"bright splotches of color against the somber sky"

"Of course, it was not actually the first time he had dreamed.  But his earlier dreams had been the kind that a healthy youth forgot with the coming of morning.  Never once had a dream lingered to affect his waking hours.  Now it was different.  Not only through the morning but through this entire day, last night's dream would persist, sometimes linked with the memory of the dream of the night before, or to be continued in the dream of the next night.  His dreams were like bright-colored garments put out to dry and left forgotten in the rain, hanging on the clothes pole without every drying.  The rain continued.  Perhaps a madman lived in the house.  And more printed silk robes were added to the drying pole, bright splotches of color against the somber sky."

Yukio Mishima, Runaway Horses

"If you knew how I felt now / You wouldn't act so adult now"

 

The Replacements, "Kiss Me On The Bus"

Tim or Pleased to Meet Me?  Which one you got?

Elizabeth Nelson on the reissue of Tim:

"Thus 'Tim' commences with a binary choice. The opening track is called 'Hold My Life,' and the decision is between fame—or at least a life-changing increase in notoriety—and something like a tactical retreat from the limelight. 'Time for decision to be made,' Westerberg intones hoarsely over a driving pre-chorus: 'Crack up in the sun / Or lose it in the shade.' A sentiment worthy of Jay Gatsby himself. By the end, the Replacements did a little bit of both."

Way back when I reviewed Trouble Boys, a band biography that's also worth checking out.

Hagerstown!

 

Spent an afternoon in Hagerstown checking out Hub City Vinyl.  Most people know the town for the nearby Civil War battlefield of Antietam.

Highlights: french fries and Led Zeppelin pinball.

"warm and thick and poisoned with human breath"

"In the trees of the Old Steyne the fairy lights were switched on; it was too early, their pale colours didn't show in the last of the day.  The long tunnel under the parade was the noisiest, lowest, cheapest section of Brighton's amusements: children rushed past them in paper sailor caps marking 'I'm No Angel'; a ghost train rattled by carrying courting couples into a squealing and shrieking darkness.  All the way along the landward side of the tunnel were the amusements; on the other little shops: Magpie Ices, Photoweigh, Shellfish, Rock.  The shelves rose to the celling; little doors let you into the obscurity behind, and on the sea side there were no doors at all, no windows, nothing but shelf after shelf from the pebbles to the roof, a breakwater of Brighton rock facing the sea.  The lights were always on in the tunnel; the air was warm and thick and poisoned with human breath."

-- Graham Greene, Brighton Rock

The Last of Us (with minor spoilers)

I finally got around to watching The Last of Us, and I really enjoyed it.  At nine episodes it managed to fill out some back stories to greater and lesser successes.  Did we need more Bill?  Sure, why not.  Did we need more Jakarta?  No, not really.

I guess I was left feeling that a really good two hour movie could have been made as well, one that would have outshined a nine-part series and brought home the point that Joel acted selfishly, but also relatably.

That's not hating, just wondering if an already baggy video game needed an equally baggy series to boot.

"pure and impenetrable as fine jade"

"The farther out one looked, the darker the color of the water, until it finally became a deep blue-green.  It was as if the innocuous ingredients of the offshore water became more and more condensed by the increasing pressure of the water as it got deeper, its green intensified over and over again to produce an eternal blue-green substance, pure and impenetrable as fine jade, that extended to the horizon.  Though the sea might seem vast and deep, this substance was the very stuff of the ocean.  Something that was crystallized into blue beyond the shallow, frivolous overlapping of the waves -- that was the sea."

-- Yukio Mishima, Spring Snow

Saturday Night Mandu