Black Vines

Record Store Day: capitalism found a way to make the cut-out bin expensive.

The co-founder of Buzzfeed once filmed an interview with me at my workplace in the World Trade Center, and later my pathetic attempts at skateboarding during my lunch hour.

I will not elaborate.

Half-listening, I thought at first it was about a dying gambler who just wants to live long enough to see the Indianapolis Colts play again, a decent enough idea for a song.

"We walked out through the dew dappled brambles" is a touch precious but the narrator's response to "Have you been drinking?" is a thing of deadpan maniac beauty.

YouTube video by Smog - Topic Let Me See The Colts

The drumming on this is scarcely believable, fill after fill after fill.

That has to be it...but lots of more esoteric possibilities came to mind first, and that kinda bothers me. ("Maybe there was there a UK vogue for salsa from this era that I don't know about?")

After a half-century (and then some), why is piano-plus-solo-vocals still such a standard for evoking seriousness and sincerity in even the chartiest of chart-pop? (And why is it so identified with women?)

Undertheorized topics in rock & roll history:

Why did SO MUCH American and British rock circa 1970 start using Latin percussion elements? (Santana is a huge part of it, sure, but the trend predates them eg "Sympathy for the Devil.")

The video for Bill Callahan's "Lonely City" strikes me as basically correct.

YouTube video by Grateful Dead - Topic Not Fade Away (with Tom Constanten) [1] [Live at Fillmore East, New York City, April 1971]

No day shall erase you from the memory of time.

Incomprehensible Omissions (my bad):

Longtime Companion
Weekend at Bernie's

There are many films shot on Long Island, such as Citizen Kane and any number of Gatsbys, but they are only Long Island Movies in a technical sense.

Long Island Cinema Canon

The Godfather (not even because some of it was shot there)
The Amityville Horror
Married to the Mob
The Amy Fisher Story
The collected works of Hal Hartley
The Brothers McMullen
L.I.E.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Adventureland
Lost Girls

You can say "I don't give a fuck" all you like: sooner or later, somebody's going to step in and do the giving-a-fuck for you, whether you like it or not. And between the two, it'll probably lean more towards the latter than the former.

For the love of all that is holy, shade of Martin Milner, give me a comprehensive allergy skin test.

Had Plotinus made it to India and met Nagarjuna we'd all be beings of light by now. Makes you think, don't it.

Oud Luban Flask

By the way...do you want to know what Leonard Cohen's favorite fragrance was? Of course you do—you're a sensible person. www.aftelier.com/Oud-Luban-Fl...

YouTube video by deyuzu Efdemin - Jean [Full Track]

Been thinking about this a lot: Efdemin's Jean. Heartstopping. www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4cn...

Listening to the Pitchfork 2025 Top 100 and I'm hearing a lot of lowercase rock: deliberately small, deliberately understated, rather affected about it, cute but not cute in, like, a K-Pop way. Music that tries very hard not to make itself a target. I understand.

No-boil lasagna noodles: first batch too dry, second batch had the noodles curl up like raw cannelloni. My standby recipe, ruined, just ruined. No picture, because some things aren't worth the bother of sharing online.

I mentioned this because I already started on the Plato readings and...siiiigh...you know, I couldn't really admit this to myself when I was a student 35 years ago, but damn Socrates and "The Athenian" (and possibly Plato by extension) are such insufferable pricks.

I'm pretty sure that's him. (Like you have to ask which.)

John Swenson listing the album as one of the all-time most boring classics in the Marsh/Stein Book of Rock Lists has always prejudiced me against it and forty-plus years down the road that's something I need to overcome, damnit.

OK, this one should work then: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

To my delight, my alma mater recently instituted a Master of Middle Eastern Classics program to complement its Eastern Classics and undergraduate Great Books programs and fuck it, I'm-a gonna do all the readings on my own just like I did with the MAEC: www.sjc.edu/academic-pro...

OK, if that link doesn't work, try this one: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Have you ever idly looked through a stock photo site and stumbled upon a picture of the man to whom you lost your virginity? I did last night! I don't even remember his name!

I'm on it!

YouTube video by Keith Jarrett - Topic Waves (Live)

This one starts with heart-stopping kinda-sorta Debussy and just goes EVERYWHERE from there: www.youtube.com/watch?v=acjr...

Don't expect too much; it all could be edited down. The ones I keep coming back to: Keith Jarrett. Funny because I've always been suspicious of his neoclassicism and his high-strung aversion to audience coughs.