June Has Busted Out All Over
Books, shows, mishigoss from the first summer month of 2025
What a wild time to be Jordan Hoffman!
I do not want to get into the specifics right now, but there are changes around the corner and the changes are good. The only negative is that in the month of June I was pretty stinking busy with work and also other things and this prevented me from blogging. No lies here: this will remain the case in July.
But August will be an august month, representing a return to more regular and robust updates. I have a lot of plans.
Now let’s get to some important things.
I found where New York City keeps the Zagnuts.
If you go to the IT’SUGAR (an awful name) on West 42nd St. right near the AMC Empire theater and head downstairs, you will discover, against one of the walls, a surfeit of Zagnuts.
These are not easy candies to find, which is a shame, because they are spectacular.
A Zagnut is basically a Butterfinger (or 5th Avenue), but without a chocolate coating. Instead it is a highly toasted layer of very light and thin coconut. Now, before you say “no thanks,” know this: I’m not the biggest coconut guy. Remember “sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t?” That ad for Almond Joy and Mounds neglected to ask what would happen if you felt like neither, because who wants to chomp on so much coconut?
But I tell you, I swear to you, the Zagnut is perfection. It’s like a rectangular Chick-O-Stick. (Note, also, the Clark Cups in the above photo. Those are not too shabby, either.)
Now let’s talk about some of the things I saw and did in June.
MOVIES
MEGAN 2.0, directed by Gerard Johnston
I watched a lot of new movies this month (and reviewed many of them for a website that pays for my brilliant insights.) The only one that really spoke to me was M3GAN 2.0, a film that didn’t exactly knock ‘em dead with other critics, but is so profoundly stupid that I find myself genuinely inspired.
The first M3GAN over-performed, and also made a bit of a “cultural mark” with its TikTok-ready dance moves — an ancillary aspect won mostly by the marketing. (The movie has its camp elements but doesn’t push them, but the way people spoke about M3GAN you’d think it was The Rocky Horror Picture Show.)
The sequel ditches the mid-budget horror aspects for an inscrutable high-tech action-adventure premise that feels, at times, like you are hallucinating your way through an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man. It knows it is silly, and knows you know it, but still everyone on either side of the screen has a straight face. The action scenes work, but the little drag queen doll belting out a Kate Bush song really works. I don’t know what else to say except that I was floating on air during most of this film. Maybe it was a sugar rush from the Zagnut I ate.
CONCERTS
The only concert I saw in June (unless I forgot to add something to my calendar) was an invite-only club show: Goose at Racket NYC (formerly the Highline Ballroom.) Not only was I there care of my friends at the PR company—a bit of a not-exactly-ethical trade off after placing an interview with Rick and Peter from Goose at an influential website—but I was in the VIP room. The VIP room at the invite-only club show at a venue that only holds 600 tops, just days before their sold out gig at Madison Square Garden that holds 20,000! I bet you think I was on Cloud 9, right?
Well, I was not on Cloud 9. And I’ll tell you why — because it’s proof that even I, Jordan Hoffman, can sometimes let ambient tsuris ruin my night.
I’ll preface this right now by saying, loudly, that everything is fine. But a few weeks ago my wife went to get a regular scan and the doctor didn’t like what she saw so there was a second, more serious test. And then we had to wait. And even though Eckhart Tolle and Ram Dass and all the drunks in recovery say to “keep your head where your feet are” I was unable to do such a thing. My head was nowhere near my feet. My head was strapped to the top of a runaway train.
There I was, seeing the hottest jam band on the scene at basically a command performance for me and I … I wasn’t there. I didn’t hear a note. I was in my head, catastrophizing, anticipating the “any minute now” results of this medical test. I was 100% aware that all I was accomplishing was ruining my night — and I was outside of myself, watching myself do the ruining. So many fans of this dopey group would have done anything to be where I was… and I botched it. (I know, I know, who in their right mind would want to see a bunch of twerpy noodlers called Goose, but you need to accept that they do have a rabid fanbase, and I am part of it.)
Anyway, I left early. I lied to the guy I was with, and told him I had a horrible stomach ache and had to split. (This was only a partial lie, I guess, because I was worrying myself into a stomach ache; M.K., if you are reading this, and I hope you aren’t, don’t think less of me, and I’m sorry I lied, but it was easier to pretend I had furious, torrential diarrhea.)
What’s the lesson here? There is no lesson. Eventually life will put me in a position like this again. Will I be able to go out and enjoy myself while I am waiting for what could be bad news? Will I be able to just relax and have a good time? I don’t know.
Anyway, I listened to some of Goose’s set from MSG (I was supposed to go to that with my not-cousin Matt Hoffman, but we both had conflicts) and they sounded spectacular. Go listen to the group Goose, they really are good.
BOOKS
Conversations with Conductors: Bruno Walter, Sir Adrian Boult, Leonard Bernstein, Ernest Ansermet, Otto Klemperer, Leopold Stokowski (1976), Robert Chesterman (ed.)
Hard Bop Academy: The Sidemen of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers (2002), Alan Goldsher
I took both of these slim volumes out from the Lincoln Center Library and read them rather quickly. Conversations with Conductors is exactly what it sounds like — interviews with the Great Men of Western Classical Music. (Sir Adrian Boult has the best sense of humor of the bunch.) What’s weird is that sometimes you see an orchestra do a piece with no one standing in front of them flopping their arms around and it’s totally fine. What, really, do conductors do? Isn’t it all written down for the musicians on the page? Well, this book gets to the heart of that, with some very amusing anecdotes. Incidentally, Ernest Ansermet HATED jazz.
Hard Bop Academy tells the story of the great Art Blakey through the zillions of sidemen who played with him over the decades. Obviously there are the big guns like Freddie Hubbard and Wayne Shorter and Lee Morgan and Kenny Dorham and Bobby Timmons and Horace Silver and, much later, a few Marsalises — but there are others in there I either never knew or forgot about. Chuck Mangione? Sure. Keith Jarrett? Huh? (Jarrett didn’t last long.) Anyway, the Jazz Messengers are really where it’s at and this is a book loaded with great stories.
Bech is Back (1980), John Updike
In May I read the first “Bech” collection, Bech: A Book, and found it charming and amusing. Bech is Back is miraculous. It details the life of a brilliant and somewhat annoying Jewish-American literary lion of the 20th century combatting writer’s block and his own legacy. Trying to figure out who he is modeled after misses the point. Sure, he’s Joseph Heller, he’s Philip Roth, he’s all of them; he’s also just Updike himself, trying on a different mask.
Not only is the book funny as hell and poignant, it is a marvelous object lesson for writers who are worried that they have to stay [clap] in [clap] their [clap] lane [clap]! Updike, as you may know, is WASPy af, he’s King of the American WASPs, but I, as a representative of the Hebraic people, am here to report that he writes from the Jewish perspective as well as ANY writer out there. Full stop! I’m banging my shofar on the table to make my point. There are passages in Bech is Back with as much insight and “interiority” (not to mention humor) concerning “the Jewish experience” as found in the work of Amos Oz or Saul Bellow or dare I even say I.B. Singer. Not to sound like a reactionary pain-in-the-ass, but you can’t really pull something like this so easily anymore, and that’s a shame. Writers should write, actors should act, singer’s should sing, and fiction should come from anywhere. If it is bad then you have the go-ahead and rip it to shreds. But once in a while it won’t be bad!
Also: that famous quote that often gets attributed to Updike — “The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding” — it comes from Bech is Back, and it is in Bech’s voice, not Updike’s. (And Bech is being a deliberate dick when he says it.) So that’s something to consider.
Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska (2023), Warren Zanes
Born to Run (2016), Bruce Springsteen
I read 800 pages about and/or by Bruce Springsteen this month, inspired by the release of this autumn’s Deliver Me From Nowhere film adaptation, followed by intense anticipation of the Tracks Vol. II collection. (Funnily enough, though, I have not had a chance to truly isolate myself and do a real deep dive into that nearly 5 hour collection, but what I’ve heard so far I’ve really liked.)
Deliver Me From Nowhere is fascinating… but mostly for fans of the Nebraska album. If you aren’t too familiar with those songs, then the story of how Springsteen slowly gave birth to this artifact will be merely interesting, not riveting. But I have long loved Nebraska so I gobbled this up in one sitting.
Born to Run is very much a treat for all, but even though it is rich in detail, it still leaves stuff out! There’s not one mention of Manfred Mann’s cover of “Blinded By The Light,” which put the Boss on the map, at least from a business point of view. That annoyed me. I kept wondering “when will he mention Manfred Mann??!!?” I bet if I scour Reddit long enough I’ll find some other nutcase who said the same thing.
Much more importantly is Bruce’s frank depiction of his own mental health struggles. For a guy who lets it all out on stage with such bravado, the he’s a bit of a neurotic! (Oh, by they way, you need to read between the lines a bit, but he has such a thing for Jewesses!)
As a fellow Freeholdian, Springsteen’s depiction of spots like the Jersey Freeze ice cream parlor and Federici’s pizza parlor (see previous blog post!) were of tremendous interest. Springsteen’s father’s wake was at the same funeral parlor as my mother’s best friend, so that stirred me.
The most remarkable thing about Born to Run is that Springsteen is not just a passable writer, he is a terrific writer. I’m sure he had the world’s top editor alongside him, but the guy just has a knack for storytelling, even when doesn’t have a guitar in his hand.
