There she was just a-walkin’ down the street…

[Picture by Kenton Nelson Via What I Do/What I Like]

“Untitled (Pink Balcony)” By Bruce Cohen.

This is really cool.

Check out Tig Notaro’s site here. And read this, too.

Here’s an extra beat of the day for you. A friend posted this on his Facebook page and said it made him feel like he was a Huxtable.

From Serious Eats, dig into this NYC Doughnut Map.

[Photo Credit: James Boo/The Eaten Path]

“The Pitch,” By Kenton Nelson

[Via: What I Do/What I Like]

From Kottke.

And then one day things weren’t quite so fine.

…I don’t feel bad at all.

[Photo Via: Chillwalker]

Pete Townshend’s “deeply felt but often ungainly” memoir, Who I Am, is reviewed by Michiko Kakutani in the Times:

What Mr. Townshend does manage to do here with insight, verve and sometimes grandiosity is describe how the Who and its music evolved: how the group “set out to articulate the joy and rage” of the generation that came of age in the “teenage wasteland” that was post-World War II Britain, under the shadow of the atomic bomb and deeply alienated from the established class system. This is why the Who’s early sound — with all the screaming feedback and distortion, the wrecked guitars and Moon’s frenetic drumming — was so aggressive and explosive.

“I wasn’t trying to play beautiful music,” Mr. Townshend explains. “I was confronting my audience with the awful, visceral sound of what we all knew was the single absolute of our frail existence — one day an aeroplane would carry the bomb that would destroy us all in a flash. It could happen at any time. The Cuban Crisis less than two years before had proved that.”

This is Mr. Townshend in his rock theorist mode — familiar to fans, who have read his music essays and reviews, or listened to his ruminative interviews. He speaks candidly in these pages about the influence that artists like the Kinks and Bob Dylan had on him, recalling that when he first sat down to try to write songs for the Who, he isolated himself in the kitchen of his Ealing flat, and listened to a few records over and over again: “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan”; Charles Mingus’s “Better Git It in Your Soul,” from “Mingus Ah Um”; John Lee Hooker’s “Devil’s Jump”; and “Green Onions” by Booker T. and the MGs.

He proves equally engaging as a sort of rock historian, describing the musical landscape in Britain in the early 1960s, when rock exploded on the scene. He describes how it upended the old order represented by the swing music that his father, a clarinetist and saxophonist, played in a band called the Squadronaires. And he charts how the Who came to push the boundaries of rock, creating one of the most acclaimed early concept albums (“The Who Sell Out,” 1967) and pioneering the form of the rock opera with “Tommy” in 1969.

As Mr. Townshend sees it, the Who’s ascendance would eventually be undermined by the rise of punk rock in the late ’70s. Though Who songs like “My Generation” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again” became “anthems for a particular time,” Mr. Townshend writes, by 1981 “a gulf had opened up between the Who and the new younger generation.

“I had to accept that we had reached our peak of popularity at Woodstock, and however famous and successful we still were as a band, our ability to reinvent ourselves was declining as we continued a long slow descent from that moment when Roger sang ‘See me, feel me, touch me, heal me,’ the sun rose up behind us, and my guitar screamed to 500,000 sleep-tousled people.”

Here’s more Pete from Alexis Petridis in the Guardian.

Canadian Living gives us Roasted Smashed Potatoes.

This might pick you up. The Princess Bride is a clunky-looking movie but it retains much of the novel’s charm. Funny performances, a good, exceedingly quotable script, and really, who cares how cheesy it looks? That doesn’t take away from the movie’s pleasures. Movie is worth watching, book worth reading.

Picture by Lissy Elle Laricchia.

Another late night…So why only half a cup? Fill it to the rim.

[Photo Via: Julia]

I never liked Pac Man. The whole thing made me paranoid. Run around a maze eating dots, chased by ghosts, the more you eat the faster they come. Can’t shoot anything, nothing to blast, just run, run, run.

Nah, not for me.

This is pretty cool, though.

From Ego Trip, here’s Prince Paul and his son.

Steak au Poivre from The Dog’s Breakfast.

Paperboy, the movie opened last Friday. Our man Dexter does not approve.

Read the book. It’s a good one.

Oh, what the heck?  (We Got) another Gummy Soul Pharcyde-Tribe blend.

One time.

[Photo Via: She is Glorious]

“Either Way” By Michael Carson (via Germinate)

Today, let’s take a moment to appreciate the rock n roll critic Lester Bangs. For a sense of who Bangs was and what his work meant, read this by Maria Bustillos.

Then, check out this 1980 Bangs Q&A by Sue Mathews:

Sue Mathews: How much relevance do you think Rock’n’Roll can have to an ageing population?

Lester: Well, It’s like a friend of mine said when I asked him “ Do you think The Rolling Stones should break up now that they’ve put out ‘Some Girls’ and quit while they’re ahead or should they keep going? ”. And he said “Oh no, absolutely, they should keep going until they’re totally senile, and a little bit more creepy and pathetic and creaky each time playing the same old Chuck Berry riffs until they’re 60 years old”. And I agree that’s exactly what they should do, and I think Rock’n’Roll as it goes along gets more creaky. The whole culture will get more creaky and why not. I mean I’d rather listen to the Stones than Tony Bennett or something like that. I guess what you’re asking is if the youth is a minority, and then Rock’n’Roll as being. . . . . well. . . Lets look at it this way, lets compare it to say Jazz or to Blues, music where some of the greatest work was done. When the artist Charlie Parker or Mingus or who ever, who were in their 30’s and 40’s. I mean I thinks it’s a total myth that only someone who is an adolescence can create good Rock’n’Roll. Patti Smith didn’t start till she was in her 30’s and she’s created some excellent Rock’n’Roll, some of it even great. Lenny Hayes is in his 30’s, in fact to tell the truth this whole punk rock thing, half of the people in it are in their 30’s. When you get right down to it, nobody admits their age, very few of them are 21 years old I guarantee you. I mean the people that make it are like Bob Seger, Ted Nugent what ever you may think of them, they’ve been slogging around for 10 years. Most of the people that make it have been slogging around for ten years. Debbie Harry, that whole group, it’s just simple arithmetic that these people could not be teenagers if they’ve been trying for that long. It usually takes about that long in fact or it quite often does. So it stands to reason that you know it’s not this myth that this person drops out of high school and grabs a guitar and the next week is the biggest thing in the country, I mean yes this happens, but in general it’s not that way at all.

Here’s an on-line archive of Bangs’s work.

[Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times]