Friday Food for Thought: April 22, 2022

Hello Friends, welcome to Friday Food for Thought. Every Friday I’ll help start your weekend by sharing four people, thoughts, or things that are on my mind this week. These may be books or movies, podcast suggestions, interesting people I follow on Twitter, music, products, or, well, anything. You may find interesting creativity boosts here, some conversation starters, or just a small dose of entertainment. Click here for last week’s post. Feel free to share this with friends, offer suggestions via the comments, or connect with me on Twitter @bradbravard. Let’s begin!

1) Cleaning Up:

We’ve simplified home cleaning by replacing multiple soapy products with liquid castile soap. It has all manner of uses, including washing hands, faces, pets, dishes, and laundry, and as a general-purpose cleaner. We often use the famous (or infamous?) Dr. Bronner’s or the Walmart variety, but if you’re determined enough you can make your own.

2) Miami’s Inherent Vice:

I’m rewatching the Miami Vice TV series from the 1980s. I was a big fan of the show when it first aired, but I was skeptical it would still work today. The truth is, the show holds up even better than I remember. “MTV Cops” may have been the directive from NBC, but there’s more going on than just trendy fashions and fast cars. While I plan to dig deeper into the series for a future blog post, you can currently catch all five seasons on the free, ad-supported Peacock streaming service. Fans of compare-and-contrast should follow up the series with its worthy spiritual successor, Michael Mann‘s 2006 Miami Vice movie.

3) Cooking the Night Away:

I revisited Sam Cooke‘s 1963 album Night Beat yesterday, and was reminded again what a classic it is. Night Beat was the second to last album Cooke recorded, and it lacks the string or chorus arrangements of many of Cooke’s better known pop hits. These songs were recorded with a smaller ensemble of crack musicians, including a teenaged Billy Preston and famed studio drummer Hal Blaine. From the swinging arrangement of Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen to the plaintive Lost and Lookin’, Night Beat feels like one of Cooke’s most personal recordings. I have the compact disc but Night Beat is also available for digital download.

4) The Wolfman Writes:

A fit of nostalgia has me recalling that I was a fairly serious comic book collector well into my early thirties. At the peak I had over 3,500 comics, and Marv Wolfman had a lot to do with that. I had read a few Spider-Man comic books prior, but I still vividly remember the day in 1979 when I browsed through the comic rack at my local grocery store and came across issues #194 and #195 of The Amazing Spider-Man. Written by Marv Wolfman, the 2-part story introduced the soon-to-be-iconic Black Cat/Felicia Hardy and came with an ending so shocking that I kept reading Spider-Man comics, and many others, for the next 18 years. Over the years, Wolfman wrote for a whole slew of Marvel and DC titles, and was part of the brain trust behind DC’s memorable Crisis on Infinite Earths in the 1980s. Compilations of Wolfman’s work are widely available in book and comic stores.

That’s all for this week. Have a good weekend!

This post contains NO affiliate links. All suggestions are based on my own personal experience, your experience may vary. Nothing herein is intended to serve as medical, legal, financial, or any other advice for which you should consult professionals and not some random guy on the Internet.