Did You See Jupiter?

So CMJ proved startlingly fruitful this year, bad-bands to good-bands ratio tilting latterward in a way I wouldn’t have thought to imagine. More on that later, once energy resumes.

For now, let it be known that Run, Ronnie, Run is better than I'd been led to believe, and Mystic River less distinct. And here's a piece on The Rapture that I wrote for The Washington Post.

Let us now praise Lupe’s East L.A. Kitchen, a great little somewhat divish Mexican place stuck, incongruously, in Soho (outer reaches, but still). Every time I go in there on weeknights it’s like 80 percent people eating alone and reading, which I love to no end.

That and watched the Cubs go down in a heartbreaker. Is there anything more joyous/heartening/inspiring than when, late in an electrifying game, the home-plate ump skips the catcher and throws the post-foul-ball replacement moundward himself? An old guy swept up by the energy, casting off his invisibleness for a second, all showy and quixotic in airing out his withered wing?

I feel an anxious need to post someanything but have been too preoccupied by chess and baseball and this new D.F. Wallace book about math the past few weeks to fix my mind on typing. Oodles of great records, though--Sascha Funke (erotic), Matthew Dear (sexy), Andre 3000 (?!?!), The Wrens (ache), Bubba Sparxxx (Athens!), The Fiery Furnaces (PJ Harvey fronts The Slits?), Stereolab EP (workaday but perfect), Ricardo Villalobos (understated), My Morning Jacket (dig the Christopher Cross bites!), Dismemberment Plan remix album (promising), et al.—that call for sitting down and thinking through sometime soon.