Making flippy-floppy

Tonight, David Byrne delivers the Marshall McLuhan lecture at NYU. Guess who *doesn't* have tickets!

I've been thinking about DB and the Talking Heads a lot lately, after a long spell of not really thinking much about them at all, despite my near religious teenage ardor. The recent Ed-Heads-meme germ? Either listening to the Arcade Fire for the first time ("Neighborhood #2") and thinking it had some of the texture of a Talking Heads song (it was later reported to me that DB joined the Arcade Fire onstage in New York, to sing "Naive Melody")—or hearing the DB song (from his latest album) that kicks off the enjoyable film IN GOOD COMPANY.

Then came Jonathan Lethem's excellent autobiographical piece "The Beards" (in last week's New Yorker), in which he shares his thoughts on the Talking Heads, Eno/Fripp, Philip K. Dick, Dylan, Godard, and more, braiding his response to these artists with his own family dynamics and his *own* eventual art.

After reading it on Saturday, I met my sister for a midnight showing (at the Sunshine) of STOP MAKING SENSE, which I hadn't seen since its original release (in . . . oh man . . . 1984). I enjoyed it even more than I did the first time around. People were dancing in the aisles!

I could talk about it forever, but perhaps I'll just leave you with this thought: Chris Frantz was a dead ringer for the young Bill Clinton!

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Speaking of "The Beards": My friend Michael has a vigorous ginger-colored beard now, grown while walking through Cornwall in September. Won't you send us a picture, Michael?