February 2009
70 posts
“To think, I killed a cat / and may I say, not in a nice way.”
– Sid Vicious, in my favorite line from his strangely touching version of ”My Way.” The former John Simon Ritchie was 21 years old when he died thirty years ago this month, though the breadth and quality of his pop afterlife is matched by very few others. A trip to Hot Topic continues...
1 tag
More Craigslist missed connections that are about...
“I noticed how wonderful your behind looked in your jeans.”
I don’t really ever wear jeans, but I have a pair of black trousers that look like jeans from a distance, so most likely she was distracted. I’m at the Spyhouse literally eight times a year, so I don’t really see who else this could be. I’ll take the compliment, thanks.
“On my way out I said...
Japanese High Command.
At a reading at the Turf Club last night, Paul D. Dickinson is recounting a panic-stricken 4 a.m. trip through the Louisiana backwoods in a band van, completely lost and unable to find the way back to New Orleans. He and his co-pilot turn to each:
“‘Japanese High Command,’ we both say. He slaps me, I slap him. He slaps me again, I slap him again. This clears our heads and...
2 tags
Britney Spears’ “Hit Me Baby One More...
1 tag
The numerically-named Jennifers of my youth.
I was reading The New York Times Review of Books last month, and saw an advertisement for a newish book about Chinese food by a woman named “Jennifer 8. Lee.” I thought the name seemed familiar — how many Jennifers could there be out there with numbers for middle names? It occurred to me this was almost certainly a woman I had gone to the Governor’s School for the Arts back...
1 tag
Point-counterpoint: rock-and-roll bands.
“Rock-and-roll bands reconstitute the ideal of the American family in its original, nineteenth-century form, as a quasi-democratic, mercantile unit (the family farm, the family firm, the vaudeville act) — as a collective endeavour in which the static rigor of single-provider patriarchy is mitigated by issues of competence and merit, by the exigencies of collaboration, and, finally by...
Charlie and I listen to the Microsoft Songsmith...
Charles: never in my wildest dreams did I imagine Rush could get any better, but this is unbelievable
me: It truly is.
I mean...wow.
Speechlessness.
That bridge. Holy shit.
Charles: this is so good I want to cry
me: I join you in tears.
I can't even remember what the original sounds like now.
Charles: Dare I say it, but I don't want to remember
Symbolics.com →
This is the oldest registered .com address on the Internet, dating to March 15, 1985.
What was “Symbolics”? Seems like it was “the premier producer of special-purpose computer systems for running and developing state-of-the-art object-oriented programs in Lisp.”
And what is (or was) “Lisp”? Seems like it is “the second-oldest high-level programming...
Let's scream the lyrics to "Born to Run" together...
Inthedaywesweatitoutinthestreetsofarunawayamericandreamat nightweridethroughmansionsofgloryinsuicidemachinessss!!!!!sprung fromcagesoutonhighwayninechromewheeledfuelinjectedandsteppinout overtheliiiiiiiiiiiiiiinebabythistownripsthebonesfromyourbackitsadeathtrap itsasuiciderapwegottagetoutwhileweeeeereyoungcausetrampslikeus babywewereborntorunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
