And now she’s dead.

Geri Allen, “widely considered by critics and her peers as one of the greatest contemporary jazz pianists,” died yesterday in Philadelphia. She was 60. Here she is with Charlie Haden and Paul Motian from 1987’s Etudes.

Nine Inch Nails, “She’s Gone Away”

The music of the original early ’90s run of “Twin Peaks,” which like the show itself was both creepy and beautiful, able to shift from major to minor in one beat and a wash of reverb, was so influential that Stuff That Sounds Like “Twin Peaks” has become its own genre (think: Beach House, Wild Nothing, Warpaint). Aside from the musical cameos that have appeared at the end of most episodes, the 2017 iteration of the show has been thin on both score and soundtrack, but the bands that perform those cameos have largely felt like they were selected based on their fitting into the Stuff That Sounds Like “Twin Peaks” mold. Episode 8, however, featured Nine Inch Nails (introduced by an old man in formalwear as “The Nine Inch Nails”), who perform a newish NIN song, because apparently they still make those. It’s the first song that feels like it was made for Twin Peaks two-point-oh.

Trent Reznor, better known in the last decade for scoring films than making records, looks like a proper Lynchian villain in leather jacket and gloves, stalking around the roadhouse stage, screaming digitally fucked up, demonic laughter. The song, “She’s Gone Away,” originally appeared on 2016’s Not the Actual Events EP, but sounds right at home in the dark, often industrial-looking-and-sounding world of new Twin Peaks. It shows up, not at the end of the episode, but after the opening scene (because nobody tells David Lynch what to do, not even David Lynch), and segues the episode into the straight-up weirdest shit that’s ever aired on cable.

Lynch and Reznor make so much sense as a collaborative duo, it’s hard to imagine why they don’t do it more often (Reznor previously contributed music to Lynch’s 1997 film Lost Highway). Lynch, the auteur (if we must) and Reznor, the producer/multi-instrumentalist/only continuous member of NIN, share many of the same aesthetic predilections that make both of their outputs so often scary and unsettling. The manufactured percussives and digital-clip distorted voices that both men favor go hand in hand. As Lynch moves more toward the musical, making solo albums and curating a music festival, and Reznor continues his work in film, this probably isn’t the last time we’ll see the two names together.

John Dziuban is no longer a musician. Metal Minutiae is an occasional column on the decline of rock music.

Notes on life

Liana Finck draws what she sees.

Its greatest strength has become its greatest weakness

There are two ways of reading this New York Times article about how bad the subway has become these days (emphasis mine):

Every New York City Subway Line Is Getting Worse. Here’s Why.

The major cause of subway delays is a factor that basically didn’t exist 15 years ago: Overcrowding. The subway is a victim of its own success and the city’s resurgence. Large crowds slow down trains, which creates more crowding in a vicious circle that takes hours to unwind during every rush.

1. The subway is so good everyone wants to ride it!
2. Hell is other people.

Seems like a beautiful day for a bike ride, don’t you think?

You’re soaking in it.

Some mornings when I’m lying in bed before dawn (which, these days, is so early oh my God) I try to imagine a life free of care, where the troubles of the world are so far from my mind that nothing can bring me down. And then I get up, because what else can I do? I’m sorry, I was going somewhere with this but the sheer impossibility of a life free of care defies even my powers of invention and there’s little point in pretending otherwise. There’s no way out. The best I can come up with is: drop me in the Hudson and let me drift away. That’s the ideal scenario. I can’t believe this is where we are now and yet it so many ways it seems inevitable, particularly since I’ve been saying this was how it was all going to end up for so long anyway. Well, whatever, it is what it is and we are who we are. Here’s music. Enjoy.

★★★★★ At bedtime, there had been discussion about whether to turn the air conditioning on, but before morning came it was necessary to grope for the warmer bedclothes in the dark and to try to get under them. The airflow outside was gently refreshing; only the most wide-open stretches of sidewalk were overheated. The shade was sensational. Breeze slipped between the buttons of the shirt. Little ripples shimmered on a filthy puddle. The full sun was too much for the eyes but it hit the body no harder than a particularly focused masseuse digging in. The light struck something harmonic in the Consolidated Edison Building, sending a soft radiance out from its limestone, past the hideous flat-brick towers intervening between it and Union Square. Along 14th Street, its rows of blockwork, offset by perspective, looked like punchcard marks. The Chrysler Building stood uptown in cloud shade like a tall person trying not to be noticed at the edge of a party. On an uptown street corner, a glance up and around to check for glare or gloom found nothing but easy brightness as far as the sky went. At dusk the ten-year-old stood on the couch to take a picture of the setting crescent moon.

Learning why your bear would eat someone.

A recent news item from my hometown: “DEC Monitors Kirkwood for Bear with Stuck Jug [on its Head].” Not too long ago, I was that bear. I felt for him. It may be that we’ll see more of these little tragedies as bear populations increase and come into more frequent contact with people and their garbage. After all, black bear population density is increasing alongside humans. The Ithaca Journal reported that it has grown to one bear per every three square miles along the Southern Tier of New York State.

Even with all of this cohabitation, bears are patient with us — attacks on humans are rare, but not nonexistent. I need to know about the ones who attack.

This is the kind of research all writers should do: making your fictional bears more realistic.

If a Bear Shows Up in the First Act, He Better Eat Someone in the Second

It’s a better investment than three salads.

Edgar Wright’s (Shaun Of The Dead! Hot Fuzz! The World’s End! Scott Pilgrim vs. The World!) new film Baby Driver opens in theaters tomorrow (or in some locations, late tonight), and it is my wholehearted and sincere recommendation that you see it three times in theaters. I know this sounds insane, and I know people will say, “Movies cost $12.” Yes, I know that, I am smart, but so do salads at Sweetgreen and I don’t hear you complaining about that.

See Baby Driver in theaters the first time because it is a great movie and a perfect summer movie. How often does someone you know who you only kind of like say something like, “Why don’t they make heist movies anymore?” Hm, a good point. I think most movies should be about heists, which is good because Baby Driver is essentially a heist movie. Well, a jukebox musical/not-pure-comedy-but-for-sure-some-jokes/action-crime-heist movie. Set in modern Atlanta, Baby Driver is about a young getaway driver, Baby (played by my biological EDM son Ansel Elgort), who scores all of his make-or-break drives to songs on his iPod classic. Baby is indebted to a crime boss named Doc (Kevin Spacey) and is nearing the end of his tenure in which he hopes to break free, not ever commit another crime, and settle down in a life where he wouldn’t steal, flirt shamelessly, and make, uh, remixes. Who among us cannot say “same”? Who else is there? Jamie Foxx (who is a genius) and Eiza Gonzalez (who is extremely cool) and Jon Hamm (who has never looked hotter). Oh, and Jon Bernthal from everything. What’s your favorite Jon Bernthal vehicle? (Baby Driver pun not intended). Mine is We Are Your Friends. Anyway. It’s such a fun movie (Baby Driver, not We Are Your Friends, which is actually a very sad movie), so go see it one time.

And then go see Baby Driver a second time, maybe three or four days later, once it’s marinated into your state of being, and you find yourself only wanting to talk about it with your friends who for whatever reason still haven’t seen it??? Now that you know the plot, you can look for everything else. Wright is an immaculate director whose work is filled with jokes and details and nuance worth seeking out that second time. There is a joke so elegantly laid out in Baby Driver that it made me want to quit comedy. And the soundtrack! The music will wash over you the first time — not because it’s not integral, of course, but because you’ll be so immersed in the experience of watching it — but you’ll be able to listen for songs you know, songs you don’t know. This movie uses “Tequila” in a context just as good as Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.

mood: Ansel Elgort crying over a really good peach he ate in Paris

 — @wjthconfidence

And then go see Baby Driver a third time because, Jesus Christ, what the hell else are you going to do? It’s good, it’s non-franchise, it’s under two hours, it takes place in Atlanta and some would call Atlanta its own character in the movie, it’s good, Edgar Wright is one of the best filmmakers alive, it’s good, Ansel Elgort has better Instagram stories than any other celebrity living or dead, it’s smart and detailed without buying in to its own mythology too hard, and it’s good. It’s the kind of movie that yanks you out of your sweltering home in 90-degree heat to sit inside with a big ol’ thing of popcorn and a Coke and pulls you in so hard that you emerge, fresh-faced, eager to start a life of crime (that, or just listen to “Radar Love” a lot).

Fran Hoepfner is a writer living in Chicago.

When was the last time you saw a strap?

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the subways in New York have been really bad lately.

• Subway’s Slide in Performance Leaves Straphangers Fuming
• At Least Three Injured As Door Rips Off ‘A’ Train In Possible Derailment

Every day on the local public radio station, they say most of the beginning of the alphabet, and then those are the trains that are running with delays, signal problems, or other unspeakable horrors like gushing waterfalls or falling debris.

A favorite way to refer to subway riders is ‘straphangers,’ which is a holdover from a time when the subway cars had actual straps hanging from the ceiling that standing passengers would hold into. Now, as everyone knows, there are pols and bars and sometimes this thing called a “pivoted grab handle” which is NOT a bodily euphemism so please just don’t.

(Apparently fuming is one of the only things straphangers do):

Doesn’t it all sound a little old-timey and well, sort of British, to you? It does to me. Maybe we could use some new and different and ideally better words. Like “standees,” or just “commuters.” I’m sure the poor transportation beat reporters get sick of saying “riders” all the time, but “straphanger” just sounds so clangy and old-fashioned that I think we should retire it. Plus something about the construction seems so wordy. Ding-dongers and blank-blankers. We don’t say car-drivers or bus-sitters or cycle-pedallers.

And how about that tricky “ph” in the middle of the word? I can’t be the only one who misreads it as “strafangers.” Sounds like the plural noun for a gaggle of bird-flipping teens on public transportation.

The MTA refers to “customers” and “passengers,” which seems nice. Based on how things are going lately, I would also accept “victims.” Really all I’m saying is if we’re going to be reading about the subway a lot more it’s just going to get more and more noticeable that this word is in the news a lot, so why not just simplify?

As one of the greatest editors of our time is fond of saying:

On Kim Kardashian’s new beauty line

That’s the real thing about nudes: Do them wrong, and they look cheap as hell. Our eyes are attuned to the minute peculiarities of living human skin, and badly made facsimiles gross us out. The illusion netting on a figure skating costume might read beautifully from an arena seat, but seen by an HD camera it’s just mall-store stuff, rhinestone and nylon, nothing luxe about it. A well-done nude reveals but also effaces the wealth it took to create that look, the same way that it reveals and effaces the body that wears it. To be beautiful enough to truly not need makeup is its own kind of wealth. To be so wealthy that you can create beauty that appears natural is another.

Awl Pal Zan Romanoff has an excellent essay over at Racked about Kim Kardashian, skin, makeup, bodies, nudity, bodycon dresses, and colors. Read the whole thing here.

KKW Beauty Is the Latest in Kim Kardashian’s History of Nudes