But don't give it away
The fourteenth periodic Tropical Depression digest post
Here’s your fourteenth periodic digest post reviewing the last few entries and tossing in some recommendations, tidbits, etc.
It is beginning to begin to get hot here. We went to the beach last weekend. At this point my mom can’t really safely walk on the sand, but she tried gamely. My daughter screamed when a tiny crab swam by her in the ocean. My son did not want us to keep a hand on him as he bobbed in his floatie. But if we took our hand off for a moment, he wanted us to put it back. My wife found half a dozen stunning shells. We got sandy, hosed off, and went to get some seafood down the road, which was not great but not bad. That crab that swam by was still on my son’s mind this morning. “That crab was crabby,” I thought he said, but he’s a clever boy. “Yes, that crab was grabby,” my wife said, making her hands into little pinchers and then we all joined in—me, my son, my daughter, pinching together as the minutes before the morning school bells ticked away, like a family of grabby crabs, happily grasping ahold of nothing at all.
From the archives
Here’s the second post ever on Tropical Depression, on Johnny Cash, David Allan Coe, and other stuff. I still dig it! Check it out if you’re a new subscriber, and of course there’s lots more in the archives.
Recent posts
Saturday, March 16
March, in review.
Monday, April 29
Tropical Depression Movie Night: Kudzu, directed by Marjie Short
“Well, there’s three things that I really hate. First is Kudzu, second is city life, and third is mosquiters.”
Tuesday, April 30
On the NBA season that was.
Strange Vibrations from behind the Iron Curtain
I’ve been posting Cold War-era popular music from behind the Iron Curtain in every single edition of these digest posts, and in some ways this album really captures the uncanny feeling that a lot of this music evokes. My (hazy) understanding is that the Moscow-born David Tukhmanov, a musical prodigy who wrote his first piece of music at the age of four, was recruited by the Soviet Union as a state-approved composer; he eventually wrote the music for the patriotic mega-hit “Victory Day,” as well as the soundtrack for the 1973 Soviet science-fiction musical “This Merry Planet,” a television film (very worth going down a Wikipedia rabbit hole). In 1972, he released How Beautiful the World Is (or “How the World is Fine” as translated in the Youtube clip above). And it’s—well, what to say? In some ways it feels like a rock album released in 1972, loosely conceptual, hinting toward prog, bombastic but poppy. But it’s also Soviet-approved. I’m really not sure what that entails, but you can feel the kitsch that must have been a result of those constraints. There is something pokey, hokey, and alien. It is not, and cannot be, cool, in the Western sense. Yet it is clearly swimming in the aesthetic impulses of the capitalist counterculture. It’s just a strange soup. I assume that he had his pick of an all-star roster of collaborators, or at least of collaborators that the authorities approved of. Much of the album is not very good, but sometimes, here and there—it’s kind of spectacular, in spite of itself. Fiddle with the knob on your expectations and check it out.
If you’re intrigued, there’s more: A few years later, Tukhmanov came out with On a Wave of My Memory, a concept album using classical poems selected by his wife. It seems to have been a kind of Soviet Pink Floyd, and was a wild success. This one is just kind of great.
Slow Noodles
Stunning drawing by the artist Rachel Briggs, sent to me by Tropical Depression reader Kim Green in response to my request for images. The drawing was part of an exhibition at Julia Martin Gallery in Nashville featuring the work of 21 women, all celebrating the life of Chantha Nguon, whose memoir Slow Noodles—co-written with Kim—was published in February with Algonquin Books.
From Kim, here’s some background on the drawing and what it meant to Nguon when she first saw it:
Rachel Briggs’s drawing includes passages from Chantha’s memoir, and the illustrations are her renditions of those passages. When Chantha walked into the gallery and saw this drawing, she was transfixed. Tears streamed down her face. She turned to me and said, “It’s like I’m back there, 50 years ago”—when she was a little girl from Battambang, Cambodia, who rode the train to Phnom Penh to see her grandparents and siblings, in the final years before war and genocide destroyed it all. It’s extraordinary to me that the artist was able to capture that moment and carry Chantha back to her childhood, even though Rachel has never been to Cambodia and based her imagery on some research and a lot of guesswork.
The NBA Playoffs!
Okay, y’all have had enough of my basketball rambling, but for those that care: Pretty good playoffs so far, though less competitive series than we might have hoped for, and a lot of games where one team or the other seemed a little shaky.
Highlights for me: Anthony Edwards dominating the playoffs, what a killer, what a smile; Jalen Brunson’s insane endurance as the Knicks call plays for him on every single possession; the redemption of Rudy Gobert; the hellacious defense the Wolves are playing, which somehow got even more ferocious when Rudy missed a game; Chet Holmgren proving himself a winning playoff player already in his rookie year; the Celtics ritualistically dropping a game each round to an inferior team; Lebron James—he’s still got it, and Anthony Davis was all you could hope…but boy, the supporting cast sucked; the arrival to the big stage of Shae Gilgeous-Alexander; an imperfect but pretty exciting first playoffs for Paolo Banchero; Derrick White possibly being the best overall player for the Celtics in the playoffs thus far (probably not a good thing?); Evan Mobley’s dominance on defense and Donovan Mitchell’s dominance on offense; and the role players swinging games—Josh Hart, Lu Dort, and all manner of Timberwolves (Jaden McDaniels, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Naz Reid, etc.). And of course, the shock of Tristan Thompson contributing in the playoffs—an annual tradition like no other.
Below were my predictions prior to any of the second-round games starting. Obviously, I’d reverse course now and pick the Wolves (writing this just before tipoff for Game 3), but feel good that I was bullish on them—I think most predicted the Nuggets would win in less than seven. In terms of the championship odds, for simplicity’s sake, let’s say I’d flip the odds for Denver and Minnesota. I’d tinker more than that if I was making odds now, but I still don’t think anyone is going to beat Boston in the East. Meantime, the Thunder match up really well with the Wolves, so if they can survive against Dallas, they have a real pathway. Wild how much of a changing of the guard we’re seeing this year. Still holding out hope we’ll get one truly great series.
And a request…
I am squeamish about social media, but one thing that I’ve figured out since I started this project is that the biggest bumps in subscriptions I get typically happen via someone suggesting Tropical Depression…on social media. So. If you don’t use social media, good on you. But if you do, and you enjoy this newsletter, it’s an easy way to spread the word, if you’re so inspired. Thanks as ever for reading!