Drove to the U to take some pictures of a building. It was not possible. There was no place to park. Traffic was wretched, because nothing can travel on Washington Avenue: it’s light rail now. I wish I could use some variation of the picture above for the newspaper piece, because it captures the looming monstrosity failing to overshadow the humble beauty of the small church.
In the evening I drove to the Mall to do some cellphone plan investigation (bottom line: I have 14 years and three million dollars left on my contract but if I pay them $2 I will get a portable supercomputer that can communicate with Mars) (Subject of Friday’s column, so I’ll leave it at that). Southdale continues to sputter. The Gap, where I would go to check the sale rack, is gone. In its place they are building a Svertlotzky or whatever luxury store. The Eddie Bauer above is gone as well. They are building a Brietling or whatever luxury store. Okay. Well. I hadn’t bought anything at Eddie Bauer for years, because they never carried my pants size.
“You can buy it online!”
“But I am here, now”
“Sorry, we can’t stock every size.”
“But there are ten pairs of XXXXL over there in the sale rack. You always overbuy the large sizes.”
“You can buy it online and earn points!”
I could usually find my size at The Gap, in the sale rack. You could, for example, find a $40 T-shirt that said GAP for $9.99. The problem, of course, is that I do not want a T-shirt that says GAP. The larger problem for The Gap is that no one really wants a T-shirt that says GAP. I prefer their more upscale store, Lacunae, but they closed too. The Ann Taylor closed. The J. Crew has been threatening to close for a long time, and will probably shutter a week before the Wall Street Journal announces that “Yuppies are back.” Express Men, which used to carry shirts the most wonderful colors, now stocks shirts in downbeat dun hues, so I don’t go there anymore.
They had added some new “attractions,” one of which was bright and strange, standing alone in a wide deserted hallway:
The other was a throwback to the era of less-tech:
There’s really no replacement for those, is there? The first time you got one with friends. The first time you got one with a sweetheart.
You meet someone, and over the weekend they die:
The Capital One tower is gone.
It was incredible to watch! Here’s a view from the ground
“Don’t use his name in a prominent way. No one knows who he is.”
Well, that’s how it seems from this distance. I mean, the first paragraph of his Wikipedia page says: “Klugh was awarded the ‘1977 Best Recording Award For Performance and Sound’ for his album “Finger Painting” by “Swing Journal” a Japanese jazz magazine.” Not exactly household name material.
None of which has any bearing on his talent, of course.
Speaking of Japan, and being Big In:
Presented in digital stereo! We like that, because it was clean and pure and perfect.
Following his father's murder on 8 December 1980, Julian Lennon voiced anger and resentment towards him, saying, "I've never really wanted to know the truth about how dad was with me. There was some very negative stuff talked about me ... like when he said I'd come out of a whiskey bottle on a Saturday night. Stuff like that. You think, where's the love in that? Paul and I used to hang about quite a bit ... more than Dad and I did. We had a great friendship going and there seems to be far more pictures of me and Paul playing together at that age than there are pictures of me and my dad”.
I’ve never understood the lionization of Lennon pere. Seems an entirely selfish and unlikeable man.
If you won't there at the time you have no idea how Japan figured in the American imagination. It was a mixture of fear (they have industrial policy and will beat us!), wary admiration (they are well-ordered and know how to do things in ways our messy corporate structures cannot emulate because we lack their Vulcan logic) and post-punk praise, because they their letters looked cool and also cartoons. Then we'd see films of the American stars who played the big stadiums and the audience would be made up entirely of shrieking teen girls.
This was inevitable:
The DIR Network? This is the entirety of their wikipedia presence: “D.I.R. Broadcasting created the syndicated radio series King Biscuit Flower Hour.” As for Howard, he could, and can, go to hell. I remember sitting in the entrance to the Holland Tunnel, listening to him make fun of a caller who was an African immigrant, asking him if he ate monkeys. I have never wanted so bad to enter the tunnel and be underwater so I couldn't hear him anymore.
Looking a bit barmy here, Phil; the nice lad from down the street who gets a bit creepy the moment anyone pays him any attention. Would you like to see his birds in jars? He has lots of birds in jars.
This is a promo for . . . a book? A TV show? “The Phil Collins Story.” I’m not sure it’s that interesting.
According to a 2000 BBC biography of Collins, "critics sneer at him" and "bad publicity also caused problems", which "damaged his public profile" Rock historian Martin C. Strong wrote that Collins "truly polarised opinion from the start, his ubiquitous smugness and increasingly sterile pop making him a favourite target for critics". According to Guardian writer Paul Lester, Collins would "regularly" call music journalists to take issue with negative reviews. Over time, he came to be personally disliked; in 2009, journalist Mark Lawson told how Collins's media profile had shifted from "pop's Mr. Nice guy, patron saint of ordinary blokes", to someone accused of "blandness, tax exile and ending a marriage by sending a fax”.
Maybe. I’m not interested. He was an astonishing drummer, a reasonably good singer, an acceptable songwriter, and a decent actor if the part was right. Filthy rich, and he earned every pence.
Rambo led to a lot of these. Yeah, that’s the guy I’d cast for a shoot ‘em up jungle war movie:
Oh yes, it’s the 80s:
That’s how the ad was oriented. Caught your eye.
Why, it’s almost like it’s . . . dancing on the wall!
The typeface, whatever it is, is as high 80s as you get. And that’s a good thing.
You always got your money’s worth with a Golan-Globus picture:
Every non-metal pop cover in the era:
Wikipedia:
René & Angela were an American R&B duo consisting of musical artists and producers René Moore and Angela Winbush. They formed in 1977 and disbanded in 1986.
Winbush said of the dissolution of their partnership:
"It was a shame to break up just when we finally got hot. PolyGram didn't want us to break up. But there was no choice. I couldn't work with him anymore.”
Also:
Winbush said the demise of the group was due to Moore's violent behavior - including an onstage incident in Cleveland, Ohio in 1986.
I wonder what that was.
That'll do for today. Thank you for your visit. Now it's time for something different in Comic Sins: Sparky!
