I’m All Lost In, #151: White T-shirts from Nordstrom; a lost photo; and Qinwen comes back. Plus the Week in X>Y.
I’m All Lost In
The 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week
#151
The Week in X > (is greater than) Y
The First Act at Friday Night’s Ambient Music Show > The “Legendary” Headline Act at Friday Night’s Ambient Music Show The experimental music curators at Age of Reflections brought two acts to Seattle’s magnificent Trinity Parish Church sanctuary on Friday night. The first performer, Cole Pulice, turned their saxophone into a synthesizer, allowing them to wrap notes around one another in chromatic helixes. This technique was bountiful as they found sumptuous chord combinations that gently splintered against the counterpoint drone they’d laid down from the sax signal.
The New Policy > The Original Policy One problem with the grungy vegan bars I gravitate to is that they gleefully welcome dogs. But I was the gleeful one during my trip to New York City last week when I stopped at The West, my regular spot on Union Ave in Williamsburg and saw a sign on the door that said, “NO PETS ALLOWED sorry.”
“You probably don’t hear this much,” I said to the young Bernie-Bro bartender, “but thank you for the new policy.”
“I hate the new policy,” he quickly countered.
And then his colleague, a young woman, added sarcastically, but not: “Why do you hate pets? I mean, I don’t know you, so you might be a good guy, but…”
Unusually for me, I wasn’t rattled. I smiled and said, “Well, I don’t hate pets, but this is sort of the reason.” My nod to their aggression didn’t register. So, I continued: “I’m uncomfortable around dogs. But in these situations, I’m the bad guy.” I started to give an example: “I’m from Seattle and it’s a complaint-based system there, and so you have to be the one…”
The woman cut me off. She evidently hadn’t heard me mention Seattle. “Yeah. It was a snitch situation here. I hope it wasn’t you. You shouldn’t say that out loud…”
Still merrily composed, I thanked the pair for making my point, took the glass of soda water I’d ordered, and grabbed a seat next to a friendly woman where I killed some time before heading to my friends’ apartment a few blocks away for champagne on the rooftop.
Artist Statements That Don’t Talk About The Intersections > Artist Statements That Do Talk About the Intersections Painter and sculpture Hai-Wen Lin’s artist statement for her current exhibit at MoMA’s satellite Museum of Art & Design off Columbus Circle forgoes banal jargon, opting instead for poetry and clarity.
Museum of Art and Design, 9/1/26
Using lyrical phrases such as “sewing couture for the wind” and explaining that “through kitemaking” her art “explores constructions of the body and the relationship of the self to the environment,” Lin’s active voice is a welcome premise.
Her kite art of “worn and flown forms” blew me away.
Hai-Wen Li on exhibit at the Museum of Art and Design in New York City, 9/1/26
This Week’s Obsessions
1) Nordstrom White T-Shirts
Despite my recent infatuation with wearing music T-shirts (Blondie, Bad Brains, Dexys Midnight Runners) and pop-culture T-shirts (John McEnroe), I rediscovered the utility and beauty of plain white T-shirts this week.
Hot and sweaty and out of shirts at the end of my trip to NYC, I went to the Nordstrom on W. 57th & Broadway on the afternoon before my flight home and bought a box of fresh tees.
What a delight. They are comfy. They go with everything. And they are good-looking in their own right.
2) MIA Feminist Photo
The image is as clear to me as a perfectly written sentence: Lady Gaga’s cool eyes under her Cleopatra bangs watching us from a large poster hanging on the PubliCola office wall. Taped directly below, a cartoon rendering ECB clipped from a newspaper of 2nd-wave feminist icon Gloria Steinem (RIP). This is all captured in a photo I thought I snapped circa 2010 that distilled my PubliCola heyday.
But searching all day Saturday through my phone and my Instagram and Facebook posts from the last 17 years, I couldn’t find it.
I did find a 2013 photo I took at PubliCola’s Seattle Met offices. It’s a snapshot of ECB’s desk. No Lady Gaga, only Steinem watching us.
ECB’s desk, PubliCola @ Seattle Met on Western, 9/26/13
3) Qinwen’s Comeback
I’m back in Seattle watching on my computer or following the scores on the U.S. Open app as opposed to watching live in Flushing Meadows, but the WTA bracket at the U.S. Open has produced some dream matchups this week: Jovic v Aela; Kostyuk v Noskova; Navarro v Muchova; Starodubtseva v Rybakina; Fernandez v Pagula; Townsend v Shnaider. And earlier in the week, a battle of the exquisite backhands between Anisimova and Tagger.
Two of my favorite players, calm vet Elena Svitolina and erratic 20-year-old Maya Joint, also faced off; there was no way World No. 72 Joint was going to beat World No. 9 Svitolina. And she didn’t. But I was thrilled that young Maya Joint won the second-set tiebreaker 8-6 sending the match to a deciding third set. Svitolina won that 6-4 for that match.
Not getting enough WTA tennis, I go to sleep every night listening to the recaps on the Tennis Podcast; they’re doing daily roundups, which they post around 1:30 am NYC time after the day’s action finally wraps up. 10:30 Seattle time. Perfect.
The stand-out match of the week was former-top-ten-star (now-qualifier) Qinwen Zheng’s comeback victory against World No. 24 Madison Keys.
Keys, the 2025 Australian Open champion, won the first set 6-1. Zheng won the thrilling second set 7-6. But then Zheng found herself down in the deciding set 0-5. Zheng won a game to make it 1-5, simply saving face now, I thought as I followed the score on my phone. But then, after Keys botched a match point in the next game with a backhand into the net, Zheng held on to win that game too. Then Zheng won the next five games in a row for a seven-game run that gave her the 7-5 win for game, set, and match.
Just as she did a week earlier when she came through the qualifying rounds with a win on Court 17 [I’m All Lost In #150, 9/2/26], Zheng fell to the ground in joy as if she’d just won the whole tournament.
Qinwen’s seven-game run tracked in real time.
All the matches this week have taken on this same level of intensity; particularly the three-hour Jovic v Aela match, a high-level affair of cross-court ball-striking elegance. Jovic won 7-5, 3-5, 7-5. It’s a sign of just how competitive the WTA has become with all this talent in the mix.
Next up for Zheng in the quarterfinals: Re-emergent Iga Swiatek. Swiatek, the former World No. 1, is currently on a comeback tear herself; she won the Toronto Open in August and she hasn’t dropped a set so far this week. Zheng beat Swiatek in the Olympics two years ago, prompting Swiatek’s temporary, though gutting downfall [I’m All Lost In, #127, 3/22/26.]
My favorite player, World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka—who’s in a slump of her own—surprised me this week by winning all four of her matches so far. And without dropping a set. I was particularly surprised she beat surging Taylor Townsend during this weekend’s round of 16; I was certain that Townsend’s carefree mood, power hitting, and dexterous-net game would send bad-mood Saby for a loop—and into fits. Especially in front of Townsend’s hometown NYC crowd.
By week’s end, with Saby’s convincing 6-4, 6-3 win over Townsend, I’m feeling slightly more hopeful about her prospects for a three-peat at the U.S. Open. Most important, Saby has finally gotten some levity back; there was her weed-centric press conference where she misunderstood a question about feeling “high,” and there was her discombobulated, on-court post-match Q&A when she couldn’t hear the interviewer. I think this comical, light mood, is more encouraging than her run of straight sets scorelines.
Next, in the quarterfinals: Sabalenka plays World No. 6 Linda Noskova, the steely and immaculate 2026 Wimbledon champion.
A final note from this year’s U.S. Open is a buzzkill, though. Excellent tennis reporter Ben Rothenberg has a sobering report on the U.S. Open’s new partnership with the gross and corrupt Trump-era betting website Kalshi. I made the mistake of updating my U.S. Open app, and now I’m waking up to sleazy Kalshi notifications on my phone.
Update: Zheng beat Swiatek, coming from a 5-0 deficit for the second time in 48 hours.