brainsplotch

As usual, I've been extremely neglectful of this blog this year. I've given up extending empty promises of "doing better" or "writing more." In all honesty, it's probably not gonna happen. So let me at least get you up to speed with what I've been up to, or at least write about what's been on my mind recently. I saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens last weekend, (December 20, to be exact). In the Star Wars Fandom Rating, with 1 being "indifferent" and 10 being "superfan who has seen all the movies, read all the books, owns most of the merchandise," I am about a solid 3 1/2. I unabashedly enjoy the first three films ( Star Wars , aka A New Hope ; The Empire Strikes Back ; Return of the Jedi ) but absolutely loathed the next three movies (Episodes I, II, III). In fact, those movies made so little impact on me that I can't honestly say if I saw all three. I can't remember. I know I saw Phantom Menace , and I may have see...

Another few months go by, and another few months that I'm completely neglectful of this blog. So We Read On by Maureen Corrigan, a detailed but casual and personal look at the life and legacy of The Great Gatsby, is the most recent book I've read since Between the World and Me . I've generally fallen into the college football rabbit hole, so I've spent most of my time writing on my Treasures from the Spartan Attic blog. I don't know if I mentioned another book I read recently, Detroit City is the Place to Be by Mark Binelli. It's a look at the current state of Detroit and its attempts to reinvent itself. That's a fairly reductive description, there's way more to it than that so if you have any interest in the city of Detroit, give it a read. This is designed as a post to let you know that I'm still alive and not completely mothballing this blog.

No matter how enlightened or open-minded or colorblind I think I am or pretend to be, no matter how much I read, no matter how many lefty podcasts I listen to or first-person commentary I absorb, I can never fully comprehend what it is to be a person of color in the United States. But I hope that by reading a book like Ta-Nehisi Coates' searing, lyrical, and deeply personal Between the World and Me , I can at least get a little closer to some basic idea--though if you never have lived it and never can live it, all you're left with is an intellectual comprehension and a sense of empathy. I urge anyone and everyone to read Coates' new book, particularly white people like me. It's truly an eye-opener.

Last night at Pine Knob (technically the DTE Energy Music Theater, but I try to avoid that terrible corporate name as much as possible), My wife and I saw Steely Dan with opening act Elvis Costello & the Imposters. It was a pairing that would've been unthinkable in the '70s and '80s. Of course, Steely Dan didn't perform live back then, so for that reason alone it wouldn't have happened. But back in those days, the two would have been seen as incompatible: Elvis the jittery, angry pub/punk rocker and Steely Dan the kings of sophisticated (though sardonic and subversive) jazzy pop/rock. But really, the two have a lot in common: intelligent and often acerbic lyrics, great ears for melody, and catholic musical tastes embracing everything from rock to blues to jazz. I'd say that as the years have gone on, Elvis Costello and the Dan have converged artistically and their fan bases are now comprised of many of the same people--including me. Now about those f...

Working at the library, I make a point of going downstairs to the basement to check out our "Book Burrow" from time to time. That's the store that our Friends of the Library runs, and they sell books, CDs, LPs, cassettes, magazines, and a few other sundries that are donated mainly by people trying to unload crap out of their houses. For this reason, there's not usually anything there that I can't live without, but every once in awhile I find something good. On Friday, I poked around the $1 CDs and found De La Soul's Three Feet High and Rising , the original release on Tommy Boy Records. I've had this on cassette for many years, but I barely listen to cassettes anymore so it's been languishing in my basement for years. I'm happy to report that Three Feet High and Rising is still a great album, and about the most perfect summer listening I could imagine. Not that I'm any kind of rap/hip-hop expert, but it's definitely part of wha...

I've been absolutely terrible about keeping up with this blog, but I'm back to get in at least one entry before the end of June. So what's new? Well, here goes. If the Rolling Stones reissue an album, it's pretty much a guarantee that I won't be able to resist. And this is exactly what happened with the Sticky Fingers reissue. Of the four killer albums that the Stones recorded and released between 1968 and 1972 ( Beggars' Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, and Exile on Main St, ), I'd say I rank Sticky Fingers fourth on that list. Really, I suppose it varies depending on my mood. In fact, ranking those four brilliant albums is really splitting hairs. They're all great. I'm not much of a stereophile, so I honestly can't tell if the sound quality is that much better than the old CBS CD I have had in my collection since the 1980s, but the main reason for purchasing these reissues is the bonus tracks...and these bonus tracks are...

I've been on a Kinks kick of late, probably as a result of receiving The Kinks: The Anthology 1964-1971 five-disc box set for my birthday. It's an amazing box set, and I didn't expect to acquire it--mainly due to its rather steep price (it's just not the sort of thing I'd go out and buy for myself without feeling really guilty). I had checked out a digital copy of it via Hoopla and raved about it so much that a certain person took notice and got the physical version of it for me. I am extremely grateful. Along with the Beatles--and in fact maybe even slightly more so than the Beatles--there is hardly a single song by the Kinks that I can't at least tolerate (at least from the band's beginnings in 1964 through the Muswell Hillbillies album in 1971). I suppose some of the Kinks' earliest songs, when Ray and Dave Davies were still honing their songwriting chops, are a bit spotty, but from 1965's Kink Kontroversy album through Muswell Hillbillies...

I'm taking a few minutes to get this out there while I'm thinking of it, so it may not be a perfectly formed post. At work, I'm processing books in our library's technical services department when I come across the early 1990s reprints of Beverly Cleary's Ribsy . The illustrations are not the classic Louis Darling ones that I remember from my youth in the '70s, they are--at least in my judgment--inferior "modernized" illustrations. 1950s Louis Darling illustration from a Beverly Cleary book Part of the charm of the old Beverly Cleary books was that they were from the fifties, and the characters portrayed in the illustrations dressed differently from the Pro-Keds and cut-off jeans of my 1970s youth. I liked the exoticness of it all. It was an artifact from the past, yet the stories still had a universality that applied to my life in 1970s Detroit as much as 1950s Portland, Oregon (where the Beezus & Ramona and Henry Huggins books were set...

My goal is to crank out more content in this blog, even if the content is crap. So don't say I didn't warn you. I have 30 minutes to get this in before it's officially February. I'd like to actually get in three blog posts in one month. That'd be amazing. So I'm drinking a glass of shiraz and watching the local news, trying to simultaneously type and stop the cat from destroying the living room. So now Saturday Night Live has started and the opening sketch is one of ersatz Richard Sherman and Marshawn Lynch hosting their own TV show. Not as funny as Key & Peele's Super Bowl Special that aired last night. Watching the opening credits of SNL, the current cast are young enough to be my children. They all look like fresh-faced kids. I love J.K. Simmons and he's the guest host. Doing a fun riff on his maniacal music teacher role in Whiplash. Various cast members flailing away on the drums while Simmons yells at them. Now Fred Armisen, a real drummer,...

Remember that ebola post I wrote several months ago (see below)? Isn't it funny that we heard absolutely NOTHING about ebola in the United States immediately after the elections took place? Nothing, At. All. At least nothing from the major mainstream news sources (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CNN). If you wanted to hear anything about the ebola epidemic in Africa, you had to really dig for information. It's not as if it was over, either. Though the situation seems to be under control in Liberia, the last I checked it was still a serious problem in Sierra Leone. Now all we hear about is something called "DeflateGate." Suddenly, The biggest news in the United States are footballs that weren't properly inflated in the AFC championship game (Super Bowl semifinal for anyone who doesn't follow American football) between the New England Patriots and the Indianapolis Colts. The 24-hour news networks like CNN have been treating this ridiculously overblown and ultimately u...

I have a few minutes to spare, so I thought it might be a good opportunity to drop in and say hello, while also making an attempt to not be a stranger to this blog. I have about ten minutes, so I'm here to try to crank out ten minutes of content. As usual, I'm experiencing both the "post-Holiday blahs" and the "pre-birthday blues." I'm rapidly closing in on birthday #47 (on March 1) and I have to tell you that with each passing year they become less and less exciting. Actually, that's an understatement. I think the last time I was truly excited about a birthday was when I turned 21. It's been downhill ever since. Thus, the two month period between January 1 and March 1 tends to verge between boredom and anxiety. What makes it slightly more bearable is that my younger son's birthday is on February 26, so at least the focus is more on HIM and less on ME. This year in particular will be eventful because he hits double-digits. Looking at th...