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Continue reading →: Wanted: ironist, not fetishist
“Exotic” and “colorful” are the most baneful adjectives used to describe Pedro Almodovar’s work (“stylish” is a close third), and in recent years their synonyms transform into a kind of shorthand by which an entire ethos is evoked without analysis. On the evidence of Broken Embraces, I’d use “saccharine,” “otiose,”…
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Continue reading →: “Born but to die, and reas’ning but to err”
I attempt the famous Proust questionnaire. ————- What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? 10:15 Saturday night. Almost as bad: the dumb horror of looking around a tableful of intimates and realizing they don’t care as much as I do. Where would you like to live? In…
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Continue reading →: Singles 6/10
The unusual number of middling singles share a blessing: solid vocalists anchored to rote songs. Fyfe Dangerfield, tethered to a song I always found problematic, is the exception (like many great and not so great singer-songwriters, Billy Joel wrote to his vocal and emotional limitations). The highest scores are exercises…
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Continue reading →: Back
Back after several days of drinking, debating, eating, and thinking, a part of which included time with two of my favorite rock critics. After hours of laundry, counting the number of books and records I bought, and lamenting my weight gain, I’m ready to almost return to regularly scheduled programming.
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Continue reading →: Guess that’s why they call it the blues
Oh, goody: Elton John played at Rush Limbaugh’s wedding the other day. It’s marvelous to see his principles at work.
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Continue reading →: “Exiled from the canon”
Lovers of literature should buy a copy of Christina Stead’s The Man Who Loved Children. Three very different friends to whom I lent or bought copies have admitted to amazement. Jonathan Franzen takes a decent shot at defining its appeal. (Posting will be light in the next couple of days)
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Continue reading →: Uh oh
Flipping through Hitch-22, I found the first instance of the phrase “my friend Michael Chertoff” rearing its head.
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Continue reading →: Singles 6/03
Potential top ten single in “Ride,” which insinuates itself into my consciousness with every play. Ciara ft. Ludacris – Ride (8) Miami Horror – Sometimes (7) Crystal Castles – Celestica (6) Lady Gaga – Alejandro (6) Hurts – Better Than Love (5)
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Continue reading →: Booger funk
After buying Maggot Brain, Standing on the Verge of Getting It On, and One Nation Under the Groove, move on to The Electric Spanking of War Babies, Funkadelic’s last studio album as a functional unit. Song by song it’s probably about as good as, say, Cosmic Slop: a couple of…
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Continue reading →: Happy June
As I drive to the junction of lane and highway, And the drizzle bedrenches the waggonette, I look behind at the fading byway, And see on its slope, now glistening wet, Distinctly yet Myself and a girlish form benighted In dry March weather. We climb the road Beside a chaise.…
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Continue reading →: Yes.
Hold on, everyone: I’m watching “Sex and the City” for the first time. The first season. So far it looks more dated than an Irene Dunne-Cary Grant comedy: long bangs on women and smoking in Manhattan bars!
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Humanizing The Vacuum 