The greatest magazine writer working
Plus a trove of sick secondhand home goods we just discovered, saluting a slept-on swag lord & more
Our 2024 Slappy Awards — celebrating last year’s best designers, pants, music, movies and more — are here.
Our brand-new Home Goods Report, bursting with things to enliven the place you live, is here.
Mach 3+ city intel for traveling the entire planet is here.
Blackbird Spyplane back again. We’re sending love to our L.A.-based readers first & foremost. Yesterday we learned that very close friends of ours lost their home. They are thankfully safe from the fires, and we hope that you and yours are safe, too.
In today’s newsletter we’ve got:
A salute to the greatest magazine writer working today
A wealth of vibey secondhand linen home goods we just discovered that come in ill colors for the low
Sauce inspiration from a slept-on American Swag Lord
Let’s get to it —
I (Jonah) had the pleasure of meeting Quincy Jones once, extremely briefly, at a party at his home in 2018. I was a guest of Spyfriend Rashida Jones, who was screening her great documentary about Quincy’s life and work in his living room.
I was also wearing a molded plastic-and-foam neck brace, recovering from a gnarly bike crash that left me with 5 bone fractures between my skull & my spine. I think I saw Dr. Dre and Mary J. Blige giving me double takes, but I might have imagined it: Rocking corrective medical gear is not the best way to feel maximally relaxed at a party.
When I met Quincy, though, he was warm in a way you can’t fake, made a goodnatured joke about the neck brace — “What did you say to her, man?” — and made me (a guy he’d just met, wearing the international symbol for shady ambulance-chasing plaintiffs) feel instantly welcome.
Last November, after Jones died at 91, I mourned the loss the way I imagine many people did: listening to the music he helped make, of course (this Time Crisis ep devoted to his career is excellent), but also looking at Mach 3+ fits he’d rocked over the years, and clips of past interviews where he dropped gem after gem about empathy, art, and collaboration.
One clip came from a 1986 episode of 60 Minutes, where Jones sat down with Ed Bradley. Watching it, I was reminded that Bradley, in addition to being a legend of journalism, was an advanced Swag Lord who feels significantly undersung today: Much like Jones, Bradley made historic contributions not only to his chosen field but to the History of Putting that S**t On.
Bradley died in 2006 at age 65 — way too young — which is maybe why the contemporary Moodboard Industrial Complex is sleeping on him.
This is a mistake! As you can see in the fits above top right and bottom right, Bradley knew his way around deceptively simple Tonal Swag layering — a chromatic secret-weapon that Erin broke down in her indispensable guide to How to Wear Colors Well.
And as you can see from the fit above bottom left, he knew how to have fun on a stylistic tightrope — stonewashed jeans with a tuxedo tailcoat, bolo tie and cigar?
Salute two masters.
Meanwhile —
Longtime readers know that Blackbird Spyplane is eternally interested in the subject of Home Enswaggenment. Specifically, we keep an eye open for home goods so vibe-rich that simply placing them in a room can make that room a minimum of ~33.3% more wavier.
Over the New Year’s break, some good friends rented a very sick spot up the Sonoma coast, in Sea Ranch, CA. We joined them for dinner and were stoked to discover a slept-on trove of banging vintage table linens in fantastic colors (below left) that can be copped secondhand for the low: