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Continue reading →: On a March morning…
from “Self-Portrait at 28“: …I am trying to get at something and I want to talk very plainly to you so that we are both comforted by the honesty. You see there is a window by my desk I stare out when I am stuck though the outdoors has rarely…
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Continue reading →: At last
Maybe I came to the party late, but after years of complaining that the franchise treated its product disgracefully I found a reasonable SPIN Magazine archive on Google Books, which provided several hours of studying, so much so that it’s all I can do from typing through my blinding headache.…
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Continue reading →: “Can we still be friends?”
Let’s get this about Rock a Little out of the way: Firstly, the boldness with which Stevie Nicks boasts the results of several years’ experimentation with the coke-only diet: a two-inch waistline! Note her pose. She’s rocking — a little! The crystal ball with the album title etched on its…
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Continue reading →: Singles 3/2
I’m ashamed I gave Ke$ha’s latest hit such a high score considering I never want to hear it again (and it took ten minutes to correctly spell her collaborator’s moniker). This week’s weirdest single: Justin Bieber’s. Ke$ha ft. 3OH!3 – Blah Blah Blah (6) Lady Gaga ft. Beyoncé – Telephone…
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Continue reading →: Decisions…
Now that I’ve uncovered my box of cassettes, I face a real dilemma: which album should I reexamine first? (I’ll save the self-inflicted sarcasm for another day). (a) Stevie Nicks – Rock a Little (b) EMF – Unexplained (EP) (c) Tim Finn – Before & After (d) Billy Bragg –…
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Continue reading →: Remembrance of novels past
After a decade of novels that sift through the ashes of the last fifty years of American history, Philip Roth’s sudden embrace of the short form initially seemed refreshing. The Plot Against America excepted, these books reexamine the usual tropes (the nymphomaniacal women beside whom his men cower; acerbic dismissals…
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Continue reading →: Soldiering on
“Soldier of Love” is Sade’s best single since “No Ordinary Love,” and boasts the same virtue: it develops a metaphor musically. In the case of the latter, with an elongated guitar lick, at once raunchy and poised, that sliced through Sade Adu’s vocal and the oddly mixed drums (they’re all…
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Continue reading →: Don’t worry about the government
In which the editors of Newsweek expose themselves as cretins. Apparently you’re a “terrorist” only if you’re Muslim or come from a country with which we’re at war, or, as the managing editor (!) avers without irony: Here is my handy guide: Lone wolfish American attacker who sees gov’t as…
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Continue reading →: Singles 2/22
After a slow week, we return. A week later I’m prepared to say I overrated Angie Stone’s single, but am still very high on “Shine Blockas” and might have spoken too soon on Adam Lambert now that I’ve heard it on Top 40 radio. The hyperlinks go to my reviews.…
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Continue reading →: Heartburn: eighties film and its discontents
A.O. Scott’s essay on Meryl Streep inspires two questions: why did mainstream film in the eighties suck, and when did Streep suddenly get fun? As far as the latter goes, I don’t know; it’s one of the mysteries of acting. Streep still chooses prestige crap like Doubt for which she’s…
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Humanizing The Vacuum 