I KNOW MY I KNOW MY I KNOW MY I KNOW MY I KNOW MY I KNOW MY TIME IS NEAR

According to the doctor I could've died in traffic.
Lindstrom: Long Way Home (Prins Thomas Edit) (cross-posted)

What's great about greatness, in part, is that it's achieved by people. We don't care about the home run record, not really, as Roger Maris and Barry Bonds have discovered. We care about Babe Ruth. Would a Michelangelo sculpture under any other artist's name still look as, uh, sweet? Even when we don't know much about the individuals who built something great, like the Egyptian slaves who put up the pyramids, part of what makes their accomplishments so awe-inspiring is that actual human beings were able to accomplish them. We can imagine in every brick the human sacrifice such greatness must've required. As a critic, I personally happen to think it's important to base our judgments only on the work itself, because that's what will endure-- that's some person's bid for greatness, and though contexts will change that feat will stay the same. Still, knowing the story of Babe Ruth makes the home run record interesting and significant; knowing the story of Barry Bonds makes it always something there to remind you of philandering former fastballers testifying before Congress about sticking syringes into their buttocks. (Which could be considered great in the context of 2118, who knows.) What a Kurt Cobain did in the way he acted his life out in the media, the way he could inspire kids to feel like being different was OK, was meaningful no matter what you or I or history ultimately says about the merit of his work.


Loneliness and cheeseburgers are a dangerous mix.
The Embassy: State'08

Uh, so anyway, that tumblr thing is turning out to be much more reasonable, schedule-wise, than blogspot, just because I envisioned this blog as being lengthy, thought-out essays linking a bunch of disparate subjects around an album or whatever, and then definitely haven't ended up having time to devote to anything of that magnitude lately. On tumblr I'm basically taking stuff I'd read or watch anyway and making a record of it, which is helpful because then there's a way to refer back to that sometime if necessary. It's an experiment I'm enjoying, anyway, and it doesn't seem to take extra time aside from maybe a minute or two here of typing a comment that I otherwise would've overloaded some other busy soul's inbox with. Ugh, ending on a preposition, that's yours for which with to deal.

Some stuff on the usual other sites lately, read those things those places.

Denmark in a couple of weeks! Then Chicago!


Grab a sharpie, homey, mark my words.
Deerhunter: Nothing Ever Happened