Monday, March 29, 2010

all night Marx Brothers on Turner Classic


Monkey Business followed by Duck Soup followed by A Night at the Opera followed by A Day at the Races followed by At the Circus (which ends just before 6 a.m. Tuesday).

enjoy, dammit.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Alex Chilton has died


in his adopted hometown of New Orleans of an apparent heart attack and, according to the Times, confirmed by Big Star bandmate Jody Stephens .

jackhammers and tigers and bears, oh my!


and the greatest of these (read: noisiest, most annoying) is the jackhammer.

the one outside my window, the one playing Woody Woodpecker on my building, has been operating intermittently for the past hour and 45 minutes. which makes the current HBO outage, and any possible "song of the day" selection, quite moot.

we've been led to believe that we've still got a ways to go here (good; it's important to have something to look forward to).

happy St. Patrick's Day.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

close encounters of the third kind,


which I've never seen despite large parts being filmed in Mobile and surrounding environs of south Alabama, comes on Turner Classic at 4 EST. so I think I'm going to give it a shot (in the background while getting more work done, of course).

Monday, March 15, 2010

the only living boy in New York


so the Tusk book, finally, has been turned in to "production."

and despite a rather late night final Fleetwood Mac push, I bet I've listened to Simon & Garfunkel's "Only Living Boy in New York" ten times in the past 24 hours.
not saying that's a bad thing.

ironically (or not), Section 7's offering a $7 deal on Fleetwood Mac t-shirts (I'm not buying one; just trying to get you apprised).

what I'm working on now:

NotWorkingBook on Facebook

NotWorkingBook on Twitter

Thursday, March 11, 2010

the last book I ever read


"In the kitchen he said, 'I know about your marriage. You had the kind of marriage where you tell each other everything. You told her everything. I look at you and see this in your face. It's the worst thing you can do in a marriage. Tell her everything you feel, tell her everything you do. That's why she thinks you're crazy.'
At dinner, over another omelette, he waved his fork and said, 'You understand it's not a matter of strategy. I'm not talking about secrets or deceptions. I'm talking about being yourself. If you reveal everything, bare every feeling, ask for understanding, you lose something crucial to your sense of yourself. You need to know things the others don't know. It's what no one knows about you that allows you to know yourself.'"

- Don DeLillo's Point Omega

(my beloved strongly suggests that I not follow my original plan to next read Falling Man)

Monday, March 8, 2010

updated news on the death of Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous


the New York Times (through the pen of Ben Sisario) reports that Mark Linkous shot himself in the heart in an alley outside a friend's house in Knoxville, TN.
he was 47.

fellow Southern suicide and Linkous friend Vic Chesnutt was 45.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

sometimes it seems


as if I all do with this blog is announce deaths.

well, unfortunately, here's another one:

North Carolina resident Mark Linkous, the driving force behind both Sparklehorse and the Dancing Hoods, took his own life yesterday.
while his exact age has not been confirmed, he was generally believed to be in his late 40s.

oddly congruous, a visit to sparklehorse.com reveals an opening page photo of Vic Chesnutt who took his life in December.

above is a photo from the Linkous' last appearance at Webster Hall in New York, and
below (here) is short, three-year-old interview I did with Mark for
Phoenix New Times in which he talks about his often crippling depression.

RIP.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Barry Hannah died


yesterday in Oxford, Mississippi.
he was 67 years old.

over the course of the next several days I'm guessing several thousand words of remembrance will be written and spoken, particularly at the Oxford Conference for the Book this Thursday through Saturday.

I interviewed Barry what seems like a hundred years ago at his home in Oxford (one of my few published pieces that's not on the Internet, it seems). before that I played in a band called Even Greenland after one of Barry's stories. and a picture of Barry Hannah - my favorite and a working print gift from the photographer Mark Morrow from his long out-of-print Images of the Southern Writer - hangs in my kitchen where I write.
but I will not attempt to compete.

if you want to read about Barry, the week's best (so far) is Tom Junod's piece for Esquire.

and if you want to read Barry (you should), start with either Airships or Ray. it'd be well worth your while.

Monday, March 1, 2010

Amazon's March 100 MP3 album downloads for $5 each sale


some truly excellent stock this time around (all for $5 each in case the title was less than clear), including Spoon's newest Transference (which I'm listening to a lot more than I would've guessed), Band of Horses' Everything All the Time, Husker Du's New Day Rising, Patti Smith's Radio Ethiopia, R.E.M.'s Document, The Buzzcocks' Singles Going Steady, Hold On Now, Youngster by Los Campesinos! and Stay Positive by The Hold Steady.

also, early Phoenix (It's Never Been Like That), Radiohead's Kid A, Low by David Bowie, The Shins' Chutes Too Narrow (for all you Garden State fans), X & Y by Coldplay, Dr. Dog's We All Belong, Patterson Hood's Murdering Oscar (and Other Love Songs), Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings' 100 Days, 100 Nights, Blondie's Parallel Lines, Iron & Wine's The Creek Drank the Cradle, Frank Sinatra's Come Fly With Me, Frightened Rabbit's The Midnight Organ Fight, Eels' Hombre Lobo, UB40's Labour of Love, Akron/Family's debut and Lenny Kravitz' Are You Gonna Go My Way?

enjoy.

the Trucks family


a rather extensive article on the most famous members (Virgil and Derek) of the extended (extensive, extended) Trucks family by famed (famous, famed) baseball writer Peter Gammons.

no, I am not mentioned.