"Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl"
Sunday, February 14, 2016
Really enjoyed Carrie Brownstein’s impressive, observant, terrifically titled memoir.music
Year in Review: 2015
Friday, January 1, 2016
Continuing a 15-year tradition (though one that’s gotten briefer with age and fatherhood), here’s a roundup of some of my favorite things experienced during the past 12 months: Books My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, Elena Ferrante The Story of a New Name, Elena Ferrante The Story of the Lost Child, Elena Ferrante Lila, Marilyn Robinson My Struggle: Book 2, Karl Ove Knausgård Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi CoatesMy Bubba
Tuesday, December 29, 2015
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzzVdi3HOfU?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=https://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=281] My Bubba — great discovery for me via NPR Tiny Desk Concerts.A Eulogy for Rdio
Sunday, November 22, 2015
I’ve been a happy subscriber and many-hours-a-day listener for years. Bummed they couldn’t make it work.Year in Review: 2014
Sunday, January 11, 2015
Back before Tamara and I had our son in the summer of 2013, I used to keep regular lists of my “Annual Favorites” of the year — the best books, movies, TV shows, podcasts, exhibitions and so on that I’d consumed that year. To say my rate of cultural digestion changed with fatherhood would be an understatement; that said, I still have an interest in logging the great stuff (if only for myself).Year in Review: 2012
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
This post is part of my Annual Favorites list I’ve been keeping for the past decade-plus. Favorite Books (Goodreads profile) The German Genius, by Peter Watson (choice passages) Journey to the Abyss: The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler, 1880-1918 (choicepassages) Life Sentences, by William H. Gass Nox, by Anne Carson A Hologram for the King, by Dave Eggers Rineke Dijkstra: A Retrospective Donald Judd Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace, by D.Chris Mills on Kickstarter
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
The other day, I tweeted some frustration about the news that a world-famous film director had turned to Kickstarter to fund a new project. Yesterday, I learned that one of my favorite (but maybe not yet financially set-for-life) singer-songwriters, Chris Mills, had too. That’s more like it. I’ve been listening to Chris and seeing him live since my days living in Chicago in the late 90s. Great songs, really nice guy.Zadie Smith Profiles Jay-Z
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Two of my favorites. At one point, Smith introduces another lyrical gem (“I got watches I ain’t seen in months / Apartment at the Trump I only slept in once”), then rebuts a likely critique: But asking why rappers always talk about their stuff is like asking why Milton is forever listing the attributes of heavenly armies. Because boasting is a formal condition of the epic form. And those taught that they deserve nothing rightly enjoy it when they succeed in terms the culture understands."Postscript: Adam Yauch"
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Terrific piece by Sasha Frere-Jones at The New Yorker’s website. Yauch’s transition from celebrated youthful knucklehead to enlightened (and hugely productive) grown-up was admirable. I can still remember listening to “Licensed to Ill” in 1987 for the first time, on a tape my 8th-grade classmate Chris made me. My parents were away at the time, and I was staying at my grandparents’ apartment here in St. Louis. I listened to the tape on headphones before falling asleep on the sofa in their den."Radiohead’s Runaway Guitarist"
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Great profile of Jonny Greenwood in today’s New York Times Magazine. Greenwood’s soundtrack for “There Will Be Blood” has been a favorite of mine on Rdio for the past year."The Germans Dive Deeper"
Saturday, February 11, 2012
<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " style="max-width:332px;"> <div style="padding-bottom:150.60241699219%;" class=" image-block-wrapper has-aspect-ratio "> <img src="http://sschenkenberg.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/b338b-germans-dive-deeper.jpg" alt="germans-dive-deeper.jpg" /><img class="thumb-image" alt="germans-dive-deeper.jpg" /> </div> </figure> </div> Peter Watson's The German Genius: Europe’s Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century is an extraordinary 1,000-page book. It is immensely ambitious, rich in ideas and evidence of the German-speaking peoples’ world-changing achievements in music, literature, philosophy, psychoanalysis, biology, geology, bioethics, archeology, art history, and on and on.