Mmuseumm is an unnatural history museum in a former freight elevator shaft. There is a small screen embedded in one of the gallery shelves which plays a loop of videos related to the current exhibitions. Sometimes we add additional footage which acts as artifact itself: video proof of the world’s casual strangeness. The familiar doing the unfamiliar, the unfamiliar doing the familiar.

You are reading Geistlist,
a chronoillogical newsletter
about Things for People by Jacob.

In an early Mmuseumm season around 2014 or ’15—before my involvement—one of the videos was a comedian breaking down on stage. I remember trying for months to identify the footage but never could muster the right search terms. This year, for whatever indexing/language processing/algorithmic reason, it was easy.

When I first saw & met Nathan Repasz a year ago in a friend’s dog’s backyard the memory of the video of Andy came instantly back to me. We have become high-ranking close friends (Nathan and I): he later played my mythical-status 27th birthday, I am designing him a very strange website, and together we are trying to coin linguo-percussive situationism. Hopefully I know what it means once I finally finish The Order of the Third Bird and figure out what’s real.

Been thinking about Scenes¹: the kind you read of your dead art heroes being part of. What sound like casual encounters, fights, hookups, arguments, lectures, and readings in basements and lofts, now imbued with historical weight and teleological surety.

¹ Synonymous to/newly christened vibe shifts?

Friday: in New Canaan I saw a photo of Philip Johnson and David Whitney jumping in their bed (though David did tend to sleep in the Brick House while Philip took the Glass House—they mirror each other, if the mirror had a ⅔ reduction lens), and Andy Warhol was just…there, if you look carefully by a nightstand, being background not foreground.

Sunday: finally got to catch up with my local historian hero and neighbor Ada Calhoun at a book launch event for Also A Poet, which is all about Scenes: documenting them, missing them, growing up with/in them, and confronting your dad for being more invested in them than he seemed interested in you.

Three consecutive days of culturally noncontiguous events this week. So happens they’re all at the City Reliquary where I serve on the board, starting tomorrow evening with the closing party for my proud little exhibition.

¶. Tomorrow 6–10pm: BIRD SHOW Closing

Taxonified incorrectly as science fair, fairly as art show but most specifically as nature exhibition, BIRD SHOW looks at people watching birds, and the birds staring back.

This is its final week, before it makes way for Wonder Woman and her myriad NYC connections.

We at the Brick House Cooperative proudly today revealed my redesign of thebrick.house front page: a triptych folding-grid apparatus with a lot of weird stretchy layout logic, inspired by deconstructed old Scribner’s front cover with two later additions McMansioned onto it.

Speaking of good writing floating in just the right unadvertised corners of the internet, I read a really wonderful ¶ written by Adlan. It’s the first one: How to Party with Garret Mukai.

When I design image-heavy layouts I often make use random-image placeholder services like placekitten.com to test image cropping out, but now in this polyptych research rabbit hole I instead want one that serves up a random @BoschBot. Maybe I’ll code that, probably I won’t. Thing’s like the Infinite Jest of medieval paintings: the feet have feet.

One of my prepandemic well-publicized secrets was to force myself up on a bike to MoMA by 7:00am on first Wednesdays. The museum had a monthly early-morning yoga thing in the lobby atrium there that attracted a lot of yoga-type people but I would skip right past that to the fifth floor and have Starry Night all to myself in an empty gallery it seemed nobody else knew was opening during the big-name-yogi yoga.

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The Newsletter about Things for People by Jacob.

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¶. Open VCR Night

Monday 7-9pm at Wonderville in Brooklyn.

1. BYO VHS
2. Anyone can eject at any time.
3. If you eject, you must insert table.

BIRD SHOW is a museum exhibition curated by Jacob Ford.

flight paths of birds, people, and bird people in the city

It opens Friday evening, and I hope to see you there.

I am curating a museum exhibition.

BIRD SHOW
flight paths of birds, people, and bird people in the city
at the City Reliquary in Brooklyn
March – Julyish 2022
curated by Jacob Ford

As in, frantically curating right now, as I type. Figuring it all out as I hang but here’s what I know and what you can etch in your calendar:

BIRD SHOW Opening Party
March 18, 6 – 10pm
370 Metropolitan Ave.
Free

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¶. Millennial/Boomer Drinking Club

Reading this right now and in NYC? Just us in an hour at Lynn's place..
Reading this right now and not in NYC? Watch my crappy stream
Not reading this right now? Watch my crappy rerun

¶. Book

Hi it’s Geistlist again.
Psueoperiodical newsletter.
About Things.
For People.
By Jacob.
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¶. Buy This Book

Two installments ago I told you about a PDF I designed which we sold a the Internet Archive for $32. Now it’s time to sell it to you, as a 222-page printed book, for the same price. That’s kind of the point.

Buy it on Kickstarter.
Read about it on The Nation.
Read it for free on the Open Library.
See it spin on the Brick House front page.

Spent my last week biking rapid tests to bartenders, baristas, performers, and other friends so they could get some peace of mind (or make an informed decision) before heading to family or whatever.

Unfortunately had to break a few laws to do that. Long story. If you’ve had a drink with me in the past 11 months, I’m sure I’ve ranted it to you.

Anyway, remember kids:

1. You can’t spread COVID (masked or not) if you don’t have COVID.
2. Negative antigen test = you’re noninfectious to others at that moment (this is possible even if you are infected with low titers, which a PCR would pick up).
3. Positive antigen test = you can spread COVID (masked or not).

Hi everyone.

Thinking about the time I was stuck in a very slow-moving elevator with Casey Neistat, discussing for 4 minutes the difference between 6:00pm and 6:05pm. Because is there one, really, like, culturally and ethnographically speaking? Casey won.

This is Geistlist. It is a semi-secret mostly infrequent newsletter about things I do, for people I know. I'm Jacob Ford. You're receiving this because I've met you and think you're interesting. Here's hoping you do too.

¶ Like 3 months ago: we sold a book to the Internet Archive

Hi friends, Jacob here.

This is my quite informal newsletter of life and life-adjacent updates which until very recently was just a bunch of emails copypasta’d into Gmail’s BCC field. Now, it’s an all growed up text-only newsletter, mostly CANSPAM compliant and all.

It’s called Geistlist, and you’re on it.

I’m cohosting the inaugural Brooklyn Eyelympics tonight, a tournament-style staring contest with live commentary from the sports desk of local drag queens Misty Meaner & Mocha Lite.

7pm in the City Reliquary backyard $15 at the door Free for Reliquary members Competitor signup ends at at 7:30pm.

All are welcome to compete. Bribery of referees will be overlooked.

You've received this email because you are on Geistlist, a secret newsletter written aperiodically by Jacob Ford, about things and sent to people. If you do not want to be on Geistlist you can unsubscribe below.

On Friday, June 25, Jacob Ford will celebrate his 27th birthday at The City Reliquary in Brooklyn, New York.

You are invited.

The theme is The Museum of Jacob Ford.

Hi friends.

Jacob Ford here. We’ve met at some point and I think you’re interesting, and somehow I got your email. That’s how you’re on this secret by-invitation-only email list.

It’s now outgrown the homely BCC field to become an actual bona fide newsletter with a CANSPAM Act-compliant unsubscribe link down there at the bottom. Powered by my friend Justin at Buttondown. But I assure you: this list is still highly exclusive, extremely underground, and very cool.

Right now I’m trying to save a tiny museum.