com
Anyone who is even moderately tapped into the culture will eventually be asked who the greatest rappers of all time are. There are no right answers, per se, but there are certainly wrong ones— and your answers say a lot about you. A person’s top five isn’t meant to be correct as much as it’s meant to force a discussion (and real fans will always discuss). Five is too small to encompass all the greats, but hip-hop is a sport as well as an art— and that means someone needs to be on top. Without that spirit, it’s not hip-hop.
💬 Bilbo’s birthday speech that was given after the final meal at Bilbo Baggins' 111st birthday party on the 22nd of September:
My dear People, My dear Bagginses and Boffins, and my dear Tooks and Brandybucks, and Grubbs, and Chubbs, and Burrowses, and Hornblowers, and Bolgers, Bracegirdles, Goodbodies, Brockhouses and Proudfoots. Also my good Sackville-Bagginses that I welcome back at last to Bag End. Today is my one hundred and eleventh birthday: I am eleventy-one today! I hope you are all enjoying yourselves as much as I am. I shall not keep you long. I have called you all together for a Purpose. Indeed, for Three Purposes!
First of all, to tell you that I am immensely fond of you all, and that eleventy-one years is too short a time to live among such excellent and admirable hobbits.
I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.
Secondly, to celebrate my birthday. I should say: OUR birthday. For it is, of course, also the birthday of my heir and nephew, Frodo. He comes of age and into his inheritance today. Together we score one hundred and forty-four. Your numbers were chosen to fit this remarkable total: One Gross, if I may use the expression.
It is also, if I may be allowed to refer to ancient history, the anniversary of my arrival by barrel at Esgaroth on the Long Lake; though the fact that it was my birthday slipped my memory on that occasion. I was only fifty-one then, and birthdays did not seem so important. The banquet was very splendid, however, though I had a bad cold at the time, I remember, and could only say ‘thag you very buch’. I now repeat it more correctly: Thank you very much for coming to my little party.
I wish to make an ANNOUNCEMENT.
I regret to announce that - though, as I said, eleventy-one years is far too short a time to spend among you - this is the END. I am going. I am leaving NOW.
GOOD-BYE!
✏️ New Words Learned:
Spruik: an Australian and New Zealand slang verb that means to loudly promote, advertise, or pitch something
Scapegrace: an incorrigible rascal
Hornswoggled: to be tricked, cheated, or swindled in a clever or ridiculous way
💐 Goodbye summer, but long live flowers
✍️ New Blog Post Up Now // bradley-andrews.com
In the years post-cult, I’ve noticed a pattern among the spaces where people were willing to speak their mind. Generally speaking, the truth, when spoken, is not nearly as catastrophic as it is cathartic. It doesn’t come to people as a shock — it comes to them as a relief. When someone finally “says the thing”, it is like taking the lid off a pressure cooker, giving permission for people to act looser, less fearfully, and be less stressed.
🎉 Today would’ve been the 100th birthday of the one and only— Ivan Illich. Truly, Illich possessed an intellect, a spirit, and an integrity that the world has rarely seen. I am from a very different generation, but owe him a great debt and am grateful for the life he lived.
“Man must choose whether he wants to be rich in things or in the freedom to use them.”
☕️ I was sitting in a coffee shop today when two teenagers swung open the door and dragged themselves to the counter. Peeping the menu through their broccoli hair and dark bangs, they asked the barista, “Do you have a pumpkin spice latte?”
It has begun. 🙏
✏️ New Word Learned:
Overmorrow: the day after tomorrow
Thank you to @miljko for putting it on the radar. And a reminder to everybody that you can find all vocab words in my Words and Writing category or filter for them by typing “✏️” into my search page.
✍️ New blog post up now // Everyone I Know, I Chose:
I was born and raised in Church. I was nurtured in a congregational setting and sustained by the friendships formed there. No matter your personal sentiments about faith, religion, or God, I hope you are willing to concede, at minimum, this simple understanding about what makes a church unique: A church is unique precisely because I cannot control who gets to be a part of it.
An imperfect post, but I hope it gets my point across. ❤️
💬 In love with this poem that I have only just come across for the first time. From the late Wendell Berry:
A Warning to my Readers
Do not think me gentle
because I speak in praise
of gentleness, or elegant
because I honor the grace
that keeps this world. I am
a man crude as any,
gross of speech, intolerant,
stubborn, angry, full
of fists and furies. That I
may have spoken well
at times, is not natural.
A wonder is what it is.
Reading this, I feel so seen. Rest In Peace, Wendell.
🗽 August ‘26, no context photos.
✍️ Wrote a lil' something outlining the metaphor I use for creativity and indecision. There’s a knock-knock joke at the end I am quite proud of, too. Read the full thing here // bradley-andrews.com
Nothing I do can be classified as high-brow. I’ve been a generalist for so long that none of my skills are very deep. I have lived a lot of life and I have a lot experiences — but experiences don’t necessarily translate to craft. Craft, it seems, is what produces the excellence that really floors people. In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche called it “long obedience in the same direction.”
🚑 A great research paper from NBER was just released, suggesting that New York City’s congestion pricing program has cut total emergency medical service travel times by over a minute on average. As contentious as the decision has been, the policy seems to be having positive results.
🕊️ Rest In Peace, Wendell Berry.
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
✍️ Urgent: Wordplay Machine Out of Cervix
A new memo from our CEO. l love my internship at Never Bored Inc., but boy do things get strange. 😅 Embrace the strange!
✍️ Humility In Drag (The Birdcage Interview) // bradley-andrews.com
Robin found a way to make those traits a gift for others. He dealt attention generously; but he also knew when it was his time to step in and rearrange it. Not everyone is like him, with the capacity to absorb—or perhaps endure—the gaze of others. Attention is a powerful thing and people like Robin have an innate understanding of the deleterious effect that it can have on people who aren’t desirous of it. It can hurt. It can harm. It can make you self-conscious and afraid, killing that wonderful spirit of play and creation.