easily encapsulated into the domain of rock 'n' roll by the narrator

Fried green tomato platter at Chelsea's; notable because it is the first good thing I've ever eaten from there.

Gorillaz, The Fall
Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies
Tom Tom Club, Tom Tom Club
Billy Joel, Glass Houses


As a personal and now, possibly an external challenge, I'm gonna get through all three of Beckett's novels in "the trilogy." When finished, I will get to sew a little merit badge depicting an old man in the dark onto my uniform. My Goodreads review of Malone Dies, in brief:

MALONE DIES is funnier than MOLLOY in the same sense that being mercilessly beaten with a sock-full of boogers is funnier than being beaten with a sock-full of shit. More...

Tom Tom Club, "Pleasure of Love"/"On the Line Again" from Close to the Bone

I had this tape because 1) in 1987 Talking Heads were as cool as anything was and 2) it was on sale on the Record Bar at the mall and 3) the neon animated video for "Pleasure of Love" was on Night Flight all the time and 4) anything Night Flight endorsed, I endorsed and 5) I brought this tape with me to some after-school student council thing (I was desperate to get a scholarship so I joined everything my last two years of high school) and a cheerleader sneered at me over "On the Line Again", a true "what is this shit?" sneer and I said it was punk, 6) because I misheard the recitation at the end. I thought they said "punk is our salvation" when in fact 7) it is "funk is our salvation" which makes more sense, and anyway 8) there is a salient line from a Billy Joel song about the pointlessness of casting something as funk and/or punk when any song can be easily encapsulated into the domain of rock 'n' roll by the narrator, (notice how not far off he was from being Elvis Costello and, vice versa) I think Mr. Joel brings up some valid points.


Billy Joel, "It's Still Rock 'n' Roll To Me." My friend Mike got to pick three albums from his dad's Columbia House 15-for-a-penny subscription and he picked AC/DC's Back in Black, Queen's The Game and Billy Joel's Glass Houses. In the early 80's, those three albums encompassed pretty much then entire universe.

Yesterday in the course of an online discussion on the subject elsewhere I came across my all-time favorite Night Flight clip:


Heroic Struggles performing on New Wave Theatre. If only I'd had this tape for student council bulletin board decorating sessions. I started this post out emulating Beckett's paragraphed numbered lists to see how that felt on after seeing him do it to wanting to write a book about Night Flight to listening to Billy Joel without a shred of ironic distance (thanks Lance). Oh, where this day is gonna take me!