Monthly Archives: July 2018
Waltzing into Despair
Elliott Smith has been one of my favorite singer-songwriters since my college roommate first introduced me to him via his brilliant album Either/Or. (We used to get high/drunk and listen to his tightly composed tragic musings.) Tortured soul he was, … Continue reading
Give Me Your Black Heart
I have been a fan of Southern California’s The Black Heart Procession since I first heard them back, I believe, in 2000. Instantly, something dark within me (heh heh–guilty of what Elizabethan rhetoricians would have labeled periergia) resonated with their … Continue reading
Extreme Teaching
Million Dollar Extreme is a sketch comedy troupe that had a show, World Peace, on Adult Swim for, I think, two minutes. As with what now seems to be the rule, not the exception, someone somewhere took offense with member Sam … Continue reading
Revisiting Can’t
In Thomas Wolfe’s You Can’t Go Home Again, the voice of the earth, revealing a mottled cast of characters, consisting of the inexperienced and the experienced, the unbridled and those who have been bridled by time, confronts George Webber the … Continue reading
Gently Becoming a Beast
With papers to grade, stories to complete, and a mind-heart fusion that wants to focus on only one area (i.e., person, i.e., woman), the last thing I wanted to do was put aside an hour for jiu-jitsu, the gentle art … Continue reading
Hammer Time
Recently I watched the mesmerizing You Were Never Really Here, starring the always captivating Joaquin Phoenix. (FYI fact: I had a friend whose father was the firefighter who futilely performed CPR on the beautifully doomed River Phoenix all those years ago … Continue reading
True Condition/Tinged with Doom
I return to Cyril Connolly’s The Unquiet Grave as I do to my favorite drink: I know what to expect, and I have probably had one too many encounters with it, but I always come away pleased, refreshed, consoled–and maybe even … Continue reading
Ephemeral Art
In the opening to The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde, the editor writes that “[c]onversation is an ephemeral art, and as the autumn breezes blow the brown … Continue reading
bourbonapocalypse 