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Sep 12

Mr. Goodstuff

I was fortunate enough to happen by the “Sexy Soul Oldies” tent on the east side this weekend. The tent’s proprietor is none other than Mr. Goodstuff (pictured below). Apparently, Mr. Goodstuff spins his mix CDs in street fairs and flea markets all around New York, and on Saturday he was in fine form: blaring groove after groove and busting moves for the (completely into it) crowd (including me) gathered in front of his display. His mixes, ranging in title from the prosaic (“Memories,” “Looking Back”) to the gauche (“Slow Grind”) to the sort of delightful (“Oh No He Didn’t”), are excellent. I know this because I bought two of them, and I also took a handout which outlines the playlists for more than a dozen of his mixtapes (which thrilled me, then slightly concerned me for Mr. Goodstuff: doesn’t he know we’ll all take his playlists and re-create them on Spotify or Grooveshark or whatever?).

(Not my photo! via)

Anyway, here’s a selection from Mix 8: “Chillin’ with a Feelin’.” That’s what I’m talking about.

Aug 4

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

We made a trip up to the Newport Folk Festival last weekend in Rhode Island. NPR has the whole thing streaming right now, but my favorite set was NC’s own Carolina Chocolate Drops, linked above (although I also have Dawes and Middle Brother on constant rotation this week). The CCDs gave a history history lesson with every song… and also awesomely covered Blu Cantrell. Pictures from the weekend below!

5/6 of the crew

Newport harbor

Taylor Goldsmith (Dawes/Middle Brother) and M. Ward

At the Festival

Just one of the cottages

Jul 29

Earlier this week, I saw an old movie at Lincoln Center called The Clock. I was excited to see it on the big screen, mainly because it’s an immensely comforting movie to me and secondly because it covers a lot of ground in New York City (OK, NYC via soundstage).

My favorite part of the movie starts in the above clip around 6:05, when Joe (Robert Walker) slides over on the other side of Alice (Judy Garland) to act as a buffer between her and this drunk stranger. It’s a sweet moment, I think, because we see that this guy isn’t out to bed her or impress her or even, primarily, win her over… he wants to protect, to take care of her. I like the way Alice then glances at the drunk, and next at Joe, processing what he’s just done and thinking to herself, “Now that was nice.” (Judy really is wonderful and sensitive and absorbing throughout the movie.)

The Clock is a fairy tale, of course, and the historian who introduced the movie told us that, throughout the filming, Robert Walker was dealing with a highly-publicized divorce and battling depression and alcoholism. Walker died from a toxic mix of alcohol and barbituates six years after the movie was released.

And Judy, five times married by the end of her life,

… often didn’t even have enough money for food to eat, and there was no pension forthcoming from MGM, a studio that made millions off of her movies. In those last years, her voice started to fray and she physically aged until she resembled a careworn little old lady who had been felled by some drastic illness.

[from Dan Callahan’s must-read retrospective essay in Alt Screen]

Friday Ephemera

Newport, c. 1920s

The US in 1920s-30s… in color

Lorrie Moore’s opening paragraphs in her piece on ”Friday Night Lights”

For my cube: this mousepad?

All of Russian Lit Scholar Elif Batuman’s Amazon reviews… including a particularly effusive write-up of a book called “A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag”

Word-hoard from “The Shipping News”:

waterweed, crenshaw, ruched, excoriation, saucisson, gyred, unguent, dolman, slovenly, tetter, doddering, atavistic, babushka, papillose, tuckamore, pumiced…

AN ICE CREAM SANDWICH SLIDE SHOW

Airplane vs. Zero Hour

Jul 25

“God never places us in any position in which we cannot grow. We may imagine that He does. We may fear we are so impeded by fretting petty cares that we are gaining nothing; but when we are not sending any branches upward, we may be sending roots downward. Perhaps in the time of our humiliation, when everything seems a failure, we are making the best kind of progress. Look on and look up. Lay hold on Christ with both your poor, empty hands. Let Him do with you what seems good to Him. Though He slay you, still trust in Him, and I dare in His name to promise you a sweeter, better life than you could have ever known, had He left you to drink of the full dangerous cups of unmingled prosperity.” Elizabeth Prentiss, “Thoughts Concerning the King”