PicoBlog

How one wacky song inspired a retired legend to keep recording - and galvanized a generation of kids to explore their joyfully weird side. “I’ve just written the stupidest guitar line you’ve ever heard.” Imagine being considered one of the world's most prolific songwriters who all but disappeared from the planet five years ago. No new ditties. No new albums — for five long years. Exasperated fans ask,“Will he ever make music again?

Welcome back to my blind coverage of the new Netflix anime Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, a series based off of some of the most influential comic books and movies of my life. What I’m doing here is giving my thoughts, analysis, and predictions after each episode before moving onto the next, but given that Episode 8 is the finale, I will also be looking back at the series as a whole, and there will be spoilers for all eight episodes.

Back in the ‘90s, the Hollywood movie “Alive” became known for primarily one thing: the featured characters, stranded in a wrecked plane in the Andes, had to eat dead bodies to survive. Every time I hear that movie referenced, that’s all that’s said about the story and the art that depicts it. “Society of the Snow,” from Spanish director J.A. Bayona, tries to change that reductive view. He’s created a memorial of a movie that honors the survivors and the dead, while retelling a absolutely harrowing story of survival, one of the world’s greatest and most disturbing that I know of.

You may begin noticing that most of my posts are now paywalled. This is an acknowledgement of the work I put into this newsletter as well as an effort to keep things more private. If you cannot afford a subscription, please let me know and I will happily comp you a year’s membership, no questions asked. This post was written on 1.2.22, and has been revised. Let us stop and acknowledge how incredible James Baldwin’s writing is.

Prospect Park in Brooklyn is majestic. There’s a giant lake, where swans and ducks placidly drift by. There’s a dog beach, where mongrels splash in the water and shake themselves dry in the sun. There are 30,000 trees, more than 175 species. The ancient, gnarly ones look like they’re about to dispense wisdom in a fairy tale. Park Slope is also famously full of children. If Tucker Carlson is worried about the “Great Replacement,” of whites by over-breeding foreigners, he should come here and see how many fucking kids white people are having.

In 2011, I was in a training class at Amazon for "category leaders" an Amazon term for people who owned retail segments like Shoes, Books, or Video Games (my category). The Ownership LP had been dropped. We proposed restoring it and he asked us to draft a new version. In the proposal, I supplied the words "An owner never says that's not my job" and they were kept in the final version.

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with the ‘60s. In sixth grade, a teacher asked us all, if we could go any place and time in history, where would it be? I answered immediately, “Woodstock.” I idealized the era because that’s where my parents came from. I spent hours on the floor as a child going through my mother’s records: Phil Ochs, Carole King, Bob Dylan. I remember how mystified I was by The Beatles’ White Album.

Those days are gone forever. I should just let them go but… Heartbreakers’ guitarist Mike Campbell and Tom Petty were in the studio mixing “Don’t Come Around Here No More” when they decided to honor the tradition of listening to the mix in the car. It’s one thing to listen to a song on very precise studio monitors; it’s another to hear it as your audience will. Campbell switched on the car radio, and before he could push in the cassette, the moody synths, clattering drum machine, and shimmering guitar of “Boys Of Summer” poured out of the car speakers.

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