Watch One Heartbreaking Scene to Understand Gena Rowlands’s Genius

Gena Rowlands in “A Woman Under the Influence,” one of several collaborations with her husband John Cassavetes.

"Midway through 'A Woman Under the Influence' (1974) — one of a number of astonishing films starring Gena Rowlands, who died Wednesday, and directed by her husband John Cassavetes — the distance between you and what’s onscreen abruptly vanishes. It’s the kind of moment that true movie believers know and yearn for, that transporting instance when your world seems to melt away and you’re one with the film. It can be revelatory; at times, as with Rowlands’s performance here, it can also be excruciatingly, viscerally painful. Rowlands is playing Mabel, an exuberantly alive woman of great sensitivities whose husband, Nicky (Peter Falk), loves her deeply but doesn’t understand her. They’re home and he has just yelled at her in front of some colleagues, who’ve fled. ..."





2010 December: Shadows (1959), 2013 June: Minnie and Moskowitz,  2021 May: A Woman Under the Influence  (1974) , 2021 July: Gloria (1980)

Rowlands as the tough-as-nails title character in “Gloria.”
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Various – Live At CBGB's - The Home Of Underground Rock


"In 1976 Atlantic Records released a double album of performances recorded live on CBGB's legendary small stage at the back of the club. Featuring sixteen songs from eight bands recorded over three days in June 1976 at The Home Of Underground Rock Live At CBGB's is one of those compilations Piccarella mentioned above. The album is sixty-three minutes of music I'd never heard before and need never hear again. The exceptions being the three Mink DeVille tracks as I have been a fan since the mid-'80s. One of those Mink DeVille tracks - 'Let Me Dream If I Want To' - is on Blank Generation, which also features the opening track from the Live At CBGB's album, 'All For The Love Of Rock & Roll' by the Tuff Darts."





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Mockingjays on Morningside


"I was already thinking about Columbia University, where courageous students are calling out the college administration’s support for genocide in Gaza, when I heard Paul Auster had died of cancer at the age of 77 in his home in Brooklyn. Paul Auster was widely celebrated as a Brooklyn writer from the middle of his career to the end, and many of his later novels took place here. Well, bravo to a writer who can capture a sense of place, and bravo especially to a writer who can claim two separate places as his literary home base! I first read Paul Auster in the late 1980s when he had just published three brilliant postmodern pseudo-detective novels known as the New York Trilogy. These stories captured in vivid street-level detail the collegiate uptown neighborhood of Morningside Heights where Columbia and Barnard sit on a cliff overlooking the southern edge of Harlem. ..."


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A Newly Translated Oral History Reveals Krautrock’s Antifascist Roots

Members of the krautrock group Can, who shared decisions and all songwriting credit.

"... Spoken by the saxophonist Peter Brötzmann, the composer Irmin Schmidt and the guitarist Lutz Ludwig Kramer, these assertions from the newly translated oral history 'Neu Klang: The Definitive History of Krautrock' explain the high stakes driving Germany’s counterculture in the decades following World War II. After the unthinkable, Germany’s youth inherited a 'country in ruins, and thus a ruined culture' (says Schmidt), a partition between the democratic West and the Soviet Union, a global fear of all things German, an identity crisis and a question: how to respond to the crimes of their parents? All easily forgotten when you’re listening to the buoyant and life-affirming music that generation produced in the 1970s. Kraftwerk, Can, Popol Vuh and their peers — a diverse movement often reductively called krautrock — raised the bar for electronic experiments and collaborative democracy in popular music, and helped set the stage for punk, industrial music and techno. ..."



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At a Russian Border Post, Scenes of Ruin After Ukraine’s Surprise Attack

The body of a dead Russian soldier lay in front of the destroyed Sudzha border control post in Russia on Monday. The body was recovered by the Ukrainian military and later placed in a body bag.

"All that remained of a Russian border post was a tableau of destruction: Sheet metal flapped in the wind, customs declarations fluttered about, and stray dogs roamed under a road-spanning sign that said, 'Russia.' Kicking up dust, Ukrainian armored vehicles rumbled past, unimpeded, as the flow of men and weaponry carried on in the biggest foreign incursion into Russia since World War II, an offensive now nearing the end of its first week since the breach of the border here in Sudzha and at several other sites. At the crossing point, a Ukrainian soldier posted on the roadside waved at the forces passing by, days after Russia’s head of the general staff declared that the attack had been rebuffed. At the border, the detritus of a losing battle — and signs of soldiers caught by surprise — were scattered about: bullet cartridges tinkled underfoot, discarded body armor lay on the asphalt. ..."


Ukrainian Army vehicles passing a sign reading, “Ukraine,” left, and “Russia,” right, on a road near the destroyed Russian border post at Sudzha.
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Racism Is Why Trump Is So Popular - James Risen


"... Trump appeals to white people gripped by demographic hysteria. Especially older white people who grew up when white people represented a much larger share of the population. They fear becoming a minority. ...  Every component of the Trump-Republican agenda flows from these demographic fears. The Trump phenomenon and the surge of right-wing extremism in America was never about economic anxiety, as too many political reporters claimed during the 2016 presidential campaign.  t was, and still is, about race and racism. ..."


NY Times: Trump Wanted to Fire Missiles at Mexico. Now the G.O.P. Wants to Send Troops. (2023)

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Suneil Sanzgiri


"Suneil Sanzgiri is an artist, researcher, and filmmaker. Spanning experimental video and film, animations, essays, and installations, his work contends with questions of identity, heritage, culture, and diaspora in relation to structural violence and anticolonial struggles across the Global South. Sanzgiri’s films offer sonic and visual journeys through family history, local mythology, and colonial legacies of extraction in Goa, India—where his family originates—deftly utilizing and vividly blending together 3D renderings, drone videography, photogrammetry and lidar scanning, 16 mm film and animation, archival footage, and desktop documentary practices. ..."


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"Waterloo Sunset" - The Kinks (1967)


"In terms of a zeitgeist-capturing moment, ‘Waterloo Sunset’ by The Kinks is as fine as they come. The band’s frontman Ray Davies penned the 1967 classic, and it remains the quintessential track from London’s ‘Swinging Sixties’, capturing the spirit of the era when the English capital was moving out of its old state as the centre of the empire into the green pastures of the technological future. A number that toes the line between melancholy and stirring, ‘Waterloo Sunset’ features include the iconic story of Terry and Julie, the sliding riff and the dynamic bassline that underpins the track, as Davies’ tale takes the listener on a tale weaving between the tight side streets of Waterloo. Released on May 5th, 1967, there has always been debate about what influenced the song.  ..."


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What’s So New About the ‘New Right’?


 "Over the last few years, a loose coalition of conservative thinkers, journalists, publications and think tanks have emerged under the banner of the New Right. With Senator JD Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, as its flag-bearer, this still-disparate group has been hailed as the intellectual heft behind the MAGA movement, and even as the future of American conservatism. Its very name declares a radical break with the Republican past — 'very nascent, very bleeding edge,' is how Vivek Ramaswamy, a former presidential candidate, described it. But how new is the New Right? It is risky to ascribe coherence to a grouping like this, especially when its ranks range from the relatively buttoned-up Vance and his Senate colleague Josh Hawley to a ragtag assortment of self-described neo-monarchists, techno-libertarians and right-wing Marxists. ..."

NY Times

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What Would Studs Terkel Make of ‘Essential Workers’?

In 1973, Jesse Jackson's Operation Push organized a march to protest high inflation and unemployment. 

"It was half a century ago that labor radio broadcaster Studs Terkel published Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do. The almost-600-page book was anchored in first-person accounts from 150 Americans, who spoke about their working life in just about every sector of the economy, as well as in several civil-service titles. A mix of labor journalism and anthropology, Working was informed exclusively by the voice of the workers, who demonstrate a disarming intimacy with Terkel (1912–2008), revealing much about each individual but even more about the society they labored in.  Each work/life account is its own universe. There are descriptions of how people came to be in their jobs, as well as what it took to hold onto them. There are names you might know, such as actor Rip Torn and jazz musician Bud Freeman. But mostly, it’s everyday folks that Terkel, who broadcast from WFMT, out of Chicago, brought into the spotlight. ..."

Voice 







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7 Years After ‘Summer of Hell,’ the Subway Is Approaching Another Crisis

New York City’s transit system faces hundreds of millions of dollars in budget deficits in the coming years.

"Seven years ago, after a series of subway failures so severe that a stretch of 2017 came to be known as the Summer of Hell, New York officials came up with a plan to make sure a crisis like that would never happen again. Through a tolling program known as congestion pricing, they would raise enough money to restore the system to competency. This would ward off the kind of meltdowns that had left passengers stranded without service, trapped themin dark, hot cars and injured them in derailments. Now, with congestion pricing on hold, experts warn that a return to hell is inevitable. ..."

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Kurtis Blow: The Prototype


"If you tried to build a rap star in a lab, your result would be something close to Kurtis Blow. Today, it’s commonplace to have a rapper that can also hold a note, but add good looks, charisma, legitimate street credibility, and an encyclopedic knowledge of music and business, and you’d have the perfect ambassador for hip-hop culture, which is exactly what Kurtis Blow came to be. Born Curtis Walker in Harlem, NY, there was no part of the culture that this trailblazer didn’t touch. He started DJing in the early 70s at just 13 years old, and even spent a brief time in one of the notorious Bronx gangs that heavily divided the borough, The Peace Makers, where he befriended fellow pioneer Melle Mel. But his singular focus on becoming an entertainer would guide his steps away from the street life. ..."

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Semiotics of fashion

"The semiotics of fashion is the study of fashion and how humans signify specific social and cultural positions through dress. Ferdinand de Saussure defined semiotics as 'the science of the life of signs in society'. Semiotics is the study of signs and just as we can interpret signs and construct meaning from text we can also construct meaning from visual images such as fashion. Fashion is a language of signs that non-verbally converse meanings about individuals and groups. ... Roland Barthes was a semiotician, who studied the fashion system and how ideologies are transmitted through dress. The semiotic system is formed by social interests and ideologies, and the fashion system is no different. In our society the ideologies in fashion are often implemented by celebrities or the dominant class. Jackie Kennedy was an important style icon for American women during the 1960s, where her style became a symbol of wealth, power and prestige. ..."

W – Semiotics of fashion

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The 10 best Nick Cave love songs


"When it comes to Nick Cave, love might not be the first thing people think of. When he emerged on the music scene in the late 1970s with The Birthday Party, the group were considered a wild card, violent troupe. For a long time, Cave was more interested in rage than romance. But as time wore on and things changed, it became clear that no one could write a love song with such splendour as he could. But these aren’t typical love songs. While others might sing about lust and longing through the lens of relatable scenes, Cave casts the feeling onto a whole other, divine plane. His love songs treat the emotion like an apparition from above or something genuinely otherworldly as he repeatedly uses religious imagery or calls upon the muses for the right words. ..."

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How Does Your State Make Electricity?


"... Overall, fossil fuels still dominate electricity generation in the United States. But the shift from coal to natural gas has helped to lower carbon dioxide emissions and other pollution. Last year, coal was the main source of electricity generation for 18 states, down from 32 states in 2001. But experts warn that a shift to natural gas alone won’t be enough to curb emissions and avoid dangerous global warming. ... We charted every state’s electricity generation mix between 2001 and 2017 using data from the United States Energy Information Administration. Scroll down or skip to your state. ..."
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Seamus Heaney Was a Reluctant Radical


"... (Seamus) Heaney went on to contribute to a literary anthology in support of the Irish antiwar movement at a time when Shannon Airport was in regular use by the US military, despite Ireland’s vaunted neutrality. 'I oppose this war with a mute passion, a pain of deep anxiety that cannot fiend coherent expression,' Brian Friel, the acclaimed dramatist, stated in his introduction to the volume, adding that there was 'something indeed' about the American aggression that 'offends the notion of what it is to be fully human.'  ... If the discernment was characteristic of Heaney, this was perhaps less true of the forthrightness and antagonistic tenor of his political positioning here. ... Beloved by several generations of readers for the human depth and fluent craftsmanship of his poems, Heaney also had a permanent seat at the court of power. ..."



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How One Harlem Block Became a Symbol of Urban Despair and Hope

Commuters mix with drug users on 125th Street in Harlem where several major transit lines converge.

"Thousands of people walk along 125th Street between Park and Lexington Avenues each day and most do not linger. Commuters race to catch trains to Westchester, climbing up to the elevated Metro-North tracks. Others hurry down to the subway, bound for Midtown Manhattan or the Bronx. They pass through a scene that conjures up all the worst stereotypes of urban disorder: closed storefronts, litter, public drug use, people nodding out. But on a deeper look, the block also reveals an ecosystem filled not just with despair, but fortitude and empathy, too. Drug dealers. Drug users. Teachers. Doctors. Counselors. Police officers. ... Every borough in the city has a place like this one, where urban woes seem to cluster. In the Bronx, it’s the commercial hub around 149th and Third Avenue. In Queens, parts of Jackson Heights. ..."



Some stores have not survived the rough conditions of East 125th Street, while others have.
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Two Niles To Sing A Melody: The Violins & Synths Of Sudan (2018)


"...  In Sudan, the political and cultural are inseparable. In 1989, a coup brought a hardline religious government to power. Music was violently condemned. Many musicians and artists were persecuted, tortured, forced to flee into exile — and even murdered, ending one of the most beloved music eras in all of Africa and largely denying some of Sudan's gifted instrumentalists, singers, and poets, from strutting their creative heritage on the global stage. What came before in a special era that protected and promoted the arts was one of the richest music scenes anywhere in the world. Although Sudanese styles are endlessly diverse, this compilation celebrates the golden sound of the capital, Khartoum. ..."





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Turbulence and Pulse - Asher Gamedze (2023)


"Cape Town, South Africa-based drummer Asher Gamedze explores relationships of time between music and history on his new album Turbulence and Pulse, out May 5th 2023. Gamedze’s critically-acclaimed debut album Dialectic Soul was released at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in July 2020. Around the release of that record, with friend and writer Teju Adeleye he organized and participated in a joint online discussion 'Poesis,' with historian Robin D.G. Kelley and others. One of the notable comments made in this session was by the poet and scholar Fred Moten, who described Gamedze’s drumming as an 'amazing interplay between turbulence and pulse. Pulse is supposed to regulate and also be regular, but the turbulence underneath it and on top of it, it’s just extraordinary.' Moten added that this concept is a fundamental element of the percussive approach in Black music more broadly. ..."





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Inside the Very Big World of Really Tiny Things


"Michael Hogan says he isn’t an interior designer. And yet, he spends a good deal of time doing what most in the trade do: deciding on material palettes, sourcing furniture, and planning room layouts. The only difference? No one will ever live in his designs—they’re only a few inches big. About eight years ago, Hogan won a Lawbre Rosedawn dollhouse—which he says is considered the 'Cadillac of dollhouses'—in an online auction. He thought decorating it would be a fun, one-time project, but nearly a decade later, he is fully invested in the wonderful world of miniatures. 'As a kid, I always loved design and architecture, so this is the perfect hobby,' he says. Miniatures are nothing new. Most reports date them to the Egyptians, who would make small-scale replicas of gods, buildings, and other artifacts to place in tombs, believing they’d travel with the deceased to the next life. ..."


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Inside the Secret Negotiations to Free Evan Gershkovich


"Russia freed wrongly convicted Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich as part of the largest and most complex East-West prisoner swap since the Cold War, in which he and more than a dozen others jailed by the Kremlin were exchanged for Russians held in the U.S. and Europe, including a convicted murderer. Gershkovich and other Americans left Russian aircraft at roughly 11:20 a.m. Eastern time. at an airport in Turkey’s capital, Ankara. Gershkovich then was transported to an aircraft lounge on a Turkish bus. He and the other Americans boarded an aircraft to the U.S. 'They are safe, free, and have begun their journeys back into the arms of their families,' President Biden said in a post on X. Biden plans to greet Gershkovich and the other Americans at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, where they are expected to land around 11:30 p.m., the White House said. Vice President Kamala Harris is also expected to attend. ..."





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Accused Sept. 11 Plotters Agree to Plead Guilty at Guantánamo Bay

Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"The man accused of plotting the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and two of his accomplices have agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy and murder charges in exchange for a life sentence rather than a death-penalty trial at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, prosecutors said Wednesday. Prosecutors said the deal was meant to bring some 'finality and justice' to the case, particularly for the families of nearly 3,000 people who were killed in the attacks in New York City, at the Pentagon and in a Pennsylvania field. The defendants Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi reached the deal in talks with prosecutors across 27 months at Guantánamo and approved on Wednesday by a senior Pentagon official overseeing the war court. ..."




People visiting the Sept. 11 memorial in Manhattan on the anniversary of the attacks last year.
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A People's History of Football - Mickaël Correia (2023)

Boys playing football in London on April 8, 1950.

"... Undeniably the beautiful game has of late become especially ugly. In A People’s History of Football, French climate journalist and Le Monde diplomatique correspondent Mickaël Correia argues that things have not always been this way — or at least not to such a grotesquely indefensible extent. The world’s most popular sport has an alternative, 'antiestablishment' history, which Correia seeks to uncover and defend. Though he dwells on the 'subversive aspect' of football, Correia is hardly a romantic. ... A People’s History of Football left this reader with the melancholic sense that an adversarial and popular vision of the game is quickly disappearing. It’s now unimaginable that a player would, as Brazil’s midfielder Sócrates did in 1984, justify their move to an Italian club by saying that doing so would provide them with an opportunity to read Antonio Gramsci in the original. ..."





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The Criminalization of Solidarity: The Stop Cop City Prosecutions

IWW rally on May Day 1914 in New York City in solidarity with Colorado miners

"Georgia’s sweeping and political application of conspiracy law echoes a tactic that shattered the left roughly a hundred years ago, when the U.S. government targeted socialist parties and militant unions with laws against criminal syndicalism, espionage, and sedition. ... A two-year occupation of the Weelaunee Forest, the site of the proposed complex, ended in early 2023 after police killed a forest defender known as Tortuguita and, over several months, charged forty-two people with domestic terrorism. The majority of those charged were attending a protest music festival in March while property destruction occurred nearly a mile away. In April, three activists distributing fliers about the police murder of Tortuguita were arrested and jailed for almost three months. ..."

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Who Were The I-Threes? Revealing The Powerful, Unique Voices Behind Marley’s Music


"... But few backing vocal groups had as strong a pedigree as Bob Marley’s trio of confirmation vocalists, The I-Threes. The I-Threes became an official part of Bob Marley’s organization in 1974. Their inclusion came in the wake of the break-up of The Wailers – a vocal group comprising Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer. Tosh and Wailer had quit the group, feeling that they were being sidelined while Bob was being groomed for rock stardom at their expense. So Bob recruited his wife, Rita, who had been singing with The Wailers for the best part of a decade, along with Judy Mowatt and Marcia Griffiths, to form The I-Threes. Their role was to sweeten and emphasize the message in the songs.  ..."



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Babylon Berlin


"Babylon Berlin is the most expensive German television drama ever made. It’s also the most successful, with its depiction of Weimar Republic-era Berlin having been shown in more than 100 countries worldwide. Since its early seasons this detective noir show has exploded with colour, razzle-dazzle, danger and sweeping set pieces, and it has now spent five years vividly bringing to life a decade-long flash of chaotic democracy that ended in economic turmoil, corruption and, ultimately, fascism. With its superb opening titles, breathless, trippy pace and extravagant song-and-dance numbers – last season even saw a turn from Bryan Ferry, singing a German jazz version of his song Bitter-Sweet – heady, dangerous times have never been better depicted. This season, the feel of the show has become even more menacing. ..."







Moka Efti, one of several glitzy nightclubs 
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Beach Scene by Degas, 1869-70


"There’s a radical new informality to this scene of the 19th century seaside. A girl who has been swimming rests while the family maid combs her hair – the kind of natural moment you would look long and hard to find in any British painting from the time when Degas painted this beach in northern France. By 1874, the experimental daring of Degas and others would be labelled Impressionism. But this is not a simple “impression”. On a closer look, a family walking in beach robes look like formally posed figures from a 15th century fresco and a couple by the shore are posed like cartoonish cut outs. Degas said he finished the picture in his studio, not on the beach. It is a provocative blend of observation and irony that shows his rare and elusive artistic mind."

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The Bottom Line


"The Bottom Line was a music venue at 15 West 4th Street between Mercer Street and Greene Street in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. During the 1970s and 1980s the club was a major space for small-scale popular music performances. It opened on Feb 11, 1974. ... The Bottom Line hosted an extremely wide variety of music and musicians. Among the thousands who performed on its stage were Eric Clapton, João Gilberto, Carl Perkins, Linda Ronstadt, The Manhattan Transfer, Patti Smith, Ringo Starr, The Police, Rockapella, Adrian Belew, Prince, Pat Benatar, Daryl Hall & John Oates, Miles Davis, Laura Nyro, Cheap Trick, Rory Gallagher, Chuck Mangione, Carl Hancock Rux, Emmylou Harris, Neil Young, Leo Kottke, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, Doc Watson, Barry Manilow, Dire Straits, Son Volt, Grayson Hugh, Dolly Parton, George Jones, The Pointer Sisters, Ravi Shankar, Ramones, The Brecker Brothers, Allan Holdsworth, Gato Barbieri, Bryan Ferry, Billy Joel, Yellow Magic Orchestra, David Bromberg, Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span and Van Morrison. ..."


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Robert Lighthouse Brings the Blues to a Ravaged Ukraine

Jamming in Kherson while the Russian army bombs the city: Robert Lighthouse on guitar, "Shoe Man Max" blowing harp, and a street musician on a homemade drum.

"Over more than 40 years of playing blues around the world — from a Hopi reservation in Arizona to Norway, Kenya, and his native Sweden — guitarist Robert Lighthouse had never heard Bob Dylan’s ballad 'John Brown.' This nettled the 60-year-old, a disciple of American music who’d thought himself familiar with the whole of the legend’s vast catalog. Simple and plaintive, 'John Brown' is a deceptive anti-war song, beginning as a patriotic fairy tale narrated by a young soldier’s proud mother. ... In late March 2024, Lighthouse returned from his third tour of Ukraine, where he played Robert Johnson, Blind Willie Johnson, Isaiah 'Doctor' Ross, and original songs for beleaguered locals and exhausted soldiers. Back in suburban Washington, D.C., where he has lived for close to 40 years, Lighthouse was surprised to learn that the song he’d written about the carnage in Ukraine closely resembled the one Dylan had recorded in 1962, at the Gaslight Cafe, on MacDougal Street. Lighthouse’s cris de coeur is called 'If They Won’t Book You in Heaven', and the lyrics, in part, go like this. ..."
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44 1/2 at a Glance: Selections from the Art Zoyd Box Set


"... Trying to make France's Art Zoyd fit into a single neat description is an exercise in futility. Sometimes they're fiendish sonic saboteurs bent on destroying listener's preconceptions about the way music works. Sometimes they're musical sorcerers conjuring strange but bewitching moments of lyrical beauty. You could call them the original post-rock band, moving on from the dark, stormy sounds of prog legends like Magma and King Crimson to something that makes even those fearless explorers sound conventional by comparison. You'd be equally accurate in dubbing them avant-classical composers, whose experimental visions are influenced by Stravinsky and Schoenberg. ..."


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