For all the wrong reasons, the town where I spent the first seven years of my life is featured in Harper’s this month.

If you pass a magazine shop, read “The General Electric Superfraud.” It would all be hackneyed pseudo-science and tall tales to me if I hadn’t heard every single one of the article’s major points about the extent of the Hudson River’s pollution when I was a child. I remember thinking, my old man sure is a conspiracy nut, but only about this whole PCB thing. Dad just won’t let this go. Oh well, we’re moving, so that’s that.

And then this article, which read like a Steven King novel I read a long ass time ago

Tom Waits, “Tango Till They’re Sore,” from Rain Dogs, 1985.

NOOOOO!!!!!! This is not something I just read in the New York Times.

Must. Administer. Self. Heimlich.

boutofcontext:

I thought Old Timers’ Day was just for baseball until the Citi ATM at work dispensed this stack of Series 1988 A 20s. That’s pre-anti-counterfeiting strips. Luckily, each cashier who’s noticed reacted cheerily (one gushed about being a hobbyist collector), rather than by phoning the Secret Service.

Incidentally, these Jacksons are holding up well for bills aged roughly 10 times their average circulation life. I wonder about their journey…

Local Natives, Brooklyn NY 10.23.09 (photo via brooklynvegan) Brooklyn Vegan finally posted some pics from our CMJ Showcase two weekends ago. Wonderful comments and amazing band reactions are included in the dozens and dozens of pictures on the site (linked to the photo above). Thanks to BV for helping plan an amazing night.

Terry Callier, “Trance On Sedgewick Street,” from Occasional Rain (1972)

The Grave of Furry Lewis, Hollywood Cemetery. Memphis, TN. 08.03.06

“He began that year (1903) sleeping in a firehouse in Camden, New Jersey, and ended it tending bar in a saloon in Wheeling, West Virginia. In between those events he won 22 games for the Philadelphia Athletics, played left end for the Business Men’s Rugby Football Club of Grand Rapids, Michigan, toured the nation in a melodrama called The Stain of Guilt, courted, married and became separated from May Wynne Skinner of Lynn, Massachusetts, saved a woman from drowning, accidentally shot a friend through the hand, and was bitten by a lion.”

-Lee Allen, on Hall of Fame pitcher “Rube” Waddell (1876-1914)

in our time by Ernest Hemingway. Paris, 1924.

Only 170 numbered copies were printed. You can buy #28, the one that belonged to his sister, for $60,000. You can buy Bertram Hartman’s copy (his paintings hang in the Brooklyn Museum), which includes the handwritten note, “with love, Ernest Hemingway”) for $140,000. Either way, it’s 32 pages long.

J. Geils Band, “The Usual Place,” from The Morning After (1971)

It’s not a classic. Not by a long shot.

But if you’re driving in a car, and everything you pass is a reminder of how fucking late it is, and the windows are down, and the streetlights have come on and gone off, and you’ve got a decent voice worth dusting off, and you know all the words, then I’ve got to level with you: this record is a damn gem.

Because the Cubs (the Cubs! who used to win pennants! all the time!) had 7 right-handed hitters in their lineup, A’s manager Connie Mack benched his left-handed starting pitchers for the 1929 World Series. This included his two aces, one of whom was future H.O.F.er Lefty Grove. Grove led the league in several pitching stats during 1929, and would notch 2 saves rescuing over-the-hill pitchers in the series, but didn’t get a start. 

His ghost was somewhere on the mound last night.

Happy 80th.

The Philadelphia Athletics, World Series Champions of 1929.

Happy 80th.

“Black Tuesday,” October 29, 1929.