Primal Scream, “Come Together (7" Mix Andrew Weatherall)” (1990)

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Primal Scream’s third album, Screamadelica, threw out the band’s original alt-indie style in favor of house techno dance approaches. DJ Andrew Weatherall gets producer credit with Hugo Nicolson on much of the album, including “Come Together,” which appears in multiple variations on the original single and on later deluxe packages of the album, with production also handled by Terry Farley and Hypnotone. The album has a veritable rainbow of producers, including the Orb on arguably the best track, “Higher Than the Sun,” and the somewhat unexpected classic-rock man Jimmy Miller, who produced the Rolling Stones’ great run from Beggars Banquet to Goat’s Head Soup, as well as work for Blind Faith, Spencer Davis, and Traffic. He doesn’t seem to have a direct hand in “Come Together,” but his influence is felt there when you compare the tracks he did produce, “Movin’ On Up” and “Damaged.” “Come Together” is just a song, but what a song. The approach is all soul all the time, with heavenly chorus. On the album, it runs over 10 minutes, but most of the variations are closer in size to this 4:26 version. It’s the groove that appeals to me in all of them, with a phalanx of singers, a pure dance drive (see also the cavorting in the official video), and enough maracas-and-bongo-style percussion to fill the studio to the ceiling. Bobby Gillespie’s whisper-perfect vocals take it home. Somehow, back in the day, I wound up with the single—I might still have it around here somewhere—and I never had a problem letting it all play through. It’s just that kind of song. Once it has insinuated into your brain and lifestyle, you’re not likely to mind hearing it on repeat.

Obsession (2025)

You’ve got to hand it to Obsession for being so arguably unoriginal, borrowing familiar ideas from all over the place and simply making them work. All credit to director and writer Curry Barker for fashioning a masterful piece of horror that is entertaining as often as it shocks (including, for example, one of the best calculated jump scare cuts I’ve ever seen). Much of what makes Obsession so great is the performance by Inde Navarrette, which is brilliant. She plays a young woman named Nikki on whom Bear (Michael Johnston) has a crush. But he is too stammeringly shy to do anything about it. One day he wanders into a mysterious antique shop. It’s not run by Keye Luke like the one in Gremlins, but it does sell a mysterious novelty product called One Wish Willow. The One Wish Willow is packaged up with warnings. They even have a phone number to call, though we learn later (in a chilling scene that ends deliciously over the top) the person answering only says nothing can be done. The One Wish Willow looks like something you would buy from Archie McPhee or Spencer Gifts. The idea is that you get one wish. If you’re thinking about the classic horror story by W.W. Jacobs now, “The Monkey’s Paw,” you are on the right track. These wishes come true, and they can’t be reversed, but they don’t come true the way they were intended. Bear, of course, impulsively makes the wish we’re all expecting: “I wish Nikki Freeman loved me more than anyone in the fucking world.” The wish comes true. Nikki and Bear have a brief honeymoon period before a nightmare of rom-comic proportions descends. Nikki, who only ever had feelings for Bear “in the friend zone,” soon becomes an even more psychotic version of Alex Forrest (Glenn Close) from Fatal Attraction. She wails about Bear leaving her even if he’s just going to the bathroom. She plasters the inside of his apartment door with duct tape attempting to keep him trapped in there. She pitches screaming fits constantly. Her ambition has always been to be a writer and she’s prone to going off on poetic soliloquies that scare everyone around her, such as an incestual version of the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale. You have to see this movie to believe how good it is. The ending is amazing. Put this Obsession up there with “The Monkey’s Paw,” Gremlins, and Fatal Attraction too. Nice to see a horror show that knows how to do it. It’s funny too.

A Bend in the River (1979)

V.S. Naipaul’s novel of postcolonial Africa is a portrait of a shifting mosaic of chaos alternating with brief periods of peace. Salim is the main character and first-person narrator. Much of the action and characters are abstracted, though it’s possible to speculate on real-life sources. As the novel begins, Salim has purchased “a shop” and moved from an eastern coastal region to a small town in the interior located, yes, at a bend in a river. We don’t learn what town, what river, or even what Salim peddles in the shop. I think the intent is to make this a generic postcolonial tale. The current president of the unnamed country is referred to only as “the President.” He is a pervasive, distant presence, attempting to work the politics and economy to the greater good of the country and its populace. But his administration is also riddled with corruption, of course. Salim is a smart survivor, able for the most part to avoid the troubles all around him even as they threaten to bring him down with others in his circle of friends and acquaintances. The novel takes place over many years, during which the government’s approach to improvements changes constantly. Salim has a number of contacts, including a servant, who all get their time in this story. Some readers have taken A Bend in the River as a defense of European colonialism but I don’t really see that. In many ways this colonialism introduced terrible political ideas to Africans even as it destroyed practically everything that could contribute to stability. It seems to me Naipaul is pretty clear about that. Colonialism provided some stability, arguably, but changed life in Africa much for the worse. The chaos that followed independence, in about the 1950s and 1960s, is artifact of the failure of colonialism. Naipaul is scrupulous about not raising emotions of outrage, though he easily could have with some of the things going on here. Some of the worst, toward the end, did reach me and I could feel the rage. Naipaul seems more intent on keeping the temperature cool, even slightly comic, which ultimately made this novel feel more credible to me. I don’t think there’s any question he is addressing the problems colonialism brought to Africa. It was still trying to recover in 1979. It’s still trying to recover now. Read this with exercises by Joseph Conrad and J.M. Coetzee.

In case the library is closed due to AI assault, which is not happening.

The Thing (1982)

USA, 109 minutes

Director: John Carpenter

Writers: Bill Lancaster, John W. Campbell Jr.

Photography: Dean Cundey

Music: Ennio Morricone

Editor: Todd C. Ramsay

Cast: Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley, T.K. Carter, David Clennon, Richard Dysart, Richard Masur, Keith David, Charles Hallahan, Peter Maloney, Donald Moffat, Adrienne Barbeau

I see my Halliwell’s film guide falls decidedly on the side of the 1951 original of this picture, which gets two stars to John Carpenter’s 1982 remake’s none: “filled with revolting detail which alienated most audiences,” it tut-tuts. That’s funny because most audiences I know are united on preferring the Carpenter version (billed fore and aft in the titles as John Carpenter’s The Thing so file under J). That includes me, both thumbs wildly up, Howard Hawks or no. I’m not always on the side of, well, let’s call them modernists. I think, for example, many of them might also prefer Philip Kaufman’s 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers to the 1956 original directed by Don Siegel. I definitely prefer the original in that case.

My problems with The Thing as a franchise may start with the original 1938 story by John W. Campbell, Jr., “Who Goes There?” I found it deeply pulpy and dull but a reread may be in order at some point. There is no denying its place as a pioneering landmark of horror SF, with aliens from outer space that have an unusual ability to mimic other species biologically. Even Halliwell’s noticed that the 1951 movie, widely rumored to have been directed by Howard Hawks, dropped the conceit, noting it contains “the first space monster on film, and is quite nimbly made, though it fails to use the central gimmick from the original story.” It is actually exactly that central gimmick that makes Carpenter’s version superior in my mind, along with a bigger budget, a few decades of special effects technology improvements, and a commitment to the visceral. Some other time for nimble direction.

“The Thing in the Weeds” (1913)

William Hope Hodgson’s story of troubles at sea on a dark night of the soul appears in his Sargasso Sea Stories collection, which unfortunately seems to be hard to find at the moment. Not even Project Gutenberg has it online. There are some cheapie kindle products that carry this story, a Delphi kindle collection for Hodgson which includes practically everything he wrote, and a “megapack” that is not as ambitious. In “The Thing in the Weeds” a ship at sea plies relatively uncharted sectors of the northern Atlantic Ocean. It has been pushed there by unusual conditions of the winds and currents. The troubles start with a bad smell after dark one night, as heavy, impenetrable fog creeps in. Then the attacks by ... something ... begin. The second section of the story, the following day, is more where the impulse for rational explanations is indulged, as it turns out to be a giant squid. This story could still fall within realms of the fantastic and/or weird—maybe squids don’t get this big or this aggressive. I don’t know. Maybe they don’t smell this bad. It feels plausible enough, maybe, for people to believe it in 1913. Still, in this case, just to be a second-guessing bitch, I think I’d have preferred less explanation and more ongoing bad news. When attacks occur at night at sea, and a dark monster of some kind is referred to as a “thing”—well, then, you know you’ve got real trouble. Monsters and other horrible stuff at sea was one of Hodgson’s specialties, as the original collection would suggest. The best of his seagoing stories at large is likely “The Voice in the Night”—the “thing” in that one is an inevitably encroaching fungus that tastes good when you’re starving at sea but has unfortunate effects. “You don’t want to know what happens to them,” as cartoon characters often warn one another. I would classify “The Thing in the Weeds” as reasonably good “night of terror” stuff as well as a perfectly competent seagoing tale. But ultimately it is too concerned for me with explanation, which renders it more of an adventure story. Not that there’s anything wrong with that—and Hodgson was always good at whatever he applied himself to—but adventure, lost world, and mostly or entirely invisible monster stories are not really what I’m looking for.

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Beatles, “Come Together” (1969)

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This song was paired on the first single from Abbey Road with Frank Sinatra’s favorite Beatles song, the George Harrison-penned “Something.” For what it’s worth, my Billboard book says “Come Together” peaked at #1 for a week whereas “Something” stalled at #3 for two weeks. Not sure how that works, now or in 1969. I’m just reporting the facts. “Come Together” is credited to Lennon / McCartney according to their longstanding tradition, but it’s obviously a John Lennon song. In 1969, “Come Together” and Abbey Road more generally—and certainly the nearly eight minutes of “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” when I finally got to it—represented a ne plus ultra to me of rock music. I was listening to “Come Together” on AM but they were also playing it on FM. But I don’t hear it that way so much anymore. Beatles forays into rock, as such and as found for example all over the White Album, seem more peculiar, insular, and separate. No one did rock quite like the Beatles. I would look now more to, say, Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys, recorded January 1, 1970, as a standard of rock at that time, for better or worse. But the appeal of “Come Together” is enduring, among other things capable of evoking acute memories of the time for me. The words are heavy but nonsensical, insinuating ineffable, slightly menacing vapors the way Lennon could (see also “I Am the Walrus” or “Happiness Is a Warm Gun”). The Beatles’ “Come Together” is a stone classic and even it it’s possible I’ve heard it too much in my life it can still reach me unexpectedly. I also like the 2015 video on youtube, swirling in urgent shades of yellow, red, and orange, with the familiar kooky psychedelic animated style the Beatles adopted, as in Yellow Submarine, but wearing the costumes featured on the Abbey Road album cover, John all in white, Paul barefoot with dark jacket, etc. Good stuff.

Faces of Death (2026)

Although the original 1978 Faces of Death turned out to be mostly a put-up job (see also Cannibal Holocaust) it did include some of its main selling point, that is, actual footage of deaths, accidents, and corpses. I want to be clear I never went for it, nor for Mondo Cane or a similar series in the ‘90s whose name escapes me and appears to be forgotten even by the internet. I realized my limits with these exercises—plain images of death too real do not work for me as entertainment or in any other way. This so-called “reimagining” of Faces of Death is more my speed, all fiction and special effects, though sadly it does not have anything in particular to recommend it. Barbie Ferreira plays Margot Romero (Romero, wink-wink), who works for a social media company reviewing videos that have been reported by users. She approves some, disapproves others—her choices can be a funny commentary on this crazy world we live in today and may be the single best part of the picture. She runs across a series of videos made by the same content creator re-creating some of the mayhem and specific deaths in the original Faces of Death. Margot has her own sad history with gonzo internet content creation which we find more about in piecemeal fashion. She’s on the case but no one, of course, will listen. This Faces of Death relies on all kinds of familiar tropes such as only one character who can see the truth and is unable to convince anyone else, including police. Also, victims tend to make terrible decisions, as seen in countless other horror movies. Viewers often speak aloud to the screen, saying, “No, please, don’t do that.” Or wait, that was just me sitting by myself in my room. The motto of this picture: “The first rule of content creation is give the people what they want.” And we know well, in this day and age, all the things that can mean: conflict, violence, gore, and mean comments. Charli XCX has a part as one of Margot’s coworkers. Dacre Montgomery is the terrible killer, Arthur Spevak. You might recognize him from the TV series Stranger Things. I had hopes this Faces of Death would be better than it is, but it’s competent enough—and Ferreira is good enough in the main role—it’s probably worth putting toward the back end of some weekend double feature or horror fest.

“The Uncharted Isle” (1930)

I thought this story by Clark Ashton Smith was pretty darn good—sometimes, in the wastelands of horror fiction, a good story gives me relief and gratitude. So imagine my surprise and chagrin to find it ranked 4 (below average) and 6 (slightly above average) on the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB), where, admittedly, the rankings are scanty. I overcompensated with a 9 (very good but not quite perfect), which should maybe be an 8 (good; recommended)—present standings with my vote: 6.33. But come on. Sure, there’s maybe not much original about the premise. A man, the first-person narrator, is lost at sea, adrift in a small boat after a terrible fire on his ship. He washes up on an island where nothing is right. He doesn’t recognize the vegetation. He doesn’t even recognize the stars at night. Things only get more weird from there. The obvious interpretation is that he is still on the boat at sea, dreaming, or perhaps raving mad. It doesn’t feel like a dream, however. I haven’t read enough Smith yet to know whether he’s even good at dreams, but I don’t think it’s what he’s trying for here. What makes the story work for me is how real it feels, in spite of its fantastic details. Indeed, the details are crazy good and unnerving. He spends a day or so recovering with fresh water, strange fruit, and rest, then explores the island interior. He discovers a community on the other side. He wanders in and finds people there of an unknown ethnicity. He is unable to communicate with them. He appears to be like a ghost, walking unseen among them. They are preoccupied with something that seems to be of great concern. “At first I couldn’t make out what they were doing, or trying to do; but plainly they were much in earnest about it. Some were looking at the sea or the sun, and then at long scrolls of a paper-like material which they held in their hands; and many were grouped on a stone platform around a large, intricate metal apparatus resembling an armillary.” The strong implication, as the story goes along, is that they too are in a wrong place, or something has gone wrong with what they know. The vegetation and the sky may not be theirs either. It feels like interdimensional membranes have grown thin, or something equally out of Algernon Blackwood. It’s a very simple story—in then out of whatever this reality is. What makes it work is that this “other” place is so well and fully imagined. The details are precise and weird, even if the ostensible explanation—it was all the dream of a man adrift at sea for “days and days”—is lame. You come away feeling it could not possibly be just a dream.

Clark Ashton Smith, The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies
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Something Else by the Kinks (1967)

By 1967 the Kinks were well into their hiatus from inventing rock (“You Really Got Me,” “Who’ll Be the Next in Line,” etc.) and on to the semi-twee songwriting exercises of the Davies brothers Ray and Dave, chiefly Ray. Music hall and other home sources were increasingly turned to for so-called “baroque pop,” with, for example, the nearly perfect scanning of “A Well Respected Man,” or the lesser-known “Most Exclusive Residence for Sale,” both of which are from their previous LP Face to Face. Something Else is the album where Ray took over from signature producer Shel Talmy, for better or worse. That’s a close call, as Talmy has impressive credentials just with the Kinks, let alone with the Who (“My Generation”), the Easybeats (“Friday on My Mind”), Roy Harper (Folkjokeopus), and many others. Arguably Something Else comes on as dreary and slow but the merits of all its songs eventually disclose, at least that’s how it has worked for me. The big hit here, though it missed the top 40 in the US, is “Waterloo Sunset,” perhaps the single most highly rated song by the Kinks at large critically. Rock critic Robert Christgau called it “the most beautiful song in the English language,” many others have explicitly agreed, and the 2021 Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list lodged it at #14. I like it too, but for this era of Ray Davies’s songwriting still prefer “A Well Respected Man” and “Sunny Afternoon,” perhaps from the exposure, as they did make the US top 40. I had to work at Something Else a little, as I’ve said. The deluxe versions do little to improve it, with too many stereo / mono duplications that don’t do much for me. Dave’s contributions (“Love Me Til the Sun Shines,” “Funny Face,” and cowriting “Death of a Clown”) evoke some of the band’s rock inclinations to good effect, lending a nice bolt of it to the proceedings. There’s some interesting sense or awareness of the sun here. “Love Me Til the Sun Shines” is followed by “Lazy Old Sun,” which is a bit too droll for me, as is its follow-up, “Afternoon Tea,” even though I’m still singing along. “Funny Face” sets things right again at that point, rock-wise. I feel like I have ended up liking Something Else almost against my will, an unsettling sensation. But I’ll probably play it again one of these days soon.

The Intruder (2004)

L'Intrus, France, 119 minutes

Director: Claire Denis

Writers: Claire Denis, Jean-Pol Fargeau, Jean-Luc Nancy

Photography: Agnes Godard

Music: Stuart Staples

Editor: Nelly Quettier

Cast: Michel Subor, Gregoire Colin, Yekaterina Golubeva, Beatrice Dalle, Florence Loiret Caille, Alex Descas, Bambou, Lolita Chammah

Not surprisingly, perhaps, director and cowriter Claire Denis likely intends many different things by the title of this ponderous and obscure but enrapturingly beautiful picture. Based on an essay by the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, it’s the story of a one-time mercenary, Louis Trebor (Michel Subor), in search of literally a new heart and thereby somehow his long-estranged son. The heart is thus an intrusion into his body, he wants desperately to intrude on his son’s life, and the movie itself is an intrusion into the essay (which I don’t know). Early in the show, living in a cabin on an isolated mountain of the western Alps, Louis kills and disposes of the body of a random nighttime intruder into his cabin. So on so forth. The knife is an intrusion on that body. Scraping electric guitar music by Tindersticks principal Stuart Staples.

In fact, thinking of it some more, the title can be taken as an intrusion into cinema history. It’s stupefyingly generic. There are other movies or TV miniseries called The Intruder from 1933, 1953, 1962, 1975, 1979, 1981, 1999, 2005, 2010, 2016, 2019, 2020, 2024, and 2025. I don’t think I’ve seen any of them. The most famous might be the 1962, directed by Roger Corman and starring William Shatner, Frank Maxwell, and Beverly Lunsford. The 2019 horror show gets pride of place in the IMDb search returns. I’m not saying all these intrusions are conscious on Denis’s part, especially not the other pictures. But I bet a bunch of them are. It’s just the way she rolls.

“The Black, Dead Thing” (1933)

Frank Belknap Long’s original title for this story, as published in the edition of Weird Tales pictured above, is a nice artifact of the H.P. Lovecraft era in horror, heaving up with many a gasping shudder “The Black, Dead Thing”—you can positively feel the quivering in that comma. Long was among Lovecraft’s best-known correspondents. “Second Night Out,” the way I found this story in an Alfred Hitchcock-branded anthology and the way it mostly appears in reprints now, is quite a bit more reserved, focused on a key point in an oceangoing journey as I understand it: getting one’s “sea legs” after a day or two of nausea from the pitching rolls of the deep sea. I like the ambiguity, which is in the story but not the original title, that the incident at hand could as well be a delusion while sick. On the other hand, in many ways the story does seem to be focused on erasing any possibility of mistake. Long’s story reminded me of F. Marion Crawford’s classic 1885 “The Upper Berth,” with its creepy corporeal ghost onboard a ship at sea. This thing, like that thing, smells bad. Coming into contact with it, in the dark of course, it feels like a writhing eel. That’s colorful. Our guy’s vacation probably never had a chance and we’re told he spent a long time saving the money for it. I will mention that the black, dead thing is thankfully not racism (you have to worry about that in 1933) but rather something more on the cosmic order, ancient and eternal. Long attacks with blunt instruments, shocking us with darkness and sensory details, attempting somewhat successfully to numb us by evoking a massive featureless face of evil. Whoever changed the title might have done Long and all of us a favor, more lulling us into what becomes a brutal inexplicable life-or-death confrontation. And this, whatever it is, we learn, always seems to happen to someone on the second night out of this voyage. I wouldn’t call this story a classic—so far Long looks to me like one of the more minor figures in Lovecraft’s personal coterie—but I must say I appreciated getting to the eel thing on my own within the story, rather than shrieked at me from the title.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories for Late at Night, ed. Robert Arthur
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Brian Eno With Kevin Shields, “The Weight of History” (2018)

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Here’s one of those special Record Store Day products that’s definitely worth a listen. Full disclosure, I still have not made a Record Store Day purchase. This lengthy track was released as one side of a so-called double-A-sided 12-inch single. It comes of a collaboration between ambient meister Brian Eno and My Bloody Valentine principal Kevin Shields, an association that feels so natural it also feels overdue for 2018. The other side of the 12-inch, “Only Once Away My Son,” was recorded in 2017, but that’s not much better. As a dirge, “The Weight of History” feels haunted, with foghorn bottoms, unexpected crackling textures, winsome melody, and moaning. In many ways it seems most like just another artifact in Eno’s ambient gallery. But if there’s one thing Eno is good at (and actually there are many) it’s collaborating. Shields and MBV had a reputation for making the loudest music anyone had ever heard in concert, and the albums were decked out with dense layers of feedback and other churning, vibrating noise as setting for delicate melodies. Eno provides the gently lilting tape loops here while Shields works his gentled tremolo-based distortions. Google AI, which sounds like a fan, lets it rip (sourced to Wikipedia and GuitarGangsters.net): “Shields scales back the aggressive, wall-shaking volume of My Bloody Valentine in favor of micro-textured ambient architecture. He swaps explosive distortion for subtle, process-driven soundfields that lock into Brian Eno's generative and tape-loop aesthetics.... Instead of aggressive whammy-bar chord sweeps, Shields applies his signature pitch-bending tremolo control to sustain string whines and single-note drones, keeping the pitch gently drifting and ‘out of tune’ by micro-intervals.” All I can add is: Yup. No wonder people get hooked on using our future robot overlords to help write.

The Secret Glory (1922)

Here’s another novel by Arthur Machen casually hailed here and there as a masterpiece. He spent several years on it at the turn of the 20th century, but it was not published until 1922. In a preface, Machen notes an encounter with an old teacher and mentor. “I am just finishing a book,” Machen says, “a book that everybody will hate.” It’s a fair assessment. I had a good deal of trouble getting through it, though it’s not without its merits. I loved his sardonic take on public school sports and the cruelties of adolescents in bunches. The main character, Ambrose Meyrick, is obviously autobiographical, a dreamer and intellect with no aptitude for physical play. He’s at the school because his uncle is a master, who unfortunately abuses him. An early (and lengthy) caning of Ambrose is notably vivid and sadistic. Ambrose is a reject but he’s on to bigger things in the scheme of life and death, namely, as near as I can tell, the Holy Grail itself. Machen’s speculation on how it got to Wales has something to do with Romans and/or the Roman Catholic Church. As an interesting side note, Protestants are much reviled here. The story makes a kind of sense but only the maddest kind. Ambrose never finishes school and eventually escapes the small Welsh town and his uncle. His father, now dead, was a certified mystic so Ambrose comes by it honestly. His uncle, a cleric as well as instructor, is all materialist with earthly ambitions. Machen is acid on him. Eventually scenes out of Rabelais intrude the narrative. Ambrose is a fan and speaks to his girlfriend about Panurge, Pantagruel, and such. Mostly bewildering for me, but it does make me want to read Rabelais. There is a grail here. It seems likely to be the Holy Grail, from the way it’s described and by its hypnotizing colors. Ambrose is bohemian in lifestyle, traveling to London with his girlfriend and living with her there (and reading Rabelais). I don’t, contra Machen, hate The Secret Glory, but it was a slog for me. It seemed like a lot of work for very little. It also seemed to promise more, perhaps, with a slower, more thoughtful reread, but I’m not sure I will ever get to that.

In case the library is closed due to AI assault, which is not happening.

True Colours (1980)

Split Enz started as an art-rock unit in the ‘70s, based in New Zealand and under heavy influence of Roxy Music. As the Finn brothers, Tim and Neil, came to the fore of the outfit via band changes and fortunes they morphed toward pop music. True Colours is a certain ideal of the late-‘70s new wave version of pop, a complete package, all decked out in primary colors. Your choice for the cover scheme: yellow and blue, red and green, purple and yellow, or blue and orange. More combos were added later and the vinyl itself was laser-etched with the triangles, squares, and rectangles featured on the cover. It was a complete package because, in terms of the music, there’s not one clinker on this album. Most were written by Tim Finn. Two—“Double Happy” written by Eddie Rayner and the LP closer “The Choral Sea” written by the band—are instrumentals, which suggests to me a band so enraptured in love with what they can create they simply shed them like sparks. They are high points. Compare “Space Invader” on The Pretenders. On the rest of the set, the simple verse-chorus-bridge attacks with guitar breaks and vocal harmonies are classic pop music to my brain. A few weeks ago I was complaining about the Whitney Houston / American Idol warbling that now occupies swaths of the pop music landscape (e.g., Kesha), but this Split Enz album is more like it for me. Beatlesque at its most abstract, never specifically evoking them. The songs range from the high-spirited romp of “Shark Attack” to the near-operatics of “I Hope I Never,” so sweetly sad. “Poor Boy” is stately, almost majestic, with a hypnotic tinkling hook. “How Can I Resist Her” sports a great, zooming, synthy instrumental break. Part of the secret brew to new wave and True Colours is an openness to synthesizers and keyboards for textures and light futuristic touches. It was a good direction for pop music and endured for much of the ‘80s (Whitney Houston was released in 1985 and the rest is history there). I’m not sure why, but, as much as I loved this album in its time and still (and earlier efforts such as Dizrythmia too), I never followed closely the further adventures of the Finn brothers, including Crowded House, which I don’t know well though generally like what I’ve heard. None of it has ever sounded as good to me as True Colours. It is a quintessential new wave landmark, with Drums and Wires, Fear of Music, The Pretenders, and 154. One of the best.

“Like Mother Used to Make” (1949)

I’m starting to see where Shirley Jackson may have been done some disservice by editors and/or publishers. The Library of America edition edited by Joyce Carol Oates restores the full title to Jackson’s Lottery collection originally published in 1949: The Lottery; or, The Adventures of James Harris. It was simply The Lottery and Other Stories in most editions. The idea of James Harris, a literary figure who traces back at least to an English 17th-century murder ballad, may not have been fully developed across all of Jackson’s stories in the collection, but James Harris (or variations of the name) shows up frequently as a sinister demonic figure, notably in “The Daemon Lover” and “Like Mother Used to Make.” “Like Mother” is one of his best appearances. He seems to have unusual powers, or at least a preternatural, seductive confidence. David and Marcia are neighbors in an apartment building and have some kind of ill-defined relationship. Marcia would likely call it a friendship, no more. David has traits that suggest he could be gay. He’s fussy and fastidious and thinks a lot about things like decor and silverware patterns. Marcia is more of an ungainly mess, always late to everything. On this occasion, David is making her dinner at his place and we get well inside his head as he works on it. He doesn’t seem terribly attracted to Marcia. In many ways she annoys him. But they are friends and get along with mild friction. Just as they finish eating Marcia hears someone at her door across the way. It’s “Mr. Harris,” who says, “I just thought I’d stop by.” He completely takes over the social situation and seems to have designs on Marcia. Somehow, before long, David is excusing himself from his own place, leaving it and going over to Marcia’s. He can hear that Marcia and Mr. Harris have turned on his radio. “Wearily,” he begins to clean Marcia’s place. It’s a remarkable situation and unsettling to witness as a reader. Even if David is gay it’s still humiliating, forced (somehow) to leave his own place to them. Jackson may have intended, somewhat homophobically, to deepen David’s humiliation by making him gay and explicitly less manly and thus prone to the will of Harris, as opposed to gay and why would he care. Although, well, it’s 1949 and likely at best he is closeted—and he abandons his own place to them, that’s the fine point, bowing to Harris. Presumably Harris could have David too if he wanted.

Shirley Jackson, Novels and Stories
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Charles Bradley, “Can’t Fight the Feeling” (2018)

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Charles Bradley was born in 1948 but found few outlets for his musical ambitions until this century. Per Wikipedia, his first single came in 2002. Abandoned by his mother, he spent much of his early life homeless on the streets and roaming the country at large until finally working as a restaurant chef gave him an income he could rely on. The long delay in recognition was partly a matter of his stage fright and also perhaps due to his calling card as a James Brown impersonator. He learned his chops there—how could it not have served his career well?—but may have limited his bookings. I don’t hear Brown as much in this early single from his last album, Black Velvet, as I do the Stax-like approach of an act like Sam & Dave or Eddie Floyd, defined in many ways by its horn charts. Others have compared him to Otis Redding. But JB is plainly in the mix as well. Bradley’s rough guttural style of singing and his throat-clotted screams say it all. There’s no question he belongs in the halls of soul music. He died too soon, even at 68, with too little public appreciation. He was a natural, and no doubt the close study of classic 1960s soul served him well even if it did take most of his life to start to get the attention he deserved. In 2018 I did not know his story, already dead by then from stomach cancer, with less than 20 years in any kind of spotlight. I just liked the raw feel and horns of “Can’t Fight the Feeling” and the faith Bradley obviously had in soul music and all the ways it can galvanize, soothe, and reach ecstatic heights.

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie (2025)

For such a frothy light time travel comedy with a notable Ghostbusters vibe, Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie comes with a long, winding pedigree. First, in the late 2000s, it was an internet-based series, Nirvana the Band the Show (the extra “n” in Nirvanna the Band would come later). Ten years on it was two seasons in TV-land proper, with Nirvanna the Band the Show. Now add the Movie, which is where I come in, the only one I know. But apparently the idea is basically the same in all: Nirvanna the Band principals Matt Johnson (vocalist, and director and cowriter of this picture) and Jay McCarrol (pianist and cowriter) are perpetually trying to get a booking at the Rivoli nightclub in their hometown of Toronto, cooking up various outrageous publicity stunts. Nirvanna the Band consists of McCarrol playing piano while Johnson improvises spoken-word rants and chants. The featured stunt here involves leaping off the top of the CN Tower and parachuting into the Skydome stadium. If you’re like me this amazing footage is looked at through your fingers. The human fear of heights is universal, and severely challenged here. These guys get away with everything, parking their RV any old place in Toronto and getting dangerous tools up onto the tower with them. Anyway, the weather’s bad, the Skydome roof is closing even as they jump, and they can’t make it through in time, landing instead on the roof of the stadium. That’s pretty much the way everything goes here. Johnson and McCarrol have lots of simple comic ideas that work—camera crew in tow for everything, for example, and making up shit we have no choice but to go along with, like the time travel aspect, which is all there to be discovered and unpacked, if you can. If it’s even possible. Johnson and McCarrol are likable blokes. Johnson likes to do his thinking with a whiteboard. His pants are ridiculously ripped. McCarrol obviously has most of the musical talent. The picture rushes about headlong and gets by on its own affability as much as anything. All bad language is bleeped out. I can’t speak to anyone who has been with them since about 2007, but I’m curious now about a reverse-engineering perspective and maybe looking into the earlier incarnations. I hesitate to guarantee a good time here, because this is a very odd one, but I can say for sure at least that I had a good time.

Crime and Punishment (1866)

The first of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s majors was a reread for me. I have always liked it, but perhaps never more. It is intense, sprawling, never less than fascinating, and compulsively readable—you just have to get used to the names. Our main guy, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, is one of literature’s great antiheroes. He’s not particularly likable but it’s also hard not to pull for him. As with the unnamed narrator in Notes From Underground he is at war with the terms of existence. There is some sense that his double-homicide axe murders—the first 100 to 150 pages of the novel are harrowing and mesmerizing—is some kind of philosophical test of a “superman” idea. Certainly the 23-year-old Raskolnikov has published an essay to that effect, which brings the attention of the police. There’s an even greater sense he has no idea why he killed. If it was part of a robbery he botched it entirely. If it’s to rid the world of a shrewish pawnbroker, all right, maybe, but he also kills the pawnbroker’s kindly sister Lizaveta. You need the stupid “superman” idea to justify that at all, and basically you can’t, and basically Raskolnikov knows that. But Dostoevsky is not done with just these murders. He goes spinning off handfuls of threads with a web of characters associated with Raskolnikov—his mother and sister, his sister’s suitors, a good and loyal friend, destitute families, and a police investigator who is reported to be the model for TV’s Columbo. Crime and Punishment was serialized and involved agonies of rewriting for Dostoevsky. What he produced may feel impromptu and full of digressions but in fact it is well organized for what it is doing. It works first as a thriller and then, as long as it has your attention, it has another million things to tell you and they are all interesting. You are there for them. I don’t know how to describe reading this amazing novel any other way. It has always held my attention even though I don’t always remember specific details. How could I forget it was a double-homicide axe murder?! Yet what I always remember, even when it’s not as fresh, is that it is a wonderful experience to read it. Any translation, but this time I was happy to go with Constance Garnett again, one of the great translators of Dostoevsky (and Chekhov too).

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.

Brazil (1985)

UK / USA, 132 minutes

Director: Terry Gilliam

Writers: Terry Gilliam, Tom Stoppard, Charles McKeown, Charles Alverson

Photography: Roger Pratt

Music: Michael Kamen

Editor: Julian Doyle

Cast: Jonathan Pryce, Katherine Helmond, Kim Greist, Ian Holm, Robert De Niro, Michael Palin, Ian Richardson, Bob Hoskins, Derrick O’Connor, Peter Vaughan, Kathryn Pogson, Jim Broadbent, Sheila Reid

I like the array of genre labels at IMDb for director and cowriter Terry Gilliam’s dystopic SF comedy. Besides the predictable—"dark comedy,” “dystopian sci-fi,” etc.—there is the perfectly apt “steampunk.” That gets to the heart of both what’s good and not so good about Brazil. It is dystopia practically by the numbers and wants it all ways it can get it: nightmares of calcified bureaucracy, ongoing random terrorist bombings, brutal police state, rampant incompetence, nothing mechanical really works, humanity is benumbed and disappearing into plastic surgery for the rich and misery for the rest. The future is crowded, overheated, and overstuffed. The technology is semi-powerful PC computers in Victorian garb. Office workers look at Marx Brothers movies on them when the boss isn’t looking. Yes, steam is visible.

Jonathan Pryce is Sam Lowry, a low-ranking bureaucrat happy to hunker down in his specific situation. He wants no further responsibilities. But his mother (Katherine Helmond) is rich, can’t stand the stigma of his lack of ambition, and keeps pulling strings to get him promoted. He has so far resisted them successfully. At night he has dreams of a woman and then he thinks he sees her in real life. He uses the surveillance power of the state via his job to track her down. She’s Jill Layton (Kim Greist), a truck driver who may or may not have terrorist ties. It doesn’t matter for Sam, who has loved her from afar and now wants to love her up close. What could possibly go wrong?

“The God of Dark Laughter” (2001)

I was surprised to find a story by Michael Chabon in The Weird—I had not realized he wrote in that vein. But he does and here we are. This was published originally in the New Yorker, so we’re not fooling around. It’s almost a parody of cosmic horror, lifting some of H.P. Lovecraft’s ideas whole and generally monkeying around with the Cthulhu mythos. Why not? It’s set up as a mystery, told by the district attorney in a quiet rural area where they don’t see much crime. The victim is a clown that has been horribly mutilated. All the skin from his head and shoulders has been cut away with “a very sharp knife.” It seems like I’ve been seeing a lot of clown and killer clown stuff lately, so I perked up for that part—really the whole story is pretty good. As our investigating DA digs into the case he starts finding literature that references a conflict between two ancient sects. One worships the God of Dark Laughter. The term “coulrophobia” comes up along the way: “morbid, irrational fear of or aversion to clowns.” Nice touch. The specific Lovecraft reference is to the mythical author Friedrich von Junzt (which is actually original to Robert E. Howard though Lovecraft used the device too). Von Junzt wrote, “Űber das Finstere Lachen” (“About the Dark Laughter”), as well as “a small volume bound in black leather and printed in no alphabet known to me, the letters sinuous and furred with wild diacritical marks.” An actual baboon in a clown suit shows up at one point, there for the color mostly (and the Poe reference). It takes the story a while to get to its concepts. The God of Dark Laughter is “the proto-Urartian deity Yȇ-Heh.” Chabon is obviously having fun making stuff up (or maybe it’s original Lovecraft? all the same). The god in opposition to Yȇ-Heh is “Ai, the God of Unbearable and Ubiquitous Sorrow.” Yȇ-Heh’s followers are hedonist, cruel, and mocking. Ai’s “gloomy fanatics saw the world as no less horrifying and cruel than did their arch-enemies [Yȇ-Heh’s followers], but their response to the whole mess was a permanent wailing.” Never mind the inadvertent reference to artificial intelligence. Ai-ites are on a mission to wipe out the remaining followers of Yȇ-Heh, most of whom “have survived, for the most part, by taking on work in traveling circuses." Thus does Chabon close this loop. More than anything it is a traditional mystery story with exotic touches of cosmic horror and Chabon’s inspired language. It all hangs together and it’s quite good, very entertaining.

The Weird, ed. Ann & Jeff VanderMeer
Story not available online.

Eagles, “Best of My Love” (1974)

[listen up!]

Those not really in favor of the Eagles, where I count myself, often nonetheless seem to have one of their songs that they will admit to liking a lot. “Peaceful Easy Feeling,” “Desperado,” “Witchy Woman,” I don’t know, you name it—even haters seem to have a soft spot for one or the other in the widescreen catalog. They made the top 40 18 times, hit #1 five times, and I believe I’ve heard their best-of is the bestselling album of all time. This is not an unpopular act. They reached me in the winter of early 1975 with their first #1. Product of collaboration between Glenn Frey, Don Henley, and J.D. Souther, it is sweet and melancholy with no (make that little) (make that arguably verging on rancid) bitterness, a tale of resignation straight out of the freewheeling breakup / get a divorce / got to move on ‘70s. Don’t, don’t do it, don’t use the word insipid. I’m feeling a little sad here. What appealed to me chiefly was the hit off the vibe of Carole King’s immortal “It’s Too Late,” the resignation to a relationship ending. I always found these breakup songs of the time the ultimate in romantic, which may explain too much. Related: “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be” by Carly Simon and “Someone to Lay Down Beside Me” by Linda Ronstadt. The sadness in these songs is abundant, but “It’s Too Late” and “Best of My Love” also bear an undertow of liberation, a certain ecstasy of anticipation. “Best of My Love” (I strongly suspect the irony of the title was lost on the authors, but then I’m a hater) is perhaps more specific on how the cookie is crumbling, referring directly to the toxic back and forth when they are in full tailspin: “We try to talk it over / But the words come out too rough / ... / I wake up and worry / What's gonna happen today?” This one filled me with a delicious self-satisfied melancholy then and it can still make me ache a little now.

Wise Blood (1952)

When I first read it I didn’t care much for this short novel by Flannery O’Connor, her first. But I read it again recently, for the sake of the lists of 20th-century novels I’m going through, and liked it much more this time. It does shore up a lot of my biases about Southern writers and their strange ways of religion. Yet I could feel—or maybe I read it somewhere—that O’Connor has detectable affection for these oddball nitwits. The main character, Hazel Motes (great name—they’re all great here), has just arrived in the city. It is unspecified but in director John Huston’s 1979 movie version it’s Memphis and that just feels right. “Haze,” as the third-person narrator often calls him, is all fucked up. He has a strong calling to preach, and people see him as a preacher by his manner and dress. He hotly denies that but has plans to preach a “Church Without Christ” message and win a following. He attaches himself to a con man pretending to be blind and his 15-year-old daughter—Asa and Sabbath Weeks. Sabbath has her name because she was born on a Sunday. In turn, a young man barely adult, Enoch Emery, attaches himself to Haze. Enoch believes the “new jesus” exists inside a case in a natural history museum, a preserved corpse. I see now at Wikipedia that Wise Blood can fairly be called a fix-up novel as a handful of O’Connor’s stories, including one from her master’s thesis, are involved. That explains in part, perhaps, why this very short novel feels so packed full of incident and action. But O’Connor also has a sharp and pointed voice, compressing a lot into just a few words. Her dialect is absolutely perfect, with a refreshingly light touch that still conveys all the drawl and twang. It’s not often that dialect is this good. I would not want to live in the world of Wise Blood, but it certainly is worth the visit and I’m glad I gave it another chance. I saw the movie years before I read it even once. Enoch’s pronunciation of “muv-zee-vum” has always stuck with me for some reason—Dan Shor is the performer—and for some reason I really like that it comes directly from the novel. In a way it almost perfectly captures the comical and pathetic yet somehow lovable abject ignorance of these characters. They are all you see here but the kaleidoscope works exceptionally well.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over. (Library of America)

“Valentine” (1996)

This Joyce Carol Oates story appears simple (and fanciful) but it is working on many levels. It’s a memoir piece told first-person by a grown woman, Erin, recalling an incident (fantasy) when she was 15 years old during a snowstorm on a Valentine’s Day. There’s a lot of specificity—1959, Buffalo, New York. She is living with an aunt on her mother’s side. The rest of her family, seven of them, have “dispersed” and no longer live together. It’s a whopper of a snowstorm, with drifts up the side of the house to the attic and her room. In the middle of the storm, in the middle of the night, a car pulls up outside her house. It’s her algebra teacher, Mr. Lacey! Just that morning she had slipped him an anonymous valentine. He’s the teacher she has a crush on, a young man still in his 20s. He stairsteps up the snowdrift by the side of the house and collects her to take her ice skating. She’s never been very good at it, but she improves in his kind company. He speaks strangely, the words italicized. Erin? Make haste, he says at her window. He drives a Volkswagen. While skating they encounter some jeering bully boy types who pelt him with snowballs and make him bleed. After skating they stop for coffee at “the Bison City Diner adjacent to the Greyhound bus station.” She follows his lead and takes her coffee black, but she hasn’t learned yet to like coffee. She feels too awkward with him to order food. The narrator, the memoirist, plays it straight all the way as if this were a story that really happened. Of course it can’t be, but it lives exactly between a daydream and a night-dream. It’s another story that captures the sense of dreaming well, but the action is all the fantasy of an adolescent with a crush on a teacher. I like the way Oates uses a legendary Buffalo snowstorm, with snowdrifts you can climb. Mr. Lacey is perfectly chaste and aboveboard with Erin, but the fact he comes for her in the middle of the night speaks to a reckless romantic side of him, at least in Erin’s view. This story goes well afield of reality, but it has gritty edges and undertones. Mostly I take it as the fantasy of an adolescent girl who is ready to let loose and let it fly—and I believe every bit of that.

Joyce Carol Oates, The Collector of Hearts
Story not available online.

Craig Finn, “God in Chicago” (2017)

[listen up!]

I would not call this song particularly sad—“melancholy” might be the better term, starting with the untimely death of a friend. But full disclosure “God in Chicago” rarely fails to reduce me to wanton sobbing. Maybe that’s because it’s so goddamn beautiful. And it may be a bit of a misnomer to call it a song, though some singing does occur. But not much. Mostly Finn, a principal in the band the Hold Steady with a now-established solo career, is simply talking, storytelling, accompanied by somber piano chords. I don’t know the Hold Steady well enough to compare. The singer / storyteller’s friend has died, and his friend’s sister has discovered “unfinished business” among his effects, “roughly the size of a baseball.” She doesn’t want to just throw it out so she contacts this storyteller, who has a college buddy willing to buy it, “but we’d have to come to him.” The dealer is in Chicago. The sister wants to come with. They start early and spend the time listening to 1999 and Led Zeppelin III on a failing boombox in the backseat. They get there. The deal goes down without incident. Then the sister says, “I've never been to Chicago / I've got nothing going on tomorrow / Maybe we could stay here tonight / Lose ourselves in the glass and light.” And so they do. They get a hotel room, eat and drink at an Italian restaurant. It’s headed exactly where you think. Or, as Finn memorably puts it, “We all want the same things,” which is also the name of the album this track is from. As a sentiment, as a truism, as a platitude, I’m not sure it has ever sounded more right. The song ends on their return: “We drove back all hungover / And all the way to Eau Claire, she played with her hair / Came up on St. Paul and she was sobbing.” So am I. So are you. And that’s it, the end, except for maybe playing it again, to verify the amazing, powerful magic going on here. I’ve since been through Finn’s solo catalog and haven’t found anything close to this searing, haunting tale.

Send Help (2026)

The latest from director Sam Raimi is more survival adventure than straight-up horror—but it is laced as always with streaks of comedy. Rachel McAdams is Linda Liddle, a brilliant office spreadsheet analyst wonk with a serious lack of social skills. She’s carrying her corporate team in many ways but the bros that constitute most of it have little regard for her. She is the only one surprised when she is passed over for a promotion she has earned, deserves, and expected. Linda is also a major fan of the reality show Survivor and has long been attempting to get an audition to be on it. We see portions of her video application, which is pathetic and ridiculous of course, but also sets up what follows. Indeed, it’s interesting that Survivor is so central to the story here because my theory about that show is that it is primarily about office politics, using those types of skills to get ahead and win. Then she ends up on a plane with her team, going to Thailand for a business meeting. But the plane goes down and Linda is washed up on a remote island with her boss Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien), who got his job in the first place because he’s the son of Linda’s former boss. On the island, of course, it’s Linda who has all the survival skills, using the little available to them to create shelter, gather fresh water and food, hunt wild boar, and even brew liquor. The arc of the story feels like it’s headed toward an enemies-to-lovers romance narrative. But this is Sam Raimi so that’s not going to happen, and besides, the difference between Linda and Preston is stark: she is likable in spite of everything. He is not. There are occasional eruptions of extreme violence in Send Help but for the most part they come somehow with a light touch. McAdams often plays it broadly but she’s good in this more or less loser tomboy role. O’Brien has little more to do than be an asshole and that’s what he does. Lots of elements here feel familiar because we have seen them elsewhere—Triangle of Sadness may be the most obvious source they are lifting from. Still, it’s reasonably entertaining all the way. McAdams has everything she needs to pull off her role effectively. It’s satisfying to see her turn the tables on the bro culture. Is it even remotely realistic? Well, that’s another question. But it’s always entertaining enough.

“Vintage Season” (1946)

[spoilers] On ISFDB this long story is credited to C.L. Moore and her husband and frequent collaborator Henry Kuttner, but the Alfred Hitchcock-branded anthology where I found it credits only Moore. Wikipedia says it’s mainly Moore. Both Moore and Kuttner won kudos for their work in horror and/or weird literature, together and apart, so it’s all the same to me. I’ve read some great stories by Kuttner and want to get to more by Moore. This one involves foreigners with indeterminate accents. They show up in New York City and want to rent a room in the main character’s place for the month of May. Others show up who want to buy it outright and name a way overvalued price. These are unusual tourists who say the attraction is to the fine spring weather. They turn out to be time travelers and disaster tourists, attending “vintage seasons” on vacation. They are coming from 14th-century Canterbury and headed next to 10th-century Rome. The story takes its time arriving at its points. For much of it the visitors are simply mysterious to the host and his girlfriend, who scheme to find a way to get the first group out and sell the place to the second. As I’ve already spoiled that part of the story—it’s absolutely done well enough that it remains worth reading for its own sake, and if you object to spoilers please stop reading now and look up the story—I will also mention the disaster the time travelers are there to witness is a meteor strike on the city, which destroys it. The reason for the popularity of our guy’s place is that the historical record showed it survived intact. There are enough clues here that I was pretty sure about the time travel aspect before it was revealed, or maybe I remembered it from reading the story as a kid, but I completely forgot and never saw coming a meteor strike, though I knew it was going to be something big. The foreshadowing is basically definitive that way. As with any time travel story, don’t think it through or everything starts to come apart. If time travel and disaster tourism were a thing, for example, you would expect to see a lot more people than this handful showing up for the target date. But never mind. It otherwise works spectacularly well, with a methodical build-up, intriguing ideas and tension, and a late-shot last sentence that defines the scope by unexpectedly enlarging it to vast proportions. Did I mention Moore and Kuttner specialized in cosmic horror?

Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories for Late at Night, ed. Robert Arthur
Listen to story online.

All I Really Want to Do (1965)

Cher’s first album was produced by her then-partner Sonny Bono. It got a chance mostly on the strength of their hit “I Got You Babe,” though Sonny’s industry associations with Phil Spector and hosts of ace session musicians didn’t hurt. That said, the production here in general is far more lackluster than sparkling. Cher, or both, not to mention the whole world, were in thrall to Bob Dylan at the time. The album produced a top 20 hit in the title song, a Dylan cover, which the Byrds also released as a single that autumn. Cher’s version did better and it’s the best thing on the album, emphasizing her confident clarion vocals to good effect. Two more Dylan covers (“Don’t Think Twice” and “Blowin’ in the Wind”) are part of the makeup of the rest of the album. The album bears the same familiar formula of the times: 1 hit, 11 covers, 32 minutes. Perhaps because of the Dylan influence, notable strains of folk here are mixed in with the pop, such as “The Bells of Rhymney,” a song by Idris Davies and Pete Seeger. “See See Rider” is credited as traditional but I think of it more as rock in the superior hands of the Animals and Mitch Ryder. Producer Sonny had a hand in two songs, “Needles and Pins” cowritten with Jack Nitzsche and a hit for the Searchers (and, much later, Tom Petty with Stevie Nicks) and “Dream Baby” (not to be confused with Suicide’s “Dream Baby Dream”). I suspect there was a lot of snickering in the studio while the Chris Andrews song “Girl Don’t Come” was recorded, but maybe that’s just me having an AI hallucination. This is another album I acquired through the Columbia Record Club. I liked the title song a whole bunch, although, I’m sorry to say, it’s a little worn out for me now after all these years, abetted by oldies radio, but still good when I can sit still and hear it. I liked pretty much everything by Sonny & Cher in the ‘60s, and then the overheated Cher solo in the ‘70s of course. But the drab production on All I Really Want to Do and the too often underwhelming singer and/or band performance—a terrible version of “I Go to Sleep” is Exhibit A—meant it was never particularly in heavy rotation. Approach with caution.

Hunger (2008)

UK / Ireland, 96 minutes

Director: Steve McQueen

Writers: Enda Walsh, Steve McQueen

Photography: Sean Bobbitt

Music: Lee Abrahams, David Holmes

Editor: Joe Walker

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Liam Cunningham, Brian Milligan, Stuart Graham, Liam McMahon, Helena Bereen, Helen Madden, Des McAleer

Director and cowriter Steve McQueen (not that one) took a bit of a risk with his first feature-length picture, making a “based on real events” show, which is often the kiss of death for me in Hollywood hands. McQueen solves the problems, to the extent that he does (problems of believability chiefly, but also of a sort of pious woodenness), by electing to take the story in the direction of an art film. The setting is Northern Ireland in 1981, the heart of “the Troubles,” and the prison where Irish political prisoners were housed. Labeled terrorists, often convicted of violent political crimes, as prisoners they staged no-wash and hunger strike protests.

Specifically, Hunger is about the second such protest. The first began in 1976, when the prisoners were reclassified from “prisoner of war” status to “criminal.” “No-wash” protests involved refusals to bathe and, in at least this case, smearing excrement on cell walls. Hunger strikes of course are refusals to eat. The second protest, in 1981, escalated into a mounting PR confrontation with prime minister Margaret Thatcher, doing her iron dame thing and reminding me anyway of why she was so reviled. She’s often heard in voiceover here from archival sources. In many ways she is rightly a main target of this picture.

“The School Friend” (1964)

This longish story by Robert Aickman is another of his many good ones—bland and straightforward on the surface, with churning undercurrents. Often, as here, somehow in the last third of his stories I feel like I’m in a dream. This one is about two women who became friends as young teens. Sally is precociously brilliant, raised by her father, who is an academic of some kind. Mel is the first-person narrator, gifted herself—a novelist, we learn, though presently, in her 40s, financially reduced to living with her parents again. There is a subtle but strong suggestion (she understands the illustrations in an edition of Petronius) that Sally has been sexually assaulted by her father. Even if that’s not the case, she’s under her father’s iron will, forced to spend her time doing housework or studying and little else. Sally and Mel go their own ways in their 20s and 30s. Mel follows Sally’s successful career from afar. Now in their 40s, they reconnect. Mel is living with her parents again and Sally’s father has recently died. Sally sends a postcard to Mel to invite her for a visit, even though they live within steps of each other. The picture on the postcard is Mitylene. I had to look into it to find out that Mitylene is the capital of the Greek island of Lesbos—another strong note of sexuality, submerged. Meeting again is a fraught moment in both their lives, at onset of encroaching middle age and perhaps predictable life crises. Then Sally has an accident which lands her in the hospital. She calls on Mel to check on her house and get things for her. It is Mel’s first time in Sally’s house, another strange note in this strange story. In the neighborhood where I grew up there was only one house I never entered. I was a little afraid of the matron who wouldn’t allow entry even to friends of her kids. It feels like something like that is going on in this story. Mel takes advantage of being in the house by herself to thoroughly explore it. All the things she discovers and what she and we the readers can make of them constitute the rest of this excellent story. Only Robert Aickman can make a situation like this work on so many levels at once. Something about this story is chilling and deeply unsettling, though it’s hard to put one’s finger directly on whatever that might be. In other words, it’s another great Aickman story.

Robert Aickman, Dark Entries
Story not available online.

Run-DMC, “Slow and Low (Demo)” (1985)

[listen up!]

I was today years old (as people say) when I realized the Beastie Boys included a cover of this workup on their 1986 album Licensed to Ill. The Beasties found out Run-DMC were leaving it off their second album and went for it. Indeed, the Run-DMC version did not really come to light until the 2005 deluxe edition of King of Rock. Forward another 20 years or so and there I am sitting with the very self-same LP. You know those cheapie “Original Album Classics” packages? Five albums from the same artist, usually their first five, in rudimentary slipcase envelopes. I discovered that some of them, such as the Run-DMC set, include the deluxe versions with all the extras. So anyway, I’m sitting there listening, having myself a Run-DMC renaissance, and this comes up. And I can’t quite get over it. It is ridiculously stripped down to the rhythms. There’s big muffled thumping that is counterpointed with separate strains of lighter, higher-pitched clinking. It is quietly irresistible. The raps are the usual Run-DMC bellowing back and forth, but the recurring words of the chorus go directly to the point: “Let it flow, let yourself go / Slow and low, that is the tempo.” They could have sexualized it but they didn’t. They could have brought in electric guitar—King of Rock continues the experiment that would culminate in the Aerosmith collaboration—but they don’t do that either. Maybe they would have if they’d put it on the original album. But they didn’t, and the simplicity has a lot to do with what makes it so great. The verses do offer some taste of their tendency toward unfortunate cliche (“you ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” “on The Gong Show I won’t get gonged,” etc.) but I could not care less about that. The point is the thumping and the clinking and the intricate interplay, with just the right sentiment: “Slow and low, that is the tempo.” It’s a kind of master class in its own right.

The Big Time (1958)

Fritz Leiber has a big reputation in horror and science fiction circles, but I haven’t read enough yet perhaps to be impressed myself. This very short mess of a novel (about 100 pages, a length sometimes considered a novella) won a Hugo (for “Best Novel or Novelette”). Wikipedia says it a nice way: “The Big Time is a story involving only a few characters, but with a vast, cosmic backstory.” That backstory is basically time travel, which can change history and erase people (who can then be “resurrected” somehow). It’s an interesting concept but explanatory exposition is scant here. These characters are similarly in a place, called “a Place,” which requires explanation. But, again, in medias res, baby. Catch the clues and keep up. It started to feel make-believe in childish ways. The Place, by the way, has affinities with Samuel Beckett’s let’s call it universe. It’s possible that reading The Big Time again, knowing what I learned the first time, might open it up more impressively for me. People see something in it. It won a Hugo and is included in a Library of America anthology of science fiction novels. There are some gems among the nine novels gathered there—notably Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination and Richard Matheson’s The Shrinking Man—but more often they felt slight to me and poorly done. The Big Time could maybe have been bigger and more descriptive, which I hate to say in this era of bloat—big novels part of big series. It was kind of refreshing to see a novel coming in at 100 pages. But it is dense and work to fathom. For about the first 20 pages I could barely make out what was even happening. There’s something that stinks a little of the MENSA mentality going on here, the arrogance and contempt. I’ve seen it in science fiction before. Maybe it’s a tradition. I’m thinking here of Philip Jose Farmer, to name names. And maybe Fritz Leiber too. All I can say about what I’ve read of Leiber is that it usually leaves me cold, but I’m thinking I should give it or him another try. All that love. There has to be something to it. But tastes in genre can often be stubbornly individual, I guess. Ramsey Campbell is another even more extreme example of my lack of understanding.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over. (Library of America)

The Wall (1979)

The other day I saw a social media post asking about albums worth listening to in their entirety, from beginning to end. I was surprised to find this double-LP behemoth among the most frequently mentioned, not least because I had spent the summer playing it that way and found myself crawling up the walls, so to speak. “Dreary blob of audio,” I noted one day. The other odd factor for me was that I never had listened to it that way in the first place—I never owned it (nor Tusk by Fleetwood Mac, for that matter, the other big burger from that autumn). I liked “Another Brick in the Wall” and “Comfortably Numb” enough that I did not turn them away when they came up on the radio. In retrospect this is where the Roger Waters takeover was complete. Pink Floyd had looked to me like a bloat job anyway since at least Dark Side of the Moon, though I’ve since found some (not a lot of) interest in Wish You Were Here and Animals. Waters wrote every bit of the music on The Wall and also scripted the freaking 1982 movie directed by Alan Parker (Midnight Express, The Commitments). I saw it when it was new and it left me, er, uncomfortably numb from the assault of bleak paranoia. The grit felt ground into grime. The album is just a lot of weak sauce. I wonder if anyone mentioned to Waters that “Goodbye Blue Sky” scans way too close to “Goodbye Ruby Tuesday” in the clinch of the chorus. But the song also has some effective moments of tension, so all right. “Vera” harks to Vera Lynn, the iconic World War II UK singer who hit with “White Cliffs of Dover” and especially “We’ll Meet Again,” for a weird-toned moment of genuine nostalgia (I think) in this mess. “The Trial” strains for the Kurt Weill note. And I don’t know about you, let alone Waters, but I do not find children singing “We don’t need no education” to be at all a comforting sentiment. The only saving grace about this puffed-up operatic strudel may be that the libretto is essentially incoherent (except the occasional lines and dramatic readings about public school failings). You have to study The Wall, including a look at the movie, to get the heavy bring-down vibe. My recommendation is don’t study it. In fact, I think you can skip it altogether—I know, 50 years too late again. The one bright spot musically is David Gilmour who steps in, seemingly only when Waters allows it, and chips in some very enjoyable guitar solos and the best music here.

Jeff Buckley, “Forget Her” (1993)

[listen up!]

Word is that Jeff Buckley specifically wanted this song left off of what turned out to be his only album, the 1994 Grace. “Forget Her” is a bittersweet breakup song, plurality of emphasis on the bitter, and Buckley wanted to stay friends with his former and presumably worried she would not react well to it. But I’m glad it finally made it out. It’s too good not to release. Anyone who’s had a broken heart (viz., everyone) is likely to feel this down deep. “Don’t fool yourself / She was heartache from the moment that you met her,” he wails. The dramatic scene is that he’s walking the streets, walkin’ after midnight so to speak, to stop his weeping. It’s the terrible moments at the first of the break, when eating and sleeping is self-denied and a kind of catatonic state descends. No appetite, no stopping the brain. On the Kubler-Ross scale of grief, the singer is flitting between anger and bargaining. Indeed, a case can be made that choosing to leave the song off the album was itself a bargaining ploy. None of that is my business or has much to do with why and how this song goes right through me. I have my own history, of course, and this song opens up some of my own darkest, saddest days. It’s cathartic, in a way—certainly I’ve had my daily infatuations with it. It has often stolen up on me unexpectedly one way or another. More than that, at this point, it’s a reminder I survived, made it past, and found happy places for myself that are reasonably free of grudges and resentment. I hope Buckley got there himself before his sad, untimely end. He was obviously a sensitive soul in many ways on many levels and deserved the peace. This beautiful song is one example of what was lost.

Project Hail Mary (2026)

I usually try to avoid comparisons between novels and the movies based on them, not for any particular noble motives but because I don’t often get to books before I see the movies (indeed, if I ever even get to them, looking your way Traumnovelle). This case is an exception—I know Andy Weir’s third novel is reviled by a certain cohort of SF cognoscenti and equally beloved of other readers who may favor entertainment in SF over heavy themes. I can understand how Weir’s jokey, heavily online voice can put off people looking for intellectual heft, but a friend pressed Project Hail Mary on me earlier this year and it turned out to be just what I needed at the time—funny and entertaining yet satisfyingly full of scientifically plausible and complex ideas. Alas, the movie, even at its punishing length near three hours, necessarily simplifies a lot of what is easily the greatest strength of the novel. A mysterious space algae has begun to consume energy directly from the sun, in enough quantity that it will affect the climate on Earth, cooling it to a degree that will likely wipe out human life if not all life. A whole region of the Milky Way has been affected, except for one star about 11 light-years away. A suicide mission is slapped together, sending Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) with two others to investigate and report back—report back via smaller probe ships, that is, because there’s only enough fuel for a one-way trip. There Grace encounters another ship on the same mission. The two throw in together—ultimately Project Hail Mary is a first contact story approximately cubed—and accomplish the mission, though not without many bumps in the road. The movie keeps its explanations lucid but truncated—I have a sense the people who will get the most out of the movie will come into it having already read the book. That’s what I suggest, noting that the movie is not really necessary. You’re probably better off reading the book again, but there’s enough Hollywood magic going on here to make it worth your time. Gosling is just plain good, as always, even in these obvious paycheck blockbusters he’s inclined to do. The story is fun but also realistic about scientific possibility and quite creative and imaginative in addressing the limitations. I mean, that’s mostly Weir, and it’s mostly better in the novel. But if you like movies you’re sure to have a good time here if you already know and like the book. Good with popcorn.

Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste (2003)

This Lester Bangs collection, edited by John Morthland, was intended as a nonredundant companion to the collection edited by Greil Marcus and published in 1987, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung. Altogether that’s about 800 pages of the original gonzo rock critic. As a general rule the Marcus collection contains most of the hits—including the famous faceoff with Lou Reed and the previously unpublished piece in which Bangs disinters Elvis Presley’s body and reaches into his guts for undigested pharmaceuticals—whereas this later collection more documents the workaday product of the rock critic: scads of record reviews, including one of Bob Dylan’s Desire in which he takes Dylan to task for making shit up. It’s kind of refreshing to see (see also Dylan’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech), but we should remember Bangs regularly made shit up himself, albeit with qualitative differences from what Dylan does. There is a sympathetic meditation on Sid Vicious and his ugly end. We find out much more about Bangs’s status as a jazzbo. There is a great feature piece and interview with Captain Beefheart. In many ways, somewhat surprisingly, Bangs is a stern moralist, although it is sadly somewhat undercut by his life as an alcoholic and drug addict, his death in 1982 at the age of 33 the result of a Darvon overdose. It’s been long enough now that another factor has come into play. I wonder a lot about what he would make of subsequent developments, even about the artists he knew like Lou Reed and Miles Davis, and certainly all kinds of things since then. His literary tastes strike me now as wrong, elevating Charles Bukowski and William Burroughs above all others. He even slags Allen Ginsberg (but not Jack Kerouac). This is all wrong according to me. Some of Bangs’s experimental writing is found here, but not as much as in Carburetor Dung. Full disclosure, that’s a good thing by my lights. That stuff has generally not aged well. But Lester Bangs remains in spirit an important model for anyone considering the commitment to being a rock critic. He’s cheerful enough often enough about being out of touch or at odds with the mainstream, acknowledging his own “bad taste.” You could do worse on primers about how to rock critic.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.