Here’s a song by my man Richard Thompson (lyrics here), featuring his characteristic beauty and bitterness: Those lines “in the dream I’m running/down a street of molasses/in the dream my feet gain no ground” seem an odd but effective image, … Continue reading →
…and do the Walk of Life: I usually prefer live versions, but for this particular song for some reason I couldn’t find a live version I liked better than the studio one. And here’s one of those “golden oldies” to … Continue reading →
…to remind me of the Flying Dutchman. Or Philip Nolan, The Man Without a Country:
Continue reading →I enjoy comparing different versions of songs I like, especially ones that highlight changes with the passage of time, and the variations among interpreters. Here’s a “compare and contrast” of three versions of Richard Thompson’s “Down Where the Drunkards Roll” … Continue reading →
America has been so fortunate, and in many ways so outside of history’s darker corridors, that we have forgotten what we should have known, and neglected to teach it to our children. It’s like a population (think Native Americans before … Continue reading →
I saw this ad on TV the other day and it stopped me in my tracks because the dancing is not the usual pop stuff at all. The dancers, and the woman in particular, have a nice intensity and what’s … Continue reading →
Oh, I was a strange, strange child. And not the least of my strangenesses was that I loved the stories of Philip K. Dick. That was odd in several ways. First of all, it was odd because I was a … Continue reading →
I confess I haven’t yet read Helen Smith’s book Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream – and Why It Matters, but it sounds fascinating. I’m quite familiar with Helen Smith’s work in general … Continue reading →
Compare and contrast. And enjoy. Both of these dancers are Russian, and both are excellent. The first is Svetlana Zakharova, and although the clip doesn’t have a date it looks relatively recent (the dancer only turned 34 a few days … Continue reading →
Funny stuff here: Dear NSA, …If you have any pull with the American Psychiatric Association, could you please recommend to them that the psychological state formerly known as “paranoia” should be no longer defined as a mental illness? Asylums all … Continue reading →
…to read the classics: … George Orwell’s “1984” is enjoying a surge in popularity, landing at No. 4 on Amazon’s list of “Movers and Shakers.” Sales of Orwell’s classic have risen an astonishing 5,771% as of Tuesday morning, with a … Continue reading →
Today is the 64th anniversary of the publication of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and with all the news that’s been occurring in the last few weeks (up to and including today), somehow it seems apropos. We are not (yet) in the … Continue reading →