C’mon, die, die! my wife just said. She had stepped on the beetle once but they’re apparently made of titanium. Birch had been barking at it for five minutes, growling and snapping, and the beetle - one of those immensely stupid and nasty June Bugs - had deployed its pincers in a brave last stand. Finally my wife just came out of the house and stepped on the bug, and it crunched like someone feeding a crate of Rice Crispies into an industrial press. Gah.

So that’s the drama of the day; all else was rote. Best part of the day: a great conversation with Daughter on the way to her last Walker Art Center teen council meeting. I’d been listening to the Metropolis soundtrack, and she’d seen the first part of the movie in a class, and so we talked about that.

I noted that they’d used contemporary music for a rerelease of the movie - Moroder and Queen, IIRC - and this was not wise.

“What did you think of the modern music in ‘Gatsby’?” She said, and I winced, because yeah I get it, updating and making it new for a different generation, but c’mon. Knowing what the popular music of specific decades sounded like is basic cultural literacy. The beats, the lyrical cliches, the instrumentation - you can read the century by hearing it.

The score is incredible, for the first half at least; it’s like a fever dream of Bruckner.

Oh to be there when the movie premiered. The audience called the composer to the stage for numerous ovations. Everyone agreed the work was a stunning achievement, the likes of which had never been imagined.

Then it flopped, hard.

All right, this is Friday, so I'm scooping up stuff I set aside for some reason. I was looking for a motel in Detroit for the 2019 postcard updates, and Detroit trips are always interesting. Horrifying, but interesting. I spied a ghost ad, and wondered when it was covered up by construction - possibly by the motel.

You doubt this is still the case. And what is it today?

It's still the Chronicle - an African-American newspaper. Wikipedia:

The Chronicle garnered national attention in its early years for its "radical" approach to politics -- advocacy of organized labor and the Democratic Party. Albert Dunmore, who edited the Detroit edition of the Pittsburgh Courier in the 1940s, remarked in 2010 that most African-American newspapers of the time took the opposite stance, because of "the anti-Black attitude prevalent in the organized labor ranks and the heavily southern influence in the Democratic Party"

Times change.

Had to snapshot this brilliant search return. This is why AI probably isn't where people think it is:

Nailed it.

At the convention center I saw this monitor. It's like all the others. What's strange about it?

This, of course:

In the comments, you can tell your theory about why I think this is ridiculous, and seems to presume something odd about what people have come to accept.

Mumps Lawson-era period were so wordy.

Talk to Berdine about the Noctine. Answer here, but hash it out in the comments first! Don't spoil it for everyone!

A few random music cues from the early 50s sci-fi radio show. The first one shows there's only so much sci-fi music to go around, and almost none when it comes to that dreaded sub-genre, Comic Sci-Fi.

The second cue has something you could call Robot Music - and something else. A voice you may recall from last year's music cues.

Instead of the swank old sounds of Goodwill albums, this year we're going to share bad 1960s pop music. The second- and third-tier tunes.

1967. Starts out like it could be early Genesis; you can smell the Ozium.

Then it goes all folk-hippy on you.

The song would be blessedly shorter if Mom had just said "yes" and closed the door.

1958. If you're old, your bile is asleep? Doubt it

Thank you for your visits this week! See you Monday.