brainsplotch

I am sitting on the living room couch after work on Friday evening and I can feel the chill from outside. It's allegedly 19 degrees outside ("feels like 10" according to the weather app on my phone. All I know is it feels frigid, even in the house. I wrote that first paragraph almost two weeks ago and never got back to it. I'm still cold. Looking at social media news posts this morning, I found myself spiraling worse than I have in months. I had to look away for my own sanity. The depression and despair was overwhelming. Never in my life did I, in my wildest imagination, picture the United States lowered to such depths as we watch fascism and authoritarianism envelop us, while also making enemies all over the world. For example, the threats to invade Greenland are insane. We have elected--make that RE-elected, a madman. He is completely out of his mind and nobody in a position of power has the bravery to do anything about it.

Well, we made it through another year. With the way things are going in the world, and the barrage of nonsense that comes out of our presidential administration on a daily basis, that's no small feat. Here's hoping we all survive 2026, too. I have spent the bulk of today reading as much as possible to get my 2025 book total to a modest 30 titles. (Several of those are children's books that I've read while at work--so it's even less...well... "impressive" is not exactly the correct word. Maybe, "more pathetic"?) It's certainly paltry compared to people I know who routinely crank out 75+ books every year. When I see them post those statistics, I wonder what exactly they're reading and whether they do anything else in their lives other than read books. Then I can't help but ask how many of those are audiobooks. It all concludes with me feeling like an underachiever who should resolve to watch fewer movies and less television. But who am ...

I said I was gonna write another "Seattle post" and, as usual, didn't get on that when I should have. So here's part two of this very loosely based on Seattle theme. In this case, it's the band Screaming Trees. I wrote about the Trees a few years ago when bassist Van Conner died. I have been on a Screaming Trees jag recently after finding a cache of their CDs at my favorite local record shop, Flat Back & Circular. The CDs in question ar the 1985-1989 SST Records anthology, and the two Epic Records albums I didn't already have, Uncle Anesthesia and Dust . It reaffirms my opinion that the Trees were among the most under-appreciated, underrated bands of the '90s "grunge" era. I know "underrated" is thrown around too often, but it is wholly appropriate here. If Mudhoney were the most Stooges-inspired garage punk of the Seattle grunge bands, then Screaming Trees were the most '60s psychedelia-inspired (not that all of their songs ca...

Hello loyal readers. Consider this part one of a few Seattle-related posts. The Fabulous Baker Boys  (1989) is a movie that long eluded me. I'm not exactly sure why, but I think I had misconceptions about it. I assumed it was a glitzy period piece with overwrought musical sequences. I was wrong on all those points. The movie takes place in a still grimy Seattle, circa 1988. This is a Seattle that is a blue collar port city, decidedly pre-tech industry and pre-grunge music explosion.  Frank and Jack Baker are piano playing brothers who have their own semi-successful lounge act playing in slightly seedy joints in Seattle and environs. Older brother Frank (Beau Bridges) is married with a family, while younger brother Jack (Jeff Bridges) is single and lives in a bohemian apartment in Seattle's Pioneer Square area.  Frank is the leader of the duo, booking all their shows and bantering with the audience with an arsenal of corny jokes. (Frank, however, is a bit of a pushover whe...

 As is often the case when a famous actor dies, I immediately have to investigate their filmographies and see the movies they did that I have never seen. Is it morbid? Maybe? I like to think of it as honoring their careers and a convenient cinematic educational experience. I recently did this with Robert Redford. Soon after he died, I watched The Candidate , The Hot Rock , and 3 Days of the Condor in quick succession.  The Candidate is a fascinating portrait of a man who goes from principled do-gooder lawyer to cynical presidential candidate. It's also a quaint reminder of a time when American politics didn't seem quite as cutthroat and despicable as it is in 2025. The Hot Rock is a funny crime/jewel heist caper that had to have been an influence on Steven Soderbergh's Ocean movies, and it has to be said that Redford is the most handsome ex-con in film history. 3 Days of the Condor is a movie I'd heard referenced multiple times in the last few years, and it didn...

After a little trepidation based on its middling reviews, we went to the cinema to see Springsteen : Deliver Me From Nowhere . Perhaps due to my lowered expectations, or maybe because I'm just a pushover who goes to the movies WANTING to like what I've paid to see, or possibly because it actually IS a good movie, I ended up enjoying Springsteen : Deliver Me From Nowhere . (I will henceforth simply refer to it as Springsteen ). From what I gather, the main complaints about Springsteen  is that it doesn't have enough music and that it falls prey to rock biopic cliches. First, about the music: I don't agree with those criticisms. It has just enough music. The movie is, among other things, about Bruce's creation of the Nebraska album. He has finished the 1981  River tour and is renting a house in Colts Neck, NJ, getting inspiration from Flannery O'Connor, the Terence Malick movie  Badlands, reading   microfilm newspaper accounts of the real-life murders that ...