One of my favorite dreams involves the Beatles’ song, ‘Savoy Truffle’. In it I was taxied around a wild city at night, going to all the parties and seeing everyone. One place was nothing but a commercial kitchen with a hundred dead rabbits resting on a cutting board, waiting to be skinned. Also, there were…
Author: Bryan
A Second Language.
Years will go by, and you will know nothing, Charles. You’ll show up wearing the jersey, proclaiming your love for One side and not the other–but no one will believe you, or Worse: it doesn’t count, belief deflating, and your immigrant grandmother Laughs at you. If only the serpent liked you better, and you spoke…
Editor’s note.
I started this website for two primary and directly linked reasons. One: I wanted to begin the essential migration away from certain social media platforms whose politics have made my ongoing participation untenable. And two: I had come to realize my writing (and reading) on those platforms, though occasionally satisfying, was aimless. These were places…
Longlegs.
I love a divisive horror movie. In fact the more sound minds hate it the more I hope I’ll love it. (See SKINAMARINK.) But unlike SKINAMARINK, LONGLEGS boasts star power —Nicolas Cage at the height of his wildcat 2.0 peak, Maika Monroe in a gambit of her own, and an IDGAF Alicia Witt shining like…
Garfield without Garfield.
At what age do you stop getting cats? Like, when do you realize that you’ll cross the finish line before they will? It’s an egotistical thing to think about, but it’s a responsibility. I have a recurring dream about Philip Johnson’s Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut. But in my dreams it’s never there. It’s…
Inverted Jenny.
Season five of COLUMBO culminates with ‘Last Salute to the Commodore’, starring John Dehner as the ill-fated boatman. Right up to the moment when he dies he is surrounded by booze-soaked leeches. I mention it because this was the high watermark for cravats and coffee tables of the seventies. Sometimes,when I’m especially lucky, I spy…
On Speak, Memory.
I think what I love most about Nabokov—and this speaks directly to the controversies surrounding LOLITA, is his transcendent ability to gather up the quiet worst in himself and make a human flag of it. I think that’s the problem with flags. Here and now, this is how I make sausage and survive my dreams.
Warm canto.
A quarter century ago there was a cd store on Forbes in Squirrel Hill, half classical and half jazz. I used to go there for the abuse of not knowing anything about both. The jazz guy was older than Egyptian dirt, with a croaky Brother Theodore voice. Working retail—even if he did co-own the place…
Chrysleriana 