May 2019
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It happened to come to my attention earlier today that this was the date in 1453 when Constantinople fell to the Turks. Many years ago I read a book about that event which was sad and disturbing, as is almost any account of mankind's propensity for conquest and slaughter. I thought often of that story…
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Maybe you remember that a few months ago I got excited about a track by Nan Vernon on a compilation album (see this post). It was a Cruise-Lynch-Badalamenti-sounding arrangement of an old Bobby Fuller Four song. I had never heard of her, but quickly discovered that she had released one album, Manta Ray, in the…
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A CapitolOne ad: Life Doesn't Alert You About Your Credit Card–But Eno Can And I thought I was pretty close to unshockable in such matters. Sure, I'll keep an eye on that credit card for you. Of course Eno has changed a lot since the above pic (ca. 1972). Brian Eno, in case you don't…
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I noticed in the statistics for this blog that the search button has been used a lot over the past few days. Don't feel paranoid: it doesn't record any info about who's doing the search, just that the URL has been referenced. So as a public service I must tell you (if you haven't figured…
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"Again" because I was talking about it last week in this post, when I had only read 60 or 70 pages. Now I've finished it. I'm still not sure that it's right to expose other people so very intimately to the world, but I gather that the main characters apart from herself who are still…
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Fritz Lang directed this 1953 film noir, which would lead one to expect that it would be at minimum pretty good. I think it's way better than that, one of the best of its type, although it isn't my favorite (my favorite so far is Out of the Past–see this post). Glenn Ford stars as…
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I'm reading Mary Karr's memoir The Liars' Club. It's very good, but I realized fairly quickly that some part of me wants to dislike it. At first I didn't want to admit that to myself, keeping a keen eye out for faults while not quite consciously wanting to find them. Then, when it got difficult to…
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The AllMusic.com review describes this album as "a bona-fide lost classic." I don't think that's really true, not because it isn't a classic, but because it's no longer lost. It was released in 1968 and sales were negligible. It was eventually discovered, or rediscovered, years too late to benefit the artists very much. It deserved…
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I knew I should have let that notice that I posted last week sit for a day or two before posting it. I generally do that with anything that's more than a paragraph or two, in case I think of something else I want to say or change the way I said it. So, addenda:…
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I mean the one in which they accuse Pope Francis of heresy. I've only read the first page, at which point I scrolled down to see the list of signers. The only one I recognize is Fr. Aidan Nichols, O.P. I've read several of his books and he is certainly not any sort of crank.…
Light On Dark Water 