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Continue reading →: Ranking #3 singles, U.S. edition: 1995-2000
I have friends, honorable people in every respect, who recoil from “Crush” like liberals do from American flag bumper stickers. Frothy, silly as a French kiss, Jennifer Paige’s only top ten rode the chart for weeks, hammering each inanity and breathless backing vocal into the consciousness of an America that…
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Continue reading →: ‘I dispute the PREMISE!’
A month from now I hope to sit at this laptop with a sky-splitting grin that no health news or hangover will wipe. My joy at a triumphant midterm elections will stay undimmed for the rest of 2026. For kicks this morning I went to the NYT archives to drink…
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Continue reading →: Ranking #22 singles, U.S. edition: 1983-1986
In memoriam for my beloved Sanibel as it existed before Hurricane Ian, I tried finding photos of Sunset Grill before Hurricane Ian turned it into driftwood (St. Augustine’s looked like a Victorian hotel). I know the one about which Don Henley co-wrote a song is the sort of place where…
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Continue reading →: You may pass on ‘The Invite’
I see two ways of thinking about The Invite. Released in a country as terrified about mature sexuality as the United States, the smirky-snarky attitude of director-star Olivia Wilde and co-star Seth Rogen as performers, of Wilde’s direction, and of Will McCormack and Rashida Jones’s script might be the only…
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Continue reading →: On Freddie Jackson
A pity the late Freddie Jackson was best known by crossover audiences for the mawkish “You Are My Lady.” A sensation when it dropped on R&B radio in spring 1985, “Rock Me Tonight (For Old Times Sake)” introduced a love man whose gravely voice understood the groove, particularly the electro…
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Continue reading →: Travelin’ men: ‘On the Road’
“Truckers will fuck anything,” we learn late in On the Road, David Pablos’ film about a hustler named Veneno (Victor Prieto) picked up by the driver Muñeco (Osvaldo Sanchez) because the former needs a ride and the latter needs a blow job. What transpires is predictable but Pablos has an…
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Continue reading →: I’ve got so much to show ya: The best of Troye Sivan
I’ve already made this claim: Troye Sivan is what Timothée Chalamet’s Elio would have become had he been slightly more of a partier instead of a reader. Call Me By Your Name ends with a devastated but resilient Elio weeping in front of a fireplace. “Kiss me on the mouth…
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Continue reading →: Ranking #2 singles, U.S. edition: 2005-2007
Few lists come as loaded as this: Kelly Clarkson realizing what the bands cited in Meet Me in the Bathroom needed several tons of coke to achieve liftoff; Mariah Carey whisper-whiskering a midtempo victory run; Rihanna bringing dance hall overtones into the top two; and Ne-Yo riding a dulcet melody…
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Continue reading →: How to free ourselves from the New York Times
Alert to the casualness with which the New York Times has aired the views of trans bigots, I read Perry Bacon’s advice nodding along:
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