I wanted to post my monthly mix for April (here it is, by the way) but decided I wanted to go long on each of the songs. So now you know what the next dozen of so posts are going to be about.
One of my absolute favourite bands got namechecked by the biggest pop star on the planet on her last album. Could this be the bump the Blue Nile needs to grace the world with their presence once again? Unlikely. I've written about the cult Scottish sophisti-pop group before, so I've definitely mentioned their slow workrate; their fourth and presumably final album came out two decades ago this August.
But bands with small outputs sometimes pad their discographies out with live records and odds-and-sods collections, catnip for the hardcore faithful. The Blue Nile have neither to their name, but deluxe versions of their four studio albums have been released with supplementary material. “The Second Act,” the b-side of the band's first single, was included in the new version of their great 1984 album A Walk Across the Rooftops. It's an unrepresentative track of the band's output, but the bare production and frail lead vocal by Paul Buchanan make it a perfect candidate to kick off any budding bootlegger's hypothetical Decade-esque career-spanning Blue Nile compilation.
Here's a take: things that sounded like shit 40 years ago can still be novel because the mid-to-late 1980s were the last monoculturally uncool era, but things that sounded like shit 20 years ago still sound like shit because culture is stuck in a tightening recursive loop. In sartorial terms, I'm not saying I wouldn't wear Crocs, I just never thought I'd see the day they'd become de rigeur.
Do not judge an album by its eight-minute second track, as I foolishly did with Wednesday's Rat Saw God.
If you're a band, and you're recording an album, and you have an eight-minute track with an extended coda where your lead singer sounds like they're getting sucked into a black hole made of tar, their shrieks and screams getting more and more muffled in the mix as the song reaches its conclusion, my advice is to make that song your closer. This has been Thoughts on Album Sequencing.
I now know approximately 1,500% more stuff about the Smashing Pumpkins than I did at any previous point in my life, stuff like “holy shit, Tommy Lee drummed on their 2014 album Monuments to an Elegy” (shout out to Sarah).
The best recommendation engines have always been and continue to be your cool friends and your own curiosity. Link-hopping can lead to some weird and beautiful places.
No not that Molly Lewis, the otherMolly Lewis, the Paganini of whistling.
Is “Susanne” the best Weezer song? Maybe!
Dude I spent hours trying to find the specific mix of “Smooth Operator” that I got off LimeWire in college, and I don't think it's on Spotify. It might be the 12” single mix.
Kiwi Jr. are the leaders in the clubhouse because I still believe in the 12-string electric guitar.
Jeremy Gaudet, if you see this, drop the Letterboxd, brother!
SAG-AFTRA is now on strike alongside the WGA for the first time since 1960, further putting the squeeze on the studios. As ever, solidarity with the writers and actors, and may they get everything they're asking for and then some.
I am fairly certain “girl dinner” is just charcuterie, or as I've called it in the past, “indoor picnicking.” There truly is nothing new under the sun.
Austin Krance's devilishly sticky browser game Sports Under 150 will gobble up every available second you have while at your desk. The premise is simple: you are presented with a country, select a sport they are ranked highly in, fill out your list, and aim for the lowest possible score. Get ready to wonder how good the Polish national baseball team is.
I have fully pivoted to being a Scrabble sicko. I busted out my tattered 20-year-old copy of Word Freak, downloaded some key pieces of study software, and started memorizing valid two- and three-letter words (god forbid I ever play CUM against one of the sweet old ladies at the Scrabble club).
Speaking of Scrabble, Babbl is a charming 8-bit Scrabble clone with an infinite board and no clock.
Variety put out a list of the greatest action movies of all time, and though it's hard to argue with #1, I found plenty to quibble about: only one 70s/80s martial arts movies not named Enter the Dragon, only one Jackie Chan movie, Terminator 2 outside the top 15. But at least Seven Samurai is in the top 10.
Headlining this edition's Watchlist Roulette is the certified pop-culture phenomenon known as “Barbenheimer.” Some friends packed into my friend Jerome's comically compact car and drove to the Carrefour Angrignon to take in all three hours of Oppenheimer (IMAX and/or 70mm will have to wait), had a light lunch, and treated ourselves to Barbie for dessert. A fun time was had by all. On the home front, I popped an adult gummy and watched Gilda on one of those free-view channels on my Roku device; highly recommended
I was on vacation last week! Steph and I went to Ottawa, visited some friends, frolicked in the pool, ate incredibly well, and otherwise had a nice, relaxing time.
Prior to that, we went to the Granby Zoo. We picked the warmest, stickiest day of our time off to go, but that just made the wave pool and lazy river feel that much better.
My rental was a Tesla. This was my first experience with the Elon Shitbox, and it pains me to say that it's a fun automobile to drive, even if it goes out of its way to take the driving out of driving. It's also over-engineered in a very specific tech-bro kind of way. Having to navigate a menu to be able to adjust the steering wheel isn't a feature, just... leave the little lever on the steering wheel. Damn near everything is done through the dash-mounted tablet, which, if you don't have a co-pilot, is a total cognitive hazard.
While in Ottawa, I got reacquainted with the consensus worst piece of fan fiction ever written, My Immortal. This was the first time in a while I thought about it, and the first time ever I experienced the whole interminable thing. What's most insidious/hilarious about this whole endeavour, other than the crass tween edginess and the litany of phobias and isms contained therein, is its repetitive hypnotic quality (the words “black,” “lace,” and, yes, “Gothic,” sound like nonce terms after a while). My Immortal lulls you into its absurd rhythms, which makes every brain-frying left turn feel that much more like a psychic concussion. There truly is nothing else out there like it.
I love the Home Run Derby, and I love it even more when a Blue Jay comes out on top. Every All-Star Game should have “ball go far” events. The Pro Bowl should have a longest field goal competition. The NBA should have a logo 3 contest. Hell, I'd watch NHL players fire one-timers from the blue line.
Via Andy Baio, the Tiny Awards, which is “a small prize awarded by an equally-small selection committee of online makers to the website which we feel best embodies the idea of a small, playful and heartfelt web.” This is the version of the internet we can still have.
Xavier Dolan, the wunderkind Canadian filmmaker whose filmography contains more films that have played the Cannes Film Festival than not (including his debut film, which played the Riviera just a few months after his 20th birthday), has (maybe?) decided to quit the movies, declaring that “art is useless and dedicating oneself to the cinema, a waste of time,” and that he doesn't “feel like committing two years to a project that barely anyone sees.” Now Dolan has already been more successful than I'll ever be several times over and surely has enough clout to make smaller (if less seen, less lauded) projects until the day he can't even lift a camera anymore. But this seems like a loser's attitude. I get that feeling like you're creating art in a vacuum can be frustrating, but if you reframe it just so, it can be the most liberating realization you can make about your practice. If no one's watching, what's keeping you from doing any god damn thing you want? Do what thousands of hobbyists and enthusiasts have done since the dawn of the camcorder: write a script, call up some friends (and Xavier, if somehow you ever read this, I know for certain that you have friends in high places), and shoot a movie on what's available. If Steven Soderbergh and Sean Baker and Park Chan-wook can make entire actual-ass movies on iPhones, I believe you can too. The result might not play Cannes, but it'll be yours, forever. Art matters in the doing, not the touring.
Speaking of movies, here's where I landed on my most recent spins of the Watchlist Roulette: a gritty Montreal-set NFB crime movie from the 70s called La gammick, aka The Mob.
If I speak for the dead, I must leave
this animal of my body,
I must write the same poem over and over,
for an empty page is the white flag of their surrender.
If I speak for them, I must walk on the edge
of myself, I must live as a blind man
who runs through rooms without
touching the furniture.
Yes, I live. I can cross the streets asking 'What year is it?'
I can dance in my sleep and laugh
in front of the mirror.
Even sleep is a prayer, Lord,
I will praise your madness, and
in a language not mine, speak
of music that wakes us, music
in which we move. For whatever I say
is a kind of petition, and the darkest
days must I praise.
I'm on vacation! I love being paid to sit on my giant ass and do less than nothing.
One of the least surprising things about me is that I really like Steely Dan, and it was a big week in Danland: the daughters of legendary engineer Roger Nichols, Ashlee and Cimcee, found a DAT containing a full version of the presumed-lost Gaucho-era track “The Second Arrangement”. Amateur engineers have already taken a crack at mastering the song. Could an official release be far behind? (via Expanding Dan)
For GQ, Eric Wills profiles Australian bowler Jason Belmonte, possessor of an unorthodox two-handed delivery, winner of 15 major titles, and possibly the greatest ten-pin player of all time. My main conclusion is that Kingpin is real.
For the first time in a long time, I participated in a Magic draft with a set that was still freshly released, which is to say that me and nine other dorks drafted Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth. I'm skeptical of the IP-centric direction Wizard of the Coast is taking Magic but I have to admit this was a fun set to draft. I drafted a solid-enough Boros deck built around Flowering of the White Tree. Gimli put in some good work, too.
Watchlist roulette: Wes Anderson's Atomic Age dramedy Asteroid City, current Sight & Sound world heavyweight champion Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, the punchy, noirish B-western Forty Guns, and this year's CanCon all-star, BlackBerry.
I want to be in rooms full of people I love.
The world goes white then green again
like the mind telling the body it is not alone.
The body saying something I can almost hear
above the sound of a dog barking
because he feels himself tied and tremendously alone.
Who would you believe?
I walk the great streets of New York City
where many great people have lived
and think how great it is to live and die on earth
even if it means having known nothing
of the why. Nothing of the why.
I was recently made aware of the 12-seat Little Prince micro-cinema in Stratford, Ontario, and it has reawakened dormant dreams of running my own little jewel box movie house.
Watchlist roulette: the neo-hixploitation classic Breakdown, the humanistic Korean military thriller Joint Security Area, and the screwball double feature of Bringing Up Baby and What's Up, Doc?.
“Summer Grass” by Tomas Tranströmer, translated by Robert Bly (via Pome):
So much has happened.
Reality has eaten away so much of us.
But summer, at last.
A great airport—the control tower leads down
load after load with chilled
people from space.
Grass and flowers—we are landing.
The grass has a green foreman.
I go and check in.
I watched the fifth and final game of the 2023 NBA Finals with some friends and marvelled at Nikola Jokić, a bored king dominating the NBA almost as an afterthought.
The best thing about Nick Taylor sinking a 72-foot putt for eagle to clinch the Canadian Open is this slow-mo footage of fellow Canadian golfer Adam Hadwin getting absolutely trucked by security while celebrating.
SportsNet put out a cute Wes Anderson-esque summary of the totally wackadoo 1992-93 NHL season.
A Max Read doublet on MrBeast (not linking to his YouTube page cos honestly he doesn't need the help): first for the Times, and second for his excellent newsletter.
Radio Garden maps out every streaming radio station on the internet onto a spinnable globe. Now you too can know what they're listening to in, I don't know, Malmö.
“One of the greatest surprises in life is when you realize you’re elderly. But there’s a gentle comfort coming from that, as everyone loves stories and long ago adventures told by their Grandpa.” This is a quote from Francis Ford Coppola (you know, The Godfather, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now...) on his first Instagram post. Now there's a sentence I never thought I'd write.
Watchlist Roulette: the gloriously 90s Grosse Pointe Blank (maybe the best of the post-QT crime comedies?), the subpar but better-than-anticipated 65, and cable-TV dadcore classic Cop Land.
Let's get architectural: two of my favourite kinds of dwellings are surf shacks and A-frame cottages. The playful spirit of the so-called “gingerbread cottages” of Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts (like the so-called Pink House) come in at a strong third.
In what the great Spencer Hall called a “controlled demolition,” New York Times art critic Jason Farago takes a scalpel to the Brooklyn Museum's new Pablo Picasso exhibit, whose title is so embarrassing I can't will my fingers to type it out here.
For GQ, Howard Beck on napping as a practice in the NBA. If an evening nap is good enough for Jimmy Buckets, it's good enough for me.
Danny DeVito talked to Arnold Schwarzenegger for Interview Magazine, and it got existential.
RIP Blaseball. As the pandemic started to ramp up in early 2020, I stumbled into the tail end of this eldritch baseball simulation's first season, cheering on the lowly Seattle Garages. I watched aghast as our star pitcher was Incinerated by the Forbidden Book. I watched the game grow and blossom in a veritable cultural phenomenon. I'm sad it's gone, but frankly, I'm surprised it stuck around as long as it did. Nothing this insular or weird was ever going to be compatible with the desires of venture capital. Godspeed to you, The Game Band, for gracing the world with your creation when it needed it most; I look forward to what's next. Godspeed to you, fellow fans, and may your eternal Party Time be a happy one. Garages forever!
Speaking of baseball: here's Cincinnati Reds rookie Elly De La Cruz simply annihilating a Noah Syndergaard fastball.
Watchlist Roulette: closing out the Blank Check Buster Keaton miniseries with College, Steamboat Bill, Jr., and The Cameraman, and a Maya Deren double feature of The Private Life of a Cat and Meshes of the Afternoon.
RIP The Iron Sheik. I will be 93 and riddled with dementia but I will always remember him calling Caillou “the jabroni of the earth.”
“The Weather-Cock Points South” by Amy Lowell:
I put your leaves aside,
One by one:
The stiff, broad outer leaves;
The smaller ones,
Pleasant to touch, veined with purple;
The glazed inner leaves.
One by one
I parted you from your leaves,
Until you stood up like a white flower
Swaying slightly in the evening wind.
White flower,
Flower of wax, of jade, of unstreaked agate;
Flower with surfaces of ice,
With shadows faintly crimson.
Where in all the garden is there such a flower?
The stars crowd through the lilac leaves
To look at you.
The low moon brightens you with silver.
The bud is more than the calyx.
There is nothing to equal a white bud,
Of no colour, and of all,
Burnished by moonlight,
Thrust upon by a softly-swinging wind.
It was my friend Willow's birthday, and to celebrate the event, a bunch of friends and acquaintances got together, ate pizza, yelled at Game 6 of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals, sang, played guitar, discussed the merits of Tommy Wiseau and yacht rock, and otherwise shot the breeze. I'm still not at a point in my life where I'll say no to a classic house party.
My friend CJ and her search for Kelly LeBrock's Weird Science shoes. Nike, I know you're reading this: the 40th anniversary of this movie is in a couple of years, and sneakerhead culture is still going strong. Now is the time to bring back the '84 Too Highs.
Daywrecker alert: Timeguessr, which is like Geoguessr, but for photography. (via Baio)
I love baseball, especially fake baseball, I love podcasts, and I love sleeping. Northwoods Baseball Sleep Radio combines all of those things in a single package. Think “baseball radio ASMR” and you're getting close. Kevin Goldstein of Fangraphs wrote up the show last January.
Shout out to local pizza chain Slice & Soda and their comically large pies.
There's something refreshing about /Film's Top 100 Movies of All Time list. There's the fact that it's unranked. There's the fact that every entry comes with a de facto double bill pairing. And there's the subtle choice of “top” in the title rather than best, because this list has a certain movieness to it; it reads like a who's who of rewatchables and comfort watches.
Watchlist roulette: Whit Stillman's acerbic yuppie talkfest Metropolitan and Oliver Stone's brain-melting conspiracy thriller JFK.
For absolutely no reason other than I find it wonderful, here a 2019 video of the great jazz guitarist Bill Frisell performing “You Are My Sunshine” as only he can.
RIP Tina Turner. She was, as the song goes, simply the best.
“Jesus visits my uncle's office” by Andrew Aftel (via Pome):
Jesus and his disciples
entered the office of my uncle,
whose name was Norman, and who sold
eyeglasses for great profits.
And Jesus said unto him,
“Are you having a good day
at the office?” And Norman replied,
“It is a fair day.” And Jesus said
unto him, “Is that right?” Then he
and his disciples proceeded to
take hammers, and they smashed all of the
eyeglasses. Then they opened the
cages where the secretaries worked,
so the workers flew away, like doves.
Normally, Dairy Queen is known for its hot eat and cool treats, but 'round these parts, most establishments are Treats Only. But! They serve chili dogs at the DQ in Lachine, so Steph and I made an evening out of visiting this particular location on the banks of the canal.
It is a miraculous thing, or anyway an impressive one, to invent a platform on which anyone can speak to anyone/everyone else, about anything. But because these people don't really value people or togetherness very highly, or have much to say, or consider the future as anything but a place where they will become richer, they don't really know what to do with that.
I keep shouting out Alex Pappademas because he's one of my favourite ex-Grantland writers, and his many of points of obsession (Ween, Keanu, Steely Dan) mirror my own. His recent profile of Dave Matthews for GQ is a corker.
Music television institution The Midnight Special has revamped its YouTube page, uploading full episodes and select performances. Check out Donna Summer shoulder-shimmying through “I Feel Love” as the backing band does a pretty good job of interpolating Giorgio Moroder, or Christopher Cross performing “Sailing” in an Earl Campbell Houston Oilers jersey.
Australian producer Dankmus, who turns classic Simpsons episodes into chill and/or groovy tracks, returns from a two-year hiatus with a rollicking plastic funk number.
The 2023 Cannes Film Festival is in full swing, and I'm thrilled that the notices for the new Martin Scorsese film Killers of the Flower Moon are positive.
In anticipation of Master Gardener, the great Scott Tobias goes long one of my favourite Paul Schrader films, Light Sleeper.
“Mushrooms” by Laura Kasischke:
Like silent naked monks huddled
around an old tree stump, having
spun themselves in the night
out of thought and nothingness—
And God so pleased with their silence
He grants them teeth and tongues.
Like us.
How long have you been gone?
A child’s hot tears on my bare arms.
