Sentential Links #192

Linkage! Get your linkage here!

:: When whatever industry it is that comes to dominate the American economy in the 21st Century the way the auto industry dominated the 20th comes to the realization that it is faced with cripling liability exposure as a result of a tort system rooted in the economics of the 19th Century we will either see change, or the collapse of that industry. It is only a question of time.

:: So if I was as young, good looking, rich, famous, and talented as Tiger Woods, my role model wouldn’t be Tiger Wood.

If you’re going to be a selfish, narcissistic, philandering jerk, you ought to at least be a gentleman about it.

:: I first met Lester Bangs via the telephone. I was a bored teenager. Growing up in South Florida in the early 70’s, there weren’t many people who liked the Stooges and the Velvet Underground. I read Creem and Rock Scene and zines like Who Put The Bomp, Back Door Man, Denim Delinquent, The Rock Marketplace, Gulcher, Punk (the original Punk from Buffalo which predated the New York mag by two years). I used to call the Creem offices in Michigan around midnight every couple of weeks. Lester was always there, usually speeding away, editing and writing. Sometimes he was drunk, or high on cough syrup. I remember him playing me a test pressing of Patti Smith’s Horses over the phone in its entirety. (Fascinating post on the great rock critic Lester Bangs.)

:: Bing Crosby always reminds me of Christmas. And not just because of his famous movie and song, White Christmas (of which Otis Redding brilliantly covered), but because he encapsulates everything about Christmas — the dreams, the hopes, the sentiment, the lights (linger on…your pale blue eyes, Bing), the well meaning and the holiday, and yet, the haunted quality of tradition — the Shining like reminder of times gone past. Like Christmas, Bing carries eerie memories and an underlying dysfunction. And in real life, Bing was no saint.

:: Well, this sucks: it seems the Orient Express, the famed Paris-to-Istanbul train that’s been the setting of so many fictional mysteries and thrillers, will cease operation as of this Monday. Like so many other relics of a more elegant age, it’s been made obsolete by faster and more convenient alternatives. (No more Orient Express? This is well and truly turning into a world I don’t want to live in anymore. Yeesh.)

:: What does a half million galaxies look like?

:: One of my favorite feelings of Christmas Time is remembering the past.. when we were all very small and innocent and ‘truly Believed’ …all the magic of the world lived within our hearts … With every twinkly light we saw…we made secret wishes…and believed they would come true…because someone Magical ‘heard’ our wishes…what a time it was. (How true!)

More next week.