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Books

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Books, Essays, Music, My back pages, Race

Urban Savant

Greg Tate, the prolific critic and culture chronicler, died Tuesday December 7. He happened to be a neighbor of mine. For close to 30 years we lived next door to each other in the Sugar Hill section of New York’s Washington Heights. We shared what neighbors share: a street/mecca where greats like Ellington and Strayhorn,…

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Books, Criticals, Film, Television

Murdering Myths

Choose your Hornet… Superheroes are not clowns.  They don’t do pratfalls, lack technological savvy, or otherwise behave like assholes.  It took a franchise like Christopher Nolan’s to usher in a new era of the comic-book-hero-made-flesh, and to give guys like us (who lapped up the TV serial-versions) grown-up editions compelling enough to rival, and surpass,…

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Art, Books, Film, Food and Drink, My back pages

Ancient Evenings

When I first moved to New York I knew a girl who fancied herself a kind of Holly Golightly.  Oh, her nights!  Always, she was full of stories about the latest film that mustn’t be missed, or that cool art opening she crashed the previous weekend.  She represented the possibility of inclusion: one day those…

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Books, Current Affairs, Writing

Peter Orlovsky 1933-2010

Muse and lover of the late Allen Ginsburg, and a poet of note.  Here’s something from 1957… My Bed is Covered Yellow My bed is covered yellow – Oh Sun, I sit on you Oh golden field I lay on you Oh money I dream of you More, More, cried the bed – talk to…

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