Short Story: Decisions Decisions
Nick is catatonic. He rocks on his feet like an inflatable clown, hands twisting against his skull as if trying to squeeze the images out of his head. He does […]
Best Albums of 2017: #25-1 (with commentary)
#25: Bjork, Utopia More ethereal fairy music from the Icelandic pixie. (And I don’t use “fairy” lightly: just listen to the title track and tell me the flutes and strings don’t […]
Best Albums of 2017: #50-26 (with commentary)
#50: King Krule, The OOZ To understand this album, just imagine stoned jazz. Very stoned jazz, with a lower-class English accent. You can see him holding a mic and not […]
Best Albums of 2017: #100-51
Granddaddy, Last Place Jessica Lea Mayfield, Sorry Is Gone Diet Cig, Swear I’m Good at This Austra, Future Politics Slowdive, self-titled White Reaper, The World’s Best American Band Pile, A […]
Best Albums of 2017: Who Didn’t Make the Cut
I listened to 249 albums (an average of almost 3 times each) in 2017 to arrive at my top 100 albums for 2017. As anyone with math skills will see, that leaves 149 albums that didn’t make the cut. These are (mostly) very good records in and of themselves, but […]
Unexpected Delight and Unceasing Pain: Reading the Modern Library Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century
I’m done! Woo-hoo and thank God. With the last page of Finnegan’s Wake, I have now read every book on the Random House Modern Library list of the Best Novels […]
Oh Tokyo I Really Can Sleep in Your Arms…
The International Travel Writer’s Guild (or whatever it’s called) must have a rule: you can’t write an article about Tokyo without using the phrase “city of contrasts.”
