I write at www.thepaltrysum.com
A rain soaked portrait of streets and scenes dying and being reborn to play me out tonight. The hawkers are packing up, the sailors are running back to ship, the outside drinkers and diners have been chased inside, existing in not quite day, not quite night, dusk of the street punks and lost boys and […]
MoreBasketball Diaries was a wasted opportunity for junk movie greatness. Jim Carroll’s book provided the perfect base for a tale of lost children, lost hope, lost lives, instead DiCaprio frittered away his character in a toss of gorgeous hair and pristine prissiness. Wrong actor, too much gloss, not enough grit. Requiem for a Dream, though […]
MoreLike I said, a while back, I am a Big Thief fangirl of the highest order. I was fussing around youtube, trying to find something to listen to when I came across Capacity, their second album. This is an album whose tracks I feel only really came alive once they were played live. Take this […]
MoreIf there is something that I can’t abide it is false hope. Wishing, wanting things to change, seeing the buoy thrown out to your drowning self, and finding that all the air has gone out of it. Give me no hope at all, rather than hopes dashed. I am not one to let myself be […]
MoreMotherhood leaves permanent milk stains on you. While the kids play boy as girl games and people enquire as to my pronouns, I want to show them my permanent milk stains and flash my own personal womanhood in response to their ridiculousness. What else can I be? Can I sew on a dick to my […]
MoreSometimes to get to the past you have to travel, eyes shutting, can’t help it, earing ringing from tiredness and caffeine, and the road, the endless road at night, the roadlamps and the blinking lights, and the halogen lamps and the chugachugachuga of a worn out suspension down the potholed 5. The gas station drinks […]
MoreDear Nas, You are beautiful just the way you are. I have to admit my taste in music doesn’t usually stretch to trap, but I saw the hatred and the outrage and having been on the receiving end of tiny amounts of that today, in comparison to the huge avalanche of destructo-faux-Christian fury you have […]
MoreA Polk Street Cinderella sits waiting For a cab that will never come Holding a borrowed black umbrella A suitcase And a stolen gun A picture of a boy reading “to all tomorrow’s parties” Between finger and thumb A crackerjack ring, a toy car of tin And a promise of things That won’t ever be […]
MoreTents on Geary, Tents on O’Farrell. Tents on Union. Tents on Civic. No tents on California. No tents in the Marina. A few tents on the Embarcadero More on Willow. No tents on Russian Hill Where it is an eternal May Tents in the ‘Loin: All work, no pay. Tents in Mission, But none in […]
MoreThere are some bands that are just meant for you, some albums that seem to be made to measure, fitted and nipped and tucked until they are a soft suit that you can fall into, they feel like a second skin. The Velvet Underground. Lou Reed. John Cale. Sterling Morrison. Mo Tucker…and later Doug Yule. […]
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