Wes Phillips

Flame on!

As long, that is, as I don't touch her.

Yeah, yeah, the relentless drumbeating about On the Road is getting annoying. See the manuscript, read the novel, nostalge about the beats, buy the anniversary edition and the Library of America canonization.

New fossils discovered in Ethiopia "conclusively demonstrates that the Last Common Ancestor (of both man and ape) was strictly an African phenomenon," according to an article published in Nature.

Jerome Harris sends along this link to his former boss' Proust Questionaire in September's Vanity Fair. Rollins, in case you didn't know, will be performing at Carnegie Hall on September 18.

The Roland TR-909 is now online.

I've been fascinated by AMC's summer series Mad Men. Its depiction of 1960 America is revelatory—even though I was alive then, if only eight. And, as Ellen Feldman observes, it's not just the details that make it so powerful, it's a throwback in terms of character development and, dare I say it, pacing. Although AMC has commercials, it doesn't observe the same rhythm other channels do, so some scenes develop for 11 or 12 minutes before a break.