music, death and basketball

yes, I'm just under the wire of my self-imposed weekly deadline.

today's new releases include Franz Ferdinand (Tonight, which I'm listening to now), Bruce Springsteen (Working on a Dream) and the Bird and The Bee (Ray Guns are Not Just the Future, which Amazon was offering as a $3.99 download; pretty strange for the day of release).
at least that's what allmusic.com chose to feature.
none of which really competed, review-wise, with last week's superfecta of Animal Collective (Merriweather Post Pavilion), Antony and the Johnsons (The Crying Light), A.C. Newman (Get Guilty) and Andrew Bird (Noble Beast).
guess your name had to begin with A to get a good review last week.

yesterday I turned in a piece on Will Oldham (a/k/a Bonnie "Prince" Billy) for Anthem magazine (I believe it's for the March issue when BPB's Beware is released).
and from assignment (we skipped over the pitch part for this one) to final edits (when everything is usually over (but not this time), the process has been (how you say) interesting.
though Oldham is a notoriously difficult interview (his mother once described his demeanor with press as "ornery"), the hour I spent with him was actually quite enjoyable. the subsequent two weeks however . . .
it's a long story (much longer than the piece itself).
maybe I'll tell you about it some day.

Monday contained other complications as well. a couple of very, very short trips into Manhattan, a hair cut, and a variety of more insular activities too small to merit mention.
but all combined they were more than enough to make me tired, tiresome and willing to rationalize a less productive day today.
but for some reason I became a bit despondent while watching Conan O'Brien on "Inside the Actor's Studio."
yeah, I know. I'm not exactly sure why I was watching Conan O'Brien on "Inside the Actor's Studio" except to say that I'm sure my attention was somehow flagged by the fact that Conan O'Brien is not an actor.
and yes, I have been known to turn to programs that I realize in advance will not make me happy.
stubborn? probably.
genetic? at least partly.
and "Inside the Actor's Studio" came on before the news that John Updike had died.

now Updike was 76 years old and had published more books than I will even if I live to be 376 (boy, that would suck). I didn't particularly identify with his style, his setting, his characters (though I did teach his short story, "A & P," about a hundred times to second semester freshman English students (and I didn't even teach freshman English (I don't think) my last three or four years of teaching)).
still, a man died. a famous man died. a famous writer died.
and there is no joy there.
continue feeling despondent.

my former next door neighbor in Tuscaloosa, Mark Hughes Cobb, has written a very nice piece on Richard Yates (he wrote the novel Revolutionary Road on which the movie is based) and his final apartment, at 1104 15th Court in Tuscaloosa (just about a three-minute walk (if you cut through a couple of backyards) from the our adjacent houses).
the piece was published yesterday (Yates died in 1992), which makes his quote regarding Updike retrospectively cold and ironic.
more death. more writer death.

it's late (much later than when I started because this Bonnie "Prince" Billy thing doesn't look like it's over yet), so basketball will have to wait.