Advice to Geraldine on her miscellaneous birthday: Don’t go to the bars where the cool people go. Find the bars where the weird old people go. Trust me.
Adam Selzer
@adamchicago.bsky.social
historian, author, and tour guide. I talk about Bob Dylan, Chicago stuff, old time true crime, and cemetery stories. There's a canon Star Wars character named after me. He/him. Linktr.ee/adamchicago
Now and then I do get some very convincing emails from authors or other book industry people. Once I had a couple weeks of friendly chat before the cracks showed. I've learned to ask if they can email me from their work account instead of an aol/gmail account. Here's the latest response:
Fresh from the Bob Dylan tour, Joel Patterson is back at his regular Monday gig at the Green Mill.
Jean Shepherd was in Chicago. Studs Terkel interviewed him on 3 successive days. Shep wanted to show off how he had surpassed the master, but Studs was unsurpassable, got Shep to reveal, maybe to himself, that every time he got in front of a microphone he felt as though he had never seen one before.
Anyone else getting a rash of unknown people liking their old posts on here all of a sudden?
I could throw in any number of Dylan or Beatles runs, but I’ll just point out that not a lot of artists or bands will have a run like Lover-Folklore-Evermore coming out in one 16 month stretch.
Mia Murphy 🏳️⚧️@miamurphy.com · 4d agoWhat's the best three album run from a band? (the correct answer is Moving Pictures, Signals, and Grace Under Pressure by Rush, but I'm excited to learn second place)
🎶Despite all my rage, I'll still fight for a minimum wage. 🎶
post malone ergo propter malone@proptermalone.bsky.social · 3d agoand GOD IS EMPTY JUST LIKE ME
One of the reasons why I’m sympathetic to the argument that AOC should run in 2028 is that the American left really needs a better figurehead than Bernie
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 3d agoBernie Sanders refuses to say whether he regrets endorsing Platner
I’m not that big a Nolan fan, but I love to see this. When I was doing fiction it seemed like every review was either pointing out which “rules for writers” people failed to follow, or gleefully crowing about spotting a trope, like that meant anything.
if I ever taught film criticism lesson one would be “you being smarter than the movie is not interesting to anyone”
This is my favorite short story of the year
Marc Masters 🌵@marcissist.bsky.social · 4d agoa friend of mine was listening to the Dead in his backyard & his neighbor said "is that the Dead?" & he said "yeah" & the neighbor said "well turn it up!" and my friend laughed and said "like Freedom Rock!" & the neighbor stared blankly at him, having unknowingly acted out an ad he'd never seen
I don’t think most of the planned data centers will be built. Those that do won’t make money. I’ve been investing based on that concept lately and doing pretty well. The AI hype is turning around. (The “you’re evil if you use an AI spell checker” people are NOT helping).
What do you call it when the federal government secedes from the union?
Lindsay Beyerstein@beyerstein.bsky.social · 5d agoI can't stress enough what a crisis this is. Trump's own intelligence agencies concluded that Iran attacked Minnesota's critical infrastructure and Trump is saying that it's Minnesota's own fault and denying it was Iran. The federal government won't defend blue states in a literal war.
Spent some time with a civil war surgeon’s bound field notes, full of photos. Fascinating stuff. The surgeon, who also wrote a fantastic gold rush memoir, is in the upcoming Vol 2 of my Graceland Cemetery book, out soon!
After hearing so much bullshit about how you shouldn’t mention any pop culture in writing, lest you be “dated in five years,” I admire the fuck out of Charlie Xcx putting out “spring summer 26” when we’re most of the way through it already. Delightful nerve.
Blimp over the loop; probably heading for the old Medinah Athletic Building (or one of the others rumored to have planned for zeppelin landings) (Mostly urban legends I’ll bet every board of directors had that one guy who wouldn’t shut up about blimps).
Out with a school group taking a ghost tour. It’s like someone read one of my books and then there were four layers of a game of telephone.
Hurling F-bombs at an 85-year-old scientist who won’t fight back doesn’t make you tough. Staying silent after your own daughter accused Rep. Max Miller of holding a gun to her head, pushing her against a wall, and fracturing your granddaughter’s collarbone makes you a coward.
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · last wk.Moreno to Fauci: "Who the fuck did you think you were?"
*standing up on a plane* I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by Grimace Starving, hysterical, purple, he dragged himself to town from McDonaldland like a thief who’d come to steal the dawn. Looking like a bloated Zorro in the hat and mask he’d begged borrowed stolen from the Hamburglar,
A lot of Bob Dylan’s letters from one dead person to another are basically letters from Bob to or to Bob, thinly disguised. Today’s letter from Chopin to Frank Costello reads like the advice he declined to give Trump in that NYT article when he turned 80.
My investing moves have been based on assuming it’s like this. And they can always add more balderdash so I’ve gotta be careful, but it’s worked out very well the last couple of months.
MisterJayEm@misterjayem.bsky.social · last wk.Shades of 2008 when poppycock was propped up by balderdash back by wishful thinking.
Why didn’t they change their name to the Dick See Chicks? It’d probably really piss off people who are into “Dixie” crap. “Look away” is right. Damn this bartender pours stiff drinks.
So, uh, when Apple Pay flags your transaction as suspicious, they really say stuff like “you have one opportunity to make your case” and “the court is not patient,” right? Should I hold out until they tell me I’m bantha pudu just to make sure?
Not sure how the algo decided to show me this, but okey dokey: kindle erotica about a dominatrix and an ICE agent. I'm glad to see the description says "this is not an 'enemies to lovers' story. amzn.to/4vQXL45
Simon and Harrison is the great lost duo of the 70s. Think of a whole show or album as good as their SNL duets. George’s bit on “Homeward bound” might be his finest moment. youtu.be/KEgBMTMUanU?...
Paul Simon & Goerge Harrison- Here Comes The Sun
YouTube video by RockFM
youtu.be
The more I think about it, the more certain I am that I’ll take the million. Partly because I don’t know what I’d do with a billion. Also, if someone offers you that kind of flip, there’s no way you’re going to win it. Just no way.
Peter@notalawyer.bsky.social · 2w agoa famous discourse in the podcast group chat is "$1 million dollars or flip for a billion?" mostly because the discussion causes me to lose my mind
Reading a fascinating letter home from a tourist in Jerusalem, 1895: "A wealth...of religious zeal and intolerant fantacism, of 19th century progress and old world picturesqueness, as well as the entire absence of that virtue which is next to godliness is probably nowhere so exemplified as here."
One thing we probably don't pay enough attention to is just how breathtakingly stupid you have to be to fall for Andrew Tate et al's schtick.