Patriot's Crossing

Hello. It’s been a while since I’ve last been in touch, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t kept busy. There’s been plenty going on, and much we can discuss.

I’ve been to many new places. I went, for example, to a restaurant in Titusville, New Jersey called Patriot’s Crossing, at the exact spot where General Washington landed after he led his troops across the Delaware from the appropriately named Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania.

The restaurant isn’t fancy. I am pretty sure they served the BLT sandwich I had on a paper plate. But when I close my eyes and think about perfect afternoons, this dump modest establishment comes to mind. I am sure it had to do more with the company (my wife) and the weather (light vest only) more than the food. Here is a photo I took of the exterior.

And of the interior.

This is suddenly rather topical, what with Ken Burns’s new documentary The American Revolution being the hottest thing on television right now. I may as well use this space to give a “shout-out” to some of my published work, in this case an interview with Mr. Burns and one of his co-directors Sarah Botstein, which is at Vanity Fair. (If you click that link and get a paywall, you can try this.)

I was lucky enough to meet Burns and Botstein at Fraunces Tavern in Manhattan, and we spoke for well over an hour. As with any interview, there were cuts made. One that I didn’t even bother including in my first draft, because I knew it would be snipped, was Burns telling me that he met Jerry Garcia at Madison Square Garden not long before his death, and Garcia said that he regularly tuned up during soundcheck by playing “Ashokan Farewell.” (I know what you are thinking — 1990s Jerry tuned up? Har har har.)

Apparently Garcia is heard on a David Grisman recording of the tune (though I can’t seem to find it), but if you want to hear Jerry play 70 seconds of the melody through a very static-y amped electric guitar (he was playing “Rosebud” at the time) you can do so during a “Space” break at the 6/9/92 show at the Richfield Coliseum in Ohio. I don’t, uh, specifically think you must; it’s kind’ve an amorphous mess, but hats off to Jerry for being a Burns-head.

Other recent work I’ve published lately includes what I think is a fun look at the new Frankenstein and Rick Linklater’s salute to the French New Wave, Nouvelle Vague. Both of those are at Foreign Policy magazine, but those are gift links that should get you past the paywall, as is this one, a piece I wrote pegged to the recent Chilean election concerning Pablo Larraín’s movie No.

Image from ‘Frankenstein’ courtesy Netflix.

I also interviewed Brad Serling, CEO of Nugs, and if you are interested in how the concert streaming business works, you may want to check that out. In a somewhat relate vein, I spoke to Derek Shulman, the former lead singer of Gentle Giant and Simon Dupree and the Big Sound, who later became one of the most successful record execs in the biz, launching the careers of Jon Bon Jovi and other mass market artists who sound nothing like Gentle Giant. (Shulman just published his very readable memoir.)

Other books I’ve read recently (beyond Derek Shulman’s glimpse into the halls of rock ‘n’ roll power) include something called Bog Queen by Anna North. This is a really terrific story about a young American forensic anthropologist who ends up in Northern England when a dead woman’s body is found very well preserved in a bog. The story then flashes to the point of view of the Bronze Age woman (a Druid!), and also the point of view of the living moss itself. As our lead character is a detective dealing with peat, I began calling the book Sphagnum, P.I. Eventually I couldn’t help myself, and emailed the author and told her this joke. She responded in under a day and pretended not to be annoyed with me.

I also read a long and dense collection of analytical essays about Terrence Malick’s work called Terrance Malick and the Examined Life by a CUNY professor named Martin Woessner, who has also published a book on Martin Heidegger. And I think I am prepared to say that all those important 20th century philosophers have little to offer me. I’m not saying they are full of shit. It’s more like you strain every muscle in your skull getting through a paragraph and are left with “yeah, and?”

These guys like Heidegger, who ramble for pages and pages using terms like “Dasein” which you then learn is a made-up word that doesn’t translate into anything, sure seem to think that they have great insights, but if they are there, I sure can’t find them. The language is nearly impossible to comprehend, but the essence of it is something like “the only worldly beings are beings of the world.” Okay, great. Very enlightening. Woessner goes to great lengths to prove that Malick’s work is deeply informed by all these thinkers. His proof is like “this character is semi-autobiographical, which shows how Malick ruminates on his own history, just like Kierkegaard suggests.” I suppose this makes Tommy Lee’s memoir Tommyland a rich philosophical text, too?

Somehow I read the whole thing.

Christian Bale, a Being in the World, in ‘Knight of Cups’ courtesy Broad Green Pictures

I also recently read Frankenstein, which I had never done before. It’s amazing how much different it is from the James Whale movie, and every other movie version, including this new (good) one. The book is also far better than Dracula, which is, I believe, commonly accepted, but I am happy to go with the flow on that one.

Movies-wise I am quite fond of Train Dreams, which is on Netflix, and also the aforementioned Nouvelle Vague. Linklater’s Blue Moon is also quite good, as is the forthcoming Timothée Chalamet-led Marty Supreme. (HOFFSTACK readers will get a full, exclusive review of that in short time.) I also enjoyed the documentary Art for Everybody, which is about Thomas Kinkade, the Painter of Light™. It isn’t a masterpiece of cinema, but it’s a good yarn. My work has condemned me to watch a great number of bad movies, too, but I will spare you those details.

I’ve been to some great concerts recently, including David Byrne (I plan on writing a bit on Byrne soon for the HOFFSTACK PLAYLIST, stay tuned) and Billy Strings, and also a marvelous flautist named Emi Ferguson, who performed an all J.S. Bach program in Princeton with Ruckus, an early music band. (I got to see a Theorbo up close.) I also saw the Nat Adderly Jr. Trio in a converted N.J. diner. I was supposed to see my beloved Richard Thompson at a club show in Red Bank, but we had to skip it at the last minute because our cat was very sick. (She is fine now.)

Back with more frequent updates soon. In the meantime listen to The Daily Zig podcast and also The Reel Schmooze.

Saru the Cat.