paul khruangbin (Dan Lehner)

salsa was my first, like, genuine musical education — really out in the world out of jazz school and playing a lot. it’s very foundational to me in a lot of ways. that doesn’t exist without Palmieri.

he was in poor health, 88, but like…you didn’t think he could go. how could he.

if you like salsa music at all, he’s like a third of a reason it exists, really the same goes for Latin jazz. really very few people in life anymore that architect styles so singularly.

Eddie Palmieri ca. 1970’s at the piano.

fuck, Eddie Palmieri. massive influence on me and so many others. he really was a universe unto himself, it’s kind of hard to stress how much this is the closing chapter of a lot of musical idioms. 1936-2025.

nobody is ever going to do this to me, but if they ever did, it would somehow feel more menacing than an outright threat

you shudder because of how much worse it can get and could’ve been

“one of my online haters generated an ironic trap video of me” is just not something anyone scanned on the horizon even a short while ago

look, this shouldn’t exist. it’s not a, you know, *good* thing, in pretty much any other scenario and honestly probably in this one too. but I can’t say this is not insanely captivating to me.

it’s a nice touch that one of the senior guys, since he’s on the football team, runs *really* fast, like noticeably so

it’s funny that McConaughey does definitely come off like a ladies man, but there’s also something about him that feels drawn from Tom Finland

the freshman in this movie really feel like kids — the seniors might be 25, give or take, but the freshman ones feel pretty believable

me every like 10 minutes with new actors appearing on screen

The poster to Dazed and Confused

now rewatching:

I’m so sorry, man. sail on, Grayson.

it’s also almost ALWAYS a transplant themselves being like “well but I”, dawg shut up

what most rubs me wrong about every third video on Subways Takes being about how transplants suck is how provincial that attitude is despite its cool affect

astonishingly good, no-skips record

like, how much time you got

D’Angelo’s “Black Messiah”

Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp a Butterfly”

yes there’s some bad pop music between 2010 and 2015 — you wanna know which albums came out in 2014 and 2015 respectively though:

I will reiterate that the reason the phenomenon of “stomp clap hey” produced musically-illiterate takes (Imagine Dragons and Mumford and Sons are not similar bands!) is because it comes from a tweet not about any particular bands or music scenes but about a slightly antiquated Type of Guy

these are all such good late 90’s white collar guy character names

found out the MTA’s Janno Lieber lives in my neighborhood. I don’t know why that surprises me. maybe part of me was hoping he lived in a converted Auntie Anne’s in Times Square-42nd Street.

bruh

wait are you being serious

serifed font with a very light text shadow. white background, sometimes a single plain object in the foreground. a touch of goof in the text. profoundly ugly but also captivating. feels and smells like Borders and cubicles.

I legitimately didn't know what it was supposed to be! the title was just this deep mystery to elementary school me

excuse me, Spencer Johnson *MD*

I was workshopping a Jared Diamond one and none of them were any good

a Japanese man in a business suit saying "Please. Accept the Mystery" from "A Serious Man"

part of me wants to listen but the other part is

late 90's work culture non-fiction has this very bland but also sort of palpable aesthetic