Gene Seymour

I'll save you a lot of reading: unless Mamdani starts taking money from Turks and roasting leprechauns - and even then - there is no way in hell Stefanik is going to win New York a year after this election in the city.

Chester Himes’s Harlem Noirs Himes helped reinvent the idea of the detective novel. He also transformed it into a powerful vehicle for social criticism.

I'd been working on this one for so long that if often felt as though I'd been writing it my whole life. In a peculiar way, maybe I have...

www.thenation.com/article/arch...

YouTube video by JazzTuna Sonny Rollins - Blue 7

Once more to the Cave of Wonders. Happy 95th birthday, Sonny Rollins.

Belichick, you know ... it's like if I ran for Mayor of Fresno ...

An Objectively Subjective List of Top Ten Political Novels The Art of the Art of the Possible

FWIW...

Today marks Year Four of Ferdinand's insertion into my life. Read the attached to find our what that sentence means.

Soft-Boiled Resistance Be Like Charles Simic (& If You Can't, Then Be-Bop)

Still trying to get the hang of this thing. But at least it's no longer calling itself "Gene's Substack." Baby steps.

Mal Waldron is 100 A brief retro tribute to a legacy with long, deep shadows

Mal Waldron is 100
open.substack.com/pub/thatgene...

YouTube video by Oscar Peterson - Topic Kadota's Blues (Live At The London House, Chicago, 1961)

Oscar Peterson, the Frank Lloyd Wright of Swing, turns 100 today. And what do I mean by that analogy? This is what I mean. www.youtube.com/watch?v=agi5...

The Big Blue Schoolboy Saves The Day But not by himself. Not this time anyway....

thatgeneseymour52.substack.com/p/the-big-bl...

Uh…duh…

I do not as yet see full-blown war. They are telling Iran in private it's over. The nuclear program has likely not and will not be destroyed, but it has been set far back. I don't see the collapse of the regime, either. The region is now monumentally more unstable.

This could all change in an hour.

Lest we forget: "It's a dog-eat-dog, world, Sam and I'm wearing Milk Bone underwear." -- Norm Peterson, Boston barfly.

Groundbreaking Daily News columnist Chuck Stone wins a special Pulitzer citation Stone received the award for his groundbreaking work covering the civil rights movement, his role as the Daily News’ first Black columnist, and his position as a cofounder of NABJ.

www.inquirer.com/news/philade...

8 years ago, The Thing To Do (for want of a better phrase) was to (re)read "1984" to get, I guess, a "sense" of whatever was about to, so to speak, Happen Here. Read it again, like now, & if you really want to know why it's happening again, read Orwell's "Politics & the English Language."

Going through the motions. After March 2, it's back to Euro-Noir novels & Big East B-Ball. geneseymour.com?p=4029

You know a movie is great when it makes you forget who, where, & at times like this, even WHAT you are. This is a great movie. #Flowisthebestof2024

"Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing."

Clive James

Tinker Taylor How a progressive jazz legend reconfigured the way we experience music – Gene Seymour

My shiny new BookForum review of Philip Freeman's most excellent & much needed Cecil Taylor biography. www.bookforum.com/print/3103/t...

Not an Oscar voter, never was, never will be, But if I were voting now for Best Picture, it would come down to either "Anora" or "Nickel Boys." If Harris had won, I'd go with Nickel Boys." But because it was The Other One, I'd go with "Anora" because it's closer to The Way Things Are Now.

YouTube video by Library of America LOA at the Movies Discusses Intruder in the Dust (1949)

“That’s not something you’ll get on the MGM backlot.” In this excerpt from our recent “LOA at the Movies” panel, film critics Mike Sragow, @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social, @geneseymour.bsky.social, and @carrierickey.bsky.social discuss the overlooked 1949 adaptation of Faulkner’s Intruder in the Dust.

"Keep your eye on the donut and not the hole." Copy that, Special Agent Cole. #RIPDavidLynch.

If you're like me (& lots of luck if you are), you likely can't wait for this year to go away while dreading whatever's waiting for us after the...um...Ball Drops. But I can't let go off '24 without acknowledging some of the things that made me happy and/or think harder over the previous 12 months.

Thought Chris Rock's latest "SNL" hosting gig felt a little off, especially the monologue -- except for one deceptively offhand reference to Elon Musk as an "African American." Don't know if anybody else noticed it, but as a Black man, I'm thinking, "Maybe it's time to (re)define our terms."

Maybe the Grinch would be nicer if every five minutes a dude wasn’t singing songs about what a piece of shit he is

Happily gobbled up all of "Black Doves" till midnight like a tin of Christmas cookies. Emma Peel & John Steed retrofitted for the 21st century with moral ambiguities & digital spice (though no AI as yet) & its own gleeful layering of outrageous improbabilities. Cozy up!

Rupert Murdoch Fails in Bid to Change Family Trust A Nevada commissioner ruled resoundingly against Mr. Murdoch, who was trying to give full control of his empire to his son Lachlan and lock in Fox News’s right-wing editorial slant.

Juan Soto & now this. How's your day going?

Dave Parker, Dick Allen get classic era Hall call Dave Parker received 14 of 16 votes, while DIck Allen got 13 as both reached the 75% threshold to gain entrance to baseball's Hall of Fame from the classic era.

Good.

www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/...

My Top Ten Jazz Albums for 2024. Not yours or anybody else's (unless they happen to agree with me.) geneseymour.com?p=3931&fbcli...

YouTube video by Sun Ra - Topic We Travel the Spaceways

Whatever my quibbles with "Wicked, Part One"(& there are many, beginning with the fact that it IS a "Part One"), they have little to do with its two leads. My (in vain) holiday wish is that Ervino & Grande take this one into the stratosphere. No one besides me is brave enough to ask them.