I sure as shit do love you / And I cuss because I mean it

Side One
Kathleen Edwards, "Sure as Shit"
Elliott Smith, "Pitseleh"
Dolly Parton, "I Will Always Love You"
Lucinda Williams, "Fruits of My Labor"
Mirah, "You've Gone Away Enough" 
Lykke Li, "Love Me Like I'm Not Made of Stone" 
Gillian Welch, "Everything Is Free" 

Side Two
Townes van Zandt, "I'll Be Here in the Morning" 
Lily Allen, "Littlest Things" 
Neko Case, "Hold On, Hold On" 
Kimya Dawson, "France" 
Britney Spears, "Everytime" 
Nina Simon, "Ne me quitte pas" 
Olivia Rodrigo, "Enough for You" 
Sinéad O'Connor, "The Last Day of Our Acquaintance" 

Magistra vitae 

I cannot recommend too effusively nor unequivocally this beautifully crafted, thoroughly engrossing, often funny, and sometimes very poignant book. It feels as if one is spending many hours (~700 leisurely paced pages) in the privileged, intimate company of one of the world's greatest living historians and, surely, one of the most learned scholars (still, at 87!) active in any field. 

As it turns out, Brown's life experiences, far-flung travels, and surprising encounters have been every bit as fascinating and singular as his path-breaking, prodigious scholarly output. A career initiated with the finest modern biography of Augustine of Hippo (arguably the finest modern biography of any premodern person) is now aptly bookended –– though not to say concluded, one hopes –– by an autobiography that (loosely and unpretentiously) follows the shape and structure of Augustine's Confessions, also pointedly terminating well before the author's present and on an echoing note of loss and love. 

2023, so far

FILMS 

01. Past Lives (Song) 

02. Return to Seoul (Chou) 

03. Blackberry (Johnson)

04. The Luckiest Guy in the World (James) 

05. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Dos Santos/Powers/Thompson) 

ALBUMS

01. Black Belt Eagle Scout, The Land, The Water, The Sky

02. Boygenius, The Record

03. Paul Simon, Seven Psalms

04. Caroline Polachek, Desire, I Want to Turn into You

05. Jessie Ware, That! Feels Good!

Best in Show, 2023

Flip a Coin

1A. Jokic
1B. Giannis

Essentially in a Category of His Own at This Point

03. Curry

“You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby…”

04. Luka
05. Tatum

Twilight of the Idols: Some nights Late Bulls MJ, other nights Late Wizards MJ

06. KD
07. LeBron

“Load-Management” a Must; All-World When Healthy

08. Embiid
09. AD
10. Kawhi

Better Bets?

11. Butler
12. Dame
13. Mitchell

Canadian Content

14. Murray
15. SGA

Intercontinental

16. Siakam
17. Sabonis

Sounds Foreign But Is Actually Just from New Jersey

18. Bam

Players We’re Kinda Bored of Talking About, Yet Remain Great Often Enough to Slip in at or Near the Bottom of the Top 20

19. Booker
20. PG
21. Trae
22. Beal

Rounding out the Top 25; Full Names (Tellingly) Necessary

23. De’Aaron Fox
24. Anthony Edwards
25. Jalen Brunson

CAVEAT EMPTOR: Elite Talent-wise and/or Athletically But Unreliable, Repugnant, and/or Just Plain Boneheaded

–Ja
–Kyrie
–Harden

–Zion 😂

Honourable Mention: CP3; KAT; Ayton; Jrue Holiday; FVV; Jaylen Brown; DeMar DeRozan; Andrew Wiggins; Scottie Barnes; Evan Mobley; Paolo Banchero; Cade Cunningham; Austin Reaves; LaMelo Ball

Probably Will Be Better Than Most of the Players Named Above OR Will Be the Next Greg Oden and Headed Back to Europe in 4-5 Years (Both Scenarios Seem More or Less Equally in Play for Now…): Victor Wembanyama

First of the Gang to Die

                                                         RIP :( :( :(

Closer to heaven above and closer to you

I Put My Trust in You

 

The Sun Shines out of Our Behinds

And Death Shall Have No Dominion

NO THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING AT ALL WRONG WITH YOU

Hang in there, everybody. ;)

Four-plus hours with you / Well, I wouldn't say 'no'

                                                                                                 If you are ever visiting, passing through, or just have the option of flying in or out of (I just did the latter) Manchester, Rose Marie Gill's Manchester Music Tour is an absolute, emphatic MUST.  (The guidebook pictured above was co-written by Gill's late husband, the Inspiral Carpets drummer and Haçienda DJ who co-founded the tour group twenty years ago.) 

I cannot recommend more highly and effusively this superlative guided tour – one of the best I've ever been on, of any type, on any subject. Rose has a tremendous and uniquely intimate knowledge of the city, its history, and its key musical figures and happenings, which she communicates with charismatic wit, passion, and vivid storytelling. The locations were well-selected (e.g., Strangeways Prison, the Salford Lads Club, the cemetery gates of "Cemetry Gates" fame, the "Joy Division Bridge," the "Haçienda Apartments" where the Haçienda itself once stood, Sifters record store, etc.) to give one a well-rounded sense of this city's staggeringly rich music-related history, especially ca. 1970s–90s. (In the pop/rock era, has any mid-sized city anywhere ever punched so far above its weight class as Manchester during these decades?!) 

Four hours and change – and just £35 – very well spent, indeed...but would that it were twenty-four!

One look at you and I can't disguise

Why Can't I Breathe?

Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue 

                          01. Modern Lovers, "Someone I Care About"
02. Shtisel 

03. Return to Seoul 

04. History of the World Part 2 

When no one is around love will always love you

Few things of the past quarter-century are better than Moon Pix; existentially exhausted and wholly inexhaustible, lower than Low, heavier than heaven, brighter than creation's dark etc. etc. All the hearts that touch your cheek / how they jump / they move / they embarrass.

 will win/should win/should've been nominated

            

Picture
ww: Everything Everywhere All at Once
sw: Tár 
sbn: Benediction, Pacifiction (eligible?), Aftersun

Director
ww: 'the Daniels'
sw: Spielberg
sbn: Terence Davies, Benediction; Albert Serra, Pacifiction (if eligible); Jafar Panahi, No Bears 

Actress
ww: Michelle Yeoh
sw: Cate Blanchett 
sbn: Frankie Corio, Aftersun

Actor
ww: Austin Butler
sw: Paul Mescal or Colin Farrell 
sbn: Benoît Magimel, Pacifiction

Supporting Actress
ww: Jamie Lee Curtis
sw: Kerry Condon
sbn: Pahoa Mahagafanau, Pacifiction 

Supporting Actor
ww: Ke Huy Quan 
sw: Ke Huy Quan or Barry Keoghan 
sbn: Ethan Hawke, The Northman and/or The Black Phone

Original Screenplay
ww: 'the Daniels', EEAAO 
sw: Spielberg & Kushner, The Fabelmans
sbn: Davies, Benediction

Adapted Screenplay
ww: Sarah Polley, Women Talking 
sw: abstain – seen one, liked none 
sbn: Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

Cinematography
ww: Roger Deakins, Empire of Light
sw: anything but fucking Elvis
sbn: Artur Tort, Pacifiction 

Death or Glory

If guitar-bass-drums rock & roll as such isn't yet dead, then Mitski might be our one-woman Only Band That Matters. 

At the risk of heresy, I'm not sure even The Clash was ever quite as rock-your-face-off awesome as she is here, singing her best song to date along with (seemingly) the entire country of Brazil. Nirvana? Hmm, maybe. Hole? Getting warmer. Sleater-Kinney for sure; but Polly Jean Harvey might be Mitski's last real antecedent –– and sine qua non. 

 The Kids Aren't All Right (But Maybe That's Okay?) 

As the late-Gen. X parent of a late-Gen. Z teenager – though, to paraphrase Seinfeld, I don't know how official any of these categories really are –– and also as a university instructor, it's hard not to worry about the overall sanity and sense of stability of a generation of adolescents whose youth has been radically ruptured by the worst global pandemic in a century; who've heard since kindergarten about an apocalyptic climate catastrophe that it may be too late to avert; who, in learning about the history of the last World War, hear grim predictions of resurgent fascist and/or totalitarian movements, the alarming erosion of liberal democracy, and a potential WWIII that may now be percolating in eastern Europe. It is a lot, and it's difficult to comprehend exactly how all of this registers for young people today. Growing up in comparatively edenic 90s North America, such problems were either blissfully absent or seemingly more muted, e.g., the far less chiliastic discussions of "global warming" on Channel 1 or in Captain Planet episodes. 

Toward a better understanding of the "Zoomer" (a term my son detests) experience of recent years' events and discourses, one can do worse than to think seriously and uncynically about pop culture by-and-for people born in the twenty-first century. Take the video above: an MSG full of tens of thousands of surely diverse, yet presumably majority-Gen. Z, fans sings along most emphatically to the drop-line "I wanna end me!" in a song written by a then-seventeen-year-old Billie Eilish. Or take the lead-off track of then-seventeen-year-old Olivia Rodrigo's Sour, in which she first expresses her doubts about whether she'll manage to survive to the legal drinking age, then asserts "If someone tells me one more time / 'Enjoy your youth,' I'm gonna cry" before delivering the drop-line "God! It's brutal out there!" But, in contrast (or not?), consider also Greta Thunberg: her heroic activism of course, but also her sparkling wit and her embrace of neuro-divergence as a "superpower." She is at least as representative of Kids Today as Billie Eilish, and in particular of a generation that's arguably done more than any since at least the 1960s to take up (figurative) arms against a sea of troubles ––  against environmental degradation, climate-change complacency, gun laws that allow them to get murdered regularly at school, the violence and iniquities of systemic racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia and transphobia, etc. etc! 

If we olds haven't already irreparably ruined this world they've inherited from us, they're going to make it a markedly better place. Even if by opposing said troubles they can't ultimately end them, they're nevertheless not going down without fighting the good fight; and not just selectively/pragmatically as per usual, but intersectionally, on every possible front of injustice. As an admiring elder, then, my best guess is that the winking nihilism of Billie E.'s "Bury a Friend" and the frustrated fuck it-ism of Olivia R.'s "Brutal" are how they blow off steam –– and it should be noted, too, that both of these pop stars themselves seem to be highly thoughtful and engaged young women. While it may or may not be The End of the World as We Know It, the standard clichés about some kind of cyclical "youth culture" –– Elvis, the Beatles, Madonna, Nirvana, Eminem, rinse and repeat –– just don't hold water. This is different. They've had experiences we haven't, or else had them during a very different phase of life. They know things we don't; and, all things considered, they're holding up awfully well under the circumstances.