It’s been a really awful year in many respects but getting to see that a copy of my cover story on Maggot Brain (which came out toward the end of 2020) made it into George Clinton’s hands was quite the highlight.

Twin Peaks character of my heart ❤️‍🔥

I AGREE. PTA was very open about how he just took what he felt he needed from Vineland to tell his own story, but it's easily the tenor of the ending for me in which the movie is at its nadir in terms of capturing a Pynchonian spirit.

YOUR MAMA EATS, legendary Vineland location. I am really locked into the DL & Takeshi stuff this time around. Too bad Pynchon couldn’t get the full novel about the karmic adjuster to work but I’m so glad he wrangled some elements of it in here instead.

Dramatic increase in overall quality from Season 1 to Season 2 of Mad Men. I forgot how much I enjoyed Harry Crane's stumbling into creating the media department and Patrick Fischler is so damn good as Jimmy Barrett.

Feminine, masculine, America.

Not me reading Vineland twice this year.

Lowkey one of my favorite passages in Vineland, just an incredible evocation of murky awareness, adolescence passing into adulthood, how to live in your own body.

Forgot to say it’s called SLEEP TONES.

#NowPlaying Did you know that Six Organs of Admittance put out an ambient double album in 2020? And it’s really good? It’s really quite good.

Stray reads.

TOKYO GODFATHERS is incredibly satisfying, gorgeous animation filling out a story that's the perfect mix of unexpected highs and gutter lows that make great Christmas/end-of-year films. Satoshi Kon was a genius. Loved it even more than I expected I would!

Tokyo Godfathers (Satoshi Kon, 2003).

#NowWatching It’s a Satoshi Kon Christmas for me.

Had to take a break from consistent album reviews ‘cause my day job was taking too much out of me but I’m back in the game with 4 great albums on reviewing deck and I couldn’t be happier about it.

They don't make 'em like they used to. I've been thinking that a lot about Rob Reiner. Has anyone else made more consistently engaging, likable films that cut across so many popular genres yet are equally beloved by many a cinephile? What a fucking tragedy. May he rest in peace.

Good-ass cocktail.

King of “Director on Set” photos.

https://t.co/B6LI8br0O4

Picked up this 1974 Rosalind Belben novella for a quick read. Brings to mind the grotesquerie of Ottessa Moshfegh, the strange language of Leonora Carrington's The Stone Door, and the faux-stilted styling of Clarice Lispector in translation. Much stranger book than I anticipated!

My heart knew this was Ozu before my brain could confirm it.