Fenster writes:
For you out-of towners.
An interesting vestige of the Bloomberg Nanny State Years: the well-known municipal ordinance mandating that all winter outerwear, boots, shoes, gloves and hats be the color black. Something to do with the absorbtion of sunlight and carbon footprints.
As evident from the subways, compliance remains high, even under the new Mayor,
and even among hipsters.
Paleo Retiree writes:
The English rock band Traffic formed during the druggiest of the drug years of the mid and late ’60s and, probably not coincidentally, experienced a super-checkered history, with members joining up and falling out, substance-abuse problems, ego clashes and such. But for their second album, recorded in 1968, all their talents and energies synched up and elevated each other. The album’s an eclectic-to-the-max near-masterpiece, IMHO, an unstable, fragrant mix of trancey psychedelia, jug band singalongs, folk-rock, soul music beats, and jazzy jams. It’s also loose and quirky in a ballsy way that might intrigue anyone who has come to associate those two qualities with anorectic indie films and wan hipster rock; the raucousness, exuberance and experimentalism on display here definitely come from another age.
In these current days of insane hysteria about teens and sex, I also can’t resist highlighting some of the lyrics from the song “Vagabond Virgin”: “Born like you were in a terrible mess / Didn’t know what it was to have a new dress … Till somebody said, ‘Let me take you to bed,’ / And with money and lies / They filled up your head. / You were barely thirteen, / A child from the villages, / So fresh on the scene.” Hey, teens are sexual beings, and some of them start having sex very young. Once upon a time it was possible to take note of these facts without needing to getting all hyper-moral and judgmental about them.
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Paleo Retiree writes:
I think it’s safe to say that a sizable majority of the people who post here are big fans of Cyd Charisse (born Tula Ellice Finklea in Amarillo, Texas). Has there ever been another performer so poised yet so lewd, so elegant yet so sexually frank?
Thanks to Brundle Guy for the link.
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Sir Barken Hyena writes:
Here’s a sampling of my Sunday drives in the great, and greatly maligned, state of Arizona. Note the “End The Fed” and Bitcoin bumperstickers. I often take my guitar with me, stopping midway to serenade the coyotes and rattlesnakes. They’re an uncomplaining audience.
Paleo Retiree writes:
Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:
In “Carlos the Jackal” Olivier Assayas trains his restless intelligence on the subject of international leftism. In its complete form the work is over five hours long, and though it’s split into three feature-length episodes, it retains a sprawling, decentralized quality that suits Assayas’ sensibilities, which have always favored entropy over the aesthetics of what I guess it’s still okay to call the “well-made film.” This has occasionally gotten Assayas into trouble: his 2002 “Demonlover,” which begins as a corporate thriller, ends in a gobbledygook of narrative noise that seems like a too-easy “FU” to genre considerations. But in “Carlos” the entropy is controlled, with peaks and valleys spread evenly throughout the film so that it becomes part of the texture rather than an end in itself. That texture is important: the entire picture is set in period, roughly the ’70s through the late ’80s, and it focuses on terrorists who, being constantly on the run, are without country, home, or center. These folks are like energized electrons blipping into and out of the orbits of various national and ideological nuclei. Assayas is trying to bring us into their unsettledness.
Paleo Retiree writes:
One of the commenters on the clip writes “Bo Diddley meets Bob Dylan,” and I certainly can’t do any better than that.
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Paleo Retiree writes:
A grab-bag of beautiful details from no-name buildings in Berlin:
When was the last time you ooh’d and aah’d over the details on a modernist building? Would modernists have us think that details and ornaments are unimportant? Yet they’re a big part of what transforms walking through a city, town or neighborhood into a pleasure rather than a chore.
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Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:
Blowhard, Esq. writes:
All of us here at UR agree we’re wonderful, highly talented people who put out a superior product day in and day out whenever we feel like it. We’re like The Atlantic, Entertainment Weekly, and The New Yorker combined only funnier and with more bush.
Thus, at one of our weekly editorial meetings, Paleo Retiree went into full Perry White Mode and started griping about our subpar site design. To shut him up we decided an overhaul was due, so we pooled our funds and hired graphic design superstar Chip Kidd to reconceive everything from the ground up.
One of our many high-level meetings during which we strategized on corporate synergy
Thing is, Kidd demands a high five-figure salary and new pair of vintage granny glasses for such gigs and all we could offer was a dime bag of weed. Lucky for us, that’s enough for Sir Barken Hyena so he took a crack at sprucing things up. Much to everyone’s extreme shock, he actually did a great job. Clean, sharp, and slick without being too fussy. Dig the new drunken header image, too.
I hope you enjoy it. Maybe the rest of us will actually start trying harder.*
*Probably not, don’t hold your breath.
Blowhard, Esq.
Callowman
Sherbrooke
Eddie Pensier
Enzo Nakamura
Epaminondas
Fabrizio del Wrongo
Fenster
Brundle Guy
Glynn Marshes
Paleo Retiree
Atypical Neurotic
Question Lady
Sax von Stroheim
Sir Barken Hyena
The Mistaken
