Hold a white bird of swag in your hands
An unbeatable Spygiveaway, new home-goods excellence, slappers from hyperpop prince Glaive & more
Welcome to Blackbird Spyplane.
Don’t miss our new guide to Beautiful Life-Improving Spyplane Staples — the B.L.I.S.S. List, live here.
Today we’re kicking things off with an UNBEATABLE SPYGIVEAWAY —
Before I (Jonah) wrote today’s newsletter, I planned to write it.
And the tool I used to plan it was the same tool I’ve used to map out every week in Spyplane Programming for the last two years: the Basic Day Planner by Rotterdam-based designer Marjolein Delhaas.
Great colors, compact proportions, design that’s as clean as it gets — we’ve shouted these out in the sletter before, and the last time we did, Marjolein herself signed up as a Spyfriend…. A few days ago, when we saw that she just dropped her 2024 editions — including 6 new colors — we hit Marjolein up to see if she wanted to do a Spygiveaway this time around. Her response (I’m paraphrasing) was “zeg minder,” which is of course Dutch for “say less.”
If you’re a Classified Recon Tier subscriber, toss your name into the Virtual Spyplane Bucket Hat down below and pick a color — we’ll do a random drawing this coming Saturday morning, 9/23 at 10 a.m. PT.
In the past I’ve gone with the black one and the orangey-red one — but mamma mia the pink, dark blue, and SILVER SLAPPER are calling out this year too.
To throw in your name, simply smash the “enter” button at the bottom of today’s sletter. This is a Classified ‘xclusie — thank you to our Spyfriends behind the Recon Curtain for respecting your quality of life enough to rock with us on an elite level.
MEANWHILE —
It’s time for the intel-rich recurring BBSP feature known as “V.I.P. R.A.D.A.R.,” where Vibey Illustrious People come through with tight bursts of Rare And Dope A** Recon.
Today we’ve got gems from a mad chill & thoughtful young musical phenomenon:
Glaive — whose excellent real name is Ash Blue Gutierrez — is an 18-year-old post-hyperpop star from North Carolina. His debut album, i care so much that i don't care at all is a beautiful, pop-rock-inflected blast of powerful teen emotion that our non-teenage-a**es f**k with heavy here at Spyplane HQ. He’s got a lovely singing voice, he screams well, and he is a clever young master of what you could call the monster feel-good depression anthem. What’s more, he looks mad cool in clothes.
So we were stoked for Glaive to put us on to 3 off-the-beaten-path slappers:
BNO (boysnightsout) music collective — “It’s a bunch of white guys who rap from Scandinavia, but not in a silly way, in an actually pretty cool way. This video is them all meeting for the first time (?) and I saw it when I was like 15. It looked really fun to me sitting alone in my room in NC.
“Last year when I was in Stockholm I met the main guy in the video, swoopy, just walking down the street. We ended up drunk with random Swedish people at like 7 a.m. and I remember driving those stupid electric scooters and just being like, ‘Holy f**k I feel awful,’ but it was a good time lol.
“Their music is pretty, just like, amazing, and I feel like no one knows about it, but the production is literally insane to this day. Word to boysnightsout mane.”
via the BNO Instagram Haruki Murakami books — “This is less of a niche interest, as he is an immensely famous author, but when I say I’m deep on bro, I mean it. I’ve read pretty much every book of his, and I have two tattoos from his books (Naoko from Norwegian Wood, Ovine Hall from A Wild Sheep Chase).
“The most recent one I read was a collection of stories called Men Without Women. I just recently started dating this girl so I’ve been forced to confront the fact that men and women differ in a far greater capacity than I would’ve ever realized before and the book is a bunch of stories between men and women. I probably won’t get any more Murakami tattoos but I’m a huge fan. He writes books that feel like the color yellow, or holding a white bird in your hands, which I haven’t done but imagine feels nice. ‘It is not that the meaning cannot be explained. But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.’”Horses on YouTube — “Bro is basically this channel that talks about everything? The first video I watched was about Ernest Hemingway (American goat btw) and he just talks and edits in a way I really like. He has this one video called ‘Why you should be more pretentious.’ As a super pretentious person I found it nice that someone is standing up for us … and confirming my bias.
Some videos from the Horses on YouTube channel “He just recently put a video up about fascism. I won’t get too into it, but I have always hated fascism. It can’t ever be anything but evil. I think this is a good video to watch if you hate fascism but don’t really understand why. He also put a video called ‘You have to go into the unknown,’ it’s about a painting. I can’t really explain it but it’s amazing, go watch it. Who knows, dude, he’s dope. Alright cool thanks bye.”
Glaive is on IG here. You can listen to his album and other music through his Soundcloud, here, or on Apple here and Spotify here.
NEXT UP — THESE NEW HOME GOODS FROM A BBSP-APPROVED LOS ANGELES LINE ARE GREAT —
