Month: October 2023

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Kinda Surprising

https://youtu.be/Qaacd-oFaLM?si=sZMzH0htwsAKTDCM

A lot of folks who I thought were still alive, and a lot who I thought had died…

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Ain't That Enough For You

I kind of wish I'd watched more Soul Train back in the day 'cuz this was the music I was dancing to. But as I remember it was broadcast Sunday morning, and after having been out all Saturday night, Sunday mornings just weren't my jam… Plus I also seem to recall the music they were dancing to on the show was always already old and tired to us gay club kids.

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I Know I've Posted This Before…

Land's End, San Francisco, November 1987

…but it's probably my favorite photo from that time period.

Despite the smirk, I did still have some innocence left. The City had not yet completely chewed me up and spit me out.  It would take another twelve years and two aborted six-month absences to break away from its spell before that would ultimately happen.

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From the Analog Archives – San Francisco and Environs in the Late 1980s

Point Bonita Lighthouse
Downtown SF from the Sausalito Ferry
Downtown San Francisco from Twin Peaks
Castro Street looking south from just north of Market
At the base of California Street
Somewhere in the Richmond District
The bridge from Golden Gate Beach
Downtown from the Golden Gate Bridge Visitor Center
Palace of the Legion of Honor
Golden Gate Beach looking north toward Marin

It's a sad commentary and a reminder that you've gotten old when your own photographs start looking like the shots you see in faded magazines.

And you may be wondering why I'm posting all these analog archives things. Well, I ran across a forgotten folder on my drive called "scans (to be sorted)" and it's full of scanned slides that I'd created when I had a slide scanner (well before the fire and never replaced) with the intent of swapping out the poorer-quality scans in my virtual photo albums that I'd made from photo prints. Obviously life sidetracked me.

So hell…why not post them?

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Released 44 Years Ago Today

Elton John: Blue Moves (1976)

Like many others, when  Blue Moves first came out, and for many years later, I had a love/hate relationship with this album. The sound was so different from all of Elton's previous work, and yet still so fresh. It also annoyed me no end back in the day that all four sides of the album wouldn't fit on a standard 90 minute cassette tape, requiring that you buy a notoriously thin and prone to breakage and entanglement-in-the-player 120-minute cassette.

Now, of course, I think this collection is brilliant.

Favorite tracks: One Horse Town, Boogie Pilgrim, Crazy Water, Shoulder Holster, Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word, If There's a God in Heaven (What's He Waiting For?), and Bite Your Lip (Get Up and Dance).

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HIGHLY Recommended

This trailer does not do this Netflix series justice. While we both enjoyed The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, Midnight Mass and even Doctor Sleep, when I asked Ben if he wanted to start the series I got kind of a "Meh" response, so I went ahead and started watching myself and it soon drew him in.  Ben ultimately described it to a friend of ours as,"psychological horror—Edgar Allen Poe style—with a stiff middle finger to modern capitalism" and that pretty much sums it up.

There is gore and violence, yes. But it is what I would call…tasteful…gore and violence. It's always in service to the story and not gratuitous. And in the rare instances when it might be considered over-the-top, it's done offscreen. (And most deliciously, as you delve further and further into the story you realize how appropriate it is in the context of what's happening in the story.)

Each of the eight episodes take their respective names from one of Poe's seminal works, and while the tie-ins aren't always immeidately apparent, at the end of the episode you think back and go, "Of course!"

We started watching only two episodes per night, but by the third night we said fuck it! and binged the rest.

When we started researching the director, we realized that one of his series, The Midnight Club, completely slipped past us, so we're busy catching up on that now, and we're undoubtedly going to go through his back catalog and see what other gems we've missed.