Current Obsessions: Sonny Rollins, Marc Maron, and 'Adults'
Things move so fast these days. It’s nice to sit down and track what you’ve been focusing on.
This post is my faulty attempt at molding the sludge of content I consume into a presentable sculpture. Things move so fast these days. It’s nice to sit down and track what you’ve been focusing on.
And this week, I’ve obsessed over…
MUSIC: The Cutting Edge by Sonny Rollins
During my bookstore shifts, I often go through the entire music catalogue of an artists. For me, lately, it’s been all about Sonny Rollins. If it weren’t for the practice, I don’t know when or why I would have ever stumbled upon his live 1925 album, The Cutting Edge which casually lives up to it’s name. For instance, by the time it builds up to the final track, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” I’m delighted but not entirely surprised to hear a bagpipe improvising along with the band —
— which, naturally, will lead me down a whole new rabbit hole soon:
PODCAST: WTF with Marc Maron: Episode 1648 - John Mulaney
This was the big announcement episode that the WTF podcast will be wrapping up. I’ll probably write or speak about the massive importance of WTF to my generation of comics and interviewers soon, but I thought it was interesting that he selected John Mulaney as the vehicle for spreading the news. Mulaney seems to be who the entire industry is asking to carve the brave new path for late night in the internet age, and I think Marc has been on the cutting edge of this bridge for a long time. His show has been the modern Larry King interview. And now that’s its approaching its end, it’ll be fun to see what strange new things fills the void.
TV: Adults
It’s really fun to watch a new critically acclaimed show while thinking to yourself, Hey, I know the team who made that! Such is the case for the new FX series Adults created by Ben Kronengold and Rebecca Shaw who I saw on numerous Zoom calls and Slack messages during my time at The Tonight Show. The cast has great chemistry, the situations are hilarious, and it makes me feel a little old. And that’s a good thing. There’s nothing wrong with, you know, being an actual adult.
