The Notebooks of Sonny Rollins, NYRB’s compendium of the musician’s half-century of private journals, is filled with more info than you ever wanted to know about the minutia of saxophone: lists of lip muscle exercises, breathing techniques, detailed notes on scales, intervals, alternate fingerings, etc. These passages are interspersed with reflections on religion, race, physical fitness, and mental health, among other things. Rollins’ sketches, mostly of animals, are also included. I pinned up a copy of his sketch of an…

First viewing courtesy of the roku channel and an 18” tv in a Palm Springs airbnb. The New Mexico Cinemascope landscapes still looked fantastic. Jimmy Stewart, possibly the GOAT of playing guys stubborn as a mule, rolls into town and immediately fucks up everybody’s money. They keep offering him jobs but he doesn’t want to link and build — he wants vengeance. Cathy O’Donnell helpfully explains the town’s lore: “everything here was built on greed and killing.” It’s crazy because…

Christopher: I’m telling you, T, you gotta watch it. It’s Ken Burns, the fucken greatest doctormentarian of all time. And it’s about the greatest Italian of all time, other than Scorsese.

Tony: I don’t see what’s so interesting about a guy who sat around making little drawings all day. “Observing things.” So what. And why does he get credit for inventing a helicopter that never got built and never woulda worked? It don’t sit right with me.

Paulie: I used…

Everybody loves Townes. Look at the reviews for this doc, in which Townes Van Zandt appears for maybe 15 minutes tops. Everybody is here for TVZ. Rightfully so. No disrespect to Guy Clark, et al, but Townes’ performance of Waitin’ Around To Die is the type of thing that starts cults. 

The Cult of Townes might be bigger today than it’s ever been. It’s practically a church. We’re coming up on three decades since Townes died on New Year’s Day…