• Down here in Wild­wood, enjoy­ing some wi-fi, try­ing not to get too much sun all at once, watch­ing the Phils mount yet anoth­er come­back, post­ing 10 runs on the woe­ful Pirates.
• Dou­ble mean­while: I’m talk­ing with this guy about com­plete­ly over­haul­ing Black­mail Is My Life, mov­ing it off of /blog to its right­ful dot com home with an entire­ly new look, new fea­tures, every­thing. I’m trawl­ing around the web look­ing for neat ideas, wid­gets, any­thing use­ful to make BMIML more inter­est­ing for you…and for me. [This is my cryp­tic way of say­ing that a big part of why I’m often remiss in writ­ing any­thing longer than the blur­by copy I do at work late­ly is that I’m kin­da tired of look­ing at this blog myself and I imag­ine you might be too. I want to change that. Hit me with sug­ges­tions, links to things you like and so forth right there in the comments.]
• Last­ly: almost done with V. Pre­dictably I’ve got a bit of Pyn­chon fever, but I just caught up with one of my Eng­lish profs from St. Joe’s and she high­ly rec­om­mend­ed David Mitchel­l’s Cloud Atlas, which is going to be my beach read­ing for the rest of the week.

As busy as usual:

• Old Joy proved more love­ly than I expect­ed, rem­i­nis­cent of the 70’s films I love rather than just being a flim­sy imi­ta­tion. Beau­ti­ful­ly shot, ellip­ti­cal and brief, it’s a movie that gives you a lot to think about with­out clang­ing you over the head with polit­i­cal pots and pans or over­wrought exis­ten­tial trac­tus­es, while being both polit­i­cal and existential.
• S/FJ cel­e­brates his fifti­eth col­umn at the New York­er. If there were a form that would explain why I asked for a sub­scrip­tion I would sim­ply pro­vide his ini­tials. It sure as hell isn’t for David Denby.
• My Com­cast blog launched yes­ter­day. I list­ed my favorite 28 albums of the year so far, along with a few like­ly can­di­dates that’ll jump into the mix before ’08 gets under­way. Apolo­gies for its appear­ance, but it’s in an embry­on­ic form and I don’t expect it to remain housed in user forums for long, but for now it’ll do. Think of its cur­rent loca­tion as an incu­ba­tor where it can grow strong and healthy.
• Still haven’t picked up my Mac­book yet. Read­ing the stu­dent dis­count page reminds me that when I arrived at school my dorm had­n’t yet been wired for the inter­net. In fact, most of them under­went ren­o­va­tions in turn after I left for the summer.

Things are busier than ever. This week I also start full-time, which is pret­ty excit­ing. I’m work­ing on a new blog [still in stag­ing] for work that I’m real­ly excit­ed about. It’s not any­thing spe­cial yet, but the pos­si­bil­i­ties, o the pos­si­bil­i­ties! I can’t wait for it to launch and grow into some­thing more sophisticated.

Even more inter­est­ing for me at least is the pos­si­bil­i­ty of attend­ing music fes­ti­vals for work next year. SXSW is a no brain­er, but what oth­er fes­ti­vals are worth attend­ing, either here in the States or abroad? Drop sug­ges­tions in the com­ments or shoot me an email.
Meanwhile:

• Vengeance is Mine: Ima­mu­ra’s grit­ty thriller had the look of my favorite Fukasaku films, but a much more nuanced, per­son­al feel, which made it a grip­ping, fright­en­ing sto­ry about a mur­der­er liv­ing right out in the open.
• Day for Night:  How I did­n’t see this in my first year as a video store clerk is beyond me. Truf­faut’s take on the film­mak­ing process is much like 8 1/2, a beau­ti­ful, dizzy­ing homage to his favorite films, direc­tors and stars.
• Attend­ed the Phillies 10,000th loss, entire­ly by coin­ci­dence. We bought tick­ets to see the World Cham­pi­ons return to Philadel­phia back in March hav­ing no idea that they’d drop the 10,000th loss with such keen ignominy. Mis­sion accom­plished. The fol­low­ing night Jamie Moy­er got us start­ed on our way toward 20,000.

• Why oh why did Paper Thin Walls get the rough­est redesign since Chris Ott beset Per­fect Sound For­ev­er with mono­chro­mat­ic grey? I love the new fea­tures [well, at least the stream­ing album stuff] but it’s pre­sent­ed in such a jum­ble. And now my old home the Bull­horn looks bland­er than a bowl of cool por­ridge. Did some­one read No Logo or something?
• I’m work­ing on a response to Gerd Leonard’s open let­ter to the music industry.
• Re item one right up there: how many suc­cess­ful social net­work­ing sites are ‘doing things right’, i.e. get­ting per­mis­sions and pay­ing for con­tent? It’s noble to say the very least, but I can’t tell if it makes any sense at least in terms of Leonard’s open let­ter. We’re liv­ing in a world where it’s eas­i­er to beg for­give­ness than ask per­mis­sion after all.
• Sum­mer feels like a new music drought. With so many bands, why don’t they use say Pitch­fork’s sum­mer fes­ti­val as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to punch up the slow­est sea­son of the year?
• I’m not sur­prised this hap­pened. See above. In fair­ness, it’s a nice album and it’s fool­ish to think that Spoon will ever per­fect­ly blend the genius of Girls Can Tell with Kill the Moon­light’s abject min­i­mal­ism, so this is prob­a­bly as good as it gets.

Some­thing I haven’t done late­ly, at least not since about 2003, is talk pol­i­tics here, or at least talk pol­i­tics very seri­ous­ly. Or at all. I can bare­ly remem­ber being the enthu­si­as­tic adjunct who was rac­ing around intern­ing at a labor think tank while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly tend­ing to duties as a research assis­tant. Those were heady, dot calm times, fraught with all the anx­i­eties of liv­ing in NYC on about $150/week and what­ev­er was left from my stu­dent loan disbursement.

That dis­qui­et how­ev­er was fer­tile ground for activism. Then again, so was NYC. Since mov­ing back to Philadel­phia, I’ve had few occa­sions to express my polit­i­cal beliefs any­where oth­er than the Roy­al Tav­ern on elec­tion night. In 2004. Con­sec­u­tive betray­als by a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty that alleged­ly “had our back” [thank John K. for that gem] were real­ly unbear­able and what they’ve done for me in the inter­im is only more embarrassing.

Flash for­ward to the Scoot­er Lib­by affair. Talk­ing about obstruc­tion of jus­tice with an admin­is­tra­tion that sanc­tions tor­ture and secret pris­ons seems quaint at this point. Why don’t you just invite the Pres­i­dent to a tea par­ty to dis­cuss lib­er­a­tion the­ol­o­gy? Draft­ing arti­cles of impeach­ment? Pfft. This Con­gress can’t pass a stem cell research bill. I’m just look­ing for an anti-war can­di­date [who’s name does­n’t rhyme with Kucinich — hey I vot­ed for the guy in the ’04 pri­ma­ry] to step forward.
Dis­cussing the minu­ti­ae of this case is akin to under­stand­ing sabr­met­rics in base­ball. Remem­ber, it was moral issues, not legal ones, that moti­vat­ed the Clin­ton impeach­ment. If it had been on strict­ly legal grounds, Gin­grich would­n’t have resigned and Clin­ton would’ve been impeached. Once Amer­i­ca looked at itself and real­ized that adul­tery, how­ev­er detestable, was com­mon­place, the coun­try had a change of heart and the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion con­tin­ued to rub­ber stamp any con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­cy that crossed its desk.

The ongo­ing right­ward shift of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty has done lit­tle more than ensure a con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty, how­ev­er ten­u­ous. What fur­ther evi­dence is required to prove that? At the 2006 mid-terms we applaud­ed the elec­tion of…Bob Casey Jr.? Not only do we face a deter­mined Repub­li­can Par­ty swept up in a rebrand­ing exer­cise, but we also must con­front the DNC viral mar­ket­ing blogs like Dai­ly Kos, who brought us such mar­ketable terms as the Fight­ing Dems, which has been an oxy­moron in my life­time. Let’s be seri­ous when we vent our wild imag­in­ings pub­licly, at least until a lep­rechaun rid­ing a uni­corn deliv­ers unto us the democ­ra­cy that is our birthright.