Cass McCombs on Job Satisfaction

There is work. There is play. There is play that is work, and play that is play. And work that is work, and in only one of these lies happiness.

Cass McCombs: The Executioner's Song

Advertising Gone Bad

I don't know what it is about a baby gleefully holding a razor to his (or her?) face that makes me want to go out and buy the new Gillette Fusion. But it does.

Check out the 15 Creepiest Vintage Ads of All Time.

R.I.P. McNamara

Today Robert McNamara died. Read about his fascinating life in this NYT obit. Several years ago Errol Morris filmed one of my favorite documentaries of all time on McNamara's life, The Fog of War.

Two Weeks

This is one of the best songs I've heard this year. The drumming is nails.

Read This Poem. Now.

Joe Plicka (poet, teacher, and friend), has published a beautiful poem with Anti-Poetry. To read it click here. He visits this site from time to time, so leave a comment and tell him he's crazy and/or brilliant.

Dancing on Lime Green

I grew up in rural Idaho with no MTV and very little pop music in the home. What I got came from Saturday morning radio (Casey Kasem’s Top 40) and my older brother and sister (AC/DC, Ratt, Def Leppard, etc.) It seems I was born with a fascination for pop music that has never quite left me (as you can plainly read). One of my earliest memories, and most certainly my earliest musical memory, is from about the time I was in Kindergarten. My oldest sister Alison came home one night, having borrowed a record from her friend. She went into our front room and put the vinyl on the turntable and let it spin. I spent the remainder of the entire evening dancing around on our shaggy green carpet to “Beat It”, “Billy Jean”, and “Thriller”. I’ve always appreciated Michael Jackson as an artist. There is a lot that can be said about him, great and terrible. But I’ll always remember green shag carpet and Eddie Van Halen’s unmistakable guitar in “Beat It”, driving a five year old boy mad with joy.

What are your earliest musical memories?

Lynchian

What is David Lynch up to these days besides making really weird films, you ask? Well, let me tell you. He's up to Interview Project. Over the course of a twenty thousand mile road trip his crew would stop at random and talk to the men and women of this great nation. There is a fascinating humanity on display in these vignettes (uploaded for your viewing pleasure at the rate of one per day. I suppose any life is worth considering for at least that long).

Gus and Milo

Christy and I have two fine boys. See them here through the talented, generous, friendly, artistic, focused-despite-the-unchecked-rowdiness-of-my-children, lens of Lacy Jane.

Discovery

You may want to put this one on your calendar for July 7th. The album is called "LP" (how clever!). Discovery is a two man electronic side project, Rostam Batmanglij of Vampire Weekend and Wes Miles of Ra Ra Riot.

Discovery: So Insane

In Memory

My Grandma, Beth Reynolds Blake

1916 - 2009

"Late Fragment"

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

-Raymond Carver

(see also)