Bergman dies and everything goes to shit. But, as I learned last night in Old Joy, “sorrow is just joy worn out” or some such malarkey. Nice flick, though. Will Oldham really should act more.

Tell you a secret: he once took a movie part away from J Frank’s ghostwriter. But I got to meet the director, at least.

Not too long ago (if ten years is no longer long-ago for you), when J Frank sometimes existed outside of this laptop and google’s servers, he would spend a nice weekend day going record shopping, usually in Manhattan in autumn, usually with Jimmy Fahrenheit. A wonderful ritual, it was both a way for us to converge as one brain for our 45% divergent yet quality tastes, and a way to hear new music in the days before even illegal file sharing services offered decent or out of the way music. It often included a serious consultation of the Trouser Press before commencement. We were mostly buying vinyl, which means we could shop today, still, but other changes in our lives, non-regrettably, have usurped our time and space. When my daughter and his son are teens, maybe we’ll reintroduce ourselves as a quartet, inaugurate them via the wfmu record fair which I hope will still be, ten or more years from now, fleecing $400 from me in an afternoon. An autumn afternoon.

Part of the ritual was sharing our purchases on the subway home, and then the beer-assisted listening session at home. Indulging my ADD or ADHD or OCD or ESP, I could do no more than skim through tracks on each album, at first, until settling on one that would serve as domination over all other purchases.

Often, something would suck. And you were stuck. Both of us now avoid this in the digital age, since we can sample the new whomever-album, first, and then deem it worthy of camping in our hard drives or even shelves after (or, sometimes, without) purchase. But if you were out digging in crates and came across this month’s new Crowded House album you had no idea was released, or you came across that LCD Soundsystem import you had no idea existed, you had to fold or ante up and call. And sometimes, as in the case of both of those, esp the later, you’d lose. And have to resell or, if you had balls, try and return it (if it was a cd).

I suspect this might be a hardship completely unexperienced by those raised on downloading as their primary music deliverer. It sucks? Deleted!

Wussies. When I was a kid, we had to walk to school uphill in the snow both ways with an AK-47 barrel in our mouth and a starved pit-bull hanging from our crotch.

Crowded House – A Sigh