The imbecility of "I don't do drama," Voodoo Macbeth, some Beeb Animals, one of the funniest radio episodes ever. 

Hank Aaron, the 1980-81 Boston Bruins, Lord Byron's "When We Two Parted." 

The music surrounding Kind of Blue. "The seraphim vibe is in place, but also the smoky rhythm and blues flavor. “Two-Bass Hit” — a good test for how well a band meshes — is  indicative of how this unit could flat out steamroll you — in a good way  — when they wanted to."

The Hammer as the perfect ballplayer. "Hank Aaron must have come to spring training every year like he’d hit .247 the season before with 18 dingers and 63 driven in, rather than his  standard .300-plus, 40 bombs, 120 RBI. Players would get bigger, but you see Aaron on any of his beautiful late 1950s Topps baseball cards, and you think he’s some paragon of pliability. A human whip equipped with the strongest hands in the history of the sport."

Conversation about new fiction, Billie Holiday, the Celtics of forty years ago, the Troggs. 

A story called "It Was Night." "It was night in my brother’s brain for a long time. That was how he described it to me. 'Like a place where there’s no sun. But it’s hot, black beads of sweat pouring down you. And then eventually I died.’"

Talking hockey, Twitter, and the bane of humanity that is the "should of" people. 

Writing for JazzTimes: "There is an abiding paradox to the life of Billie Holiday, which is the core tenet of her art: In theory you should feel bad for her, and yet it borders upon the impossible to do so. She’s overleaping will packaged in a vessel of transcendence."

BBC TV horror, "Can't Buy Me Love," baseball Hall of Faming voting, the Stooges live in 1970.

The Remains, Johnny Dollar, Marx Brothers, Wayne Gretzky. 

The best part of Handel's Messiah. "It’s but a repeated word, sounded again and again, and yet, with Handel’s lived-in genius for tone painting, the word “Amen” seems to  encase the very nature of possibility itself. To contain, paradoxically, the infinite. Or to point — melodically — to whatever the infinite can best represent in our lives."

Seabury Quinn's Arkham House treasure, Roads. "Weird fiction, as the Arkham masters like Quinn delivered it, didn’t need to feature ghosts or the otherworldly. The invention quota had to be high, but perhaps the key tenant is that there would be no  disclaimers that you needed to accept a certain set of rules divorced  from the reality we know, as these disclaimers undercut potency."

Stellar five-part radio episode of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar; Elvis; Duke Ellington. 

"Fitzgerald and Berlin (or West Berlin, as it was once called) go way back—to the eve of Valentine’s Day 1960, when she cut a live album there that infused swing and the American songbook with scat stylings that were as bracing as Picasso’s forays into synthetic cubism. On to March 25, 1962: Fitzgerald has come to Berlin once more. In her mid-forties, she’s in the early portion of what will be an extended vocal prime. Tapes are made, tapes are then lost, and thanks to the swinging rainbow, they have found us again."

Duke Ellington and The Nutcracker. "There is a rhythm to ballet music that inevitably puts images in your mind of human movement, even if you’ve not actually seen the ballet in question. Movement is ingrained in the music; otherwise the music  wouldn’t serve its true purpose. Remember, Ellington wrote for  ballrooms, to get people moving, and I bet you he and Pyotr could have had a merry glass or two of the nog together, discussing the ways in which their respective approaches to dance music overlap."

"I Saw Three Ships," Christmas episodes of Frasier and Newhart, the Quiet, Please episode, "Berlin, 1945," and Art Tatum.

On the excellent and rarely discussed V-Discs. "A spring spritzing of opening notes, a soft blanket of billowing, burnt-fog triplets, and then Tatum sticks the riff in a way that I’ve never heard anyone play it before. He nails it, lands upon it, as he keeps it moving, sidles that riff right on into your kitchen. The ear doesn’t expect it in that precise moment but it feels bidden all the same, a riff with a built-in understanding of 'now would be the best time for a visit.'”

John Lennon, scary radio, Judy Garland, Christmas carols. 

The power of "Help!" "We all spend a lot of energy trying to show others—and ourselves—how  well we’re doing. And simultaneously convince ourselves, too. 'Help!' is  the opposite of this, a full-out airing of real feeling."

How to get through a lonely Thanksgiving. "There were times in the past when I’d sit and drink on Thanksgiving and  watch bad Christmas movies, but a few years ago I said, 'right, surely  we can manage better than this.'”

Conversation about new fiction, Dylan, Rudolph. 

A piece about Dylan's long songs. "It isn’t easy to do this kind of thing and not have it be a repetitive  grind. The musical backing doesn’t change a ton — in fact, there’s not a  single modulation in these performances. They are not jams —  that backing needs to be arresting from the jump and remain so.  Musicality in the vocal is crucial — an excitement of forms of phrasing — because the voice becomes the central instrument."

A short story about a man who is not dead who nonetheless has a ghost he must look after called "Post-Fletcher." 

Talking about Matthew Lewis, Led Zeppelin, Quiet, Please, and Hammer horror. 

Interview about the new novel, Meatheads Say the Realest Things: A Satircal (Short) Novel of the Last Bro.