Engineer's Daughter

three forms

Through August 8 - Three Forms: JB Blunk at Blunk Space

I was looking for an excuse for a drive yesterday, so I trundled on up to Point Reyes Station (zero love to the asshole blonde in the Mercedes who tailgated me and the five cars in front of me the entire way) to revel in some beautiful scenery and to introduce myself to the work of JB Blunk by way of the new Blunk Space gallery. Blunk lived off the grid in Inverness until his death in 2002, and a connection to nature strongly informs all his work. I knew that he had carved the monumental redwood piece The Planet on permanent display at the Oakland Museum, and I was delighted to take in some of his semi-abstract paintings while seated in Blunk Space on one of his wooden stools, carved into sculptural and biomorphic forms from redwood, cypress, and bay laurel. Blunk's ceramic work is also represented in the form of a series of cups that have been recast from his original designs, and it was very tempting to walk out with an entire set in the sage glaze. I'm very excited for further exhibitions and further excuses to visit. And that wasn't the only art I saw yesterday, because earlier after fueling up at AvocadoCon I made a stop at Minnesota Street Project to visit Connie Zheng's brilliant new yam fish seed exchange (nyse) installation and to see everything at Anglim/Trimble: Ajit Chauhan's "erasures" upstairs, and the group show Contested Territories curated by Kim Anno downstairs.

Other things I liked this week:

• An Inventory of Losses by Judith Schalansky. A collection of experimental essays/short stories/meditations themed around things lost that definitely had some tough moments but which I ultimately found quite beautiful. The physical book design is its own work of art too.
• Beyond the Visible - Hilma af Klint by Halina Dyrschka. This luminous documentary explores af Klint's astounding body of work, and the question of what happens to art history when work is discovered that completely rewrites the whole of it.
• I've been feeling pretty glum about environmental devastation lately, but it was very uplifting to hear local legend Doug McConnell give his perspective on our parks and conservation future courtesy of the Sempervirens Fund.
• Also inspiring: What is the water saying?, a screening of videos by Carolina Cayecedo, Denise Ferreira da Silva and Arjuna Neuman, Sky Hopinka, Thao Nguyen Phan, and Charwei Tsai, curated by the Wattis Institute and hosted outdoors at Headlands.
• And because I'm back to outdoor performances only I was grateful to SF Playhouse for the option to stream their current play, The Song of Summer by Lauren Yee. Their video has a few glitches but still (mostly) captures the feeling of being in the theater for a live show, and the play is very sweet besides.

dance desert

Through August 21 - Cybele Lyle: Dance Desert at Et al. etc.

I continue to be in awe of artists who were able to create work during pandemic, and to see how Cybele Lyle synthesized the experience and extended her ongoing practice in the work currently on view at Et al. is hugely inspiring. Painted fabric is thumbtacked to wood panels to create portals that suggest a view to the outside (most pieces are alternately titled Desert Windows or Desert Walls), while wood poles propped precariously against the work on the walls imply a delicate architectural/mental stability. I loved the interaction between the inner and outer world in the detail above, and how the colors taken from nature are punctuated by pops of contrasting hues and patterns. In her artist statement Lyle speaks of how "this idea of breaking apart walls and windows and indoors from outdoors changed in meaning for me this past year," and for all of us who were experiencing similar shifts in perception this work resonates most strongly. Meanwhile, on this same art expedition, next door at Ratio 3 I stood rapt before the "aggregate" weavings Ruth Laskey created earlier this year, and then dropped in at Jessica Silverman to take in a multi-decade overview of Catherine Wagner's brilliant, subversive photographs.

Other things I liked this week:

• Wild Minds: The Artists and Rivalries That Inspired the Golden Age of Animation by Reid Mitenbuler. A highly entertaining and well-written overview of the early days of cartoons, chock full of oversize personalities and fascinating details. I only wish there had been more women and POC in the book, but I also wish that of the industry.
• Clockwatchers by Jill Sprecher. This film came and went so quickly in the '90s that I never caught it at the time, but it absolutely deserves wider recognition for its ruthless and artful skewering of office contractor drudgery from the perspective of a quartet of women.
• Saved By Nature along with the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority hosted a wonderful talk this week about how awesome bats are and how we can help local bats thrive. Not currently posted on their video page but hopefully soon!
• Last Sunday I had a lovely day out in the city with lunch at the SSP Beer Hall and then a return to my beloved Roxie to see Linda and the Mockingbirds in person, with many of the local families featured in the documentary in attendance.
• That said, with the current virus surge I'm probably going to stick to streaming at home again now, and enjoyed checking out the twisty-turny doc Misha and the Wolves for the SF Jewish Film Festival's virtual opening night.
• The SF Mime Troupe is also committed to keeping everyone safe this summer and have produced a series of weekly radio plays that I highly recommend if you appreciate agitprop that makes you laugh out loud. I'll be eagerly awaiting each new installment.

the black index

Through August 14 - The Black Index at Palo Alto Art Center

After outdoor lunch with my folks in Redwood Shores yesterday I schlepped a little further down the Peninsula to the always-lovely Palo Alto Art Center to see this small but powerful exhibition curated by Bridget R. Cooks and organized around the theme of Black self-representation. Lava Thomas's renderings of mugshots from the Montgomery Bus Boycott (pictured above: Alberta J. James) take my breath away every time I see them, and Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle's 2020 project The Evanesced: The Untouchables is equally moving, composed of 100 gorgeous ink and watercolor drawings of Black women meant to bring attention to those who have been abused, murdered, and disappeared. Hinkle wants viewers "to think about how we are all agents in erasure, and we all have a role that we play," and the exhibition at large presents a strong statement about anti-colonialism even as it maintains attentive to nuance and complexity. Also currently in Palo Alto: the excellent Resonance show at Qualia gallery, featuring artists who merge the visual and the aural in their work.

Other things I liked this week:

• Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy by Adam Jentleson. A very readable history of the filibuster and an extremely strong case for why it needs to be abolished that just added to the pile of rage that's going to sustain me all the way through next year's midterms. Stay angry, my friends.
• The Witches of the Orient by Julien Faraut. I loved Faraut's John McEnroe documentary and he uses similar experimental techniques here to tell the compelling story of the Japanese women's volleyball team that won the gold in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Highly recommended if you're ambivalent about this year's competition but are in the mood to watch some amazing women kick ass.
• Headlands held an "Open House Lite" last Sunday, their first in-person event since lockdown, and while I'm still feeling tentative about the future (and downright gutted about the loss of the Affiliate program) it was wonderful to be back and to see and hear inspiring work and to eat Chef Damon's mac and cheese.
• SF's Opera Parallèle has teamed up with the Dallas Opera to produce Everest, an inventive online graphic novel opera that I thoroughly enjoyed despite its intense subject matter. Very clever use of comic book conventions and you just have to abandon any disbelief (similar to any musical theater experience to be honest) that the characters are singing without oxygen on the top of Everest.

out of site

Through August 14 - Brett Goodroad at Cushion Works

It was pure delight to visit the gallery that Jordan Stein oversees at Cushion Works for the first time yesterday, and yes it is directly above the city's best cushion company, and yes I really have to get my couch cushions restuffed after a year+ of pandemic. I first saw Brett Goodroad's work when he was the Tournesol recipient at Headlands and was happy to see his paintings are as dreamy as they ever were, loosely abstract with suggestions of figuration and landscape that shift with the viewer's proximity. Some of his canvases are quite large now too, and one of my favorite pieces was a deconstructed still life that took up almost an entire wall. Goodroad utilizes impressive technique, building up the paint here and allowing the canvas show through there, and though his work is reminiscent of Romantic era paintings it is at the same time completely contemporary. And spending some time with a gallery full of his work almost feels like a meditation.

Other things I liked this week:

• The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington. While I was familiar with excerpts from this marvelously surreal novel thanks to the interpretations Anne Walsh and Moira Roth (RIP) performed several years back, I'd never sat down and read the whole thing and I am so glad I did and in fact I am now planning to reread it at least once a decade as I continue to age into my own eccentric womanhood.
• Freak Orlando by Ulrike Ottinger. An assault on the senses in the best possible way, Ottinger's take on the Virginia Woolf classic has almost no correlation to the later Sally Potter version but instead you get Magdalena Montezuma and Delphine Seyrig cavorting through a succession of bizarre scenarios both historical and mythological. My jaw was hanging open the entire length of the film and I loved it.
• I spent a lovely Independence Day roaming the newly reopened galleries and the newly relandscaped gardens of the Oakland Museum, and almost the most exciting part was my "NorCal NOLA" picnic box from Tanya Holland's new museum café Town Fare.
• Lake Merritt's Rotary Nature Center has been doing wonderful virtual "lakeside chats" throughout the pandemic about the lake's flora and fauna, viewable on their website here.
• Outdoor walking plays are one of my favorite things right now while I work up to being ready to sit in a theater regularly again, and Eye Zen's Out of Site: Haight-Ashbury is particularly special. Actor Tina D'Elia fully embodies two SF icons, entrepreneur Peggy Caserta and Hibiscus of the Cockettes, in and around their old haunts in the Haight, and the show/tour includes a heap of other queer history besides.

seeing sound

Through July 24 - Seeing Sound at Kadist

Slowly but surely I'm making it back to all my fave Bay Area spaces, and it was wonderful to spend some quality audio/visual time yesterday with the three artists curated by Barbara London for this show. I was mesmerized by Samson Young's video, pictured above, showing lion dancers in a traditional performance without the musical accompaniment, the better to hear the sounds of footsteps and breath that are usually buried under drums and cymbals. In a nearby room Marina Rosenfeld's installation of audio equipment accoutrements rewards the patient listener with brief, evocative sounds that seem to boomerang around the small gallery. And you might mistake Aura Satz's piece as a waiting area as you enter Kadist, but instead the comfy chairs are an invitation to sit and dial in to an incredible conversation between Pauline Oliveros and Laurie Spiegel as they riff on the concept of drone. This is an exhibition you experience with your whole body, and it engages in a way I desperately missed during pandemic. While I was out and about I also swung by the excellent Uplift / Heavy Lift juried group show at Berkeley Art Center, curated by Thea Quiray Tagle and speaking to both lockdown and this moment of emergence, and then the rescheduled 2020 Mills College MFA exhibition, which filled me with excitement about the graduated artists even as I'm filled with worry about the future of Mills.

Other things I liked this week:

• Little Snow Landscape by Robert Walser. In a week where my brain felt completely battered by the news it was sheer respite to open this book and read one of Walser's short (sometimes very short) stories. In many cases they are more meditations on landscape or human nature than what you might think of as a traditional story, and arranged chronologically they also show his progression as a writer.
• Aya of Yop City by Marguerite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie. Abouet transforms her comics about three women in Côte d' Ivoire into an animated film (interspersed with actual vintage ads!) full of color and laughter and amazing music.
• I love bobcats and if you also love bobcats you will love this Bay Nature talk by conservation photographer Sarah Killingsworth about Bay Area bobcats.
• In the closest thing to a live music show I've experienced yet, the Panorama Paranormal program for Gray Area's Recombinant Rebound featured 360-degree sound and spatial cinema works by the likes of Ryoichi Kurokawa, Burial, Fennesz, and Paul Clipson with Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. I'm still a little wary of indoor events but this was glorious.

remembrance of things paper

Through July 5 - Remembrance of Things Paper at Round Weather

Round Weather has been open since December in a beautiful space in an old Oakland bottle factory, and this week I swung by for a visit to the current group show and just loved everything I saw. Gallery director Chris Kerr not only has a thoughtful eye for art that addresses sustainability and the current climate catastrophe, but he and the gallery's Advisory Council are running the space as a nonprofit and are sending money from sales to environmental organizations. The current exhibition is themed around a specific material, paper, with its associations with recycling and just the sheer pleasure of its many textures and forms. Daniela Naomi Molnar, pictured above, uses collected rainwater, dew, and earth pigments to create her striking watercolors which in turn depict mankind's effects on landscape, while Michelle Yi Martin's mesmerizing woven pieces similarly take on added meaning when you learn she works with exclusively found materials. The motif of transforming one person's trash into new treasure continues in Ajit Chauhan's practice, where he erases the edges of discarded postcards into forms of his choosing. And in one of those wonderful moments of Oakland serendipity, while I was at Round Weather I glimpsed a piece by Miguel Arzabe resting under the stairs from a previous show, which reminded me I needed to see his current solo exhibition at Johansson Projects so I went yesterday and it is super fantastic.

Other things I liked this week:

• The Bad Side of Books: Selected Essays by D.H. Lawrence. Lawrence can certainly be a frustrating and problematic writer, but I admire his endless curiosity and his inquisitive way of working out the world around him. He'll find a particular turn of phrase that just lights up your brain, whether he's describing the New Mexico landscape, or birdsong, or metaphysics, or a scammer acquaintance. Geoff Dyer edited this collection and his introduction is top-notch too.
• Mädchen in Uniform directed by Leontine Sagan. I love watching queer film during Pride month and this is a classic, depicting forbidden love between a student and teacher at a boarding school in Germany between the world wars. Also worth watching just for the Expressionist close-ups.
• This past week was Kronos Festival week, and I spent a good part of the day last Sunday wandering around Golden Gate Park with Ellen Reid's wondrous Soundwalk in my ears, which had premiered as part of the festival. The rest of the programming is available on YouTube through August 31, and the Soundwalk is sticking around for a few years.
• Another fun way to celebrate Pride is Canela's to-go rainbow picnic bag filled with Spanish chips and candy and the most delicious sangria. Highly recommended.
• I also sampled this year's Frameline festival at home this week in the form of Chen Hung-i & Muni Wei’s As We Like It, a giddy gender-bent reimagining of Shakespeare that had me grinning ear-to-ear throughout. The whole Focus on Taiwan program is very cool too.
• Megablack SF threw one heck of a Juneteenth party at the Ferry Building farmers market yesterday, and I walked away with bundt cakes from Minnie Bell's Soul Movement, various puddings from Yes Pudding, and sprinkle cookies from A Girl Named Pinky. All the sweets, in other words.
• MoAD also had great Juneteenth programming all day, including a panel discussion in conjunction with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History that featured Annette Gordon-Reed, Jelani Cobb, Imani Perry, and Kevin Young.
• And to celebrate Summer Solstice, I recommend this virtual saunter on Mount Diablo courtesy of Greenbelt Alliance.

Programming note: I'm taking some time off this week to go run around Los Angeles and see art and friends in SoCal, my first getaway out of town since pandemic. I'll be back in two Sundays.

the violets in the mountains have broken the rocks, part two

Edited to add: The show has been extended through the end of June! Go see it!

Through June 12 - The Violets in the Mountains Have Broken the Rocks, Part Two at Gallery 16

I'm so glad I got to see this group show before it closed, especially because it's looking like Gallery 16 won't be much longer in the SOMA space where I've attended so many exhibitions and performances. But while they're still there, they're going to keep putting on great shows. With a loose theme of resilience some of the artworks speak directly to the pandemic, as with Tucker Nichols's incredible free-associative wall installation, while in other cases it's just interesting to see what artists were able to create in the last year. Cliff Hengst's series of intimate watercolors are real beauties, and they seemed to be having a conversation with Wayne Smith's ink-on-hardwood sculptures from across the room. Basically this exhibition felt like a wonderful conversational gathering with old friends and new. While I was in the city I also had a lovely bayside bento from Delica in the Ferry Building and took in the gorgeous Diane Arbus show at Fraenkel Gallery curated by Carrie Mae Weems. Just a fantastic day all around.

Other things I liked this week:

• Saving Freedom: Truman, the Cold War, and the Fight for Western Civilization by Joe Scarborough. With a title (and an author) like that I was of course reading this book with a fairly critical eye, but though Scarborough is no historian this is an absorbing account of a part of American history I knew little about. I just could have done without the partisan potshots, and the alarming amount of typos.
• I thought Marin Theatre Company did an excellent job with Denmo Ibrahim's online play Brilliant Mind, a mix of live Zoom and pre-taped scenes and with the added fun of receiving texts during the action from one of the characters. I just really miss seeing Ibrahim onstage in front of me.
• SF DocFest is doing a few screenings at the Roxie this year but the whole thing is also virtual, so I chose to watch Keeper of the Fire about local poet and activist Alejandro Murguia from the comfort of my kitchen table. This is one of those festivals where every film is a gem.
• In one of the more brilliant pandemic adaptations, Robert Moses' KIN are currently rehearsing and performing a new piece called The Vital Heart of S.F. behind the windows of the old Gap store on Market for passers-by to observe at their leisure. I caught just a snippet of the dancers at work and it was divine.
• The Wattis just launched a new book called Why are they so afraid of the lotus? and to celebrate the occasion Astria Suparak gave a Zoom talk called Asian Futures, without Asians that was absolute fire.
• I caught another incredible performance from the ODC Theater Festival, this time Unheard: Deaf Refugees in America by Antoine Hunter (Purple Fire Crow).
• Until I can see them again in person, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater program from Cal Performances At Home was completely transcendent.
• And Tanya Diamond and Ahiga Snyder of Pathways for Wildlife taught me a ton about wildlife tracking in the first part of a virtual program presented by Peninsula Open Space Trust. Watch their presentation on YouTube and get ready for part two on July 9.

made lands

Through June 26 - Minoosh Zomorodinia: Made Lands at Local Language

I'm very happy that Oakland creative studio and fabrication shop Local Language was able to restart their artist-in-residence program earlier this spring, and the current show by Minoosh Zomorodinia is a real beauty. Zomorodinia began mapping her walks in 2016 when the xenophobic new administration unsettled her visa status. She started transforming the data points on her phone into physical objects both to lay claim to her adopted land and to reference the legacy of colonization in the United States in general and in California in particular. In this exhibition Zomorodinia continues to use those paths to investigate how the process of capturing memories on our digital devices affects our recall of past events, as in the My Ziggurat series in which she builds up layers like the ancient architecture from her Persian heritage and paints the resulting structures with gold leaf as if a monument to memory itself. And while you're in the neighborhood I recommend grabbing a bite at Forage Kitchen across the street and then heading down to West Grand to see Sheila Ghidini's deconstructed/reconstructed furniture at Gearbox Galley, another smart take on the concept of reassembly.

Other things I liked this week:

• The Sediments of Time: My Lifelong Search for the Past by Meave Leakey and Samira Leakey. Meave Leakey is foremost a brilliant paleontologist, and she also has a remarkable grasp of sociology, zoology, chemistry, genetics, climate science...the list goes on and on. I loved hearing the stories about her important discoveries in Africa, and she also begins and ends with some strong words about the survival of our species if we don't change our current self-destructive ways.
• Hooligan Sparrow by Nanfu Wang. This documentary about Chinese human rights activist Ye Haiyan is a portrait in courage both of the feminists in China defying their government to demand change, and of the filmmaker herself, who had to stay one step ahead of the police and smuggle her footage out of China.
• For Memorial Day Sunday I took public transit over to the city, picked up cheese-on-a-stick and boba tea from Stix, and had a picnic lunch by a pond in Stern Grove. Highly recommended.
• Seeing Silicon Valley: Life inside a Fraying America by Mary Beth Meehan and Fred Turner. I attended a virtual talk with Meehan and Turner and their University of Chicago Press editor Joseph Calamia on Wednesday and was inspired to immediately buy their book. The talk should be up on the Press's YouTube channel soon.
• To celebrate Pride Month Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society hosted a wonderful talk Wednesday evening with Jennifer Rycenga, one of the founders of Queer Birders of North America. Queer Birds: Community Inclusion, Community Building, and Community Science is available here.
• This year's ODC Theater Festival is all-virtual and features an impressive line-up of artists who showcase how good dance can look on film. I caught the opening night program on Thursday and especially loved the short pieces by the ODC Theater Opportunity Fund Artists.
• In honor of Black Birders Week this last week I recommend seeking out Annie Kaempfer's documentary The Falconer about Rodney Scotts's mission to provide access to nature for his community.
• Yesterday I kidnapped my friend Zach and headed off to McLaren Park for Psychopomp, the new outdoor theater walk from We Players specifically formulated for pandemic times. It was a magical and transcendent experience and then we went and outdoor dined at Red Window and that was most excellent too.

design by time

Through August 15 - Design by Time at the Museum of Craft and Design

The Museum of Craft and Design is a genuine city gem out in the Dogpatch, and their current group show Design by Time is a fascinating look at some cutting-edge work. Organized around the idea of time at a point in history when many people have lost a grip on temporal reality, the exhibition displays items from 8 countries and a 22 different artists and design collaboratives, with both established and emerging names represented. I was smitten with Swedish studio Front's reimagining of a Royal Delft vase that seemed to perform duration, pictured above, while nearby Sebastian Brajkovic's Lathe V Chair piece resembled classic French furniture that had been melted sideways in a sly visualization of history. Some objects also directly address how time acts on materials, as with the tiles from London studio Glithero gorgeously imprinted with cyanotypes of urban weeds. The museum also has a fantastic gift shop, and while you're in the neighborhood I further recommend brunching at Piccino, seeing Liam Everett's glorious show at Altman Siegel in which he gives me real Richter vibes, and picking up some treats from Biscuit Bender for the road.

Other things I liked this week:

• Sketches of the Criminal World: Further Kolyma Stories by Varlam Shalamov. The second volume of Shamalov's fiction in which he processes his 15 years in the Gulag, this is grim but essential reading. Human nature doesn't come out looking all that great, and if you're a soft heart like me just skip any story involving an animal.
• 1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything on Apple TV+. For a music obsessive this 8-part series is pure catnip, with the usual suspects present but also some nice deep dives into more unusual corners of sound. The vintage footage is incredible, and I appreciated the historical context throughout as well. 
• My YouTube rec for this week is the channel for the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority, with virtual hikes and nature programs galore.
• black midi hosted a listening party for their new album Cavalcade on Wednesday and it was super rad. RIYL high energy post punk math rock.
• I also spent three days Zooming into as much as I could of the International Contemporary Ensemble's Afro-Diasporic Opera Forum, including screenings of and reflections on three operas that the Ensemble has produced: George Lewis’s Afterword, Tyshawn Sorey’s Perle Noire: Meditations For Joséphine Baker, and Pauline Oliveros & IONE’s The Nubian Word For Flowers: A Phantom Opera. The forum ended with a screening of Lisa E. Harris' recent digital opera Cry Of The Third Eye and the whole thing was just wall-to-wall inspiration.
• The virtual Legacy Film Festival on Aging offers a wealth of perspectives on the latter years of our lives, and I chose the Fun & Games program with Ruedi Gerber's Seniors Rocking to honor the passing of goddess Anna Halprin this week and Lance Oppenheim's Some Kind of Heaven about four residents of The Villages in Florida.
• And then yesterday I saw a film! In a theater! It was Christian Petzold's mesmerizing Undine as part of the 25th Berlin and Beyond Film Festival and oh it was wonderful.

regarding extinction

Through June 26 - Kara Maria: Regarding Extinction at Anglim/Trimble

Stepping into a gallery of Kara Maria's paintings is pure pop joy, with vibrant splashes of color and psychedelic shapes twisting this way and that. Once you get closer you realize each piece contains wildlife too, a threatened creature calmly situated in its unnatural environment. The message about our current climate catastrophe and our responsibility as humans is crystal clear, but Maria also calls attention to the beauty and diversity of the animals on our planet. We'd better do our best to get our act together, and quickly. Also don't miss the Jerome Caja show concurrently at Anglim/Trimble, featuring a fantastic array of Caja's work and Anna van der Meulen's moving photographs of this local soul who is still very much missed. And then grab a biscuit (or five) at Biscuit Bender before stepping over to Slash's beautiful new space to see the Arboreal tree-themed group exhibition curated by Juana Berrío.

Other things I liked this week:

• A Good Time to Be Born: How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future by Perri Klass. Despite the grim discussions of childhood mortality, I thoroughly enjoyed this accessible look at how we've managed to subdue a host of deadly diseases over the past century. Klass also celebrates a number of women and people of color who were new names to me, and it was very cool to learn about them.
• Butter on the Latch, Thou Wast Mild and Lovely, Flames, and shorts Squeezebox, Me the Terrible, First Day Out, The Mask Task, all by Josephine Decker. I love it when the Criterion Channel allows me to do a deep dive into a artist's body of work, in this case the director of Shirley and Madeline's Madeline. Decker's films are intense and not always easy to watch but entrancing all the same, especially in the way she incorporates music. 
• This talk Gardening for Water, Fire, and Habitat from the Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation, if you are already as freaked out about the drought as I am.
• And last night I spent some hugely therapeutic time on Zoom(!) laughing along with the Mental Health Comedy Hour and special guests Margaret Cho and Guy Branum.