Still hangin’ out on 52nd and Broadway

The freshest undiscovered track on the Stones’ Some Girls reissue: “Do You Think I Really Care,” a country cousin to Emotional Rescue’s great “Let Me Go,” but instead of musing aloud about maybe hanging out in gay bars and moving to the west side of NYC, Jagger chases a girl he sees on the D

Snowed in

Of course she loves concepts — she’s even pretty good at delineating them in song suites and such. She’s even better at coaxing all manner of aural wickedness and mystery from samplers — “Waking the Witch,” “There Goes a Tenner,” and “Get Out of My House” are miracles of Fairlight programming commensurate with imaginative daring.

Justice is served: Elena Kagan

In a report card grading Elena Kagan’s first year, Dahlia Lithwick thinks the Supreme Court will uphold the Affordable Health Care Act “by a 6-3 or a 7-2 margin,” reminding us that “for every Bush v. Gore, there are hundreds of cases that are not decided along party lines, and also because party lines don’t

On rats

History: The Nixon Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP), a private non-governmental campaign entity, used funds from its coffers to pay for, and later cover up, “dirty tricks” performed against opponents by Richard Nixon’s employee, Donald Segretti. Segretti famously coined the term ‘ratfucking’ [1] for recruiting conservative members to infiltrate opposition groups (and/or misrepresent them

“The purchased acquisition of commodities”

Eric Harvey on Black Friday versus Occupy Wall Street: You’re allowed to congeal into a mass of humanity or pitch your tent on concrete if your goal is capitalistic in nature. If in other words you’re acting as a modern consumer/citizen who defines him/herself and his/her position in society through the purchased acquisition of commodities.

Beached: The Descendants

George Clooney is barefoot for much of The Descendants, at times when the other actors’ feet are sandaled. I’ll let my one Hawaiian friend comment on the verisimilitude of Alexander Payne’s adaptation of a 2008 novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings: do the white guys really wear flowered shirts and drink Budweiser? Clooney’s expertly tanned ankles

Singles 11/25 – Thanksgiving edition

I’m thankful that the year coughed up a single worthy of every bombastic thing written and yet to be written about it. The also-rans bloomed in Azealia Banks’ company, or maybe I was particularly compassionate. Azealia Banks – 212 (8) Lady Gaga – Marry The Nigh (7) Big Sean ft. Nicki Minaj – Dance (A$$)

A thought…

Drake’s Thank Me Later might be too dull to review fully, but I’m too busy with lechon and turkey to address this.

Happy Thanksgiving

  Their best 12″ mix?

Liberal fantasies

David Frum’s latest mea culpa (he writes one every quarter, as if to remind his new audience that he’s a martyr, thank you very much) regarding how he and his power-obsessed droogs turned conservatism into a kind of necromancy is more honest than Jonathan Chait ruler-slapping the palms of liberals who merely remind each other

Saran-wrapped sin: The Skin I’m In

Now I can relent: after years of accusing male heterosexual directors of worshiping their favorite ancestors like sons begging their mothers to adore their girlfriends, it’s reassuring to turn the Eye of Sotoron on a gay one like Pedro Almodovar. His second consecutive film intended as chrysanthemums for the tomb of Alfred Hitchcock, the cumbersomely

Happy Sunday

The oboe part, buttressed by rhythm guitar, is the killer.