40 Favorites: #4


Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall sitting on a desk
Still from The Big Sleep © 1946 Warner Bros. Pictures.

Raymond Chandler. William Faulkner. Leigh Brackett. Max Steiner. Howard Hawks. Lauren Bacall. Humphrey Bogart.

Some films with such a pedigree end up as perceived if not actual failures. On The
Big Sleep
, released by Warner Bros. in 1946, everything went right — at least judging by the end result, never mind this oft-circulated anecdote:

Mad Mix


screenshot of band in video

I’m a sucker for mash-ups, inventive arrangements, and the Mad Men theme. So
yay for the self-proclaimed “bunch of film/music nerds” behind Live Music Videos who’ve performed said theme (actually just an excerpt of the RJD2 track “A Beautiful Mine”) “with a twist” [2:18] — namely, by using it as instrumental backing for the pop standard “Nature Boy”. I don’t know if it ranks up there with Eminem’s appropriation of Dido’s “Thank You” for “Stan” or David Bowie and Bing Crosby’s legendary “Little Drummer Boy / Peace on Earth” medley; at the very least, though, it’s a thrill to hear the theme performed acoustically, and I look forward to more from this ensemble.



Related: Mup’ Tempo L Is for... Sisters Go Bangles

40 Favorites: #1-3


For my 40th birthday I thought I’d share a few musings on favorite things.



Not wanting to get mired in a swampland of categories or graphics nor too much internal debate, I settled on a casual catch-all catalog of whatever popped into my head. The items have been jotted down and put in rough order; now they’re being written up in varying levels of detail as time permits.

Of course such “things” as my nieces and nephews are indescribably precious to me,
but while I share the occasional story about them here I wanted to keep these posts focused on pop-cultural diversions.

To XL


B&W photo of man with short hair, beard, and glasses
a self-portrait of the artist
approaching middle age


I turned 40 yesterday — at midnight legally, but literally at around 7 p.m., and yesterday only in the sense that I’ve been trying to get this up since the header date although you will probably be are definitely reading this some time later.

Yes, I’m still having trouble connecting to the Interwebs with any longevity or reliability. For that reason among others, I haven’t published here in almost a month; due to the substandard WiFi, my own lack of energy, and the fact that dealing with the first makes the second all the more aggravating (or vice versa) when there’s a post fully written ready to go online, I attempt to live by a version of Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Serenity Prayer”:

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.