[I know I usually post these on Fridays, but it’s summer and days of the week don’t really exist anymore anyway]
In the new documentary ENO, musician Brian Eno talks about how he used to do breakfast all wrong.
“Breakfast” for him included a long period of answering email, reading the news and engaging in various forms of “input” immediately after getting out of bed. At some point, he switched and pushed “breakfast” to noon … and then, he said, all sorts of cool creations began to pour out of him in the morning.
I found Gary Hustwit’s new “generative documentary” about the artist/producer/thinker to be a much-needed shot of optimism and curiosity — and I’m assuming this is true for all variations, since no two screenings are the same. While we don’t all have the freedom to design our daily routines, most of us could probably afford to gaze at our phones less and tweak our breakfasts. (Right now the doc is only in theaters; I hope they’ll find a way to stream it.)
Other stuff I’ve been into lately:
modern english
The lineup for the Totally Tubular Festival includes Thomas Dolby, Bow Wow Wow, Men Without Hats and Wang Chung — but it was during Modern English’s extended performance of “Melt with You” that I looked over at my 11-year-old and felt a little bump in my chest, an emotional realization that thousands of hours of listening to this song and singing it alone had led me to this very moment, where I was belting it out next to a person who was part of me.
The band sounded wonderful and asked the crowd to please live in the moment instead of on their phones; alas, not everyone listened and too bad for them.
times square
Right now The Criterion Channel is spotlighting “Times Square” movies, like Midnight Cowboy, Taxi Driver, King of New York and Shaft. My favorite of the batch is, of course, TIMES SQUARE (1980), the cult classic about two teen girls who break out of a hospital and go wild in New York. The film has one of the greatest soundtracks of all time (Talking Heads, Ramones, Patti Smith) and Tim Curry plays a cool, kinda creepy rebel disc jockey. Rewatching it reminded me that it’s *still* pretty rare to see movies about deep female friendships go and how it can feel so good to be young and bad. Sleaze Sisters forever!
TIMES SQUARE also reminded me of a movie I’ve been meaning to see for years, 1979’s OVER THE EDGE. That one carries a similar teen-riot vibe and went on to inspire a bunch of other stuff, including Dazed and Confused and the video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
What a tagline: “They were old enough to know better, but too young to care!”
freak scene
Dinosaur Jr. is like cake to me now, and so last week when I needed an escape from this oh-so-heavy world, I put on the 2021 doc FREAKSCENE and got lost in some oh-so-heavy chords. If you think you’ll like it, I know you will.
Dinosaur Jr. is about to go on a big tour with Weezer and The Flaming Lips. Use earplugs because you’re getting old and they’re still loud.
the friday afternoon club
Whether you read it or listen to the audiobook (I did the latter), you can’t go wrong with THE FRIDAY AFTERNOON CLUB, Griffin Dunne’s sublime new memoir about his family. It takes us through awful events as well as the triumphant ones, like producing and starring in Scorsese’s After Hours. (I didn’t realize a young dude named Tim Burton was initially approached to direct. How cool would that version have been?)
I think that’s all for now. If you’d like to support my work, you can become a paid subscriber and/or buy a copy of TRUDY SELLOUT, my book of short stories.
Enjoy the week, don’t let the (PLURAL NOUN) get you down.
signing off,
johnny laguardia
handshake | eavesdrop | up the wall