New York

I like Uranium Club so very much, and I was fully prepared to travel to see them (after I learned to speak the incantation that makes their sporadic, unadvertised tour dates appear momentarily in hexadecimal at the bottom of a beer bottle), but then they just showed up in my backyard.

I hadn’t been to Brooklyn Bazaar before, so I wasn’t quite prepared for its ballroom’s 250 capacity, which held about triple the amount of… See more →

I so love the mere fact of an artist as singular as Björk that I often forget how little of her music actually grabs me. I’m a huge fan of her masterful millennial output, 1997’s Homogenic and 2001’s Vespertine, but given how much else she’s done that doesn’t move me like those records do, it’s probably not fair to call myself a big fan of Björk herself. Cornucopia, advertised as her “most elaborate staged concert… See more →

Reich Richter Pärt is a pair of collaborations between the American composer Steve Reich, the German painter Gerhard Richter, and the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. I’m an admirer of all three men, so this event was a no-brainer for me, and since I knew Frank would be into it too, I invited him along as a belated birthday gift.

The first performance pairs Pärt’s 2014 choral piece, Drei Hirtenkinder aus Fátima, with wallpapers and tapestries… See more →

There were definitely more men in their 50s at this show than I expected to see!

I went partly because I enjoy Colleen’s records and partly as something of a recon mission: As I’m focusing more on making music again, singing and playing power chords live over canned backing tracks is an approachable performance goal, and I wanted to see how well a pro could make it work. Colleen’s biggest strength is her songwriting, and… See more →

Okay, I know, fine, I’ll quit Twitter.

Isabelle Huppert’s demented performance is more than this movie deserves and not enough to save it. One might expect the filmmakers to have some fun with this kind of pure pulp, but the whole thing is rote and flat, with plainspoken design and direction and a script that pulls every punch. The closest it comes to generating tension is triggering flashbacks from The Piano Teacher, seemingly intentionally. So maybe just watch that instead.

Fuck yeah.

A lot happened in 2018. The ruinous Trump administration continued doing its ruinous thing. I finally deleted my Facebook account. I had a stressful couple of months caused by something that rhymes with “head hugs,” which I would gladly trade the life of any loved one to avoid going through again. I visited the UK for the first time. I published 33 blog posts, including several well-received posts on design and development.

Projects

Let’s check in… See more →

Best dance sequence since Ex Machina.

It may be the first in the series (other than the original) to have a director and screenwriters with name recognition, but this is just another Halloween sequel, thankfully nothing less but certainly nothing more. It’s pretty boring.

Also, is there any greater talent in Hollywood who is as routinely wasted as Judy Greer is?