PODCAST

: lower black pain.

Jd Michaels - The CabsEverywhere Creative Production House

Life’s lemons into rich, dark chocolate. lowerblackpain.substack.com

society & culture performing arts

All Episodes

5:17

Dire.

: lower black pain. ·

2025/10/16

Dangling. Helpless. Fingernails dug deep into the bark of a fragile branch threatening to splinter and snap under the weight of the struggling, desperate body which swings from it - eyes mad with dread, awaiting the inevitability of plummeting, plummeting, into the abyss.This is a description of the world’s greatest and most celebrated motivational poster. It’s been hung in the highest halls of Congress and office break rooms everywhere. Millions of prints sold, not counting the various ripoffs,

5:48

Dark.

: lower black pain. ·

2025/10/09

Around the time of my daughter’s second birthday we went camping at a park that had Airstream™ campers instead of cabins. I adore Airstream™ campers and aspire to someday own one, though most likely I will never be able to afford a driveway to park it in.We arrived in the afternoon, and eventually the sun set (as it does) and the lack of streetlights and buildings left the outside world a pristine shade of nothing. All the windows of the trailer were pitch black. My daughter had never before

8:11

Grim.

: lower black pain. ·

2025/10/02

It’s pretty grim. I mean, “things” are. Or they look that way. Things seem pretty grim. Somewhat. Depends on where you look, I guess, and other variables. For me, it’s worse when my eyes are open, so while that’s happening, I point them in friendly directions in attempts to “de-grim” the experience, somewhat.I find grocery shopping soothing. Plenty to look at that’s pleasant to see. Vegetables are soothing (frozen vegetables a bit less so). The part of the store where they have all the bottled

7:17

The Babel Fish.

: lower black pain. ·

2025/09/25

It’s all moving so fast.The world’s always changing. I seem to be getting older, like, almost every day now. My daughter’s baby clothes don’t fit her any more now that she’s in high school. Zoom. Zip.We are SO CLOSE TO THE FUTURE. Cars talk and can drive themselves, but they don’t fly quite yet, and that’s “The Future” benchmark: the second a Volvo leaves the pavement we will be knee-deep in The Future, full stop.Well, not full stop, that’s the point; the modern world is an endlessly flowing event

7:08

Picnic.

: lower black pain. ·

2025/09/18

In 1902, a man went hunting in Mississippi. The man loved hunting a great deal – had created a 1000 creature “Museum of Nature” in his room at 12 years old (mostly insects), and adored the outdoors so much that he became one of the first people ever to be known as a “conservationist”. He had hunted his whole life, all over the place. He just loved it.This particular trip wasn’t very fulfilling, as he hadn’t found anything really huntible in the woods after several hours. But his hosts wanted him to

5:27

Pika, Pika.

: lower black pain. ·

2025/09/11

As I get older, I’m becoming a great deal more and much, much less adventurous.* “Never heard of orange wine!” I heard myself say once, many years ago, “…sounds interesting!” I told the cashier as I purchased a bottle.* “We’ll just rent a car, because driving in Europe is probably the same as driving at home!” said a man who looked exactly like me, only younger.* “Now this cat looks like he needs a lot of love… what does “feral” mean, exactly?” spoke a previous version of myself, a short 14 hours

7:03

Curriculum.

: lower black pain. ·

2025/09/04

A calendar year seems kind of random - the length of time between one page and a page 12 pages after. I used to find it poetic that the year began in the deep of winter, then blossomed outward toward summer - only to pull dramatically into itself in autumn, like a Martha Graham dance. But then I learned of The Southern Hemisphere. Wasn’t ready for that. Winter in July. Santa on the beach. Spiders big as dinner plates. The world gone mad.The School Year seems more stable. Its scheduling is in no way

9:05

Gutenberg. Kirby.

: lower black pain. ·

2025/08/28

So there’s this thing you can do with masking tape, where you make a little loop over two fingers and fasten it together and then put one of those loops in each corner of a piece of paper in order to place it on a wall. Though not recognized as an acceptable form of professional art handling at any major museum or gallery, in the late part of the last century this strategy did hold sway as the preferred method to display the carefully curated poster collections of young people in bedrooms across the

7:13

The Boxful Of Magical Time Ribbons.

: lower black pain. ·

2025/08/21

We’re celebrating the beginning of a “new school year” because at least one person in our home is going “back-to-school” in a few weeks. This means that the rest of us get to glom on to their excitement - purchasing our favorite pens, boxes of artisanal pencils, and the occasional odd-sized notebook that we absolutely do not need as we haven’t yet filled up last year’s notebooks with particularly compelling pencil or pen marks.As part of this pre-academic nesting, our household shared a mutual

7:50

The Perfect Summer Read.

: lower black pain. ·

2025/08/14

I have always enjoyed a good comic book - it’s a portable, colorful adventure. I have even been described as a “comic book kind of person”. Quite a few times. Hmn. Anyway, comics are great, but they are not my favorite kind of book.Of course, NOVELS, who doesn’t like a thick, engaging novel to get lost in? Or POETRY - inspiration to the very soul, essential expressions of the human spirit! I humbly respect all forms of the literary arts, but there is one category I find the most intriguing, most

7:32

Hum-da-dum.

: lower black pain. ·

2025/08/07

I hum a great deal. Not really humming exactly, there’s a rhythmical aspect to it, kind of a “bum-ba-dum”.Bum-da-dum dum dum dum dum…Going up the stairs to work, filling out forms, waiting in grocery lines, cleaning the house. Bum-ba-dum. It’s a bit like having a personal soundtrack.In many cities, this would be considered a problem. I’m lucky enough to live where we gently ignore one another, automatically assuming that people who seem to be speaking to themselves are either on the phone or

6:10

Vintage Cheeses.

: lower black pain. ·

2025/07/31

It’s the time for bread and wine as the year moves steadily on, days now getting shorter, summer both in full swing and ever-so-slight decline. Many of us can’t help but look past the sweltering days ahead of (and just behind) us with keen anticipation of the autumn and winter holidays, already anticipating how thematically unified those pumpkin-orange shoes will be, or the pretty of the streets with the houses once again covered in lights.But first, summer. The other half. The half when it’s

8:09

Cliffhangers.

: lower black pain. ·

2025/07/24

1958. A Nebraska editor creates a series of study guides for Shakespeare plays that sell over 58,000 copies in six months. The editor’s name? Clifton Hillegass.By 1964, his company was selling over one million books from the “Cliff’s Notes” series annually, summarizing everything from Greek myth to classic literature.It took much less time to finish one of these pamphlets than to read the actual novel or play, and they were categorized to show all the things that teachers cared about in school -

6:47

Sleeping With The Enemy.

: lower black pain. ·

2025/07/17

I’ve always had a problem with Darth Vader™ sheets, a specific concern that does not include the tapestries, house slippers or “comfy throw blankets” depicting the character, as it is not the simple combination of legendary cinema maniac with home textiles that disturbs me. It’s the children’s bedsheets depicting Darth Vader in a classic menacing stance, or sometimes as many as four or five action poses. I suppose I also must include the matching comforters and pillowcases.It’s not the creation of

7:46

The Kansan.

: lower black pain. ·

2025/07/10

Birds are easy to draw when they’re flying - pointy oval with a triangle coming off of each side.A basic airplane shape, admittedly, closely mimics that of a flying bird, at least for the models and styles most often seen above our cities.But PEOPLE, even with their hands on their hips, do NOT look like pointy ovals with two triangles coming out of them… even from far away. This is why the whole Superman™ meme confused me:“…it’s a bird!”“…it’s a plane!”“It’s SUPERMAN!™”REALLY? Surely a guy with a

7:06

101.

: lower black pain. ·

2025/07/03

Last week it was stiflingly hot; a result of which was the unprecedented difficulty I had writing my column. The little room where all my creative-y stuff is sequestered doesn’t get the air conditioning from the living room, so the temperature was about 94 degrees.My computer kept shutting itself off because it is more intelligent than I am.As it turned out, full sentences that I was absolutely certain I had included in the piece had not been added, and when reading the audio version I actually

7:17

100.

: lower black pain. ·

2025/06/26

About 100 degrees. For three days. Humidity: 70 percent.Such heat can add weary to worry, extreme to exhausted, and vaseline edges to focus. Even in air conditioning, the sun penetrates brick, mortar, steel, skin, and bone.Yet and still, I saw people jogging. In the park. Without a lion behind them, or an open full Brink’s truck rolling ahead of them.These are not “my people”; they do not exhibit a logical measure of self-preservation, as any physical benefit of exercise is nullified once the body

7:40

Garage.

: lower black pain. ·

2025/06/19

We have a storage unit, a 6 foot by 10 foot room in a gigantic warehouse building down by the docks: most likely used to be a processing factory for something that came in off a ship a couple of blocks away. It is a de facto “extra room” of our apartment, one of three we desperately need in order to not vividly project the lifestyle of “artistic madpeople”. Or at least make it a little less obvious to visitors. And random passers-by.As defined by its contents, this unit would be our “garage”:

7:10

Got To Be Real.

: lower black pain. ·

2025/06/12

I’m allergic to milk. While others stood in line at Baskin Robbins for ice cream cones, I sat on our front porch eating ice milk bars.Yes, it has the word “milk” in it, we saw the irony, but our before-the-internet and no-one-in-our-family-was-a-doctor logic assumed that CREAM was a more harmful word, since as everyone knows cream has more milk in it than milk does.Non-surprisingly, ice milk bars were significantly less enjoyable than ice cream, if for no less reason than the distinctive CRUNCH they

5:45

Planting Seeds.

: lower black pain. ·

2025/06/05

I started a little garden at work, in the window.Our office is on the ninth floor of one of those old-time office buildings that looks like an old-time office building - all brick and stone and evenly spaced windows with bold lentils. It’s a building that is easily drawn with a pencil, perfect for Superman to fly by or Spider-Man to swing from as he’s rushing uptown.The building is about 100 years old, and while the interior has been updated a few times, no amount of industrial carpet and pastel

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