WHAT I’M SPINNING NOW

SpinningTheTimesTheyAreAChanginBaja

Dylan’s career as an artist has veered between the swagger of hipster genius and the humility of a prophetic calling. Time has transformed the hipster genius into self-deprecating wit and the prophetic calling into majestic art.

Looking back, it’s inspiring to retrace his journey, knowing that it will lead only to an epic spiritual triumph.

WHAT I’M SPINNING NOW

SpinningTheFreewheelinBobDylanBaja

Nothing takes me back to the Fall of 1963 like this album. I was 13 at the time. Most of my friends thought this record was cool. At the very least it was a cultural artifact that you had to deal with in some way, if only to reject it as too weird.  It was certainly weird, whatever else you might have thought about it.

Is there anything in our popular culture now that’s capable of challenging 13 year-olds in the same way?

THE END OF JOHNNY

StompanatoCorpse

Police photo of Johnny Stompanato, stabbed to death in 1958 by his girlfriend Lana Turner’s daughter Cheryl, 14 years-old, who said he was assaulting her mom.

Stompanato was a low-level mob thug with show-business ambitions.  Once in England he stormed onto a set where Turner was making a film with Sean Connery.  Stompanato brandished a gun — Connery disarmed him and threw him off the set.