This is why the Democrats lost. I’m not watching the Grammys, and who cares. Of course I tuned in for the lame opening. I heard it was going to be “I Love L.A.,” but I expected the man himself, Randy Newman, instead of Dawes and a coterie of the half-dead. Either do it right or […]

Are you watching this Hulu show “Paradise”? I take notice of the volume of hype. If a show is reviewed everywhere, that means the producer/distributor has a lot invested in it, and I need to pay a modicum of attention. I usually look at the last paragraph of the review. And maybe the first. Oftentimes […]

Last night I started reading the new Adam Ross book “Playworld.” It’s gotten great reviews, best of the year so far, and I loved his previous novel “Mr. Peanut.” And I was hooked by the very first sentence: “In the fall of 1980, when I was fourteen, a friend of my parents named Naomi Shah […]

Subject: RE: 74 Of ’74 For an interesting exercise, compare this 50-years-after-the-fact list with the Top Album list Rolling Stone actually issued in 1974. The original list had jazz or jazz-fusion albums in each of the top five spots. In this list, the top-rated jazz album is Miles Davis at 32 – and Miles wasn’t […]