Rail Against the Orthodoxy of Toys
Michael Chabon's rant about the imposition of predetermined boundaries and contours, of a formulary of play—and why Sid in <I>Toy Story</I> wasn't necessarily a Norman Bates in the making.
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They Couldn't Write It If It Wasn't True
Headline of the year.
Are We Doomed?
<I>The Independent</I> interviews Jared Diamond, author of <I>Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed</I>. The good news? We may not be doomed. The bad news: Yet, that is.
Hitchens vs Fry
The link is to <I>The Guardian Unlimited</I>'s podcast of Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens debating blasphemy. You might think you don't have time to listen to a 78 minute argument? Well, think again—<I>this</I> you've got to hear.
June 14, 2004
On June 14, 2004, I made a silly, little mistake.
Elvis Costello & Allen Toussaint
<B><I>The River in Reverse</B></I><BR>
Verve Forecast
invisible records
As a follow-up to my last entry, I was sitting in my favorite watering hole over the weekend, listening to my favorite jukebox㬎 tunes for 5 bucks–when a couple sitting at the bar next to me struck up a music conversation about what was playing: Elvis Costello, The Shins, King Sunny Ade, Lefty Frizzell, James Brown, Arctic Monkeys, you name it. At one point, talking about the cover art of an album I can’t remember now I said, being the absent-minded old man of the bunch, 'Have you ever seen that record?'
Travel Advisory
I'm going to be on the road for the rest of the week, so blogging will be even more irregular than usual. I'll be visiting NHT's facility in Benecia, CA—so check the <I>Stereophile</I> Galleries for some instant gratification—and I <I>will</I> be putting up new links, just not as early.
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
My friend Jeff gave me a copy of the new CD remaster of this David Byrne/Brian Eno disc—and it's great. Now Byrne and Eno, "in keeping with the original spirit of the album," offer listeners access to the original multitrack recordings and a chance to remix them through a Creative Commons license. They also offer a chance for the remixes to be posted in a daily Top 20, as chosen by the site moderators.
Inside the Ferrari Factory
<I>Canadian Driver</I> gets us past the front gates.