Sarah Deming has a hilarious new essay out in the Threepenny Review, “Are you Jewish?”
Roz Milner kind of blew my mind with this overview of Yoko Kanno and the soundtrack to Cowboy Bebop.
Lewis Porter finds the sound of Thelonious Monk knocking over a beer bottle on a record with Miles Davis.
Nate Chinen offers a close view of Brad Mehldau in concert at Vanguard.
Matthew Guerrieri celebrates Lukas Foss at 100 with an early Foss sonata.
The best TV I’ve seen this year is the recent HBO mini-series The Rehearsal with Nathan Fielder. Sarah and I went in cold, not knowing a thing about it, and we advise others to do the same. There are some pretty harsh critiques out there. To those philistines, I say: Art is ruthless, and The Rehearsal shows a path forward.
Two thumbs down to The Grey Man. Maybe the production team had too much money to play with? At any rate, the over-the-top superhero antics of The Grey Man makes a James Bond movie look like a documentary.
Top Gun: Maverick is a far more acceptable popcorn flick than The Grey Man because it plays a bit more by the rules of physics. They took that “Tom Cruise in a caper” thing from the banal Mission: Impossible franchise and gave it some gritty heft. It’s no masterpiece, but I liked it more than I expected.
Back to school, back to tour. Before fall gets any further along, a look back through a few summer photos:
DO THE M@TH 