Helveticish 1: An Introduction
"What the hell is this???", a conscious baby, The Bear, and Amy Winehouse, among others.
But first! Some words…
I think about things a lot.
Not necessarily in the mushy, sensitive, beige cardigan, Bags by Clairo type of way (although those can be a part of the whole). It’s just that I consider myself as an observant of many facets of the world – of the people I interact with, the places I go to, the seasons I experience, the media I consume, the thoughts I entertain. More often than not, I’m opinionated about them. Call it being judgmental in a glorified sense.
Often, these internal observations of mine evolve into half-baked ideas that, on good days, turn into full-blown think pieces that I end up posting here on Substack. On the flip side, there are thoughts that never see the light of day. God knows how many times I’ve persevered on an idea thinking it was going to materialize into a coherent article only for it to crash and burn at two paragraphs; onwards to the barren wasteland of momentary thoughts. Well, that or they get sent out as snappy one-liners on Twitter.
Back in the day, I would have scratched these unfinished articles as a loss; yet another potential piece fumbled. Drat, I claim myself to be a writer but all I have are niche, useless information and an opinion and a half! But what I’ve grasped as I walk along my iterative journey of trying to be more rooted in the present is that a huge part of that school of thought is accepting everyday life to be an amalgamation of fleeting moments, useless information included.
It sounds cynical on the surface, but the glass half full perspective of it is finding comfort in the fact that that very life is willfully hurling all these sensations at me. It’s relentless that way; I’ve found that it’s up to my own to acknowledge these things and figure out what I make up of them. As it turns out, you don’t have to make everything a critical essay, I tell myself. You have a thought, you process it, you ponder on it for some time, maybe chuckle a bit, and then you move along.
It wasn’t until just recently – when I started workshopping the idea of a recurring series for this newsletter – that I registered how prevalent Helvetica is. Influential might be a better word. With the newsletter taking after the Sans Serif name, I knew I had to stay in theme; I default to what’s renowned as the world’s most iconic typeface. At first, I thought nothing of Helvetica as a possible title for this series, but after gushing over a couple use cases that have this font style as the medium:
Things started to click. As far as mission statements go, these organizations have next to nothing in common – it’s Helvetica dancing in a ballroom line of varied color schemes, logos, and company taglines, staying true in its intent of being unassuming and inoffensive at its core.
I first encountered Helvetica in Microsoft Word, in that little wheel of font style fortune you play to decide on the fate of your document. Times New Roman felt too ancient. Arial felt too basic. Comic Sans was just amateur hour. I was a pretty pretentious child. But Helvetica, it felt…malleable. A grotesque collection of seemingly monotonous strokes in its typography that are simple enough to fit most aesthetics. It felt as if it in itself was a blank slate, a medium that was pleasant enough to take a backseat and be the visually-pleasing partner to whatever words I wanted to speak into existence at the time.
Helveticish is all about leaning into that malleability. At first, I merely wanted this series to be a templated, fill-in-the-blanks form on what I’m into for a certain period of time, but I decided I want this to be a running document of my appreciation for the small things that beg of it – a congregation of scenes, words, songs, ideas, and moments at a certain point of time, fast as how we live these days.
🏃♂️ What I’m into right now (if you even care)
The things we find funny
I had to restrain myself from drafting a think piece over the conscious-Four Seasons Orlando-Young Sheldon baby, the peculiar toddler who made the rounds on TikTok and Twitter for responding to his mother’s cordial holiday invitation like a fully-grown human. Needless to say, the succeeding edits like this one and this one were glorious. If there’s any takeaways to be had, it’s how internet humor is a spectrum between something that would get featured on Ellen and something incredibly brain-dead.
To represent the other end of said spectrum, I’ve also grown an affinity for brainrot songs, an obtuse subset of cover songs that are so dumb, they actually become witty just for replacing some lyrics to make way for the Gen Alpha vernacular (the specific words of which I am too shamed to admit knowledge of). I must be sounding insane by now. Anyway, here’s a guy who makes use of his unironically beautiful voice in the name of brainrot.
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All I’m saying is, if I had a little brother 15 years younger than me, we’d have no problem communicating.
This one morning jog I had
Not to be that guy, but I am going to be for this paragraph: I fucking love jogging. Corollary: I fucking love jogging on a Sunday morning. Corollary to the corollary: I fucking love jogging along Manila Bay amid fresh morning dew on a Sunday morning. The vibes were through the roof, the world was to be had, and the step count goals were smashed.
The Bear
Some facts:
I am incredibly late to the The Bear party.
I’m only on Season 1 Episode 5 as of writing but why do I have a sinking feeling that Carmy’s story is gonna get painfully relatable. Big Kendall Roy vibes.
Ayo Edebiri is amazing.
🎧 Music on repeat
Prelude: I have only recently realized that Substack doesn’t offer embeds for Apple Music URLs. Blah. We’ll make do with vanilla links for now.
There’s two renaissances working in parallel here: one of Usher’s dating back to his electric Super Bowl performance and the subsequent release of Coming Home, and another of Afrobeat’s recent boom brought to mainstream by talents such as Wizkid, Tyla, Rema, and Burna Boy. In Ruin, USHER invites producer Pheelz for a swooning, mellow homage to that very sound and a tunnel-vision love.
Sometimes, you just gotta be playful with it, and the addictive “U U U U” coupled with even more “U U U U U U U U U”s in Magnetic’s chorus is enough to have you forget about the recent fracas between ILLIT’s parent label HYBE and Min Hee Jin for a couple minutes. Let the fat cats and rabid fans fight, just take care of the kids and give us good music.
He Can Only Hold Her – Amy Winehouse
Amy Winehouse speaks a lot and in depth of longing for a previous lover even amid the sparse lyrics and the light instrumental. Far and away the best song out of Winehouse’s brilliant Back to Black, which was recently included in Apple Music’s Top 100 Albums of all time. Also, Mark Ronson’s rent was DUE due when he made that progression for the chorus.
📰 Words I read
Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
For my book of the month, I did a redux read of Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain, widely renowned as the chef’s magnum opus in writing. I first picked it up in 2021 – deep into the pandemic – and I remember it more for being vulgar than personal; I didn’t appreciate it as much then, in large part because I’d been stuck in the Haruki Murakami echo chamber then where any writing that strayed away from his style got the mental boot. If there was such thing as a terrible reader, I was one of them.
Anyways, I still rated Kitchen Confidential a 4-star back then, but after this reread, that assessment feels like an injustice to Bourdain’s raw, opinionated, open-book, and passionated take on things inside and out of the kitchen.
I don't know, you see, how a normal person acts. I don't know how to behave outside my kitchen. I don't know the rules. I'm aware of them, sure, but I don't care to observe them anymore because I haven't had to for so many years. Okay, I can put on a jacket, go out for dinner and a movie, and I can eat with a knife and fork without embarrassing my hosts. But can I really behave? I don't know.
He’s a witty, expressive introspect, and I could only hope to articulate my thoughts for even half as good as him.
Substack stars
Some Substack pieces I loved from some of my favorite authors on here…
posted this heartfelt piece on a mother’s love and this expansive retrospective on growing up, both of which hit a little bit too close to home.Speaking of birthdays and relating to words,
wrote about the fascinating thread that ties Nikola Jokic and Dua Lipa (yes, you read that right) and betting on yourself. People are amazing.✍️ Words I wrote
I had been off of writing on here for a while there because of some other things in my life I had to prioritize. I tend to underestimate the amount of time it takes for me to write a single article, so I reckoned I should knock off a few of the goals I had for the year first before I go back in a writing zone. So here I am!
As for the last serious thing I wrote? I had my first case of the birthday blues (see: existential crisis) this year, and I told myself, “You know who needs to hear about this? Everybody on the goddamn internet!” Anyways, it actually turned out better than I expected:
What are all the candles for?
As my birthday draws closer, I can’t help but attempt a recollection of the thoughts I’d conjure up whenever it was time for me to blow out the candles every year. After all those birthdays – twenty-three iterations of them so far, to be exact – the answers all point toward…nothing.
📸 Random photos I took
Thank you for the feature, I’m honored!