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JASON STEWART • How Long Gone

WORK • Thursday Routine

JASON STEWART • podcaster • How Long Gone
Neighborhood you work in: West Hollywood
Neighborhood you live in: Glendale

It’s Thursday morning. What’s the scene at your workplace?
My morning beverages are black coffee, whole milk, and orange juice. I prefer Straus brand milk, but my wife likes Alexandre. It tastes suspiciously sweet, and I have yet to see cream on top despite being labeled as “cream on top.” My Straus has half a pound of cement-thick cream clogging the top. You could hold the glass jug upside down, and nothing would come out. I don’t do anything with the cream. I just like knowing it's there.

Since we’re in citrus season, I hand-juice my OJ once a week, meal-prep style. Then I’ll delete 75 emails, primarily boilerplate PR pitches for people we’d never book on our podcast, and have a sauna while I listen to interviews with whomever we actually did book to be a guest. (Bella Freud today, great-granddaughter of Sigmund and fashion designer, who has a podcast of her own.)

What’s on the agenda for today?
After a long dog walk with an edible, I’ll record, edit, mix, master, and upload the podcast, hopefully all while standing. Standing desks are embarrassing, but at least I’m not wearing one of those weighted vests during all of this. (I am.) I don’t eat breakfast unless it’s hangover pho on the weekend, and for lunch, I like to keep it light and push it as late as possible; otherwise, I won’t be able to finish what I want to.

Once my meal-edging is complete, we’ll cook a nice dinner (I made pot-au-feu from my wife’s recipe today because it’s rainy out). If she’s out at work all day, I love spending the afternoon listening to some NTS reggae mix while I cook her dinner with a slow, methodical recipe. People say salt, fat, acid, and heat are the four elements that make food delicious, but I’ve been working on a fifth, which can only really happen when cooking for someone you live with: predicting what someone wants to eat before they realize it themselves, cooking that thing for them, and presenting it as a surprise. Food tastes better when you don’t have to decide what to make; it's the purest form of hospitality. And cooking her dinner means I can make her pick what we’ll watch after dinner.

Any restaurant plans today, tonight, or this weekend?
I plan to have a lazy Friday lunch at Bub & Grandma’s. Andy, the owner, supplies bread to every solid, reputable restaurant in town; I’ve been eating his bread for nearly 10 years. I order the tuna sandwich, served with a steak-sized iceberg chop, and that lettuce crunch especially contrasts his buttery soft bread. Order a scoop of tuna on the big salad with vegan lemon vinaigrette if you’re not feeling bready. Secure a strawberry donut at the beginning of your meal in case they sell out by the time you finish. Get a side of horseradish cream to dip your potato chips in, and wash it all down with a carrot and beet salad to maximize your intestinal something something.

What’s a recent big-ticket purchase you love?
Now that I’m a fully formed, middle-aged podcaster, I’ve naturally dived back into my life as a professional DJ. I’ve always loved Genelec studio monitors but didn’t have the scratch for the ones I truly wanted, so I never pulled the trigger. I grabbed one speaker just to see how it felt and was happy with the results. I took a risk on the raw aluminum finish, but I think they look ugly, weird, and cool. My wife was sweet enough to buy the second one for me as a Valentine’s Day gift before I could get it myself. EDM romance ain’t dead. The best part about them is they’re tiny and rock solid, so I could toss them in my carry-on if I need to do some audio-based work on the road like a real DJ.