Wilfrid

I have to share this. Of interest only to anyone who really knows Wuthering Heights, so this is not going to reach a huge audience. Michaela, in 90 minutes, recounts the entire novel, using an investigation board and post-its, and it's fiercely accurate, very funny, she's right about how monstrous the characters are, and she drops her Kate Bush at the right moment. Is this obsessive? If you care at all, grab ten minutes.

By chance I was thinking of the "Vanishing New York" theme today and reflecting that changing is better than vanishing. Old places, buildings and experiences that are being erased once replaced what came before them. This may or may not console.

I remember trekking down to John's Roast Pork (sorry, have nothing new).

I was thinking their first Japan show was tonight, but it turns out Osaka is not on EST and it's tomorrow there. Some clips on IG.

Fragility. The Naked Lunch was a bit beaten up, but my Don Quixote that I must have had since I was a kid is very frail. Turning the pages very carefully.

I continue to build their audience. One of my friends is a Phish fan. We were talking about the New Yorker profile and I happened to mention Hinds and shared the Denton video. She then found them on Spotify. "They're great," she said, correctly.

Wuthering Heights is very special, but after nearly three hundred pages of people being very, very sick and/or very, very angry I need some light relief. Paul Bowles stays on hold therefore while I dip into Cervantes. I don't plan to read 900+ pages of Don Quixote; the book's structure makes it very easy to pick out and re-read favorite episodes. And yes, it's still funny.

I remember getting thrown out of Rockwood. Not just me. A crowd of us were there to see a band we knew and we would not keep quiet during the rather solemn solo singer-songwriter preceding them. The band got thrown out too.

Funny? Nasty. 900 dead including countless children and it wasn't Kool-Aid. How is this getting good reviews?

Nobody out there late?

I tried The Studio but shut it down halfway through episode 1. Story just too stupid for the show to be funny. Am I wrong?

Yes. It's a pattern familiar from my youth as successful bands migrated from the club circuit to boring and more expensive seated venues. Ana and Maria have arrived in Japan. I assume along with CC.

I'd be interested to learn what others make of this show that has just opened at the Guggenheim. I was familiar with some of his paintings from the Alvin Ailey show at the Whitney and had read the New Yorker profile, so I was keen to get in early here. I did like what one might loosely call "paintings" (usually materials involved other than paint and canvas). But his practice is extensively multi-faceted: video, performance, altered furniture, and lots of bookshelves displaying, yes, books (well chosen), but also potted plants and all kinds of stuff. And mirrors with slogans sprayed on them. I was torn between admiring the "Anxious" paintings and the "Soul" paintings and other work of that kind, while my response to the wild mix of other objects was not so much aesthetic as, oh yes, I see your point.

Interesting. They have started working on new songs, but also talking about retiring some of the older songs, which doesn't make for a longer set. Would a set of 90 minutes to two hours inevitably be less energetic? Hair, make-up, wardrobe: There's no consistency. Ana can look like she's just stepped away from a modelling shoot; Carlotta in baggy t-shirt with her space buns coming unravelled. Of course, purely selfishly, I like them playing small venues where I can get to the front and track them down afterwards.

By coincidence, I saw a statistic this morning that 53% of events at NYC nightclubs go beyond 3am compared with 70% ten years ago.

I see Ana on the plane. The Japan stuff is going to be amazing.

This is fabulous. Denton, Texas, the night before I saw them in Austin. Full set. The angle is a bit odd but otherwise high quality video. Really captures the excitement.

Beautiful. Yes, the 1882 match which Australia won by 7 runs. Not out at the end, the young Cambridge student CT Studd who went on to become a missionary. I somehow ended up with two copies of his bio.

They have a show coming up in Sabadell which is not far from Barcelona, but it's a festival with a stack of bands and it's in May. Barcelona in July or August would work. They are also playing my old college town in August. No US dates.

I wish. I don't know what their management arrangements are. I don't see a manager on the road with them. Maybe Ana and CC manage themselves although they must have a booking agent. I should inquire.

I was thinking Bradman's triple century was at the Oval, but that must have been Hutton. A Yorkshireman. Yorkshire cricket books I do have.

Right. Doyle's predecessor Gaboriau does the same in his Lecoq novels.

Never seen the Yorkshire moors, indeed I think I've never been to Yorkshire. Dartmoor and Exmoor in the south-west, yes. The Hound of the Baskervilles has a great opening and ending, but Doyle was never able to sustain Holmes for a whole novel and so he vanishes for a large part of it, leaving us with Watson.

Looks like Paula flew out to Japan early. She's the only one posting pics from there and the first concert is 4/22. Dates coming together for Europe later in the year.

It's hardly news that Wuthering Heights is amazing. What stroke of genius caused her to make chapter three so terrifying that we can't wait to read the lenghty and complex back story that follows? The names do get a bit confusing -- no wonder the Wikipedia page has a family tree. Within a couple of paras you get Catherine, Cathy and Mrs Linton, all the same person. This set me off looking for the books presence in the wider culture. I would have been listening to Buzzcocks rather than Kate Bush in 1978, but what an extraordinary feat of imagination that song was; written by her at 18 after seeing some of the BBC TV version and before she had picked up the novel. So many adaptations: I didn't recall that a 2011 TV version makes Heathcliff Black.