Media from my weekend, yet again

So I was at my friends' house for dinner on Saturday night — we made pozole and cookies, and when we were mixing the dough, I asked them what they look for in a girl's media diet.

They said they've never come across girls who have media diets that are that similar to theirs, but they do seek "an appreciation for absurd humor." This was totally novel to me. They said it usually comes with a groundedness, a humility about life. I'll ask them to re-explore this soon. 

Anyway, here's what this weekend's media diet consisted of for me:

Early '60s issues/covers of Downbeat magazine

I stumbled on this magazine cover the other day, and I followed it down a rabbit hole. Not only is DownBeat jazz magazine still running, this old Blogspot blogger, Crash Boom Bam, wrote a post about the 1961 Percussion Issue I'd seen. 

While I can't find a digitized copy of that issue, I did find the August 31, 1961 issue fully digitized as a PDF in all its glory:

Read it

It's full of these gorgeous, personal ads: 

The covers are done by David Stone Martin, whose work feels like it's vibrating: 

Music roundup

The Hats album

On Friday, my manager brought me the Hats album from The Blue Nile on vinyl. The Downtown Lights is one of the best songs to come out of new wave, and it's very difficult to find this record anywhere for under $100. 

Flynn sent me a track from Happenstance (2004), an album I'd never heard by Rachael Yamagata, who I'd never listened to. It punched me in the heart. I listened to it from the top all the way through. Worn Me Down is wearing jeans like these with fuzzy socks, drinking coffee from a mug like this, and waiting for a call on a phone like this from a guy who dresses like this. This is absolutely a CD I would have owned in middle school.

Big Thief released All Night All Day as a single over the weekend — Adrianne Lenker the poet laureate strikes again. Hard to write about this stuff without it feeling icky or corny or both. It's one of those songs that makes you feel like the song is swirling around you, and I can't get enough of this kind of motion. I feel the same way about Incomprehensible and kind of hope the whole album is going to sound like this. 

Maddy texted me a link to Who Knows Where the Time Goes, which I found astonishing. A loudspeaker-surround-sound-lay-on-the-floor song.

As I mentioned in my last post, I picked up Tea for the Tillerman for $8 at Bridge Street Books, and Hard Headed Woman has quickly risen to the top of my list of songs by men describing their ideal woman. My favorite part describes a hard headed woman as a woman with a sense of conviction:

I know a lot of fancy dancers,

People who can glide you on a floor,

They move so smooth but have no answers, nooo no no

When you ask, “What d’you come here for?”

“I don’t know.”

I know many fine feathered friends

But their friendliness depends on how you do

They know many sure fired ways,

To find out the one who pays

And how you do

Lastly, here's the central question I have about SWAG: What is JB made of? My friend Edith with the genius analysis that I haven't heard anywhere else:

Animation

We watched Lilo and Stitch after dinner on Saturday. This is one of my all-time favorite films, and I think this one in particular looks better on as big a screen as you can find. It's one of those films that shows you something different on every watch; there are so many clever and subtle inclusions that it's always saying something new to me. 

"My friends need to be punished" is one of my favorite lines and delivery of all time, head tilt and dead eyes and all

Usually this movie makes me cry, but what stood out to me this time was the watercolor work and the quickness and dryness of the opening dialogue. This has to be my favorite first 10 minutes of a children's movie. 

texts with my sister from earlier this year