1996 Tears

To some extent, you’re forever doomed to listen to whatever music you favored in your formative years. For me, from college up to my late twenties, I spent a lot of time listening to music from the United Kingdom — the dance-rock graftings of Madchester, the so-called “shoegazing” brand of droning indie experimentation, and then the more distinctive, less obscure — and less characteristically independent — brand of traditionalism known as “Britpop.” These days, I can sport all the Arcade Fires and Ying Yang Twins I can muster, but at heart I’m most inclined towards the catchy, knowing and facile hooks of pale British youths from the early to mid-1990s.

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Full Text of 11 Jul White House Press Briefing

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4 of 5 stars
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Question: “You’re not saying anything. You stood at that podium and said that Karl Rove was not involved. And now we find out that he spoke about Joseph Wilson’s wife. So don’t you owe the American public a fuller explanation. Was he involved or was he not? Because contrary to what you told the American people, he did indeed talk about his wife, didn’t he?” Scott McLellan: “There will be a time to talk about this, but now is not the time to talk about it.” Question: “Do you think people will accept that, what you’re saying today?” McClellan: “Again, I’ve responded to the question.”

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The City in Seventy-Seven

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is BurningIf ever there was a perfect summer book for me, it’s Jonathan Mahler’s “Ladies and Gentleman, the Bronx Is Burning,” which I finished last week. It’s a completely absorbing tale of New York in 1977, when the city was besieged by fiscal crisis, arson, serial murders, blackouts and divisive politics, a time when New York seemed literally on the brink of a final, catastrophic end. Through meticulous research and a masterful feat of narrative contrivance, Mahler posits that year’s Yankees ballclub — itself stricken with internal strife between the erratic paranoia of manager Billy Martin and the outsized ego of new addition Reggie Jackson — as a metaphor for the city’s troubles, and uses the team’s progression over the course of the year to tell profound, fascinating stories about baseball and an iteration of New York that, in its very character, is almost unrecognizable from its twenty-first century self. New York, politics and baseball — what’s not to like?

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