PicoBlog

My classroom was on the first floor, next to the nuns’ lounge. I used their bathroom to puke in the mornings. When I first read “Bettering Myself,” the first story in Ottessa Moshfegh’s collection Homesick for Another World, it was one of the most vulgar pieces of writing I’d ever encountered. I loved it. The rest of the collection zipped by in a couple afternoons. This was the dark humor and deadbeat characters of Jesus’ Son, the biting technology-satire of George Saunders, and an intensity of scatological & sexually deviant humor I’d never encountered in literature.

Disclaimer: You do NOT have to listen to the accompanying music to understand this piece…but you will not get the entire multimedia experience and/or message without it. Please at least turn it on in the background at a comfortable volume that still allows you to read and comprehend. Thank you and enjoy. This article will not deconstruct or solve (sadly, still) modern complexities like anti-Semitism, racism, or bigotry. This piece will not defend Kanye “Ye” West.

And through the ages, I'll remember As a kid, Willie Nelson would ride his bike six miles from his home in Abbott, TX to the movie theater in the town of West, where he’d pay a nickel to see movie cowboys like Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. “They rode horses and sang and played guitar. And they beat the bad guys,” he writes in Willie Nelson’s Letters to America. “That looked like the life for me.

Take a look at this: “What am I looking at?” That, right there, is Windows 3.11 (Windows for Workgroups)… loading up the Google Cloud VM manager. A website that requires a modern web browser. But, that isn't a modern web browser. That is Internet Explorer 4.0. On Windows 3.11. Seriously. Now check this bad mama jama out: That's OS/2 Warp 4. Running Firefox 2. While reading Wikipedia. Anyone who uses older (think 20+ years) computers knows… this just isn't possible (certainly not with the websites looking… right).

I said come on a little closer I got something to say Mark Sandman called Morphine's music Low Rock. It was the simplest way to describe the sound of the band. Their aesthetic prized low, deep tones — baritone saxophone, Sandman’s husky vocals, and the growls and moans of a two-string slide bass of his own devise. The simplicity of his description, however, reveals the band’s actual aesthetic, which was simplicity itself.

First of all, if you are celebrating Christmas today, or just generally chilling and taking the day off, close the newsletter. There’s nothing good in here. In fact, I am using the cover of the holidays to finally, briefly write about the bread guy. It’s BAD. I need to stress that you will not enjoy what is in here, and I am not negging you into reading further. If you are enjoying your day and want to keep that going, close the email, save it for later, or just delete it entirely.

☆☆☆☆ Seo Mok-ha (played by Park Eun-bin) Kang Bo-geol / Jung Ki-ho (played by Chae Jong-hyeop) Yoon Ran-joo (played by Kim Hyo-jin) Kang Woo-hak / Jung Chae-ho (played by N / aka Cha Hak-yeon) ↑Note: Korean names denote the surname followed by the given name. There is a lot to unpack in “Castaway Diva." On the surface, it’s about a teenager who has been trapped on an island for 15 years, is rescued, and pursues her dreams of becoming a K-pop idol.

If April is the cruelest month, does that make August the laziest? Days are hotter yet getting shorter, the deep greens of June have burnt off into a haze of corn-yellow. The afternoon sun is slanted and valedictory. Dogs nap more, and so do their people. Work? It can wait. Historically, August has always been the month when the studios release those titles in which they have the least faith – the un-blockbusters, lame, halt, and blind.

Last time, we reviewed some of Shearing’s history, listened to his adventurous early bop compositions, and introduced his piece “Conception.” When I read Peter Pullman’s well researched biography of Bud Powell, one of my own piano gods, I noticed a footnote (p.427 in the printed book) where Peter reports that some musicians who knew both Powell and Shearing believed that Shearing was not capable of writing “Conception.” Instead, they suggested that Powell was a more likely author for the tune.