Dominique Fils-Aimé with Old Love … I dig it:
This Sun
Pete Josef … I dig it:
Movies Watched -- Stand Clear of the Closing Doors (2013)
94 minute running time … strange movie, depressing … about a 13-year-old autistic boy who doesn’t go home after school (in Rockaway Beach, Queens) and instead rides the New York City subways continuously for several days in a row, experiencing all the insanity and weirdness and violence and conflict and rare kindness that surrounds him (including a great break-dancing routine by a trio of kids — the highlightof the movie for me) … his Spanish-speaking mother (an illegal Mexican) is worried sick and is desperate and sort of stuck with no money or contacts or friends, her husband is working upstate (possibly milking cows) … the whole thing is kind of hard to sit through and believe me I fast forwarded through a hell of a lot of it … but I could sort of understand what the filmmaker was getting at (about alienation and loneliness and confusion and terror and the horrors and wonders of life in the Big CIty, etc.). It wasn’t terrible, just a major downer.
From Stephen Holden: “Throughout the movie, you are forcefully reminded that time spent on the subway may be the ultimate New York grounding experience. You feel the city’s collective pulse as the entire spectrum of humanity pours around you … It stays with its characters to a wonderfully witty and understated ending.“ I didn’t find anything witty about the ending and have no idea what Holden is talking about … but it’s a capital A.R.T. art movie for sure.
From Richard Brody: “Fleischner empathetically but unsparingly depicts the fears, indignities, and degradations that Ricky endures in his largely subterranean wanderings, and movingly captures his fixations on ancillary details and incantatory phrases”
Ricky is a smart boy
Juvenescence
Yasmin Williams, yowza … encountered “Guitar Hero” at age nine:
The Inquiring Mind of Brian Lamb (VII)
In his interview with Philip Taubman on the development of the U-2 spy plane and reconnaissance satellites:
LAMB: … what did the "U" and the "2" stand for?
The Primary Suite
Submitted without comment:
Sumner Welles and the BBC
From Joseph Persico’s interview on Booknotes:
“… what you're referring to is the fact that Sumner Welles, who was the undersecretary of State in the Roosevelt administration and who was an important figure, he was Roosevelt's man. The secretary of state was Cordell Hull, and Roosevelt pretty much circumvented him and--and worked through Sumner Welles, who was an old family friend. Welles had made some sexual advances on trains, part of his--his business trips, to black porters on these trains, who reported him. This was concealed for a long time. It was two or three years before it finally erupted. Roosevelt is under tremendous pressure from people who fear that having a man with homosexual tendencies in such a sensitive position at State--we have to remember we're not talking about the current world; we're talking about the attitudes of the--of the 1940s. He's looked upon as a--as a--a security threat, and Roosevelt very unhappily eventually dismisses Sumner Welles.“
Too Old To Be Playing
Neffy with “Youth” … great voice … made me stop in my tracks … thanks to the Spotify algo … you can buy the track here….
The Inquiring Mind of Brian Lamb (VI)
In his interview with Dana Priest on mission creep in the US military:
LAMB: I can`t leave this without me asking you why your first name is pronounced “Danna?” and did [your parents] want a boy?
Listen to the Markets
Mall Cop once again perfectly on point in today’s stream: