Last Miles Review
After this, more sedate Jazz…
Evergreen Jazz Reviews
I’m almost done with Miles Davis. Just On the Corner left.
Tumblr Jazz
I may not have mentioned this before, but I have a blog on Tumblr that is devoted to a somewhat geeky and idiosyncratic project: reviewing every music CD I own. It’s called Every. Damn. CD. and it’s got quite a history. I’ve been working on it for a long time, because I have long spells of being unable to work on it. And the structure – by genre, in alphabetical order – makes sense for the blog, but doesn’t always inspire work flow.
ANYway, I’m in my jazz cd’s right now, and I’m currently working on John Coltrane, who I’ve never been as devoted to as other people who like jazz are. The fault is doubtless mine.
Theme-Hunting and Other Follies
I know I do this randomly and seemingly out of a sense of restlessness, but this time I think I may keep it a while. I’ve soured of the giant-header themes: no one needs to scroll through an image to get to the content. This one is clean, has the content front and center, and has a nice little Connector tab up top.
So you can hunt me down on Twitter, and Google+, and read my Tumblr, which is an ongoing project of going through my CD collection, and even look at my Youtube and Vimeo channels if such be your delight.
Bonus Internet points for anyone who can name all my rogues gallery at the end of the song above.
That’s all. I’m keeping off the wider internet so as not to be spoiled before I see Force Awakens on Sunday. Enjoy your weekend.
Everything’s a Problem is the Tumblr You Didn’t Know You Needed
For a long time, we were lost in the darkness. Unable to tell what was problematic, or, if we dared push past our privelege to consider if it was problematic, to know just how problematic it was.
For example, of course you knew that Wonder Woman’s costume was Problematic. That’s a no-brainer. But could you in your wildest imagination have discerned that enjoying Potato Salad without consideration for it nonwhite origins is even MOAR Problematic?
Of course you did not, you foul hater you.
But now you can know. Listen. Absorb. Don’t Resist.
New Content: Demon-Killing and Caliphates
I have long been fascinated by the Crusades, the Crusader states, and the military orders. Piers Paul Read’s The Templars is a magisterial book that fits in well with the newer generation of Crusade historians (good-bye, “ambitious younger sons”, hello “pious armed pilgrims”). The Templars, of course, met their brutal end before the Middle Ages were over, but the Knights Hospitaller survived, first on Rhodes, then on Malta, where they became the great anti-Turk sea-lords of the Mediterranean. They survive today as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, a charitable organization with knightly flavor.
That history and a few viewings of Hellboy has inspired a piece of fiction, perhaps the stepping stone of a larger work:
On a related note, the claim of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant to the Caliphate of all Islam let me down the rabbit hole to learn one or two things about what went down in the Mid-East in the 20th Century. Most interestingly, I learned that the House of Saud has been ruling in the Arabian Penninsula for a long time. Check out the rest at my new svbtle.com blog, Histeria. A relevant quote:
The Caliphate is imperial by nature: it’s godly goal is to expand the ummah. Every Caliphate has stagnated and collapsed when it hit its military limits. That was true of the Umayyad Caliphate, the Abassid Caliphate, and the Ottoman Empire; it will be true of ISIL.
Where exactly those limits are is the question of the hour.
And of course, there’s my music tumblr, Every. Damn. CD. I just finished up with Led Zeppelin. Rockabilly to follow.
