Image: Dave Parker via Flickr

9/28 8:25 ET At Green Bay -7 Chicago

The most radical
Thing you could do this week is
Watching some football

PICK: PACKERS

10/1 9:30 AM New Orleans -2.5 At Miami (London)

Jay Cutler will be
So jetlagged he might somehow
Throw a few touchdowns

PICK: DOLPHINS

10/1 1:00 ET At New England -9 Carolina

Instead of kneeling
Cam Newton’s form of protest
Will be playing well

PICK: PANTHERS

Rest in Warning

In the dark before morning lay the living in their beds
and lay we the dead in ours. Each earth-lidded terminus
not a chamber of rest, but a listening ear to the past.

The dead are with you, difficult as this is to believe.
We know how quickly you turn from mourning
back to the distractions you stretch from hour to hour.

You buy green mangoes from the street vendor
and pink tulips from the corner bodega. Finally alone
in your apartment, the bolt slid against strangers,

you collapse in exhaustion. No news, you vow
no devices all the long weekend. The cat nuzzles
your tulips and pushes the vase off the kitchen table.

This is so pretty that for 17 minutes it will keep you from remembering… you know, all the things. You might not think you can spare 17 minutes but trust me, all the things are going to get so much worse, and they’re going to to on for so much longer, 17 minutes is the least you can give yourself away from them. I very much encourage you to take advantage of this diversion, which for all its length will seem shockingly brief once it ends. Enjoy.

★★ Clouds had reappeared, and the air was waterlogged. Somehow, for a moment, the arrangement of the cloud cover sent reflected light in more strongly than direct light, so the retrograde shadows were the darker ones. Gloom prevailed for a little while, till it seemed as if it had to rain, and then that threat was forgotten in brightness. The early afternoon glare was a little nauseating. Sun flashed off the foil on the Rice Krispy treats; the spatula had to be carried low so as not to harm passing eyes. The effort of hurrying to beat a crosswalk signal stayed with the body for a full long block afterward, in the unforgiving air.

Image: Mike Mozart via Flickr

Stew Leonard’s is at the center of one of my earliest memories: it’s the early ’90s and I’m in the back of my parents’ station wagon, which is overflowing with beach-vacation detritus. We are hurtling into an incorrigible August haze, about two-thirds of the way through the long drive from Cape Cod to our home in suburban New York. We are feeling the itch of having been confined to a car for too long—the leg-cramps, the window-glare, the constricted arm-stretches. We are approaching the point at which tempers will inevitably flare.

Out of this fraught summer landscape arises the Danbury, Connecticut exit of I-84, and not far from its exit ramp materializes a broad brown-roofed structure surrounded by a sea of parking lot. At the outskirts of this parking lot is a small barn, alongside it the genteel wooden fences of a petting zoo. And beyond this incongruously located petting zoo, at the foot of the brown-roofed structure, is a red-and-white striped awning covering an open-air restaurant and seating-area, like a family-reunion BBQ that has been mercifully opened to the public. Past this awning, at the entrance to the structure itself, is the structure’s namesake, in taught cursive and bright, unapologetic orange: “Stew Leonard’s.” Below that, in a more austere white block-font: “WORLD’S LARGEST DAIRY STORE.”

Image: Bruce Monroe via Flickr

Looking for something to do tomorrow night in New York? The artist and attempted hijacker, Duke Riley, has an opening at Magnan Matz Gallery. Last year Riley essentially created living constellations by attaching L.E.D. lights to thousands of pigeons for “Fly By Night,” a public art exhibition commissioned by Creative Time. “It appeals to people who don’t give two shits about art, whatsoever,” his assistant, Madeline Joyce, said last Spring. “Like, for instance, the pigeon community. The people I’ve met from this project I don’t think have ever stepped into an art gallery in their lives. And they don’t care to, but it doesn’t mean that they don’t appreciate beautiful things. Duke has a way of making art accessible to people who generally do not seek it out at all.”

“Now Those Days Are Gone,” functions as an extension of “Fly By Night”—a thousand handpainted and embroidered portraits of the pigeons and a series of large scale photographs tracking their flight patterns—as well as showcasing new work in response to the election.

Duke Riley “Now Those Days Are Gone”

September 27-October 21

524 West 26th Street

Opening Reception: September 28 6-8 p.m.

Image: Piano Piano! via Flickr

As I am sure everyone remembers and is aware of, this week marks the beginning of my 10-concert symphony subscription for this upcoming season. When I wrote about Bruckner a few weeks back, I knew that his Fourth Symphony was going to be the hallmark of this week’s concert. What I did not realize until this past week when I looked further into the program is that it also features what is probably the most famous piece of music of all time: the William Tell Overture (BERNSTEIN). Now I do not believe you if you tell me you don’t know this piece. I don’t care if you’re a philistine or an idiot or you’ve been living alone in the woods of Wisconsin for the past twenty years. You know the William Tell Overture. Have you seen a cartoon? The Lone Ranger? (The ORIGINAL, not the ARMIE HAMMER version.) Listened to music even one time? You know it.

Wenner’s sales pitch to investors, according to the document, calls for cutting the editorial budget from a high of $8.1 million in 2015 to $4.2 million in 2020. With the reduction in the number of printed issues, production costs will drop to $7.3 million in 2020 from $18.1 million in 2015.

Gus Wenner says the pitch he is making to investors is that the future of Rolling Stone is online and in video and television. “We have an enormous amount of belief in our ability to create premium video content, TV shows, and documentaries to service a massive market,” he says. Right now, Rolling Stone’s video revenue is just $100,000, according to the document. By 2020 it’s projected to be $1 million. That’s healthy growth, but still a modest figure given Gus Wenner’s bullish talk.

I am not what you would call a “Certified Financial Analyst,” but something seems…off about Gus Wenner’s sales pitch for Rolling Stone, which consists of slashing fifteen million dollars and pivoting to a medium that you “believe” is “projected” to rake in a million dollars by the time we have to do the election all over again. And they suppose at the end of these calculations lies a thriving video-based brand called Rolling Stone. Where have we seen this “pivot to declining pageviews” before? Oh right, step 3 of Mic’s business plan.

Here’s music. Enjoy.