My ears started hemorrhaging today, and only later did I discover that My Bloody Valentine had released a new album, their first in 21 years. Now that’s something.
It’s available at the band’s site.
Dinner in paradise
From a 1950s ad for Del Monte green beans:
Men at work
I’ve recently become very fond of Paul Newman’s 1970 film of Key Kesey’s epic novel Sometimes a Great Notion. The style of the film (curt and compressed) couldn’t be more different from the style of the book (garrulous and sprawling), but somehow both styles work for the story. The best parts of the film are the scenes of logging. They’re understated yet thrilling. It’s a shame Newman didn’t do more directing.
Creative destruction
A dismantled eight-track cartridge, pictured in a Billboard magazine ad from the 1970s:
The keen vibration of bright truth
More than 300 etchings by William Blake have been discovered in a library at the University of Manchester. Here’s one that illustrates a passage from a poem by Edward Young:
The keen vibration of bright truth — is hell:
Just definition! though by schools untaught.
My first car
It was that color. It lacked the rally stripe. It had a short and tragic life.