Something a bit different this week – I'm releasing something that I've been working on for a few months, and I'm pretty excited about. It's a little book-type-thing, called Venice #1.  It's got pages and pictures and you can hold it.

Venice #1 contains 16 black-and-white photos, taken between December 1st and December 7th, 2019, in and around my old apartment in Venice, California. Each page contains one photograph, and most have a brief caption. Each 2-photo pair is linked, most with a pretty straightforward semantic connection.

For example:

A few of the pairs are more whimsical or intuitive.

The friends I've shown this to have commented that its helped them see some of what I find interesting about photography – how the subject is light, and texture, regardless of the literal subject of the photograph.

It's been a real joy to put together, and a joy to publish. It's a tiny sketch of a photobook, using the simplest possible criteria for inclusion – the first 16 pictures I made with a DSLR that don't rely on color for their effect – but it's incredibly satisfying to have shipped something.

I hope you'll enjoy it too, and I'd love to hear what you think of it.

Watching

New Girl is an epic rom-com, in the "epic poetry" sense. It takes the usual plot and spreads it out across six seasons. Crisp, specific character work and strong narrative structure keep it both fresh and consistent through the run – its not one of these shows that has 2 strong seasons in the pilot and then just prays it can come up with something after that.

It's also a solid exploration of a modern American masculinity. It uses the formula-driven nature of its genre to really cover the territory.

If you've only caught episodes here and there, but generally enjoy light, slightly weird sitcoms that like their characters, you should check it out. On an episode-to-episode basis it tends to look much more committed to a false status quo than it is. It's actually unusually character arc driven for a show of its type.

I used the phrase "Nick Miller chic" in an earlier draft I wrote this week before settling on a more straightforward approach. The character nails the young Gen X/old millennial relationship with cynicism and authenticity. He's also one of the better examples of disorganized (anxious and avoidant) attachment I've seen on screen.

The show makes a lot of really brilliant choices. Two of my favorites:

Nick can't lie. One precise decision cuts off a bunch of tedious plots and replaces them with much stupider, much funnier ones. It also keeps Nick basically decent. Compare with Sam – who shares a lot of Nick's problems talking about feelings, but deals with those problems by lying extravagantly. (And by breaking other people's things when he's mad – I found Sam profoundly unpleasant.)

Winston is a puzzler. And, basically, a profound weirdo. They need a reason to drop a <redacted> on <redacted> at the end of season two but Schmidt doing it alone, or with help just from Nick, would come across as genuinely mean. Winston keeps any situation he's in light, like an Italian seltzer. His episodes with Cece are wonderful.

Hiring

Homebase is hiring engineers in San Francisco, Austin, Houston, Atlanta, and Toronto. They also have a ton of other roles open, including Directors of Engineering in Austin, Denver, and Houston. Their stack appears to be Ruby on Rails but they're explicitly language agnostic in their listings – they'd like to see that you know some framework well, but they don't care which one. You can get in touch with the VP of Engineering directly at jeff at joinhomebase.com.

You can check out the listings from past newsletters on the jobs page.