Thelma (2024)

Thelma is a feel-good caper comedy, set in Los Angeles and all dressed up in a pulsing action-movie soundtrack. It’s about the title character, a 93-year-old woman played by June Squibb, who was 94 at the time of shooting. Thelma is fond of her grandson Danny (Fred Hechinger, looking like Kurt Cobain or Scott Evil). He’s a 20something slacker with seemingly all the time in the world to visit and help Thelma with her computer. Later we find out Thelma is actually pretty handy with her electronics. Early in the picture Thelma is victim of a phone scam. Someone purporting to be Danny calls and says he was in an auto accident, almost killed a pregnant woman, and now he’s in jail. She follows the directions to post his bail, which involves mailing $10,000 in cash to an anonymous post office box. Thelma is not stupid but her panic blinds her to all the clues she’s being duped. The money is in the mail before she figures it out. Then she gets mad. Then she gets even. Classic stuff. Parker Posey plays Gail, Thelma’s daughter, Danny’s mother, and a psychotherapist. Clark Gregg is Gail’s husband Alan. Now they are all even more worried that Thelma is slipping mental-wise. But she is already on the case, stealing a friend’s scooter and taking off to monitor the post office box. Her friend, Ben (Richard Roundtree), takes off to help her and to get his scooter back. Her family frantically drives around town trying to find her. Thelma and June Squibb are charming enough, but the movie somewhat painfully wants it both ways on the elderly as figures of both pathos and comic relief. Director and screenwriter Josh Margolin makes this work (to the extent it does) by making it a farce, although he is not above abject pulling at the heartstrings in places. It is based on his own 104-year-old grandmother, whose apartment stands in for Thelma’s place. Thelma is basically a data point in the argument that you can make a suspense movie out of anything. Even an idle look can absurdly ratchet tensions. There is both gunplay and explosions along with gags about old people. A lot of stars in this one also helps put it over: Squibb in the first starring role of her life, Roundtree, Posey, Gregg, Hechinger, and Malcolm McDowell too. An amiable crew. You probably won’t believe a second of it, but you might have a nice time.

“A Nasty Story” (1862)

"A Bad Business," "A Disgraceful Affair," "A Most Unfortunate Incident," “A Nasty Anecdote," "An Unpleasant Predicament"
Absolutely prime Fyodor Dostoevsky here in this long story of the painful realities of class conflict, written shortly after the Russian reforms that liberated the serfs into lives of grinding poverty. Our main character here is that oxymoron, a liberal man of business. He has been dining and drinking with two peers with whom he has uneasy relations. He leaves for home but his coachman has mysteriously vanished. He decides to walk, partly because he’s a little drunk. By chance he meets someone who mentions that the revelry they can hear from a nearby building is the wedding of a man who works for him. He begins talking himself into making a surprise appearance there, thinking they would appreciate his condescending to be with them. It is a disaster, of course. Before he even enters, he steps in a dish of galantine put out to cool. Everyone, including his employee, is paralyzed by his presence. Our guy can see it is spoiling the party and he attempts to dispel the inhibition. But when the dancing and revelry begin again he does not like it. Others, such as the mother of the groom, are all over themselves to cater to him. They produce bottles of champagne for him. Later he realizes he is the only one drinking champagne, and even later we learn the cost of the champagne for the wedding party. There is a remarkable tension between boss and underling, as the underling furiously resents his presence but struggles not to show it. Meanwhile the boss is getting more and more drunk and finally passes out. It is a titanic piling on of incident, so wickedly painful there is moral vertigo just from reading. I like the dawning sense in Dostoevsky’s work of no limits. If you think things are bad now, just keep reading. It’s not long before Dostoevsky would be reaching this level of intensity at epic massive novel dimensions. But certainly here there is a compelling seed of it. I should also note this is another of his stories with an amazing variety of translations, even in the titles. They give a vivid sense of what you’re in for with this story.

Read story online.
Listen to story online.

Roma (2018)

Mexico / USA, 135 minutes

Director/writer/photography: Alfonso Cuarón

Editors: Alfonso Cuarón, Adam Gough

Cast: Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira, Jorge Antonio Guerrero, Diego Cortina Autrey, Carlos Peralta, Marco Graf, Veronica Garcia, Fernando Grediaga

Alfonso Cuarón takes a page from the playbook of Steven Soderbergh (and a few others), making his award-winning, much-celebrated picture for Netflix practically a one-man-band show, directing, writing, shooting, and editing this period piece set in early 1970s Mexico City. It starts slow, it’s a little long, and it can teeter dangerously close to pretentious, with a black & white color scheme and diegetic soundtrack (available commercially) that is composed entirely of music playing in the background on radios and TVs or at the movies. The parts of Roma that feel most obviously autobiographical are about a family plunged into media: radios, TVs, movies, full of audio strains and visual clips. In fact, Cuarón makes the most out of incidentals like what’s playing on the radio. My favorites are the jets floating complacently through the clouds of some of these scenes, aircraft noise and all. Some must have been shot near an airport because they seem to be flying relatively low, drawing perfect lines across their scenes. They are somehow fearsome and beautiful.

Roma survives any and all concerns about its intentions (except the one about Netflix, which I’ll get to below) as it patiently mounts a powerful slice-of-life tale with mild upstairs / downstairs notes, juggling the life of a middle-class family in breakdown with the life of their maid in similarly dire straits. Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) is the maid and de facto nanny for the family headed up by Sofia (Marina de Tavira), her mostly absent husband Antonio, and their four kids, three boys and a girl. The youngest boy, Pepe (Marco Graf), might be 7. He is always talking about memories of his past lives.

Gene Thomas, “Sometime” (1961)

[listen up!]

I wound my way back to Gene Thomasson’s 1961 near-hit (which peaked at #53) mainly because it’s one of the cover songs on the classic Flamin’ Groovies 1976 album Shake Some Action, and I am always happy to seek and find the originals. Shake Some Action is a 14-track affair that came after founders Roy Loney and Tim Lynch had left the band. It’s composed of half original songs by Cyril Jordan and Chris Wilson and half cover songs by artists as well-known as the Beatles and as obscure as Gene Thomas—adding up to a nearly perfect, seamless whole. Thomas managed a #17 hit in 1968, “Playboy,” in the Nashville-based Gene & Debbe act with Debbe Neville and her spectacular beehive hairdo. It’s a nice country-tinged tune, apt in many ways for 1968, but I agree with the Groovies that “Sometime” (or, as it is sometimes and more accurately credited, “Sometimes”), is the better song. And I’m not sure who does it better. The Groovies version rocks it up nice with a full band and emphasis on harmonies, drumkit, and electric guitar. The Gene Thomas version is much more stripped down, with an easier tempo and Thomas’s plaintive solo voice stalked by a mellow saxophone. The singer’s problem is the same in both places, of course: “Sometimes I cry when I’m lonely / Sometimes I cry when I’m blue / Right now, I’m cryin’ ‘cos I love you / I’m cryin’ ‘cos you don’t love me too.” He’s worried that “all the tears I shed were shed in vain.” Given the way things generally go in this world, it’s a valid concern and he’s probably right. It doesn’t take much more than that for a great pop song.

Nostromo (1904)

The subtitle of this hefty novel by Joseph Conrad is A Tale of the Seaboard. A description I saw called it a rip-roaring adventure story, which led me to a few errant expectations. Nostromo is the name of a person, not a ship as I had assumed. And “seaboard” is not the same as “seagoing,” although perhaps the best part of this shaggy dog is a treacherous if brief sea voyage. The other best part is the treatment of South America’s long history of unstable politics, the colonizers’ greed for riches and lust for power. The novel at large, in fact, seems to be mainly a lampoon (as I take it) of South America’s ludicrous and bloody history, set in a fictional country, or territory. It’s not far from Venezuela, with a shipping port and a silver mine owned by an English businessman. Nostromo is barely present for the first half or so, seen at the edges of the large rotating cast of characters. Conrad is more expansive here, going deep into the backstories of these characters—and new important characters keep emerging beyond the halfway point. It’s a serialized novel and often feels it but Conrad brings it to a solid ending, taking it where it must go according to the richly complex characters. It ends up landing on Nostromo the hardest, as it must with that title. Nostromo, a sort of hapless but brave peasant, gets by mostly on bravado and luck, along with his skills as a seaman. I have to say, even with all the cruelty on display—I see South America’s reputation as a haven for terrible torture goes back at least to 1904—it often feels comical more than anything. The revolutions and patriotic fervor result only in terrible violence and death but still things go on. All officials are at least a little corrupt, some very much so. Part of Nostromo’s appeal is his sincere peasant background. His highest military rank is captain, but he is a man of the people. He has several names, suggesting his status as a legend: Capataz de Cargadores, Gian’ Battista, Captain Fidanza, Nostromo. His background is Italian. I still think Conrad is mostly a chore to read, but patience does pay off. This story ends quite satisfyingly.

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

“Posthumous” (1994)

I came here ready to complain about this very short story by Joyce Carol Oates. Then I saw that it was published originally in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, in 1994, and somehow it became instantly more intriguing. What was she doing in Ellery Queen? Was she a regular? How did a story like this fit with the magazine’s usual fare? I never read it much but knew it as a competitor and sort of counterpoint to Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. “Posthumous” is less than three printed pages. It is told from the point of view of a corpse, in a 21-gun salute to Edgar Allan Poe (10 years later, in 2004, she would publish a different and much longer story with a variant title of “Poe Posthumous; or, The Light-House”). But maybe I am being hasty and she is a near-dead victim of violence, her own or another’s. She doesn’t seem to be able to move or speak. Police are forcing entry. Italicized passages suggest a home invasion. The police are shocked by her appearance but the twist of the story, as such, seems to be that there is worse in another room, presumably her husband. Did she do it or are they both victims? Unclear. It’s a horrific scene, like a tableau caught in the flash of a camera. It seems extreme to me for Ellery Queen, but perhaps not for 1994, which I remember as particularly lurid—Tonya Harding, Kurt Cobain, OJ Simpson, etc. I like that Oates had outlets for a lot of things like this that are experimental. Sometimes I am impatient with her female victimology, which she turns to a lot. But then, females are frequently victims. I like the Poe touch, if that’s what it is, and I guess I appreciate the ambiguity too of the murky situation. So I come out liking this one after some consideration. I believe Oates may have been at least a semi-regular in Ellery Queen but I would have to verify that. The way she uses the police is great and the point of view of the woman or corpse is perfect as they force their way in, vivid and sensory. And it’s really short, accomplished at near light-speed. The mayhem is gratuitous maybe? I was inclined to complain about that. But in many ways I think mayhem might be Oates’s most natural mode.

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

Modern Lovers, “I’m Straight” (1973)

[listen up!]

This curiosity was not part of the original Modern Lovers album by Jonathan Richman & co., home of “Roadrunner.” Most of that now-classic LP was produced by John Cale in 1971 and 1972. “I’m Straight” comes from sessions in 1973 organized, overseen, and/or produced by the notorious Kim Fowley. It has been appended as a bonus track on reissues of the album since the Rhino release in 1986. In many ways the song hasn’t aged well. The term “straight” now refers more often to sexual orientation or secondarily an inclination toward the conventional. A third sense is honesty. The sense of it as drug-free, which Richman is on about here, has faded since the ‘70s; “clean” and “sober” are more the favored terms now. Richman was still accessing an aggressive persona derived in part no doubt from his heroes the Velvet Underground. But his own variations are all him. The singer in this song is so shy he keeps hanging up before completing a phone call to a woman he wants. But it’s a kind of calculated assault too because he knows she already has a boyfriend—Hippie Johnny by name—and he won’t respect it. “He’s always stoned, he’s never straight,” is his point. If I had to guess, the drug in question here is most likely cannabis—marijuana, weed, tea, whatever. That’s what “stoned” (and “dope”) usually referred to, at least in my circles in 1973. The singer is surprisingly aggressive: “Now look, I like him too, I like / Hippie Johnny / But I'm straight / And I want to take his place.” His voice is deep, growling. It sounds like the microphone is inside his mouth. And it is full-on unapologetic in its judgment of the stoner lifestyle. At the time, that put the singer arguably rowing against the current. Call him an iconoclast. Sometimes I object to the situation it describes, stealing girlfriends and the preening rejection of weed. It’s certainly unusual, but that can be said about much of Richman’s catalog.

28 Years Later (2025)

It hasn’t been quite 28 years since the 28 / Later franchise opened for business by director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland in 2002, with 28 Days Later (the first sequel, 28 Weeks Later, came in 2007). Boyle and Garland brought some innovations to the zombie movies (will they never die?) that I wasn’t always on board with. Their zombies can outrun anything short of the Flash, for example, as opposed to George Romero’s more classic lumbering, relentless creatures. It hasn’t been quite 28 years, but frankly I’m not sure, without refresher looks at those first two, what is new here and what is continuity. There are slower zombies, called “Slow-Lows,” that crawl on their bellies and snack on earthworms. There are the fast zombies. And—new with this installment, I think—there is an evolutionary development in zombie-land that human survivors call “Alphas.” They are fast, strong, and big—like eight or ten feet tall—and look something like a Norse god or maybe Conan the Barbarian. The story here is about a 12-year-old boy, Spike (Alfie Williams), mentored by his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) to hunt zombies. He is more concerned at the moment about his mother Isla (Jodie Comer), who is sick, no one knows with what and there are no doctors. They live in a small community on an island off the coast of the British mainland, reachable at low tide via a causeway (a neat visual and suspense device also used well in both the 1989 TV movie The Woman in Black and its 2012 remake). The UK has been overtaken by zombies but the rest of Europe has worked out keeping them confined there (a different flavor of Brexit). Spike hears of a doctor on the mainland who is supposedly insane—Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes)—and sets out with his mother to get her cured. I wasn’t really convinced by the family dynamic here, or maybe I’m complaining because it seemed lifted in many ways from the TV series The Walking Dead. Not surprisingly, 28 Years Later is full of great shots and it entertains some interesting ideas—the developing zombie fauna, reproductive speculation (including an amazing childbirth scene), and a wandering tribe of punk-rock zombie assassins. A lot of 28 Years Later is world-building, figuring out how things work in this world and universe. It’s lucid but very busy. Its sequel, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, was shot at the same time and released early this year. The sequel is written by Garland but directed by Nia DaCosta (Hedda, the 2021 Candyman). The ending here is wide open for the sequel and thus 28 Years Later feels unfinished or more like the way TV works now with chains of episodes. Maybe Boyle—or perhaps Garland—has big plans for what’s to come. 28 Years Later and possibly its sequel are worthy additions to the franchise, though, as I say, I have my reservations about the franchise at large.

“The People on the Island” (2005)

I liked this story by T.M. Wright from The Weird. I liked it when I read it and I liked it even more the next day. Editors Ann & Jeff VanderMeer compare it to Shirley Jackson in their intro and that sounds close enough. There is something deeply normal about the two main characters even though little else is normal in their circumstances. They are alone on an island. It’s not clear how they got there or what they are doing there. It’s been long enough they no longer seem to question it. It could be an afterlife. But there are few explanations for anything here. Other people show up in other houses. They seem to be corpses but they are not decomposing or perhaps they are doing so slowly, because finally that changes. They seem to be engaged in activities—a woman on an exercise bike is the first they discover. The narrator and his wife, Elizabeth, don’t like them. They provoke anxiety. No one knows how they get there. The wind is often blowing and howling. They also hear something that sounds like a stray dog but they never see it. When they finally do, eventually, they can’t be sure it’s a dog. It feels like they’ve been there a long time. Time itself feels off in this place. It doesn’t pass in the same way. It may not be passing at all. Eventually Elizabeth disappears, though the narrator still thinks he sees her sometimes. The story is all very straightforward simple description and dialogue. At times it’s so simple and the circumstances described so bewildering it feels like a trick being played. More and more people show up on the island. It’s starting to feel crowded. The weather is pretty weird too, I should mention. Always cloudy and then, seemingly after years, occasional sunshine and warm temperatures. We know the narrator’s relationship with Elizabeth extends back to childhood, “before we started noticing, in earnest, that we were different sexes.” That struck me as a slightly disturbing way to describe it, almost as if they are closer to brother and sister. Nothing in this story sits exactly right and that’s what makes it great. Wright was more of a novelist and wrote several. I’m curious now what they might be like.

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

The Roaring Silence (1976)

Marshalling white R&B / soul with prog-rock may seem an unlikely project but it’s the one South Afrikaner keyboardist Manfred Lubowitz took for himself. He hit first and often with his band and new sobriquet Manfred Mann in the ‘60s and then again (if somewhat more modestly) with Manfred Mann’s Earth Band in the ‘70s. Mann long intrigued me from a distance. I liked (but didn’t love) the hits: “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” and “Blinded by the Light” (written and recorded by Bruce Springsteen for his first album in 1973) both made #1, and “Mighty Quinn,” probably my favorite, reached #10. Somewhere I got the idea the albums were good, but I never sat down with them until recently. By way of internet recommendations, I also tried the Earth Band’s Solar Fire (1973) and Watch (1978). The Roaring Silence attracted me most, doubtless because of the Springsteen covers. Versions of the album now include the 3:49 radio edit of “Blinded” as well as the original 7:08 album kickoff. I’m more familiar with the radio version so that’s the one that sounds right to me, though I appreciate the various proggy twists and turns of the longer piece. Mostly I’m just kind of tired of the song now, and also its follow-up, “Spirits in the Night,” a soundalike to the big hit, and another Springsteen cover from his first album. It reached #40. But I found the 8:19 “Singing the Dolphin Through” irresistibly beautiful. I wish it were shorter but I’m still not tired of it, and somehow a little embarrassed that something this overweeningly sweet would get me. Speaking of embarrassing, there’s the embarrassingly titled “Waiter, There’s a Yawn in My Ear” (apparently inspiration for the album’s cover art or possibly vice versa, but someone should have stepped on that title). It’s where the band goes full antiseptic prog in a live setting, tarted up further in the studio. The crowd loved it. I don’t mind it. The album is always at least pleasant for me, such is my 20something corruption. Affection for prog does linger on in my psyche. I note that keyboardist Mann and guitarist Dave Flett can be perfectly competent-plus and even inspired on their instruments. The other main points of interest are “Starbird” and “Questions,” which continue another Manfred Mann project, adapting classical music to pop songs. In the early ‘70s, the Earth Band approached the Gustav Holst estate for permission to adapt Holst’s suite, The Planets. But when they submitted their Jupiter installment, “Joybringer” (now a bonus track on the Solar Fire album), the estate closed them down forthwith. But never say die. “Starbird,” on The Roaring Silence, is based on a Stravinsky theme. “Questions” is based on a Schubert theme—I hope and trust Schubert had nothing to do with a further embarrassment of these lyrics. I mean, really, it can get pretty dopey around here. Still, the album is good for a hit of guilty pleasure when I am occasionally in need of prog, and it also has a solid if not entirely inspired line in soul too.

RoboCop (1987)

USA, 102 minutes

Director: Paul Verhoeven

Writers: Edward Neumeier, Michael Miner

Photography: Jost Vacano, Sol Negrin

Music: Basil Poledouris

Editor: Frank J. Urioste

Cast: Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Ronny Cox, Kurtwood Smith, Dan O’Herlihy, Miguel Ferrer, Robert DoQui, Ray Wise, Jesse D. Goins

People seem to have some problems categorizing RoboCop. I have always thought of it as a slightly tongue-in-cheek (because patently ludicrous) crime / action show. Wikipedia calls it “science fiction action,” Amazon classes it with the labels “action,” “drama,” and (of all things) “serious,” and IMDb lets loose with a torrent of labels: “cop drama,” “cyberpunk,” “dark comedy,” “dystopian sci-fi,” “gangster,” “one-person army action” (good grief, this is a genre?), “superhero,” “tragedy,” “action,” and “crime.” I was happy to see at least a “dark” comedy in the mix, but I think it’s a real stretch in this perfectly cartoony setting to go for “serious” (never mind “tragedy”).

It’s formally a tragedy and serious because a human being cop, Murphy (Peter Weller), is killed in the line of duty and then surreptitiously and implausibly reanimated as a cyborg with no memory of his humanity. But he is a super-excellent cop, the hope for the near-future Detroit envisioned in the ‘80s to eradicate crime altogether. Director Paul Verhoeven is playing it for laughs all over the place. The lifts from Terminator are obvious, intentionally so. Robocop’s triangle-shaped body is an exaggeration of the ripped male ideal. His thudding footsteps are heard constantly in the sound design when he is on the move. (Note that the subtitles spell it without the capital C for the character and I am following suit.) The fights go on too long and they are too extreme, verging on slapstick. And the fact, in this near-future sci-fi tale—certainly it is science fiction, I’m not sure why I resist that label too—the fact that corporations can steal a man’s body with impunity and do what they want with it is rushed past so willfully it comes to feel like another joke.

Monkees, “What Am I Doing Hangin’ ‘Round?” (1967)

[listen up!]

This Monkees track, written by “Lewis & Clarke” (the writing credit taken by songwriting team Michael Martin Murphey and Owen Castleman), was selected and sung by Michael Nesmith, furthering the explorations of country and country-rock by which he’d be better known in his solo career. The song’s narrative point of view is not entirely clear and can be confusing. It’s about a young San Antonio man who takes a train down to Mexico—“Just a loudmouth Yankee I went down to Mexico,” it starts. In places the song has not aged well. The singer admits, for example, “I lightly took advantage of a girl who loved me so”—that “lightly” seems to be doing its share of heavy lifting here. Should I stay or should I go? is the question that plagues the siinger, and ultimately (apparently) becomes the source of his greatest regret. Or, or as he somehow movingly bewails it in the chorus, “What am I doing hangin’ ‘round? ... I should be ridin’ on that train to San Antone.” It’s my favorite part of the song and the place where I can most easily ignore the singer’s somewhat loutish behavior, because at that point he is full of regrets that can never be answered for. The question is a bit muddled—at first it seems to be about staying in Mexico too long, but later it seems to be about how long it took him to get back. By which point, sadly, it’s too late, baby, baby it’s too late. “Then she told me that she loved me not with words but with a kiss” is a moment that can never be recovered, seared into this song. That’s all. It feels like that and train whistles in the distance are going to haunt him for the rest of his life.

Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time (2009)

From 1976 until 2002 Joseph Frank published the five (large) volumes of his biography of Fyodor Dostoevsky. As he explains in the preface to this (large) single-volume abridged version, he looked to Leon Edel’s similarly massive biography of Henry James (four large volumes), which was whittled down to a single book (large, of course). Frank thought that was a pretty good idea and brought in editor Mary Petrusewicz for the condensing work. It would take them seven more years, but I found the single volume particularly useful and worthwhile, given I had only limited interest in plowing through the original five. It connects a lot of dots that might be missed simply reading through Dostoevsky’s beyond-impressive work as a whole. Perhaps most crucially it covers the 10 years from 1849 to 1859, when Dostoevsky was charged and convicted of treasonous activity, imprisoned, forced to endure a mock execution, and exiled to Siberia. He was imprisoned there for four years, after which it took him another six years to make it back to Russia, Petersburg, and Moscow. Understanding what happened in that period is almost staggering to contemplate—he lost 10 years of writing in his late 20s and 30s, the best years for many writers. It is crucial to understanding his work, both before and especially after, when he produced most of his masterpieces. Frank also provides excellent literary context and analysis for all Dostoevsky’s work. My takes were not always the same as his, but he’s the expert here, not me, and his analyses were always illuminating. Even this abridged version is still quite a honker—nearly 1,000 pages in print and closer to 1,500 in the kindle pagination (however that is calculated). But this biography was essential as I made my way through Dostoevsky’s work, lucid and informative. Even with its imposing length I would recommend it to anyone with more than a passing interest in the great Russian novelist. Dostoevsky wrote great tales, but in many ways his life story rivals them.

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

Turn On the Bright Lights (2002)

I remember liking this first album from NYC-based Interpol pretty well, but lately I’ve been distracted trying to ID the various influences I may or may not be hearing as they hit me: Bauhaus, Catherine Wheel, Echo & the Bunnymen, Joy Division, Simple Minds. Wikipedia has more suggestions which seem apt now that you mention it: the Chameleons, Siouxsie & the Banshees. So “derivative” feels like a reasonably fair point to make. “Pretentious” might be another. Not to be harsh about it, but when you open your album (and apparently lots of show) with a song called “Untitled,” well, really? That’s all you could think of? Other clues suggest Turn On the Bright Lights is intended as some sort of concept LP. Calling track 2 “Obstacle 1” and track 7 “Obstacle 2,” for example (two different songs as far as I can tell), suggest that larger cryptic undercurrent patterns are at work here. The sequencing pairs up two 3LA (three-letter acronym) titles, one of which is “NYC,” a genial blast of slo-mo drone. The other is “PDA”—is that really personal digital assistant? Public display of affection? Pathological demand avoidance? Hard to tell. I suspect the larger concept has something to do with the big city, home at that time to a host of semi-related acts, including the Strokes, the National, and others. Another track seems to speak to the New York fixation, the overly titled “Stella Was a Diver and She Was Always Down,” which breaks down into calls for “Stella!,” a certifiable New Yorkism ever since A Streetcar Named Desire. Note also that the title, Turn On the Bright Lights, is often associated with Broadway (and/or Warner Brothers classic animation)—and embedded right there in “NYC.” I’m not entirely saying all this like they’re bad things (nor that I’m proud to have cracked some code, because I’m sure I’m overthinking it). Eventually, it’s true, with closer dedicated study, the album grew on me again. It’s often dense and heavy and if you let it it can weigh you right down like the heaviest comforter on a cold three-dog night. Bliss and ecstasies all at once. I bet Interpol was a great live act on good nights. Not sure I’m venturing any further than I originally did into their complicated catalog with personnel changes and associated acts. But still, ultimately, a pleasure finally to just play loud and let it come to me.

A Prophet (2009)

Un prophete, France / Italy, 155 minutes

Director: Jacques Audiard

Writers: Thomas Bidegain, Jacques Audiard, Abdel Raouf Dafri, Nicolas Peufaillit

Photography: Stephane Fontaine

Music: Alexandre Desplat

Editor: Juliette Welfling

Cast: Tahar Rahim, Niels Arestrup, Adel Bencherif, Hichem Yacoubi, Reda Kateb, Slimane Dazi, Jean-Philippe Ricci, Gilles Cohen, Leïla Bekhti, Jean-Emmanuel Pagni, Frédéric Graziani, Alaa Oumouzoune

I must admit I originally took the title of this epic prison movie a little too literally. I knew it involved an Arab in a European prison and I worried it was about some bearded chin-stroking holy man enlightening other inmates (or failing to), heading down some solemn religious line. The running time was the final detail that put me off it. But it turns out A Prophet is one of those long movies I’m happy to see, immersive, intense and kinetic, sending us to places where time does not exist. The camera is restless, roving, often handheld in these tight claustrophobic prison spaces. Tahar Rahim as Malik El Djebena serves up a performance that is masterful and unforgettable, inhabiting a majority of these scenes and virtually carrying the picture by himself, though he is amply supported, notably by Niels Arestrup as Cesar Luciano, the Corsican center of power in the suffocating French prison setting.

A Prophet also counts as both a coming-of-age and an immigrant picture, as the Muslim El Djebena is 19 when he is convicted of unspecified crimes and sentenced to six years in an adult prison, after spending what sounds like much of his adolescence in juvenile facilities. El Djebena, arriving at prison, has obviously been beaten recently. One wound on his face is recent and ultimately leaves a scar. He is self-possessed and wary, stalking through his days as a loner. Prison life is hard. Early on he is a victim when he is pushed around for his shoes, which are taken off his feet. When the prisoner Reyeb (Hichem Yacoubi) attempts to pick him up, offering hash for oral sex, the outline of El Djebena’s new life starts to come into focus.

“The Specialist’s Hat” (1998)

Kelly Link won a World Fantasy Award for this story. It’s a little too whimsical for me but not bad. The main characters are Claire and Samantha, 10-year-old identical twins who play a verbal game called Dead. “When you’re Dead ... you don’t have to brush your teeth.” “When you’re Dead ... you live in a box, and it’s always dark, but you’re not ever afraid.” So on and so forth. They’re staying in a haunted house once occupied by a minor poet who their father is studying, even though he doesn’t like the poet’s work. Their mother died almost a year earlier. They compulsively measure and count things. It seems fanciful, but it paints the strange scene and setting quickly, a little bit comical and perhaps even a little bit something to envy. Staying in a ginormous haunted house to study the papers of a minor poet you don’t like has its appeals as a lifestyle. There’s also an unnamed babysitter on hand who is somehow unsettling. Specifics of the very large house follow, called Eight Chimneys because that’s what it has, with fireplaces big enough to stand in. They keep things intriguingly odd. Ten-year-old identical twins playing a game called Dead are, of course, unsettling too. The babysitter distracts with what she says and what she knows. Along the way the language can sparkle. Snatches of strange poetry, perhaps the minor poet’s work, interrupt the narrative. The story dances around the points of any haunting, teasing us with evocative details. Ominous notes attend the babysitter, “whose name neither twin quite caught.... The reason that Claire and Samantha have a babysitter is that their father met a woman in the woods.” I love how loaded and deceptively simple it all is. No one can reach the babysitter but she always shows up on time, enters the house, and goes to the room the twins are in. The babysitter tells them about “the Specialist” as if he or it is both real and unreal. The Specialist’s hat itself is a strange and unnerving object: “There are holes in the black thing and it whistles mournfully as she spins it.... ‘That doesn’t look like a hat,’ says Claire.” As it turns out, it bites. A lot going on underneath the surface of this one.

Kelly Link, Stranger Things Happen
The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror: Twelfth Annual Collection, ed. Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling
The Weird, ed. Ann & Jeff VanderMeer
Read story online.
Listen to story online.

Earth, Wind & Fire, “Reasons” (1975)

[listen up!]

I was doing my much belated due diligence recently, checking up on Earth, Wind & Fire, an act I too long neglected. That’s the Way of the World is something like their fifth or sixth album but it’s where the (multiple) hits started (plus don’t forget the worthy deep cuts): “Shining Star,” a #1 hit I admit I heard enough on the radio and in some telephone company ad, the glistening title song (#12) much better than I remembered, and then this beauty, never a Hot 100 hit but it did appear on the Adult R&B chart. I was surprised—I knew “Reasons” as well as the other two, and not because it has become an unlikely staple at wedding celebrations (unlikely because if you listen to the words it’s about a one-night stand). That doesn’t explain why it seems so familiar because I don’t make it to that many weddings. The leisurely five-minute “Reasons” insinuates with fluttering horns and electric piano and Philip Bailey’s haunting, darting, lovely falsetto. But what I really love is one of those moments I’m starting to think only the best pop songs can deliver, heard in snatches on the radio (or somewhere) that stop me cold—in this case the lurching, battling rhythms that hit when the singers start going “la-la-la-la-la” around 1:15. It gets even better about a minute later when strings take the “la-la” melody line and the song sails on pure intuition, a robot out on the dancefloor reeling and careening at deliberate tempo. I can’t get enough of it. Cover versions by Miki Howard, the Manhattans, Maxi Priest (smooth reggae), Musiq Soulchild, and Nelson Rangell (lite jazz) only remind how good is the EWF original. Stick with this—and no live versions need apply either.

The Girl With the Needle (2024)

I’ve never thought of myself as too particularly squeamish—hey, I look at horror movies and true-crime documentaries all the time—but this Danish picture and period piece, shot in black & white and set shortly after World War I in Copenhagen, seems designed only to make viewers uncomfortable. Male viewers, that is, which might be the source of my troubles. The needle in the title is a knitting needle which “the girl,” a factory worker named Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne) and a full-grown woman, uses to attempt to abort her pregnancy in a public bathhouse. It doesn’t work, and later we get a harrowing birth scene. Still later, we get some breast-feeding scenes that range close to perverse. They were all hard for me to watch. At the bathhouse another woman there, Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm), comes to Karoline’s aid. She tells her that, for a fee, she will take Karoline’s baby after it is born and find it a good home. Sonne is good as the hapless Karoline, but Dyrholm is reasonably the star of this show, or maybe I was just remembering her riveting, convincing performance as the singer Nico in the 2017 picture Nico, 1988 (make it a double feature if you must look at this one). I thought The Girl With the Needle tries too hard to merely shock. Well over halfway through this picture, I still had no idea where it was going, and that was not in a good way. The last words in the picture provide a vital clue: “Inspired by true events.” Any time I see that in a movie—more often placed at the opening—I know how to set my expectations. A lot of it will be unbelievable and, just so, most of The Girl With the Needle is hard to believe. There are good scenes here—notably the confrontation between Karoline and the mother (Benedikte Hansen) of her lover and would-be spouse Jørgen (Joachim Fjelstrup). This matriarch brings in a doctor to verify Karoline’s pregnancy (yes indeed, another uncomfortable scene) and then proceeds to shatter any illusions harbored by Karoline and her son. Jørgen is left weeping and unable to make eye contact with Karoline. But all the extremes about this story and this movie—I didn’t even get to Karoline’s husband, a war casualty—seem to exist purely in a context of unending miserablism. It left me cold. YMMV.

Double Star (1956)

I’m pretty sure Robert Heinlein remains a divisive figure among science fiction readers. Certainly I agree to the extent he injects his various conservative political ideas into his work. But he’s also reliably a very good storyteller, as this very short novel shows (under 150 pages). Yes, it’s on the preposterous side and has crazy ideas, but it’s so readable it’s not hard to knock off in a day. It’s set in the far future when the solar system has largely been colonized and settled. There’s still hope for Venus in 1956 and many planets are crawling with their own life forms. Martians, for example, look like trees. Our main guy and first-person narrator is an actor. The art of the theater is one place where Heinlein has a lot of strange ideas, but never mind. For complex political reasons the actor is called on to impersonate a high-level functionary who has been kidnapped, which would be no excuse for missing some ceremonies. There’s a lot here about the art and science of performance, sprinkled with “method” ideas and chin-pulling theory. Maybe an actual actor could speak better to it, but it struck me as a bunch of bloviating. Nevertheless, the story moves quickly and doesn’t leave us much time for doubting its assertions. Double Star is the first novel in the second volume of the Library of America’s American Science Fiction set of nine SF novels from the ‘50s, a big rollicking start. I don’t think I’d heard of Double Star before, but it won Heinlein his first Hugo. You can do worse in science fiction than go with award winners. Although the solar system setup is rife with science fiction gadgets and technology, this novel is mostly about politics, with a lot of complicated parliamentary procedures driving the action. Heinlein, happily, wastes little time on lectures and asides, but is obviously into the machinations of power—I thought that side of it was dullish. He is prone to some lecturing about acting here. The ideas are interesting but a little bit trite. No matter—Double Star is short, moves fast, and simply rushes past its flaws. It’s entertaining, as Heinlein often is for me, though I generally prefer his stuff before the 1961 Stranger in a Strange Land. After that one you’re on your own.

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

Green Border (2023)

[2025 review here]

Zielona granica, Poland / France / Czech Republic / Belgium, 152 minutes

Director: Agnieszka Holland

Writers: Maciej Pisuk, Gabriela Lazarkiewicz, Agnieszka Holland

Photography: Tomasz Naumiuk

Music: Frédéric Vercheval

Editor: Pavel Hrdlicka

Cast: Jalal Altawil, Behi Djanati Atai, Maja Ostaszewska, Tomasz Włosok, Mohamad Al Rashi, Dalia Naous, Monika Frajczyk, Piotr Stramowski, Jaśmina Polak, Marta Stalmierska, Maciej Stuhr, Magdalena Popławska, Joely Mbundu, Taim Ajjan, Talia Ajjan

The green border in director and cowriter Agnieszka Holland’s blockbuster, sickening war movie, shot in black and white, is the swampy forested region on either side of the border between Belarus and Poland. A family of Syrian refugees is making their way to Sweden, seeking asylum in the EU. They travel by air to Minsk in Belarus, on the flight picking up Afghani refugee Leila (Behi Djanati Atai), an older woman who is seeking a new home in Poland (rather than wait, as she says, for the Taliban regime to resume power). Belarus is where the problems start for them. They encounter corrupt, sadistic, and/or indifferent officials in the border patrols, thieves, bad weather, and more. Poland unofficially does not allow passage for refugees. Both Poland and Belarus have “pushback” policies, which means Leila and the family are repeatedly herded across the border, back and forth, over and over, between the two countries. Making progress is all but impossible, dependent on luck more than anything.

The family is notably vulnerable. A grandfather in poor health (Mohamad Al Rashi) is the family patriarch, a traditional Muslim who trusts in Allah and rolls out the prayer mat even in the depths of the forest. His grandson Bashir (Jalal Altawil) is more savvy to the world, more embittered, carrying a cell phone that is their lifeline along with powerpacks to keep it charged. His wife Amina (Dalia Naous) and three young children are total innocents who must trust Bashir (and Allah) to get where they are going. The youngest is an infant still being breastfed. Leila has a cell phone too and seems to be the most skilled at using it. She and the oldest boy Nur (Taim Ajjan) make a connection that will turn out to be fatal.

Link Wray, “Rumble” (1958)

[listen up!]

Link Wray’s “Rumble” was a few years late to be the first rock ‘n’ roll record, but it was the first something. Shoegaze, possibly, or dream-pop? Sonic Youth might have studied it closely. It’s an obvious influence on David Lynch’s musical projects. Jimmy Page cites it as a primary influence. So does Jack White, even U2’s The Edge. “Rumble” hits like a steamroller, dense with mass. In its own way it is very ur, even (or perhaps especially) as it stalled out at #16 in 1958. It should have been #1 for weeks and rivaled “Rock Around the Clock.” But the world may not have been entirely ready for it, though its influence now runs to the horizons. Others (notably Johnny “Guitar” Watson and Les Paul) had been exploring the tonal dynamics of the electric guitar, but no one previously treated it like a hot tub where you go take a soak. The best way to listen to “Rumble” is loud, of course, with eyes closed for maximal impact. Wray is in love with his ginormous chords and so am I. Reverb all over the place. His plectrum brushes the chords so slowly and methodically you can almost hear each string. The song plays slow and logy, hypnotic and seductive. Having established a mood so immersive it has your full attention (in a song that lasts only 2:26), Wray proceeds to begin abusing his instrument, whaling away on single strings and incidentally pointing the way to thrash, potentially yet one more innovation of this tune. We have heard it everywhere since 1958, all over oldies radio and in movies like Pulp Fiction, Independence Day, Blow, the original pilot for The Sopranos, the Japanese cult classic Wild Zero, and many more. It never gets old. I’m a little amazed it didn’t turn up in one of David Lynch’s pictures.

What Was the First Rock ‘n’ Roll Record? (1992)

I’m embarrassed to note it took me so long to get to this interesting music history, by Jim Dawson and Steve Propes, that a 30th anniversary edition has already been out for a few years. That’s the version I’m pointing to below. It’s probably even better than this original, adding forewords by Billy Vera and Dave Marsh, whose bio here asserts he is the dean of rock criticism, an interesting choice of words. As per the question in the title, the book is a densely researched list of 50 songs that are candidates for the honor, from “Blues, Part 2” by Jazz at the Philharmonic (1944) to “Heartbreak Hotel” by Elvis Presley (1956). All the ones I might have nominated are here: “That’s All Right” by Big Boy Crudup and Elvis Presley, “Good Rockin’ Tonight” by Wynonie Harris & His All Stars, “Rocket 88” by Jackie Brenston With His Delta Cats, “Sixty Minute Man” by the Dominoes, “Hound Dog” by Big Mama Thornton, “Shake, Rattle, and Roll” by Big Joe Turner, “Work With Me, Annie” by the Royals and the Midnighters, “Sh-Boom” by the Chords, and 41 more, including the correct answer (according to me) “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley & His Comets. Each song is profiled in great detail, with chart positions, when and where recorded, release dates, interesting anecdotes, and more. Along the way a lot of industry currents are discussed, such as the stories of cover versions, the abuse of independent labels by the majors even as the indies marched on to further heights, and many of the interconnections between musicians, producers, and songwriters. Some of these songs I barely knew, such as “Blues, Part 2,” Arthur Smith’s “Guitar Boogie,” or Fats Domino’s “The Fat Man.” All were a pleasure to hear, even if I think some are barely rock ‘n’ roll. “Blues, Part 2,” for example, sounds much closer to me to free jazz, thanks to the wild, iconic tenor sax play by Illinois Jacquet. Maybe in some ways it prefigures the Stooges’ Fun House? It’s not on my streaming service, but I found it on youtube, posted by someone inspired by this book (likely 2nd ed.). It’s not just book and library research here. Dawson and Propes spoke to dozens of people involved with these records, including artists, producers, distributors, and many other industry figures. I was sad to reach “Heartbreak Hotel” because I cared less about answering the primary question and just wanted to keep hearing the stories of how great rock ‘n’ roll records came to be.

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

L’Argent (1983)

France / Switzerland, 85 minutes

Director: Robert Bresson

Writers: Leo Tolstoy, Robert Bresson

Photography: Pasqualino De Santis, Emmanuel Machuel

Music: J.S. Bach

Editor: Jean-Francois Naudon

Cast: Christian Patey, Sylvia Van den Elsen, Michel Briguet, Caroline Lang

Director and screenwriter Robert Bresson adapted a long tale by Leo Tolstoy as the basis for his last picture (translated as “The Counterfeit Bills” or “The Forged Coupon”). The result, L’Argent, is perhaps less about the evils of money (“l’argent” in French) and more a kind of practical thought experiment in the chaos theory butterfly effect, which holds that a butterfly flapping its wings can lead by circumstances to events as devastating as tornados, or as wonderful as an unexpected windfall. Anything might happen when it comes to cause and effect. It’s hard to say why the title was not translated for English-speaking countries. In Spain and Mexico, for example, it was released as El dinero. Perhaps calling it “Money” would imply too much about the intended evils thereof? But then what are people supposed to think anywhere else?

This story starts with adolescents in need of spending money who forge counterfeit bills and pass them to a camera shop. The camera shop manager, realizing later that he has been bilked, decides to pass the bills himself and does so the next day, paying a delivery driver, Yvon (Christian Patey), who accepts them without question. It’s the beginning of the end for Yvon. His superiors catch the counterfeits, but Yvon’s story does not hold up when the camera shop staff denies even knowing him. This seems a little unlikely given the way these things are tracked, with invoices and receipts and such, but maybe it was different in 1983 in France. Yvon goes to trial for the crime. He’s convicted and given three years, and then things only get worse. His child dies while he’s in prison and his wife leaves him for a new life. He keeps getting in trouble and fights with other inmates. His imprisonment is extended. He’s all the way into a terrible downward spiral.

“England Underway” (1993)

This story by Terry Bisson with its kooky, whimsical premise—perhaps too kooky and whimsical for me—was nominated for Hugo and Nebula awards in short fiction categories (it is apparently long enough to be a “novelette” by Nebula standards). It surprised me that Bisson is from the US, Kentucky specifically, as the story succeeds in feeling British. Or maybe it feels British to me the way an American conceives it. Anyway, for whatever reason—plate tectonics is the only detail given that sounds remotely plausible, but who cares in a fantasy, right?—England and some British territories (not Ireland) have come loose and set out west across the Atlantic. No one knows why. It’s all over the news. I have to admit some of this story went over my head because I don’t know UK geography and have never been good with spatial relations. The entire land mass is also spinning slowly so the south of England becomes the east and so forth. It’s confusing. The story does have a soothing, gentle tone, milking humor from the absurdity of the situation as well as UK politics (pre-EU), especially regarding Ireland. The main character is a British chap set in his ways, with a dog and a niece in the US who writes him monthly and says he must come visit to see her baby, his grand-niece. Eventually England delivers him for the visit and he meets the baby, shortly after which England departs the New York harbor, headed east, presumably returning. There’s a nice sense of how strange it would be if England were literally only a ferry ride away from New York, but what’s strange and interesting in this story is mostly swamped by what’s cute. On the whole it’s well done but on the whole it is merely cute. In a way it plays to my own, mostly unfortunate preconceptions about fantasy—that it’s intended to be harmless if not entirely vapid (I say this knowing better now that horror is a subset of fantasy). But in other ways the story pulls against my bad attitude. Though Bisson is obviously trafficking in British stereotypes he’s doing it with a good deal of urbane charm and wit. I’m curious how Americans and Brits respond comparatively to it. I wouldn’t be surprised to find Americans like it more.

The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror Seventh Annual Collection, ed. Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling
Read story online.

Willows, “Church Bells May Ring” (1956)

[listen up!]

The Willows were a five-piece doo wop act out of Harlem who fell victim to the 1950s industry convention of covering Black artists threatening the pop charts with white groups who had the resources (label PR and dough) to nab the bigger hits. It produced strange and somewhat embarrassing results, such as Pat Boone covering Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti” and getting the bigger hit with it. Teens of the ‘50s, what hath thou wrought? The Willows were successfully prevented from reaching the pop charts, but the Diamonds (from Toronto) took their inferior version of what they retitled “The Church Bells May Ring” to #14 in 1956. The Diamonds version all but eliminates the bells, buried in the mix except for jazzy solos that miss the point of the song. What makes the Willows’ version so resounding is exactly the pounding bells it pushes so hard. The song, written by the Willows, was originally called “Church Bells Are Ringing” or maybe just “Church Bells”—church bells were always going to be involved. And, indeed, they are what makes the song stand out. They’re chimes, or tubular bells—as it happens, played by studio hand that day Neil Sedaka. They add a rhythmic luster around which the lusty singers dart in harmony. The song feels like the happiest wedding day, bursting with upbeat energy. “Oh ah linga linga linga linga ling ding-dong,” chants the lead vocalist with exuberance. You never knew you could dance to church bells but now you do. To be clear, I have nothing against the Diamonds. I like their big dance hit of a couple years later, “The Stroll.” But it’s a fact that the Willows plainly have the better version of this song.

Eddington (2025)

The range of opinion is wide on the latest from director and writer Ari Aster (Hereditary, Midsommar, Beau Is Afraid). Filmmaker John Waters put Eddington at the top of his list of the best pictures of 2025, while movie critic Glenn Kenny put it last on his list, in the category “No Cigar” by itself with the brushoff comment, “Piss off, MAGA boy.” I’m somewhere between. It’s a mixed bag. It’s basically the Covid pandemic as viewed and experienced from the small town of Eddington, New Mexico, but it’s a satire so lots of things are exaggerated. Eddington is only tangentially related to the disease, to Black Lives Matter protests, to QAnon, or even to masking. But it’s all here. Mandates required masks in public, as I’m sure you recall—the main virtue of Eddington is the way it brings 2020 back so vividly. Masks are an ongoing issue here and, yes, the picture is sympathetic to people who won’t wear them. “There’s no Covid here,” Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) keeps saying, although he develops a terrible cough after an altercation with a homeless person who probably is infected. Sheriff Cross is in a dispute with the mayor, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), who is working with shady tech bros to open a massive data center that he promises will bring jobs to the town. Sheriff Cross decides to run for mayor against Garcia’s reelection bid, dresses up his rig like the one Robert Altman used in Nashville for the Replacement Party candidate Hal Phillip Walker, and cruises the town speechifying through the loudspeaker as he goes. Like Aster’s last picture, Beau Is Afraid, Eddington is long and muddled. It's trying to stuff everything it can into it from 2020. The burgeoning hunt for pedophiles under influence of QAnon, for example. Sheriff Cross’s staff of three includes a Black man (Michael Ward), which leads to lots of easy plot developments. At least Beau had a great first hour before going off the rails. Eddington has isolated impressive points, such as Phoenix’s performance. He’s great as he always is, maybe even a little better here, disappearing into the role. The white-kid protesters are treated as robotic woke-spewing morons. One tries to explain himself to his parents, saying they’re “changing institutions, dismantling whiteness, and not allowing whiteness to reassert itself.” Certainly from the MAGA point of view that’s how the Left in this country can look, whereas the MAGA-friendly types here are arguably more down to earth. Maybe I’m talking myself into not liking this one. It didn’t give me that much to take away. Approach with caution.

Housekeeping (1980)

I thought this strange and beautiful novel by Marilynne Robinson worked really well, a kind of coming-of-age story of a girl raised first by her grandmother, then by two great-aunts (briefly), and finally by her Aunt Sylvie, her mother’s sister. The setting is Idaho or western Montana, probably in the 1950s. The narrator is Ruthie Stone, writing from memory about her girlhood many years later as an adult. Her grandfather died in a spectacular train accident. Later her mother committed suicide. Ruthie is with her younger sister Lucille for many years, but eventually Lucille runs away, leaving Ruthie with Sylvie. Sylvie is a loner and a natural transient, often sleeping with her clothes and shoes on, ready to depart at short notice. She can’t keep house and spends many days by herself disappearing into the woods. The title is less a reference to cleaning and more about what it takes to keep a roof over one’s head. This thing about spending whole days in the woods runs in the family apparently, as Ruthie and Lucille spend much of one school year doing it too. Eventually Lucille decides to go straight and runs away, making her home with a schoolteacher. That leaves Ruthie with Sylvie and the court system which is coming for them. Ruthie, it turns out, might well be the transient type herself. Her voice is straightforward yet lyrical. She makes the Idaho / Montana landscape alien and a little weird. This is not a typical western by any means—largely, perhaps, because there are no men except on the furthest margins—but the landscape alone makes it a western. No horses or Indians, but a mountainous land, western weather patterns, and of course trains and maybe Mormons. The language can lapse into dense passages of description and discussions of memory and perception. It’s odd but never particularly feels unlikely. I had a hard time feeling like I could get a handle on Sylvie, but I always liked her. Ruthie had her misgivings—and Lucille too, obviously—but in the end she comes to love Sylvie, fiercely, even as she enters a lifetime of estrangement from Lucille. Strange and wonderful, Housekeeping is a short and utterly fine little novel.

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

Kinda Kinks (1965)

The ever-amorphous state of mid-‘60s British Invasion LPs applies to the Kinks too. There are UK and US versions of Kinda Kinks, their second UK album, as well as at least two deluxe package editions that are equally close to essential. It seems likely, by the way their discography goes, that the Kinks were also bound like the Beatles and many others to an industry convention that frowned on releasing a single and then including it on the next album, whereas it was somehow OK to release singles from an album. Another significant factor is that EPs sold well in the UK but did not in the US. Because of these and other factors, and even though UK and US Kinks releases were identical as of late 1965 with The Kink Kontroversy, there are strange gaps all over their catalog. Songs like “All Day and All of the Night,” “Who’ll Be the Next in Line,” and “I’m Not Like Everybody Else” don’t have proper album homes now except on the CD deluxe package editions that started arriving in the ‘90s. In many ways the best version of Kinda Kinks is now found there. I know at least two on my streaming service, one of 53 minutes with 23 songs, and another of 80 minutes with 35 songs. I prefer the shorter one—many of the extra dozen on the 80-minute edition are redundancies, alternate versions, more b-sides (experiments that don’t always come off but usually have at least one interesting point), and/or are associated with live recordings and/or radio interviews (admittedly charming). Both playlists kick off with the 12 songs from the original UK release, which includes “Naggin’ Woman” and “Tired of Waiting for You,” neither of which are on the US version. It’s somewhat amazing when you consider “Tired” was one of their biggest hits in the US, #6 in early 1965. But that song instead wound up on a US-only release, Kinks-Size, where “All Day and All of the Night” also landed (admittedly a pretty good album!).

The nine songs on Kinda Kinks shared by the UK and US versions are as good as anything on the first album, notably in their lively jolting mode of ecstatic racket typified by “You Really Got Me.” With perspective, we can see it was rock ‘n’ roll transmogrifying into rock in front of our eyes and as early as 1964. But that’s not all the Kinks were up to. Elements of skiffle and music hall show up here as well and the songwriting is often ingenious, musical, distinct in style from song to song, and infectious. I may finally be tired after all these years of singing along with “Tired of Waiting for You,” but it remains an irresistible singalong even in my latter-day zombie variations. There’s more ecstatic racket in the cover of “Dancin’ in the Street,” which is exciting and surprisingly not that far off the Motown original by Martha & the Vandellas. Convincing tender exercises show up here as well, such as “Nothin' in the World Can Stop Me Worryin' 'Bout That Girl.” To cap it off, there’s “Something Better Beginning,” with its delicate baroque air and dense lyrical shadings: “Is this the start of another heart breaker / Or something better beginning / Something better beginning / Something better beginning.” I could do without the bawling “Naggin” Woman,” but even the stripped-down concentrated original UK 27-minute version of Kinda Kinks is quite enjoyable, standing up to close scrutiny and daily play, a pretty darned good album of itself. But there’s more, as they say on the late-nite shows, much much more.

Bell Notes, “I’ve Had It” (1958)

[listen up!]

I was listening to Vol. 2 of the Ace label’s excellent Golden Age of American Rock ‘n’ Roll: Hot 100 Hits From 1954-1963 when the Bell Notes’ one and only hit, which reached #6 in February 1959, leapt out and reminded me vividly of the early-‘80s cowpunk act Rank and File and specifically their theme song “Rank and File.” It seems likely this could be settled in a court of law because “Rank and File” sounds more like “I’ve Had It” than “My Sweet Lord” sounds like “He’s So Fine.” Just sayin’. The greater and more obvious influence on the Long Island act Bell Notes is the Everly Brothers, in both their close harmonies and in the sense in their songs of ineffective peevishness, miffed by the way things are going. In “Bird Dog,” “Problems,” “Walk Right Back,” “Bye Bye Love,” “Wake Up Little Susie,” they have reason to feel short-changed and that there’s nothing they can do about it. Just so, the singer of this song has “had it,” an expression, “I’ve had it,” usually spoken by people who are likely to keep having it and know it. Exasperation as real as it gets, in a way. As for the cowpunk lift, I would not call it exactly theft on the part of Rank and File, just a pronounced family resemblance between songs, or maybe a kind of homage or salute (though it’s unlikely many in 1982 remembered the Bell Notes, who I have to keep fighting myself not to think of as the Bell Tones). Rank and File’s version, if you want to call it that, is twice as long and all rocked up heavy on a big drumkit and twangy electric guitar, with all-new lyrics. You can imagine what the “la-la-la-la” singing Bell Notes might have to say about it. It’s right there in the title of their only hit.

“Field Biology of the Wee Fairies” (2018)

This story by Naomi Kritzer is highly enjoyable, a canny mashup of girl power and “faerie” tale. To be clear, Kritzer spells it fairy, but still. In the world of this story—which is also 1962 US—adolescent girls are expected to catch a fairy and get a wish. It’s an adolescent rite of passage. The wishes are generally on the order of being more pretty. Our main character, Amelia, is a smart young girl whose skills and aptitude for science and math are frustrated by the profound sexism of the time. She is working on a science project, probably the best of anyone else’s in the school, yet she can’t get into the school Science Club because she’s a girl. The fairy thing is real in this story, though not what it appears, as the teeny creatures are wily, with their own agenda. They let themselves be caught because the touch of a human makes it possible for them to read the future. They grant a wish they know will come true, but there are other benefits in it for them. Amelia suspects some of this, and so, when a fairy appears to her and starts flitting around to be caught, her scientific instincts kick in. She captures it in a jar without touching it and then interviews it for information. What she learns enables her to triumph over the Science Club. It’s all stitched together well. As more of a girl power story it bears a light hand with the fairy stuff. The story is obviously as skeptical as Amelia—and yet fairies are real (in this story). I am undereducated on fairy lore myself, which I understand extends back far into antiquity, so I don’t know how ignorant I may sound when I talk about a Susanna Clarke model. This story anyway struck me as more of what I encountered in Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, as these fairies are small and charming, but quite intelligent, with strange and great powers, and not necessarily on our side. I like the way Amelia can break down her fairy and get some straight talk from it. She’s remarkably clearheaded for a juvenile in the first place, but at the end she definitely has the look of someone who is going to go far in this world. It’s such a happy ending it’s irresistible even as the story’s strands are brought off nicely on many levels.

The Long List Anthology, Vol. 5: More Stories From the Hugo Award Nomination List, ed. David Steffen
Read / listen to story.

United States of Trance (2001)

I’ve always been a little confused about how to think of albums like this. The major credit goes to a DJ—in this case the prolific Christopher Lawrence—who produces and/or remixes tracks by different artists. Contributing artists get so little credit that I was momentarily uncertain which were artist names and which were track names. On Lawrence’s Wikipedia page, United States of Trance is categorized with “DJ Compilations” (as opposed to “Albums,” “Singles & EPs,” or “Remixes”). OK, that sounds good. I somewhat crudely perhaps classify the genre with these exercises as “techno” at large. But hold up now, “trance” has its own meaning, which is fairly specific (again Wikipedia): “... typically characterized by a tempo between 120 and 150 beats per minute (BPM), repeating melodic phrases and a musical form that distinctly builds tension and elements throughout a track often culminating in 1 to 2 ‘peaks’ or ‘drops.’” Yes, all right, good to know. Moving on: “Although trance is a genre of its own, it liberally incorporates influences from other musical styles such as techno, house, chill-out, classical music, tech house, ambient and film scores.” A lot of styles in that list I would call “techno” and be done with it—I can’t shave hairs that fine. I have my suspicions that making such distinctions requires doses of stimulant drugs, which I imagine also go excellently with a set like this one here, beguilingly lurching and percolating and driving forward for nearly 74 minutes. I will note that the 12 tracks by 12 different artists (including one by Lawrence) are all largely instrumentals, with some occasional whispering or non-word vocalizations. They are largely matters of simple musical figures with unexpected tones and complex rhythms. They are thrilling and dull as your mood may dictate. Per the definition above, each track does indeed have its peaks and/or drops, although that does not exactly apply to the album as a whole, which chugs along in its established parameters modulating groove and finally goes out unbowed at the end, like a brass band parade disappearing down the street. You wouldn’t necessarily know it’s 12 artists. It’s less a collection of songs and more a collection of dramatic musical moments. What’s more, the album tracks seamlessly—that is, playing it on shuffle produces awkward and abrupt transitions from track to track. It’s not the same. Lawrence intends it to be listened to as sequenced. For me it is music that too often wants to recede into the background. It’s hard to stay focused. Another word might be boring, but I would not go that far. United States of Trance is more like an environment that you visit, as a kind of tourist. You may not absorb it all, but you come away with distinct memories and experiences.

Six Degrees of Separation (1993)

USA, 112 minutes

Director: Fred Schepisi

Writer: John Guare

Photography: Ian Baker

Music: Jerry Goldsmith

Editor: Peter Honess

Cast: Stockard Channing, Will Smith, Donald Sutherland, Ian McKellen, Mary Beth Hurt, Bruce Davison, Heather Graham, Anthony Michael Hall, Eric Thal, Richard Mason, J.J. Abrams, Kitty Carlisle

Six Degrees of Separation is one degree of separation from a 1990 stage play of the same name, based on a real-life con man, which approximately sums up most of the problems here. Well, except for the conceit of a high concept that never quite comes off. Google AI summarizes: “Six Degrees of Separation is the theory that everyone on Earth is connected by a chain of no more than five other people (six acquaintance links).... [It may be] illustrated by the ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’ game, where any actor can be linked to Bacon in six or fewer roles.”

The funny thing (funny dumbass, not funny ha ha) is that this idea has little to do with anything going on in this picture, beyond something that one major character is fascinated by in a daydreamy sort of way. That is the unbearably named Ouisa, pronounced “wee-zuh,” short for Louisa (Stockard Channing). Donald Sutherland plays her husband Flan. They are rich New Yorkers living off Central Park. Sutherland is excellent, as he always was, but he can’t save this mess. Will Smith plays Paul, who says he is the son of Sidney Poitier. That claimed connection might have something to do with the six degrees. I don’t know. I never figured it out. I did notice that Will Smith did not slap anyone in this picture.

“A Place to Stay” (1998)

[spoilers] I was impressed by this longish vampire story by Michael Marshall Smith. It deliberately applies a patina of confusion to a story of a man’s semi-lost evening with a woman he meets and wants to find again. It’s set in New Orleans, the French Quarter in all its touristy glory. The man works in the software development industry and is there for a convention and the excuse to party and blow off steam. These elements are perfect, in 1998, for a night of hard drinking and carousing. Eventually our first-person narrator blacks out. He wakes in the 4 a.m. hour in a bar that is cleaning up after closing. He remembers parts of the night, and parts come back to him as he retraces his steps trying to put it together. He thinks he remembers where the woman told him she works, a retailer of high-end kitchen goods. He finds the place, the next day, and enters, but instead of a store he finds himself in the bar from the night before, and it’s no longer day but night. Smith’s transitions as he switches back and forth between these realities can be jarring, and confusing, but they use my favorite of all the vampire powers, otherwise way too underutilized for my taste, which is the ability to cloud minds. Whatever your theory, by this point of the story the mystery is engaged. It’s hard to guess what might be coming next, specifically, but we’re starting to get the drift. There’s a decidedly modern tinge to it in the affluent, hedonistic, youthful software development world. The woman our guy searches for asked him at one point whether he believes in vampires. Decidedly, contemptuously, he does not. That’s really our only clue, beyond that I was reading the story in a fantasy/horror anthology. Nothing seems vampirish at all about her. Things reach a crescendo of confusion as our guy goes switching in and out of the night before and recovers more information about his missing time. It’s all nicely done with enough misdirection to fool me until the reveal only in the very last sentence. One thing I find interesting about vampire stories is that the lore is so wide-ranging—about mirrors and daylight and counting and all of it—that even if you know it’s a vampire story it’s hard to know how it’s going to play out. This story is obviously dependent on their ability to becloud minds, which I had forgotten as a possibility while reading the story. Smith springs it on us as an unfurling, horrific, endless nightmare, with romance and pleasure ultimately stripped away.

The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror: Twelfth Annual Collection, ed. Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling
Story not available online.

Jody Reynolds, “Endless Sleep” (1958)

[listen up!]

[content warnings] One more out here on the morbid tip. Jody Reynolds was a one-hit wonder rockabilly artist, born in Denver and reared in Oklahoma. “Endless Sleep” reached #5 in 1958, his only appearance in the top 40. But the follow-up, “Fire of Love,” which peaked at #66, was later covered by both MC-5 and the Gun Club. The label Demon liked “Endless Sleep” enough to record it, but insisted on adding the happy-ending last verse as well as tacking on the name Dolores Nance to the songwriting credit; apparently they thought the tune would do better as the product of a songwriting team. OK, maybe. The story here is literally dark from the start, opening: “The night was black, rain fallin’ down.” In profoundly mournful tones, the singer tells us he’s quarreled with his girlfriend and doesn’t know where she went. He follows her footsteps to the shore of the sea (Reynolds wrote the song in San Diego and performed it that night). She’s gone, “forevermore.” Gasp! Suicide! Then the singer thinks he hears the sea speaking to him, albeit in a kind of awkward way to make the lines rhyme, saying, “I took your baby from you away.” But we’re not done yet. Comes the voice of his beloved: “Come join me baby in my endless sleep.” Suicide-murder! Lord! “Come join me baby in my endless sleep.” It’s high, keening, remorseless tragedy, but thanks to the honchos at the perhaps ironically named Demon label all’s well that ends well. The singer rescues his babe. The “angry” sea gives it up. “You took your baby from me away.” But I don’t believe it. One or both are moldering at the bottom of the sea even as we speak. I’m sure of it.