Irrational Man

I liked the simple storytelling, which was augmented by lots of narration from Phoenix and Stone.  "Phoenix and Stone" - sounds like figures from fantasy, but no they are the two actors Joaquin and Emma.  The week before we saw "Mr. Holmes", which has some of that timeplay storytelling, the narration suddenly shifting to a scene from the past, then back to the present, without any obvious storytelling helpers, like written text "30 years earlier...".  "Irrational Man" is strictly linear, I appreciate that for a weekend matinee's entertainment.

There is a lot wrong with the story, but it wasn't hard to sit through.  Oy vey, another Allen film about an older man and a much younger woman; why Woody why?  Emma Stone seems to be fine with this longtime conceit of girls chasing greybeards; can anybody watch "Manhattan" anymore?  I liked that Phoenix has a gut and is not afraid to "dare to be fat", to quote Rootboy Slim.  Fat is where it's at.

This idea of committing "the perfect crime" is kind of dated.  Professor Phoenix is shown to own a copy of "Crime and Punishment", so we are meant to consider that, but I think the auteur Allen missed a great opportunity by not having his murderer suffer the exquisitely insufferable paranoia that haunts Raskolnikov and makes that book a classic.  Professor Phoenix doesn't seem to change his demeanor much after the murder.  He even is still giving matter-of-fact voiceover, even up to the point where he is about to be killed - so who is the voiceover telling the story to?  

Is there a professor of philosopher in this day who carries a flask and is constantly nipping from it and in all sincerity offer an unsanitary sharing with other grown adults?

We loved the Rhode Island setting, though.  Also, Allen's movies always have nice supporting casts,  of course nobody is ever asked to act too much, but nevertheless there is a lot of sincere effort.  People don't have unfunny dramas in these later Allen films, there's always a lighter side to poison.  That helped the straightforward storytelling, though.  No scenery chewing rants or fits.

So not a really memorable film, but an acceptable diversion for a weekend matinee.

Finally, a positive review: "Love and Mercy" is a good story, if you are already sympathetic to Brian Wilson

We finally saw a movie I watched all the way through without resenting.

"Love and Mercy" braids two stories for two ages of  Brian Wilson, the composer youth embodied by Paul Dano, and the casualty manchild disembodied by John Cusack;  Cusack acted it fine, but Dano had the charisma.  The early years thread is rightfully praised for elucidating BW's creative process, working with squarewear classical musicians, the wood-paneled tube and dial board studio, and BW's craft.

Paul Giamatta should get a Best Supporting for the dodgy doctor who controlled BW for years, I love his mad energy every time he's on screen dominating the sheeped out BW.

It isn't short, but it follows a real human story, illuminates a life, does a fair behind the music, it is offers real lessons not Hollywood bromides, so I give it 7 thumbs up.

House of Cards Indeed

The first season of House of Cards was plausible and entertaining, like a real house of cards, the second season was implausible but entertaining, like a dramatically positioned, fantastically piled house of cards, and the third season was stupid, foolish and unentertaining, like fallen cards, flat and splat.

It was gloriously brazen reckless to kill Zoe Baird shortly in the second season, since she had charisma, did the actress have another opportunity?

In the third season the major addition was the plagiarist biographer with crazy hair, but why?  The hair and its actor were unwatchable.

Season Three President Underwood says nobody cares about Social Security, he wants to take money from it to fund job subsidies, for jobs like washing dishes.  The cynical Frank Underwood I knew from the first season would never consider touching the third rail of American politics!  This is just crazy plotting, something went terribly wrong in the arc of season three.  Then the stupid showrunner wants us to thing this wouldn't cause an outrage.  This is a shark jump of record breaking breadth.

The main problem seems to be that the great Sarah Treem, who wrote season one, left to write the intriguing, nuanced, and adult first season of "The Affair".

Season one Underwood sweet talked and bamboozled people, it was a lot of fun, but season three Underwood just yells and bullies and gripes and mopes.

The worst of all this putrid decaying corpse of a once-great series was the Doug character, who spends the whole season either blank-faced or enraged and crying and destroying cellphones and laptops, thoroughly miserable and unlikeable, not a good looking actor to begin with, he was like Gollum without the charm and warmth.

I may sue this wretched showrunner Beau Willimon with ruining once great characters, Frank Underwood and Claire Underwood.

Clearly this yet another case of an American show that is closely modeled on a European show, but going completely off the rails when it has used up all the ideas from the original.  All of season three's drama were standard soap opera junk tropes.

"Veep" is a delightful comedy that is firmly grounded in the reality of Washington, but this decrepit senile "House of Cards" is just shitty cornball melodrama conceived by some Hollywood Bubble pinhead.

Birdman negative review

Last December we saw a downer movie about unpleasant men and the women who suffer from them called"Birdman" and then it won Oscars.

Micheal Keaton never cracks a smile nor hints at non-unpleasantness as the Hollywood hack vet doing Broadway, and he seems to have the DT's, the film portrays his hallucinations of telekinetics and Birdmanisms inline, is it all in his mind or not, the film ends truthing towards the hallucination translived through his predictably moody-crazy daughter, they are all unpleasant so screw them; the soundtrack is crazy drums and sometimes we see the crazy drummer as Keaton walks about; as Robert Plant said at LiveAid, does anybody remember laughter?

They might as well have filmed this in black and white because the palette was so close.

The one good scene was Keaton walking through Times Square and entering the theatre in his undies, but that could have been done as a Fruit of the Loom commercial.

Atlantis downer post

The #1 NPR program is "On Point", and today the second hour featured Plato's story of Atlantis, with Mark Adams, a man obsessed with the tale.  Okay, as an amateur who has only read library books, I don't know why anybody would trust Plato's account of some foregone place, since he lived in the 4th century BC, long past the age of myth, and there is no mention of "Atlantis" or any some-Atlantis like situation in Homer or Hesiod, or in any ancient Greek myth or cult, nor in Roman myth or the known other tales from Mediterranean cultures.

So, some 4th century BC Athens metropolitan is the first known author to have heard of this tale from pre-history, which in his telling involves Athens, a city shameful with self-promotion in that time, pushing the Theseus franchise, getting the common Greek polis goddess known as "Athena", not Thebea or Argoa; and he supposedly heard this from sailors, who are well known not to be shy in telling tales, yet nobody before Plato had heard a sailor talk about this mysterious ill-fated place, when in reality sailors tell all they know and more than they to know to anybody who can stand to listen to them, and if there had really been an Atlantis that had fallen into the sea in prehistory, the tale would have been huge in Homer and Hesiod and many of the mythic tales involving the gods and heroes.

But there is nothing until Plato?  Why would this ancient tale have been not recorded in the story of Ilium or the Calydonian Boar or Jason?

Odysseus in "The Odyssey" visited all kind of crazy nonsensical ungeoprachical places but never heard of Atlantis.  The ancient bards loved to reference other mythic tales in their stories, people love references.  But nothing is told until Plato, who lived in a rational post-Socratic age, when triremes had sailed out and back over the possibly explored near seas.

Plato was wholly dealing out parable and metaphor here.  There is no Atlantic you dumbasses. Nobody in the Bronze Age or Archaic or Classical Greece until Plato knew of any Atlantis, until the philosopher in 4th century BC Athens described it in great detail.  This ends the Atlantis conversation, no more will be heard.

Wes Anderson is like Terry Gilliam without the edge?

Once again, the post title is the thesis, doesn't that make it easier, like when a song is named after its most earwormy lyric ingredient?

We saw "Grand Budapest Hotel" at Coolidge Corner Theatre last weekend, where it had the third largest weekend gross in its history.  The reviews were good.  I had not yet seen a movie by Wes Anderson.  I don't watch movies much because most are so interminably tiresome like this one.

I went in thinking this some period piece but the pseudo period setting was just dress up, after some initial setup the script played with anachronism beyond its welcome.  It's a bad sign the first time a punchline is a cuss, junior high school style.

Hijinks ensue, characters were cartoons, sight gags, stunts, running jokes, some characters used a voice or an accent and some spoke Californian.  Cameos aren't a bad thing, they indicate respect in Hollytown. I perked up when Bill Murray was on screen, but he didn't do much and then was gone.  I couldn't follow the story at times. I was sorry they left the grand hotel, which had a nice look and where I had expected the story to take place, to run amok in the outside world.  Some of the gags were good, some groans.  One interesting thing, how every shot seemed to be centered and framed by symmetry.

Watching the clock by halfway, how long oh lord?  So much gratitude when the narrator voice indicated coming closure.  During "Drive" I sat in the bathroom reading my email I was so bored, this wasn't that bad, set pieces kept dropping and I had some hope something better might come.

So to expand the thesis, "Grand Budapest Hotel" is like a defanged Terry Gilliam movie, fanciful comedic fable, but without the edge, with lightweight character development, patchwork storytelling, a frame to hang scenes on, and not as funny.

Oh well it was a night out.  Then we went to Lemongrass for defanged Vietnamerican food for Brookline, I like that, I'm an old Yank myself, please no spicy.

When money grew in ponds weather like this was like hitting the lottery.

Thomas Perkins is the guy who recently dinged the Godwin's Law bell by saying resentment of the rich is akin to the Kristallnacht of 1930's Germany, but in a more simple time Colonel Thomas Handasyd Perkins was the man who created an industry, like an Edison or Fulton, by marshalling the early 19th century craft of refrigeration, not yet a technology so much as an art, to export ice sawn from Boston area ponds overseas. 

Caribbean plantation owners and English manors paid well for this luxury of the pre-refrigeration days, making it profitable even if most of the goods melted in transit.

If this lost industry existed today, then this wintry March we are still enduring, like going out not at all like a lamb so much as a rabid rogue ram, would indubitably be classified an economic boom time.

The Power of Equality, = != == != ===

The equal is equal except when only congruent, excepting when actually equal, so define equal as equal and not.

Roxbury Conglomerate Puddingstone

There is an outcropping of Roxbury Conglomerate on the beach in Hull, an assemblance of pre-Devonian granite pebbles and cobbles in the conglomming medium of muds.  A snapshot of the geology at that period, with less interesting sedimentaries because the contributing landmass was more upswelled ignitions than previously deposited record rocks.  But the rock is rock-hard, not flimsy for being conglomerated.

Rocks have become more interesting as time has gone on since the Cambrian, since calciferous lifeforms have deposited immense calcium, now known as limestone and marble, and carbon is laid down in fossil fuel rocks.

The Roxbury Conglomerate represents a time when the life of earth did not contribute so much to deposition, although it is lightly present, more in the sea than the highlands that fell into the muddy seas that created this formation.

The most interesting rocks in my purely amateur opinion are from the sedimentaries of the life period.  

My current evaluation of Crimean War II.

Crimea is not worth nearly as much as Putin seems to think. This is in line with his assault on Georgia for the puny prize of South Ossetia. He was more on the right track with the costly corrupt Olympics at Sochi just a few weeks ago, and the current Paralympics which goes on during all this. Cultivate a worldly image and keep up the energy exports. But now Russia has magnified its sometime role as crass brutal bully 

The Black Sea fleet could have been maintained merely with the threat of invasion, but exactly how worthwhile to Russia is the maintaining of a Black Sea fleet? Nobody cares about it, except the former Soviet republics that border Russia, and how much can Russia gain from bullying Ukraine and Georgia that is worth more than their commercial relationships with Europe? 

Putin must be surrounded by yes men who echo 1980's considerations that expired in the 1990's. An isolated boss without reality checkers, whose main purpose is to maintain the corrupt advantages of power.

The Crimean War of 1854 is best remembered if at all by the unintentionally ironic poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson "The Charge of the Light Brigade", a celebration of the misguided valor of British light cavalry, specifically the 4th and 13th Light Dragoons, the 17th Lancers, and the 8th and 11th Hussars (don't you love these obscure archaic names?) under the command of the Earl of Cardigan, he of the sweater, on the wrong target by a confused British headquarters.  They assaulted a dreadfully deadly wrong position, and their lack of tactical tact was celebrated as the bravery of dying just because somebody says go for it.

This Crimean War II may be a possible verification of one of Karl Marx's better quips, that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

Exile on Main Street

I originally had this on a cassette tape that I made from an LP from the Schenectady County Library, LP sides 1 and 2 on cassette side 1, and LP side 3 and 4 on cassette side 2. The tape soon suffered a characteristic failure on the media, a section turned over and was subsequentially played backwards, and sounded amazing.  Backwards tape is underrated; the reverse rhythms are quite striking.

When I bought the remastered reissue CD a couple of years ago, I first wanted to hear "Casino Boogie", then "Torn and Frayed", but the song that had most stuck in my brain since that old cassette gave out was "Let It Loose", and it is now the most played song from Exile on my iPod.

So here I once again take the opportunity the discuss what a single album of a classic double album might include.  There are 18 songs on Exile, so what are top 9 according to me?  I ask.

I like many of the cult favorites and not necessarily the popular favs; I'm not into "Tumbling Dice" or "Happy", more into the French studio excretions and the LA gospelishers.

So my 9 iz:  "Casino Boogie", "Shake Your Hips", "Torn and Frayed", "Sweet Black Angel", "Loving Cup", "Let It Loose", "All Down the Line", "Shine A Light", and "Soul Survivor".  Thems those I want to listen up with on iPod for purposes on running. (I fracture my speak to celebrate and exploit the declining prestige of prescriptivism.  On. Internet. English.)

Casino Boogie is a great take on some old blues cliche, Shake Your Hips even more so, Torn and Frayed is a classic of simple acoustic chords, Sweet Black Angel has great structure, Loving Cup was a result of Mick's gospel church take and subsequent adaptation and rip off, and song that came on abruptly after my cassette tape's backwarding, Let It Loose is my favorite song on the album; it takes up the black church musical tradition in stepping up to higher levels several times to increase the intensity, although it suffers from Mick's lyrics of pickup politics.  Mick should have given it more universal lyrical themes, then it could really be a great song, as is it is somewhat problematic to sing, his tale of picking up some girl.

All Down The Line I include because it is a moving rock song.  Shine A Light is good, but could be replaced by Rocks Off in all honesty, Rocks Off is an interesting tune with some resonance, it has unusual features, but Shine A Light  is classic, so maybe this is a tossup.  Soul Survivor belong in any distillation, the guitar architectural is good Keith, Mick had to instill a melody upon it, from the latest CD outtake you notice Keith didn't have a melody on the demo.

I have stopped listening to some of songs.  It is 2014, I can't listen generously as much no more, this has to upholster my iPod on runs during this winter with so many cruel cold days.  Running seives my tolerance for songs that can't move me.

Scenario: Cumin gets huge.

There are many foods and spices with health benefits, but how can one suddenly erupt, like kale, from boring also-ran to godhood adorned with prestigious and pseudo-prestigious branding from the food-industrial complex doping it with its proven addiction enhancers, a crunchy host, saltiness and/or sweetness and/or fat, marketing, an upthumb from Dr. Oz, blogosphere hype, and the resulting buy-now-reflex from hoi polloi Whole Foods shoppers?

Recently there has been mild buzz about cumin, one tip from Dr. Oz and the hype-trigger will blow, the food cartel will clog consumer markets with cuminy processed foods, cumin chips, cumin shakes, cumin flakes, cumin smoothies, cumin pops, cumin cupcakes, cumin frozen yogurt, cumin steak sauces,cumin beer, cumin vodka, cumin lattes, cumin rings, cumin tea, and cumin kale crunches.

But perhaps the next Big Thing is another, so thus in the above paragraph replace 'cumin' with either 'ginger', 'turmeric', 'cilantro', 'clay', or 'seal blubber'

It's as good as lost

Oh shit I lived part of my life in the pre-internet period, it might as well have been the Bronze Age, if you don't scan it in.

In the 32nd century, all they will know of me and mine are the digital relects left?

Christmas, not Festivus

The Airing of The Grievances only pertains to Festivus, if a house has Christmas decoration up, and not an aluminum pole, everything must be cheery and jolly, or else just get out and die.

Schlock and Troll Hall of Lame, Cleveland's brown is fecal.

The proposed 2014 "inductees" to the so-called Rock and Roll Hall of Fame have been reviled; oops I mean revealed...

Okay, I have to toss yet another boring nutty over this "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame". Inducting Nirvana is a no-brainer, but to include the middling likes of Hall and Oates, Cat Stevens, and Linda Ronstadt, who nobody cares about anymore, refluxes the nausea and unease I felt when Jann Wenner and cronies first forced the "Hall of Fame" conceit in the 80s.

I suppose that they eventually had to include the pathetic cartoon characters Kiss (I will NOT uppercase their stupid name), younger children of the 70s, not knowing any better liked their shtick; to my mind costume rock is better served by Insane Clown Posse and Gwar. Kiss only had one halfway decent song; contemporary uninducted middle of the road yeomen like Bad Company and Boston had at least a half dozen.

They are giving some kind of award to the E Street Band for their pompous bombastic recycling of 1950's rock cliches.

Hall and Oates joins Abba in the Hall of Lame wing, while Kiss of course will be in the Hall of Damn Shame annex. Hall and Oates. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Hall and Oates. The Onion? No, sadly true. They are in and but not Jethro Tull, whose song "Living in the Past", by itself, is worth more than Hall and Oates entire career of pale painfully lame white music. Could it be because George Starostin only gave Tull a C? So Tull made some not so good later albums, who hasn't?

Nirvana set a standard for arch lyrically and musically we will probably not see again, my opinion of course being we are in a downward spiral of formula schlock in popular music. While the rest of grungists had downward chord patterns like "Black Hole Sun" and the musical question "Would", Nirvana had crazy ups and downs in songs like "In Bloom" (verse: A# F# D# B A) and "Lithium" (chorus:E G# C# A C D B D) that Cobain managed to carve Michelangelic melodies from, and were well-served by the growled wordplay about angel hair and baby's breath, a mosquito my libido, teenage angst has paid off well.

Linda Ronstadt? Some people like her voice, I saw her at the old Boston Garden, she does not move on stage, not a hair. Have her songs aged well? Do you ever hear any of them? How is she more deserving than Yes? That is indeed a long distance run around.

Cat Stevens had a few entertaining pop songs, but so did Seals and Croft, Jim Croce, and John Denver. Oo baby, baby it's a mild world.

So I think the R+R HoF just enjoys the attention, even from cranks like me lambasting them, they are laughing all the way to the bank, as the saying goes. They held off Rush as long as possible, until 2013, and Rush fans are indeed fanatical, they choose a ready guide with some not so celestial voice.

As the years go by, there are going to be fewer and fewer old acts to "induct"; there are a handful of obvious candidates from the 90's, but 10 years from now they will be at 25 years past the de facto end of the rock era, please don't make me listen to post-rock bands like Arcade Fire or the dreadful Imagine Dragons, torturous predictability. I think a basic shortcoming of today's music is a genuine inability to sing and play with feeling, these whelps have no blues in them. They don't even have any folk in them. What is their base? Their base is the old rock's patina, under which we no longer see the blues and old music that anchored the first 20 years of rock.

Peter Gabriel sans Genesis, that's fine, he had some good sounds. I can't listen to one of his albums all the way through, but "Games without Frontiers", "Big Time", and "In Your Eyes" are terrific songs.

Getting through, entangled up in wormholes.

You can’t get entangled without a wormhole - MIT physicist finds the creation of entanglement simultaneously gives rise to a wormhole.

They found a reason for gravity, previous a big mystery, it's all quantum entanglement, the quazillion quarks of the universe hold things together through wormholes.  So goes the scenario.

Another day, another mind blowing article from the science section.

But does this legitimize astrology by saying the gravity of the spheres effects every brain upon borning?

My top 25 iPod tracks in 2013, all of which were recorded in the 20th century.

Use my iPod only for running, its library has just 535 songs after eliminating most of those which really didn't make sense for my run motivation, so let's see what has been the Top 25 this year

49 Byes-Byes
I hadn't heard this song in decades before adding it to my playlist during my Buffalo Springfield revivalist period and revisiting CSN, but then I listened to it near the end of every run for months and it ended up my most played song for the year, never skipped.  I like the 60's sound in the guitar and drums, the electric organ phrases, the changes in the melodies, and the goal is the way Stills sings the musical question "Who do you love?"

Golden Slumbers
Once there was a way to get back home... not anymore.  Abbey Road was my third album, after The Monkees Greatest Hits and Buffalo Springfield.  This is McCartney's best granny-song (Lennon's phrase) moment, always singing the granny tunes like "Martha My Dear" and "Your Mother Should Know", so concerned with the vanishing past, but here he addressed his issue directly.  The Golden Slumbers filled his eyes when a lad, when there was a way to get back homeward, he took the phrase from an old English work that resonated with Paul, The Greatest Sentimentalist of our time.

For No One
This McCartney tune has a pace in the rhythm guitar in both verse and chorus that matches my  characteristic trot, and the classical trumpet solo helps.  The lyrics are yet another rock song complaining that his woman hurt him, maybe it's more convincing when given by Paul McCartney than when more philandering types like Robert Plant and Mick Jagger assert it's some woman's fault.

Mean Mr. Mustard links to an early acoustic version which is worthy, but the original Abbey Road version along with Polythene Pam/She Came In Through the Bathroom Window was my favorite song when I was 10; cartoony Beatles songs were all the favorites, and Yellow Submarine was my favorite movie; Britishy and Sixtiesish as anything, I took that movie as a monumental document, though you don't hear much such acclamation anymore.

Lilywhite Lilith - The opening track of record 2 of Genesis' "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway", which I didn't listen to until a year or two ago, while long worshipping the album title track, the similar "Fly On A Windshield", and the immortal "Carpet Crawlers"; now I skip a jump when I hear that bass countdown that the chamber was in confusion with all the voices counting down, what a great song; Genesis did a bad job putting together what should have been their definitive rock opera, the second album drags with the ill-considered imagined lysericity, and even the first album drags at times, Gabriel was only partially committed, he was also undergoing some personal drama, mairrage stuff.

Outside Woman Blues - The much beloved blues remake from side 2 of Disraeli Gears, with Clapton's "woman tone" guitar stylings, written by whoever, but originally recorded by Blind Joe Reynolds in 1929; the Clapton arrangement is very playable, any chords website should have a version.  You can't watch your wife and your outside wimmins too, this old song says.

Let It Loose - Mick's best gospel-inspired contribution to Exile On Main Street.  The lyrics about some pickup, I wish Mick had stepped it up for this tune instead of being ironic, because the tune picks up throughout and is terrific; the drums cutting in art 2:27 announce the higher revelation with majestic horns, and Mick's more involved melodic performance at 3:04, and again at 3:40, he totally redeems himself from screwing with Keith's drug-stoked initial album tracks from France for Exile.

Eleanor Rigby - Another Beatles rhythmic runner's helper, with the pathos, Paul should have asked John to sing with him, it always sounded better with Lennon vocals, two of us.

Doing That Scrapyard Thing - This is one of my favorite Cream songs, perhaps for sentimental reasons, playing albums in the 80's in Dorchester, but maybe I just like Jack Bruce's Beatlesqueries.

Don't Stay Home - 311 always with the positivity and distorted guitar, and I stayed home many a time, I like the admonishment, this is the 311 tune they should play more often!

Helplessly Hoping
I think I like a few CSN songs for memories and resonance, though most of their work is off my list. The rhythm of the acoustic picking pattern fits my running pace, the amateur alliteration is fun, even when the G's in "Gasping at glimpses of gentle true spirit" match on paper but not in pronunciation.  I don't expect a lot from rock lyrics, not everybody is Bob Dylan, many of my favorites fail to achieve what they want in their lyrics, George Harrison aims high and falls short sometimes, Townsend has some awkward lines.  Still it's fun that Stills tried to be alliterative.

On the Way Home - Buffalo Springfield, Neil Young song sung by Richie Furay, a great song,

Bluebird - Stephen Still's best Buffalo Springfield song, starts with Neil Young guitar, but Stills matches guitars later, the guitar match is conversant, a great 60's sound from all the instuments; at the end the whole song is made transcendent by a Charlie Chin banjo piece, which Young had not expected and objected to, yet is completely appropriate and necessary to enjoyment nowadays,and I pick up a banjo every time I am in Guitar Center without luck,

Mellow My Mind - Now my favorite song from Neil Young's Tonight's The Night, the favorite album of Neil Young heads,  Sloppy and glorious, the great moment is the voice breaking in the chorus, "lonesome whistle on the railroad track, ain't got nothing on that feeling, that I had".

Let It Grow  - Eric Clapton still in 60's mode, singing deliberately, heavy breath to start,

Ain't Wastin Time No More - You don't need no gypsy to ask you why this is the best Allman Bros song becausethe slide is all over like hot fudge,

One Love - The Bob Marley classic anthem, for some reason the more topical "Three Little Birds", Red Sox right fielder Shane Victorino's muse and Fenway Park 2013 World Series sing-along is not the one that made my cut, although it is equivalent culturally.

Dance the Night Away - Cream from Disraeli Gears side one, the drumming never stops, the vocals total Bruce falsetto vibrato, a great insurgent Cream discoteque dance tune.

Lovely Rita - Paul makes his bass melodic and propulsive, it has rhythm and pace,

Go and Say Goodbye - From my rediscovery of Buffalo Springfield,Stills and Young guitar interaction magic, a tight country-rock song that was ill-served by the slowed-down version acoustically played in the ill-fated 2011 Buffalo Springfield reunion tour that Neil Young ungentlemanly aborted,

Come On Baby Let's Go Downtown - The showstoppper, the last song from side one of Tonight's the Night, a song about The Junk from addict Danny Whitten, whose death Neil would mourn in The Needle and the Damage Done.  What a great song.   I like it when Neil sings with somebody else, Stills  and Furay, Stills and Crosby and Nash, and especially Danny Whitten in this song, while Ralph Molina pounds on the drum and Billy Talbot hurts his bass, Crazy Horse style.

Sea and Sand - has been my favorite song twice from Quadrophenia, once in the 80's when that was my favorite album, but also once again in the Two-Tens as a runner.  Dirty Jobs was my favorite song for Q in 2009-2012, and perennial second-place finisher The Real Me is retired to the Hall Of Fame.  Sea and Sand has a noise-and-quiet interplay, and now as I live near the sea and sand there is that resonance.

The Unknown Soldier - The Doors, in their theatrical mode, I consider them better when theatrical, that was their contribution, along with baroque keyboards.  Jim played the execution victim in the original, the images play on my mind as this plays,

Mother and Child Reunion -  This reminds me of fishing with my father in the early 70's, but is also one of the best Paul Simon songs during his fairly glorious early solo period, I used to listen to "There Goes Rhymin Simon" on 8-track, the imitation of reggae was beneficial to PS,

Waiting for John Hawks to comment on Denisovans in Spain...

As a blogger I await the opine of the master anthropology blogger John Hawks from the U of Wisc Madison to weigh in, but he is deep in the caves of Malapa these days, at least mentally, only super thin spelunkers can get in there.  It's great work, but bloggers need immediate waggery.

Maybe Deinekes will have an opinion

Here it is:

The Denisova-Sima de los Huesos connection

Denisovan genetics in Spain screw up the apple cart and apple sauce squooshes underfoot

The Denisovan line of humans, as separate from us modern human as the Neanderthals, was only known by a finger bone in a cave in the Altic region of Russia until the other day, when it was broadcast that advanced DNA analytical methods revealed that bones in a Spanish cave had DNA really similiar to those of the finger bone.  Denisovan genetic mixture is only found in people from west of the Wallace Line (google it) indicating ancient mixture in Asia, but they found this in Spain, a long way from Asia.  As a result, the story lines of recenter human evolution are messed up.

As DNA analysis get more nuanced and human remains are more digged upped, the results will get resultinger.

Denisovans in Spain? Human origins may now be characterizsed as "It's Complicated"

Firstly, the National Geographic link.

They tested the Neanderthal bones from Spain and the result said Denisovan, the still apparently poorly understood third strand of modern human genetics, along with homo sapiens sapieins and the cold-adopted Neanderthals of Eurasia.

Maybe the Denisovans were the original Eurasian population and Neanderthals replaced them in their range?

Maybe any hypothesis can float a while in the current void of knowledge.