Internal Monologue

 I don't like writing proper reviews; I generally just like to put down my thoughts: Preamble stuff: I'm coming from the perspective of someone who read the books, but a long time ago. I probably read the original Dune twice, once when I was a kid and once again as a young adult. I've seen the David Lynch movie, but not the miniseries that came out in the early 2000s. I saw it at home on HBO Max. We have a 65" HD TV and a sound bar, so we can have a relatively cinematic experience at home, but it's not like a theater. This does seem to be something where you want as big a picture and as powerful a sound system as you can have. Opinions: I like it overall. It feels big. It looks beautiful. It aspires to a tradition of grand cinema in a way that a lot of things these days don't even try for. The Bene Gesserit are pretty spooky, which is good. The Guild Navigators weren't as creepy: they just looked like people in "Among Us" suits full of orange gas...

 Originally posted on the Expecting Rain forum : Some thoughts on "Murder Most Foul", after over a year: It works on me. I'm in the "it's a masterpiece" camp. I can tell you a story about why I think it is, but I'm not certain that would be the real story. ("Key West" on the other hand, does not bind me with its spell--somehow that one I look at from the outside, rather than get pulled in.) I think the central conflict in the song is between overwhelming cynicism and evil, represented by the killing of Kennedy, and the power of music to heal wounds and offer solace in the face of despair. I think Dylan has music "win" the battle, but it's not obvious. But at the end, "Murder Most Foul" no longer refers to the assassination so hideously depicted earlier in the song: it now refers to the song itself, and it is the last shot fired in Dylan's barrage of DJ Wolfman Jack invocations against hopelessness. This is a great bi...

Short version The lyric is not "Fifty-sixth and Wabasha", it is actually "Fifty-six and Wabasha", referring to the intersection of old Minnesota Highway 56 and Wabasha Street in Saint Paul, Minnesota. If you listen, you can hear Dylan sing "fifty-six", rather than "fifty-sixth", particularly on the take that was released as the B-side to "Duquesne Whistle". Minnesota Highway 56 no longer intersects Wabasha Street, but from 1963 to 1974 it did intersect Wabasha Street, at what is now (in Feb. 2021) the intersection of George Street and Cesar Chavez Street in St. Paul, or possibly South Wabasha & Cesar Chavez.  Long Version "Meet Me in the Morning" is the first song on side two of Bob Dylan's celebrated 1975 album  Blood on the Tracks. In the opening lines of the song, according to the lyrics on Bob Dylan's official site (https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/meet-me-morning/), the narrator invites the listener to a rendez...