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Turquoise record on turntable

Happy day when

a. I get a present in the mail
b. It’s a record
c. It’s my first Umm Kulthum!
d. It’s turquoise vinyl!

I keep thinking that this or that Crying Wolf instance will finally put an end to the hyped up Antisemitism Moral Panic of the 2020s and keep being wrong.

But the Scarsdale Pee Pee Kerfuffle has gotta be a contender, right?

!!!

I Want To Know What Love Is YouTube video by Leela James - Topic

I think the original is one of the greatest singles of the 1980s but Lord what Leela James does here—rhetorically hailing Ashford and Simpson and Bill Withers into the conversation to seal the deal youtu.be/P8UkfQG2ZAA

Thank you

Humbling day in the Boston area for some of us...

Just got back from grinding out my little four miles of "running" and seeing all those jaunty folks in their blue jackets who knocked out 26 earlier today...

Oh that makes me SO happy.

Show ended with C is the Heavenly Option. As it must.

oh yeah! Love them

Cornelius Eady reading at JHU on April 26 at 2.

Am I connected to Baltimore people on here? My dear friend Susannah and her family have sponsored an annual poetry reading for years, now, in honor of the tragic loss of her brother so long ago...

This year it's the amazing Cornelius Eady, whose Brutal Imagination still haunts me.

Second song of the night: Sperm Meets Egg, So What? I love Heavenly…

Mood: ecstatic

Sunday morning update: apparently George W. Bush was a regular patron of the Hillbilly Ranch during his years at Harvard Business School, 1973-1975.

I saw him in 1988. Fire.

I just had a student email me to ask me what I thought her chances were to get off the waitlist for my class in the Fall of 2026 and I wanted to say: I am far too old to have a waitlist.

Also: those cheekbones! As my Jersey people would say—“you could slice cheese on those!”

A year later Nan Goldin would be taking pictures of drag queens in bars a few blocks away. How is history, even?

Just blocks away really

Amazing

Would love any leads if you got! Trying to write a little bit for my book

Dark haired server at bar in Boston, 1972.

And it was Boston, so you know the waitresses at the Hillbilly Ranch were gonna be Irish gals like this

Pensive guy at the Hillbilly Ranch, Boston

This guy has seen some shit

ahhhhh yeah

Rugged guy in cowboy hat, lighting a smoke

There used to be an important country and western bar called Hillbilly Ranch in Boston at Park Square. The state seized it in 1980 under eminent domain to replace it with the state transportation building. Henry Horenstein took great pictures there in 1972. Coulda been 1952.

For a book I'm writing on Boston music, 1974-1999

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Beautiful

Last year I was buying merch from an artist and told her warmly how great the show was and that I’m not a yell out for songs guy but missed hearing this one poignant number I love and she said “you shoulda yelled! It was on the set list and I literally just forgot to play it.”

Elmo learning Arabic from Ramy Youssef

First Bert and Ernie turned our kids gay, now this