Holy smokes, Gentle Reader(s)—it's Wednesday and I'm just NOW getting around to posting last Thursday's Matador Playlist! Whattup wit dat, you might ask. And well you might, but we'll not get into that now. However, far from being idle, I have been cogitating these last few days about making an official InkyInkInc. corporate statement as regards the company's position on the question of AI. For a while now I've been poopoo-ing the whole AI brouhaha, in part because (much like crypto) I don't really understand any of it. A couple of recent articles in The New York Times and The New Yorker regarding the July 11 hack of the French company Hugging Face by 'agents' created by OpenAI finally laid out the entire scenario in terms that even a pseudo-luddite such as Your Humble Narrator could understand. Last Friday's edition of the PBS program Washington Week with the Atlantic did a good job of summarizing the growing concerns about AI and data centers (the two are inextricably linked) in a straightforward 25-minute presentation—I strongly encourage you to watch it. After taking all of this in, my grasp of the situation comes down to this: It ain't good.

Another Thursday night in old Santa Fe town, another jumpin evening down in the deeper depths of Ye Olde Matador Bar & Lounge. Perhaps you were there, perhaps you weren't, but whichever way points the Fickle Finger of Fate you can rest assured that DJ Inky was tucked away in his dark corner, slaving over a hot laptop to crank out the toons for the delectation of our esteemed clientele. Good, clean all-American fun for one and all.

Heat, smoke, opera, Indian Market, scarcely a drop of rain, barely a place to park—yes, it’s August in Santa Fe, Gentle Reader(s). Add Ye Olde Matador Bar & Lounge to the mix and it’s quite the uniquely Tierra del Encantado combo. Well, less smoke and more rain would be preferable but we all gots to work with what we have at hand. At current hand, it’s another Thursday night deep beneath Galisteo Street and DJ Inky is once again back in his crepuscular hidey hole, hidden behind fans, blowers, blown woofers, twitchy tweeters, pints of ale, computers, mixers, cables... Through the Frijoles Fire haze and high season hullabaloo duty’s clarion call is sounded and to the Matador I must go. Your exclusive playlist is enumerated below—as always, click your clicky clicker right HERE to access the YouTube-ish iteration thereof. Ivy—this one's for you.

Welcome to yet another installment of that endlessly renewable supernatural resource, that blister on your psychic bum that just won’t go away, that antidote to what ails you that you weren’t aware ailed you, the eternal Mock to the sublime Woof: Yes, Gentle Reader(s), it’s the Matador Playlist. Ask for it by name, accept no substitute. How long is this Anti-AI ectoplasmic exercise in musical exorcism going to keep on going on on on? For at least one more week, so it seems.

Summer in Santa Fe, Gentle Reader(s)—that blessed season is upon us once again. As we head into July the once-reliable onset of monsoon season is nigh and we can but hope and pray that the Higher Powers are favorably disposed to bestow the life-giving rains. Admittedly, recent history is not encouraging: Winter snow basically didn't happen, spring showers were pretty much of a bust, and now it is hot and dry and the wildfires are beginning to flare up all over the Southwest. Distressingly, the in-house climate control systems of the building wherein resides Ye Olde Matador Bar & Lounge are not functioning these days, and it can get pretty stuffy down in there. I arrived on Thursday evening to discover that Cesar had installed an industrial strength fan at the end of the bar adjacent to the DJ station. I'm tellin' ya, people, this fan is HUGE and it...

It is fortunate indeed for you, Gentle Reader(s), to have stumbled upon this particular obscure corner of the intrawebs at this particular juncture in the space/time continuum. ‘Why?’ you may ask, and well you might. Because this is the last Matador Playlist to be forthcoming for six weeks or so. Shocking news, to be sure, but all for a good cause. That good cause is that Your Humble Narrator will be traveling to locales far and wide, near and narrow, in pursuit of… I dunno. In pursuit of life, love, art, music, I suppose, and the simple urban pleasures of flânerie. I’ll leave it at that for the moment, but fear not—my wanderings will not be for naught. Documentation thereof, in one form or another, will eventually find its way to these pages, rest assured. Or just rest. Rest is important.

Gear: Can’t live with it, can’t live without it! Ye Olde Matador Bar & Lounge has its share of Gear: A DVD/BluRay player, hundreds of movies, a rack full of amplifiers, crossovers and EQs, turntables, mixers, speakers, a sub-woofer, and cables—LOTS of cables. The Gear rack originally contained a professional dual CD player but I don’t think it was ever used and it went the way of the dodo bird years ago. Much of the Gear is covered in a thick layer of greasy bar dust and grime and I generally try not to touch any aspect of it that I don’t absolutely have to touch. Cesar set all the Gear up and all concerns and requests are best referred to him.

A brief hiatus, Gentle Reader(s), for Goth Night (every third Thursday) and a winter storm and Your Humble Narrator is back in the saddle at Ye Olde Matador Bar & Lounge for another inimitable evening of signature DJ Inky toonage. The second winter storm of the season—this one of intimidating strength and size—is bearing down on our little mountain town and Katia and I are hoping that the fevered anticipation of being snowed in for the weekend is inspiring folks to come out and lift a warming beverage before the fluffy stuff flies.