THE TLRHB EXPERIENCE (with apologies to Jimi)

At the risk of becoming a irredeemable linkmeister, I just hope everybody is keeping up with That Little Round-Headed Boy these days. He’s got a very pleasant new template to go along with all the usual well-observed writing in posts that touch on all corners of the pop culture landscape, which are very effectively informed by his expansive point of view—it’s what I like to think of as the TLRHB Experience. (He recently, and good-naturedly, ranked on the film Bubble advertising itself as ”a Steven Soderbergh Experience,” so I will cop to a little TLRHB-baiting here.)

My only complaint is that if you don’t check in with regularity, you’re likely to miss something really good, and I do mean miss it-- TLRHB has revoked access to his archives, so once it’s gone it’s gone. (I wanted to link to his review of Neil Young: Heart of Gold on my top-15 list, but instead had to settle only for my memories of the way TLRHB so perfectly evoked the experience of watching that film, and its quiet meaning as well.)

If you act now, you can enjoy this viewing tip regarding Kevin Willmott’s The Confederate States of America:

“Like Spike Lee's sorely underrated Bamboozled, (C.S.A.) makes smart connections to present-day racial issues, our so-called notions of progress and especially how prejudice is always lying exposed in plain sight, even if we sometimes pretend not to see it. (I was thinking about that this morning when I drove by my neighbor's house, which proudly waves a Confederate flag just below the American one.)”

TLRHB is a voracious reader too. I’ve currently got a request in to him for recommendations of titles from his favorite author, James Salter, and he’s currently offering praise for Rob Sheffield’s new book:

“(Sheffield is) Rolling Stone's resident pop culture junkie, which means he's such a good writer that I read him even when he's blathering on about Britney and the latest MTV reality show. He's that rarity: A first-class, instantly recognizable stylist, with the enthusiasm to embrace new musical trends, but with the background smarts to appreciate the history and roots of country, pop, rock and soul. When The New Rolling Stone Album Guide came out a few years ago, Sheffield's contributions were the star attractions. I could tell which ones he'd written from the first sentence.

But none of that prepared me for the emotional wallop of Sheffield's new book, Love Is A Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song At A Time (Crown). I figured it would be more of his effervescent observations on pop culture. I should have read that subtitle more closely. The book, while offering up plenty of pithy patter on rock music, is a real heartbreaker: It's the story of the love of his life, and her early, untimely death. This is High Fidelity — without much of a happy ending.”

Finally, more timely than ever, it seems, is Robert Altman’s plunge into the Nixonian soul entitled Secret Honor, and TLRHB found himself spinning Criterion’s luxurious DVD of the film during a confluence of events that just made the movie even more resonant:

“On the week of Richard Nixon's birthdate, on the week after Gerald Ford's funeral, on the night of George Bush's speech about committing even more troops to Iraq, I sat down with Robert Altman's Secret Honor for the first time in years. What a weird harmonic convergence. As I watched Philip Baker Hall's Nixon bitching about the Ford pardon and the reaction to his escalation of bombing in Cambodia, I could hear the TV downstairs broadcasting Bush's speech about upping the troop count in Iraq. I felt like I was hallucinating. We needed to be in Vietnam to stop the Communist domino effect from spreading across Southeast Asia; now, we need to stay the course in Iraq to stop civil violence from spreading out of Iraq's borders across the Middle East. Different decades, different presidents, same old rhetoric about a "winnable" war. Pride over honor, blood over logic. God, I miss Altman.”

(Read the whole excellent piece here.)

We all have favorite sites and blogs that have become not just a daily habit, but a daily necessity, a checkpost for interpreting and re-experiencing the world around us. Some of them offer new stuff every day, some tantalize us with two or three days in between posts. But they are sites that always trumpet the good reasons why they’re bookmarked. That Little Round-Headed Boy is such a site for me, and if you haven’t bookmarked it yet, please do. TLRHB’s posts may be available for a limited time only before they get replaced by more trenchant, thoughtful commentary, but their shelf life in the mind lasts long after the expiration date.