That photo is the most terrifying political photograph I think I have ever seen.
I think some people think of Carla and me as hippies because of our relative lack of ambition.
Pops got his Sunday wrong. ✏️ 🎤 🎵
Veni, vidi, vici
Sure ain’t how it goes
You gotta take your shoes off
Feel the carpet ‘tween your toes ✏️ 🎤 🎵
Your spit gets thick
And you’re not sure why you came
The players seems nice
But it’s not your game ✏️ 🎤 🎵
Just listened to: The State Of The Tenor: Live At The Village Vanguard, Vol. 2 (1985) by Joe Henderson. Heavy saxophone improvisation served over a delicious bed of bass and drums. Are there key signatures? Who cares! Free your mind. Come for the improv sax tremolos, growls, and melodic flights. Stay for the bassist.
Worse comes to worst, I can go bush hopping: where I live in a bush and when that gets compromised, I hop to the next one. I have four in mind. Though it might be hard to get to the third.
— Éa, discussing the state of politics at the dinner table
Just listened to: Puts: The Hours (2024) by Kevin Puts, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, The Metropolitan Opera, Renee Fleming, Joyce DiDonato, Kelli O’Hara, and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. I don’t know opera, so I don’t know what to say. But as a cap for all the emotional and musical color and drama that comes before, that final trio is remarkable.
Won-won-won-wonderful, even.
As a lighter aside, it is hilarious to hear Renee Fleming sing, “Maybe I should join a choir.” Yeah.
Dr. Seuss should’ve entitled it Oh, the Mistakes You’ll Make!
Just listened to: Alive in the Wilderness (2020) by Endless Field. New-age, occasionally jazzish, occasionally groovy acoustic guitar-and-bass record made outdoors in Utah using a solar-powered recording rig. Ambient if you want it to be. A fascinating, short write-up on the making of the album is available on the Bandcamp page.
Wait, is that a rule? We’re not allowed to have telepathic antecedents?
— Éa, in response to a gentle scold from Scott about a conversation he couldn’t follow
Your spit gets thick ✏️ 🎤 🎵
Today I am taking Focus up a notch: For 100% of day—morning, afternoon, evening, and night—I am allowing zero Messages and WhatsApp notifications to come through from anyone other than my immediate family, people with whom I have appointments in the next two days and, during the workday, my workmates. I am coupling this with a morning clearing and an evening clearing, rendering how I handle my instant messages more like how I handle my email. This experiment will last either forever or until I observe it’s unloving.
So folks will still get text replies from me twice a day. If that’s not fast enough and they need my attention more urgently, let them place a good, old-fashioned phone call. It’ll be like time travel back to 1993 (minus the coiled cords and dial tones)!
Note to self: When you find yourself reflecting unhappily about your job being helping make truck bed covers when you wish automobiles had never been invented, remember that these words of Paul were addressed to slaves: “Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord” (Colossians 3:23). Whatever you do. And besides, DiamondBack is easily the best manufacturing company (and one of the best companies period) to work for in central Pennsylvania. Everything about working there pretty much couldn’t better.
Just listened to: False Lankum (2023) by Lankum. Irish folksters whelming their traditional ballads with walls of dark sound. They start off most tracks playing, singing, and often harmonizing rawly and beautifully. (The color of the harmonies sometimes gives gives a clue of what’s to come.) Then they keep singing while they bury the songs in mountains of dark, wrenching sonic peat harvested from the banks of the five rivers of Hades. They do it often and consistently enough to call it a schtick, but to call it that is to undersell its power. I can’t recommend the whole without reservation because there’s sometimes too much noise for my taste. However, the album deserves the raves it has received, as well as a good single listen from you and a place on your Halloween playlists. As for me, I’m sure as hell going to dig into their back catalog.
Just watched: The Last Stop In Yuma County (2023) written and directed by Francis Gallupi. Two and a half time shorter than Greed (1924) and three times as fun, with nods to the Coen brothers and Tarantino, in that order. Lots of craftsmanship to admire. Worthwhile, but only as a brain break.
I hereby plead with governments, universities, and commercial real estate developers: If you’re going to erect a public clock, please make sure it keeps time. Otherwise, you’re just littering our built environment with noble-looking embarrassments whose only effect is to remind us that everything is broken and most of us don’t care.
🎧 🎵 Hopes and Fears (2004) by Keane: Who needs smart lyrics when you have pretty melodies rendered achingly prettier by a tenor like Tom Chaplin? Who needs Coldplay when this piano-driven pop record is better than anything that more popular band has released since 2002? Goes down very smooth.
lollipops of fate ✏️ 🎤 🎵
He is a sure fool who gives up what he promised to keep to gain that which he will probably lose.
Either You’re magic, or I’m moody. ✏️ 🎤 🎵
“You’re a little much sometimes, you know that?” (God, of me)
🎧 🎵 The Monkees (1966) by The Monkees: Sunshine, melodies, Micky Dolenz’ voice, energetic session musicians, contemporary Beatles imitation, and a heap of goofballism. One of several album-length reasons I count 1966 as my one favorite years in pop.
Finished reading: How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told (2023) by Harrison Scott Key. A breezy, raw, comic, winsomely Christian cuckold’s memoir.
headlamp + summertime + living next to a large park → reading a book while meandering outdoors at night 🔦📚