interrupting my train of thought

“close to the intersection between criticism, autobiography, and rambling…”

show no traces

“somewhere along the way, nixon and the godfather started to become one, turning up in my thoughts and in the flow of daily events…”

record collecting

“to a large degree, the inventory became the story of my life as a record collector…”

Influences

“my influences, which have been either admirably or sadly fixed in place for three-plus decades now…”

radio on

“wall-to-wall song comments drawn from ten stapled fanzines sitting in a box in my basement…”

“when i finished university and moved out in 1984, i figured that, beyond the usual family get-togethers, i was clearing out for good. not so…”

“it came down to one simple question for me: would you rather witness history, or would you rather read about it in a book?…”

“you might not think it possible to confuse matchbox twenty with the dave matthews band, but it is…”

“it was something like an awareness that i would be a film student for the rest of my life…”

“no mention of 1990 — i took a break that year, for teachers college and to try to figure out what roxette was all about….”

“these stories concern friends, co-workers, libraries, baseball, donut stores, giggling fits, teaching, and various other matters…”

“i’m unduly disappointed when pop music is misused, and i start to cut slack for any film that gets me to take notice of even a single song…”

“here then is my own personal pantheon, along with accompanying lists of the songs that put them there…”

“neil closed out the record inventory, he closed the facebook countdown, he closed my high school years in georgetown, and he’s closing this book…”