daisy cashin is brainstorming pranks
friends of!
Welcome to friends of! Once a month, one of my favorite writers, artists, friends, poets, opera composers, lovers, and/or booksellers recommend books & things to you & me.
Daisy Cashin is a writer from Virginia and one of my very favorite people in the world. He is an excellent writer. He has many cool tattoos. He makes a mean chicken parm. He is brave and kind although he will be so embarrassed I told you that. He is just okay at fantasy football. He has made me laugh in more dark bars with sticky floors than anyone else I know. He is the first person to read most of the things I write and he always makes me feel like a million bucks. I’m very happy that Daisy agreed to appear on this month’s special installment of friends of! You can find Daisy’s books and misc recs below…
I am a broken record on this one, but I can’t stop telling people to read The Sarah Book by Scott McClanahan. I haven’t read something with that much heart in it maybe ever. It made me laugh and weep and freak out and empty my bowels into my keyboard.
Big Cheeseburgers and Good French Fries by Blaze Foley
I’m usually having one of those, it ain’t all good, but it’s all alright kind of days when this is in my head.
I’ve got this old denim farm shirt that my Nana bought my Papa from Walmart a few decades ago. It’s about four sizes too big, but I can still smell the big man on it. I always put that sucker on when I need a hug.
Pranks
Lately, I like standing in the window and brainstorming pranks for my neighbor with the wannabe Fast and Furious car. I was thinking of a classic “Honk if your horny” sticker at first, but I’ve evolved to a more American Graffiti-style chassis removal fantasy.
Great-grandmother’s cast-iron skillet
Everything I cook in it kind of tastes a little bit like hay and dirt and somebody getting their knuckles cracked for sneaking a bite of roast before grace has been said.
I put it all over my body after a shower. It makes me feel like Cleopatra after a milk bath and rubdown.
Arty and I were sitting in this empty bar while it was still light out, and I was knuckles deep in a chicken wing when Kermit Ruffins started playing his trumpet along to a Miles Davis record. He was blowing the horn right into this baby’s face and the baby was just levitating from its stroller. Then Arty looked at me and I think I must’ve been levitating too because I was crying like a little baby.
It’s a Trailer Park Boys-esque mockumentary series about these pirate radio DJs in West London. Kills me every time. Long live Kurupt FM.
Substack
Yikes. I know this is a trap but I’m going to walk right into it, which is perhaps less defensible than not knowing I’m about to walk into a trap but fuck it. Workshops are stupid and there is more compelling, heart-worn, soul-tattered, for-the-love-of-the-damn-game work on Substack than there is in the Paris Review. Take that sixty bucks a year and give it to one of these passionate pervnerds on Substack blasting into the void because their heart will not allow them otherwise.
Daisy Cashin is a writer from Virginia currently living in Brooklyn. You can read and subscribe to his missives on love and loathing here.
Thanks for reading! See you next week for the January installment of missed connection which will either be about mopeds or crushes (maybe both!).
aw shucks 🥹