2025: junio
Image of bootleg shirt design by Nick M.W. (WBN)
Rock a fly jersey in the summertime God.
One of my favorite months of the year and the official kickoff to summer, June just came and went. It’s a celebratory month usually filled with grad parties and wedding receptions. Historically speaking, this month has mostly been good memories to me. As a youngster, I anticipated the first of June as early as the first day of school. June signaled the end of school and a break from all that work. No more early wake up calls. Hello all-nighters. Baseball. Skateboarding. Swimming. Visiting my dad. Hanging out with my neighborhood friends.
I was lucky to have good summer breaks, and that was pretty much how every summer went for me throughout the 90s, way back in the 20th century. Play baseball through July. Skateboard all summer. Visit my dad in August for the month. Return home for school. Do it again next year. The lone exception was in 1992. That summer was fucked. During the wee hours of June 6th, on a lonely stretch of Highway 62, my mom, brother, and I got in a bad car accident. The scariest moment of my life up to that point and still to this day. I’ll save the details for my next Saturday Night Special, but it was a miracle we all made it out alive.
One year later, on June 12th, my mom, brother, and I left So Cal for Spokane, Washington. That summer started out on a big downer. Leaving the only place you ever called home can have that effect on people. However, Washington turned out to be a lovely place to continuing growing up. So, yeah, overall, I was lucky. My heart goes out to the kids who hate summer break. I didn’t know any when I was in school, but I met a couple later in life when I worked at an elementary school. It was then that I realized the economics involved in having a good summer.
Do You Know What Today Is
My wedding anniversary is June 1st. That was a great day all around, and it’s another fantastic life memory tied to the month. This year, my wife and I celebrated our twelfth anniversary. We’ve returned to the place where we got married every year to have dinner as part of our celebration. Shoutout Coco Palm in Pomona, CA. The churrasco was on point.
I don’t have anything new to add to the conversation about relationships and maintaining a healthy one. My relationship with my wife is the best it’s been since before the pandemic, not that the pandemic had any effect on our relationship. There were a couple of years before the pandemic and then a stretch during the pandemic where our relationship was stretched to a certain limit. It was tested, but we got through it. Part of it was that we experienced family loss and personal tragedies, and we leaned on each other for support when we needed it most. She was there for me when my dad died; I was there for her when she went through a challenging season. The timing of these things can’t be coincidental. They helped us return our focus on having a great family, of enjoying our time together raising our children, doing the thing we both committed to doing when we discovered we were about to do it. I am grateful to have gone through all of it with Elaine.
WBN and Wife. Happy life est. 2013
The Final Chamber
Wu-Tang Clan and Run The Jewels made a tour stop in Ontario, California on June 20th, and I was there to witness the Wu’s final act (so they say). I’ve waxed poetic about it—what I liked about it and what I didn’t—in a review of the show and in Saturday Night Special: 50, which you can find at the end of this banging blog. I’m not going to reiterate all the points I made. I’m just going to give all the performers another verbal bouquet for the show they put on. It wasn’t perfect, but it was epic. There probably won’t be another group like the Wu-Tang Clan to ever hit hip-hop the way they did when they landed their first hit in 1993. I just can’t see it, but maybe that’s because I’m ordinary, not visionary.
RZA in Scotland. Photo by Roverto Ricciuti. Additional imagery by WBN.
Saturday Night Special
Episodes 47 through 50 dropped in June. Nince subscribers couldn’t wait. Shoutout to the four of you who are actually real people and not different versions of me.
SNS 50 had me revelling in the glow of that Wu-Tang final show.
R.I.P Ananda Lewis
March 21, 1973 - June 11, 2025
After a seven-year battle with breast cancer, Ananda went home. She was one of my favorite MTV VJs and one of many teenage crushes. May her beautiful soul rest in peace.
