i hear what you're saying, i hear what he's saying

this so adequately captures my mood going into what is going to be yet another rowdy sun and surf filled weekend.



too bad the actual show was a disaster.

and here we test our powers of observation

team novel designs saw jazz trio the bad plus at the mint last friday. i've seen them perform more than any other band and there really aren't enough superlatives in the english language to convey just how stunning they are to behold in person. youtube has been lacking good footage of the band playing for quite some time, but it seems the touring they've been doing behind the new album has prompted some more posts.









while ethan iverson on piano and reid anderson on bass are incredible musicians in their own right, it's always dave king who steals the show. it's hard to imagine a better drummer on the face of the planet. these clips give a sense of his virtuosity, but you have to see him live to truly witness his idiosyncratic skin slapping style with that mischievous grins plastered on his face. humbling.











Just for the record. their second set at The Mint with Wendy Lewis on vocals was: lithium
radio cure
blue velvet
New years day
long distance run around
how deep is you love?
comfortably numb
barracuda
heart of gold

their cover of radio cure has set me on a pretty much uninterrupted listening spree of the original wilco track:




their blog is also a great source of info. the guys have killer taste in everything from music to film and literature... all they're missing is some wave sliding knowhow.

read, walk, communicate

since christmas i've been on a serious woody allen kick, developing a more informed appreciation of his work. beyond reading woody allen on woody allen, as well as a collection of his screenplays, i've rewatched manhattan and hannah and her sisters about a half dozen times and started viewing the films i've missed (sleeper, bananas, interiors etc). i'd say i'm about 70% of the way through the full catalogue and the most satisfying surprise so far has been stardust memories. it's an immediate entry into my top 5 allen films (displacing sweet and lowdown from the company of annie hall, manhattan, hannah and mighty aphrodite).



also listen to django reinhardt's body and soul which accompanies the closing credits.

- What do you think was the significance of the Rolls-Royce?
- Um, I think it represented his car.

open up your purses for the boys who reimburse us

happy pavement saturday.

it's a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn't want to hear

so, credit for this post goes to t. moffett for drawing attention to this dick cavett interview with updike and cheever. i can't embed, but do take a look. cheever's voice and demeanor is so classic and engaging that you can't help but wait for the camera to revisit him. it was taped less than a year before he passed away.

anyway, turns out the dick cavett show was sort of awesome. who knew? below is a selection of interviews, and i'm pulling these up after a cursory at best youtube search. all i know is suddenly, i'm like, a dick cavett fan.



this is video 1 of 4 - check them all out. cassavettes, falk and gazzara are "promoting" the brilliant film HUSBANDS (still frustratingly not on dvd). charming amateurish camera work aside, it's incredibly entertaining seeing these three ultra hip guys, giggling like idiots, goofing off and just having a good time being celebrated for doing what they love. gazzara rolls out with a lit cigar and a highball, falk waits a full minute before sitting down, cassavettes takes a pratfall when it hits a commerical break (and what a commercial break it is). who's got a match?


i don't think i've ever actually watched hendrix talk and i'm suprised by what an awkward, gentle demeanor he has. very humbly intelligent, and kind of comfortably lanky. I love the line "thats why we play so loud...to go inside the soul of the person." when he gets into "i don't really live on compliments" there are definite echoes of david byrne ("i try to write songs about small things, paper, animals, a house "). there are a lot version of this video so worth investigating further.


bowie, smiling deviantly and sniffing liking a banshee is quite dylanesque in his evasive answers, "what do you think i'm like?"


capote and groucho marx. "all of it libelous"


george harrison, ASP favorite beatle, is very witty ("yoko sat in that very chair" at 2:48), but also comes off as a very sensible person. and quite sad, re: liking talking: "sometimes, if there's something to say, but there's nothing to say these days."


zappa. total genius. no question. waltzes out cool ad a cucumber and proceeds to succinctly describe the history of punk, announce that all popular music trends have been the consequence of a popular clothing trend, recommend new wave and the record he just got by a band called the slits (per his suggestion, check out Bleeker Bobs), and provide his sociological take on the international popularity and uniformity of disco. absolute genius.


ali and frazier. cavett is agitatin'!


John Houston. The template for Daniel Plainview.


cavett found him.


last but not least, an obvious pick, but man oh man, it's impossible to like yoko. she's just so horrible. speaking at the wrong time. barely coherent. damn yoko. lennon, obviously, is a delight.

honestly, who cares about joaquin on letterman? this is real gold right here.

tangled roots

come the end of march the paperback edition of Tangled Roots will be published. the novel is written by ND supporter Sue Guiney and i can't recommend picking up a copy strongly enough either here (free worldwide delivery) or here . take the time to check it out.

hall with the temptones and oates with the masters

like the flame that burns the candle, the candle feeds the flame. think about it.

ok, mr. depth, wallow in it

CLASS first came to asp attention one late night circa 1998 when it was playing on the uk "paramount comedy channel" at about one in the morning. unbeknownst to fourteen year old me, I had stumbled upon perhaps the quintessential eighties new england boarding school coming of age comedy. the next night, it was taped on vhs. CLASS blends all the classics: animal house, ferris bueller's day off, the graduate, say anything...addressing all the great themes of growing up in any decade. in CLASS though, the trying times of being a teenager are set against the backdrop of the extra rad world that was 1983. not to mention, in addition to rob lowe, andrew mccarthy and jacqueline bisset (as ellen burroughs, the sixteen year precursor to ms. stifler), you've also got memorable turns from john cusack, alan ruck and virgina madsen. somehow the film has failed to garner its due public/critical acclaim and remains elusively outside the canon. fortunately a chosen few have taken it upon themselves to go to commendable lengths to make the film available to a modern, web surfing, audience.

"balderanddash" has posted the entire film on youtube. part one below:


so that's awesome

but it's nothing compared to what this site has compiled: seven hundred and thirty two screen captures. crazy as this sounds, each and every one is an absolute delight. a sample below.



















huge shout out to chaunceygardner for sharing this stills, providing overdue inspiration for this post.

something to put something on

i'm woefully undereducated when it comes to conceptual art, abstract painting, geometric abstraction etc, not to mention, the distinctions between such movements, but my love is steadily growing for guys like josef albers, max bill,john baldessari, sol lewitt...
i just ordered as far as they eye can see by lawrence weiner, a new favorite.





















a great shot of the man himself:

the life you save may be your own

just ordered a very large shipment from amazon, mostly for school but also this new biography of flannery o'connor. if you've never read any of her work, check out the volume of complete stories (or read everything that rises must converge). it reminded me how perfect these farrar, straus and giroux reissue covers are:

fill the past with friendly nights

photos from the inaugural "adventure" issue of imaginary zine. issue two will be themed "ritual" and the editor is accepting submissions here, so get creative.

this is gonna be primo

as an introduction to new blog all things RAD, here is a collection of offerings from the warriors of radness blog. the world can never be too radical a place.

when i was your age i was seven

so today was a watershed day for ASP who may have joined twitter for purely informational reasons (like needing to know if michael showalter's cats are fighting or not). have to say, i'm already feeling the need to tweet. i haven't. but i can tell right now that i will. why? i really couldn't say. when? only time will tell. to who? i suppose my three "followers" who i feel an obligation to. you can join them and "follow" my nonposts here. the day of reckoning is nigh.

to counterbalance this potentially gross lapse in judgment i want to share some of my favorite works by ed ruscha which i think represent a core aesthetic component of novel designs and are incredibly almost all available online here. remember, brave men run in my family.