Month: March 2006

  • A Living Legend

    Back in 98 and 99 when we had the studio at 1650 Broadway going, we worked on a wide variety of recording, engineering, and writing projects. Some of those were klunkers, which we were doing just to get established, but one or two were sheer gold. The best example of the latter category was the…

    Categories:
  • More good things from Austria

    “I never knew the old Vienna before the war, with its Strauss music, its glamour and easy charm.” So begins The Third Man (ranking high on my ten great films list), in which the city itself fills out the ensemble cast. It occurs to me just now that in the course of the film, we…

    Categories:
  • Ignorance and certainty

    Quote from Charles Darwin: “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.” Quote from Bertrand Rusell: “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.” Rings true? Then you may be interested in this study: Unskilled and Unaware of It:…

    Categories:
  • Two neo-noirs from unlikely sources

    When you think of directors Harold Ramis and David Cronenberg, film noir is not the first genre that pops into your head. Cronenberg likes to blow things up good, real good. And come to think of it, so does Ramis. Well, at least that would apply to the Stay-Puft marshmallow man. But both directors turned…

    Categories:
  • Stonewalled again, or Erin go brouhaha

    This year’s award for embarrassing public behavior at the St. Paddy’s day parade goes to none other than parade chairman, John Dunleavy. I’m not sure how many green pints he had downed before offering this explanation of why an Irish lesbian & gay organization is always denied permission to march in the parade: “If an…

    Categories:
  • Demics Rule!

    The Cedar Lounge–every city, big or small, must have had its own CBGB’s in the late ’70s and early ’80s. This was London, Ontario’s punk rock incubator. It was already closed down, and a legend, by the time I got anywhere near old enough to go to a bar or a rock club. And of…

    Categories:
  • Lars von Trier

    Dogville is the kind of film which leaves you completely bowled over, in that “wow…” state. Especially the “…” part. When Lars von Trier engages you, you feel it, viscerally, of course, but you are also left with many things to ponder. A heated coffee-shop philosophy chat that ends with chairs being smashed over heads.…

    Categories:
  • The L-train word

    Hopped on the L train last night and wound up at Pete’s Candy Store. We’re still trying to figure out the whole Williamsburg thing–like where everything is and why you have to go to the back of the room to order a sandwich, or get funny looks if you ask if the red cab is…

    Categories:
  • Clickradio back in the news

    How does that song go, “Do you remember rock-and-roll-Clickradio?” Maybe not quite. Clickradio may have died young, but the fight over the beautiful corpse it left behind continues. The New York Post (ick) reports that a trial opened April 5th in Manhattan Supreme Court to settle whether the company was scuttled to allow a group…

    Categories: , , ,