Let us have one other gaudy night. Call to me all my sad captains; fill our bowls once more. Let us mock the midnight bell.

W. Shakespeare - Antony & Cleopatra

Welcome back, Gentle Reader(s), to that perennial classic, that itch you just can't quite scratch, that musical pebble in your shoe—another Matador Playlist from the DJ Who Wouldn’t Go Away. Actually, I did go away for a bit but, whether for ill or gain, I have returned. Whenst and wherefore you ask? Well you might. Off to the Great North Woods I have been—to the land of pernicious ticks, lurking bratwurst (or vice versa), Great Lakes, Good Lakes, So-So Lakes, an abundance of puffy white people, and lingon berry pancakes at Al Johnson’s restaurant in Sister Bay. All was well and good and Inky Mum abides still, her 97th birthday forthcoming in just over one month’s time. 'Amazing!' you say—'Astounding and unprecedented!' and right you are. Having returned I took up the gauntlet once again and ventured down down down to the Cimmerian lurkage of Ye Olde Matador Bar & Lounge for yet another gaudy Thursday night session. Few of my captains, sad or otherwise, were in attendance but the midnight bell was well mocked regardless. The fruits of my nocturnal labors are presented here below for your delectation and edification.

Another Thursday, another wild night at Ye Olde Matador Bar & Lounge, Gentle Reader(s). The joint was jammed pretty much all night long, starting off with a wedding party of Millenial sorts who commandeered the rear portion of the establishment for the first couple of hours. The blushing bride requested 'Mamma Mia' by ABBA, but regardless of what kind of crowd we pulled last night I was resolved to pay homage to two great geniuses of 20th century popular music who passed away this week—Sly Stone and Brian Wilson, both aged 82. I got turned onto Sly early on as his music was ubiquitous when I was growing up in New Orleans. When I saw the Woodstock movie sometime in the early '70s Sly & the Family Stone's set was one of the standout performances that made a big impression on me. The Beach Boys were a different matter. The whole hot rods/surfing/drive-ins universe that they evoked was completely alien to the gritty, swampy urban milieu of my hometown: I didn't have a car, there was no beach, I didn't have a girlfriend, and it was all just so white. I couldn't relate.

I’ve never really thought of myself as a sports guy (and when I say ‘sports’ I mean ‘sport’, for those of you Across the Pond). That’s what I tell myself, Gentle Reader(s), but the evidence might possibly seem to indicate otherwise. When I were but a wee lad I was into baseball—I bought baseball cards, had a bat and a glove, and wore a jacket decorated with team emblems. New Orleans had no major league sports to root for (or ridicule) in those days, and I became a default Cubs fan when my grandfather took me to a game at Wrigley Field in 1967. At some point in the later ‘60s I became enamored of drag racing. I have no recollection of how this puzzling development came to pass, but I compulsively drew tiny pencil renderings of rail dragsters in my school notebooks and had a subscription to a couple of motorsports magazines. Big Daddy Don Garlits—the Swamp Rat, King of the Drag Racers—was my hero. I successfully badgered my mum into driving out to LaPlace Drag Strip on a couple of occasions to attend races, at one of which I met Big Daddy in the flesh. He was eminently approachable, discussed the delicate and combustible art of mixing nitromethane fuel with Inky Mum, and autographed a photo of himself performing a flaming burnout in his signature innovation—the rear-engine dragster. This sacred heirloom was framed and now resides in a place of honor behind the bar at Ye Olde Matador Bar & Lounge.

At long last, Your Humble Narrator has returned to his crepuscular little corner in Ye Olde Matador Bar & Lounge to spin the toons for the multitudes once again. It was a fairly long hiatus this time around—almost two months—but I figure that my time was well spent as the previous posting on this page will attest. One event that took place while I was out of the Santa Fe pocket was the Matador anniversary. The Little Bar That Could first opened its door (there's only one) on May 5, 2007, and it has been taking names and kicking butt ever since. There was that whole unfortunate pandemic thing back in 2020, but with that one exception the Mat has been open every day of every week of every month for the past 18 years. That is pretty incredible. A wide range of watering holes—most of them within a block or three of the corner of Galisteo and West San Francisco Streets—have come and gone during that period of time, but the Matador abides and, somewhat improbably, so does DJ Inky. The promo image that appears above dates back 16 years.

Ahhh, printemps in New Orleans, printemps in New Bjork! Such joy, such bounteous pulchritude, such not-awfulness of meteorological conditions! Not to deny the appeal of printemps in my beloved Santa Fe, but the wind, Gentle Reader(s), the wind! The near constant gale force gusts blasting eastwards out of Arizona can begin to mess with yo haid after a while, so in recent years I have resolved to put thee behind me, Satanic zephyrs, and decamp to Ink South. This year I decided to append my southern sojourn with a trip to the Big City, the lure of inexpensive non-stop flights from Louis Armstrong International to LaGuardia being too attractive to resist. So, after the numbing two-day excursion across half of New Mexico, all of Texas, and three quarters of Louisiana, I hitched up at Laurel Street and settled in for about ten days before heading north.

Welcome back, Gentle Reader(s), to yet another installment of Matador Playlist coming straight to you via the good graces of Ye Olde Matador Bar & Lounge. Be forewarned as this shall be the last iteration of the playlist for a few weeks, as Your Humble Narrator will be taking off for Ink South in a few days. Come February I’m about ready for a bit of a break from Santa Fe winter, which has been has been distressingly devoid of snow while still managing to be cold as a sumbeyotch—up until this week at least, which has been bizarrely printemps-ish as regards matters meteorological. It’s all rather disconcerting, but what with the Orange Goblin going progressively apeshit crazy on a daily basis, I can’t say I’m surprised. As Miss Exene Cervenka observes in song #4 in this week’s playlist, ‘The World’s A Mess, It’s In My Kiss.’ Pucker up, Gentle Reader(s).

At long last, I am returned, Gentle Reader(s)! It has been four weeks since I last posted a Matador Playlist and it’s not because I’ve been at the Sundance Film Festival or lying in the sun down in Tierra del Fuego or enjoying the terrors and pleasures of alien abduction or anything exciting like that. No—the explanation is considerably more mundane: I’ve been sick. And when I say ‘sick’ I mean flat-out groaning miserable for a week, barely ambulatory for another week, seriously dragging ass for a third week, and then slowly returning to something resembling ‘normal’ this past week. I’ve not been sick in years—like, six or seven years at least—so I’d forgotten how completely lousy it is. To confirm: It’s completely lousy. At the behest of my very expensive concierge doctor I got vaccinated to the full extent of the law back in late November through mid-December so I was feeling pretty bulletproof come the holidays. So much for that conceit. Who knows what the deal is/was? Perhaps it was the impending horror of DrumpfReich 2.0 that compromised my immune system and allowed whatever this dreadful shite is to sneak in. Drumpf blames Biden and the LibDems for everything, so I blame Drumpf. My Apple stock is tanking: I blame Drumpf. Forgot to buy salad dressing at the store: I blame Drumpf. Stubbed my toe: I blame Drumpf. Fuck that dude.

When I was a little kid I engaged in all manner of magical thinking, as children are often wont to do. I had the notion that if I longed for something desperately enough or imagined a particular outcome to some situation fervently enough my wishes and desires might actually produce some tangible effect on reality. Now that I’m an alleged adult and have the Medicare card to prove it, the folly of magical thinking has gradually become apparent to me. Regardless, on the evenings of November 8, 2016, and again on November 5, 2024, I went off to bed carrying with me the hopeful fantasy that what I knew to be a foregone conclusion would not, in fact, have come to pass when I awoke to the harsh light of morning.