iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

The Beatles At The Hollywood Bowl has long been a favourite. I never saw Howard’s documentary but I bought the album reissue on CD. The reissue was remixed by Giles Martin, the son of George Martin, who mixed the original. The clarity on this reissue is outstanding.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I bought this album when it came out in 1980 and I was disappointed; I was expecting more of the sounds of For Your Pleasure and their eponymous first album. But, a few ounces of vodka in and 46 years later, Flesh & Blood is an acknowledged classic. A banger.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Organizing my CDs after three years of mischievous filing and pulled up this beauty. Bryan Ferry rearranged his classics (like Slave to Love and Avalon) for The Jazz Age. Cornets, clarinets, and banjos. Listening to this recording you can almost see a lifeless Gatsby floating in a swimming pool.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Hop into the way-back machine to 1997 when Primal Scream released Vanishing Point and an instrumental/dub version of that album, Echo Dek (Adrian Maxwell).

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Beth Orton is distracting me from my chores.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

To celebrate Bryan Ferry’s birthday, I pulled out some of his vinyl to enjoy with a coffee and a book.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

If you’re holding on to the last moments of summer, pleased be advised that I am moving on.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Dixon House Band issued only one record and this is it. A Vancouver/Seattle based band, it sounds a lot like Boston. When I played this for him, my friend quipped, “Imagine being this talented and not being Boston.” That pretty much sums up the album. Check out their Wikipedia page.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I met my “pro-Trump” friend for after-works drinks last night and the news had better slow the fuck down so I can bone up on the facts. She must spend all day on X, gathering these turd-bits of data, before we meet up. I mostly play defence in our drink-dates until I can no longer.

static.klipy.com

Kermit the Frog in Water

ALT: Kermit the Frog in Water

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Stepped away from work and the computer. Found this Chet Baker book at a thrift on my way to the green grocers.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I’m not quick to shower, dress, or drive to work this morning. Instead, I am listening to the story of a guy getting fleeced.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I typically have a home book and a work book going. The work-related books are legal, contracts, facilities management, or other related books. This time the “other related book” is Atoms Under the Floorboards. I expect it to be more way fun than Mechanical and Electrical Equipment for Buildings.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

When Tim Curry died I went to play this record, but it was in storage. I would have trouble explaining just how important this cultural artefact/moment is to me. It is up there with Outrageous, the film staring Craig Russell. And The Naked Civil Servant.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

My worldview regularly gets changed and reworked. I have a feeling that it’s about to change again in the next two weeks as I read my way through this book.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

If the recent news of culling wild horses in the USA is disturbing to you don’t watch the emotionally bleak John Huston film, The Misfits. I thought Marilyn Monroe was going to have an actual breakdown. The culling scenes are nerve wracking.

en.wikipedia.org

The Misfits (1961 film) - Wikipedia

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

When they kick out your front door; how are you gonna come; with your hands on your head; or your hands on the trigger of your guns. God love you, Joe!

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

I meant to get up, drink coffee, and listen to Joe Strummer this morning. But fingers tripped past Mescaleros and landed on Morricone instead.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

I would pitch this novel as streaming series. It’s a nesting doll of gothic stories and adventures. I’m halfway through the book and I assume we’ll get back to the titular monk’s storyline; we left him breaking his vow of chasity with a dying noviciate.

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Reposted by Michael Van Lane

Jalopnik @jalopnik.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Plenty of people will tell you this is a bad idea. Those people don't want you to be happy, and you need to cut them out of your life.

jalopnik.com

You Don't Need Anyone In Your Life Who Says You Don't Need This Orange Morgan 3-Wheeler - Jalopnik

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

I bought this record on a whim. Never heard, didn’t know, no idea whim. It’s one of my favourite Sunday afternoon plays.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

I’ve been listening to highlights from Verdi’s Don Carlos all week, in between Massive Attack and George Jones. Verdi is a genius.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

I could prattle on about how good this book is. Let me be short and say that its “the red flags that are men” theme is so fully modern and capably realized it is hard to believe it was written almost two hundred years ago. I love Charlotte Brontë but I’m having a mind crush on her sister Anne.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

I looked at the list of my Sunday chores and decided that I might be able to fit a cookie and a 30 minute read into the schedule. Things are about to hit the fan in the Wildfell Hall plot.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

It’s a Brontë year for me, with Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights read earlier; now August has The Tenant at Wildfell Hall on the go. What a family that must have been to have produced three daughters able to describe such dark romantic passions.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

The macabre always happens under louring, gloomy skies. Always at night, with cold wind driving needles of rain into your skin. No one ever finds a decapitated head in a sunlit field, the air fragrant with meadow flowers. Just an observation about the weather in this book.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

I’ll start using this going forward.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

After my adventurous, chaotic, and exhausting yesterday, I’m hanging out close to home with black coffee and a record collection that loves me.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

With the US Senate grilling Fauci, there are people reminding us of his essential work in the AIDS crisis in the US and that Reagan doesn’t get enough of the hate that he deserves. The seeds of Project 2025 are there. Reread Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angels_...

en.wikipedia.org

Angels in America - Wikipedia

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

A Poetry Club for Insomniacs — A thousand faces looking at the 3am moon, dreading the morning footsteps of the coming day.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Polidori wrote The Vampyre at the same retreat where Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

These guys were barred from entering Canada in person, but they have arrived in vinyl form.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

A bit of music on the sound system and a bit of food for a fool.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

“When there is no wind, row.” — Latin Proverb

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

“After all, he said to himself, it is probably only insomnia. Many must have it.” Ernest Hemingway, A Clean, Well-lighted Place

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Birnam Woods is dilly-dallying a little to long for my liking.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Steve Wilson’s Intrigue, a four CD set of “progressive sounds in UK alternative music 1979-1989” If you walked the earth in alt-music circles in the 1980s, I can’t imagine you not enjoying this. Marketed by Edsel.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

I promised myself that I would read Smith’s Wealth of Nations this summer. But I took a little side dish in the form of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, and it, and not Wealth, has held me enthralled.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

This Karen Dalton album was released in 1971 (reissued in 2021). Dalton was stomping around NY cafés and folk clubs before Bob Dylan, Pete Lafarge, and those others. Dylan said she sang like Billie Holiday and played guitar like Jimmy Reed.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

So, anyone have plans this evening? I think, under cover of darkness and with a few torches, we can correct this timeline.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

When I was eleven I had a celebrity crush on Diane Dufresne (I think I watched her on Les Beaux Dimanche). I picked this album up recently.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

The liner notes on this reissue are wonderful. They end with a paragraph that reads, “It was inspired by *Mr Benn*, an animated kids’ TV show I adored as a child.” Then he describes the premise of the show and how it inspired him. Hannon’s artistic trajectory now makes complete sense.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

I’ve spent the day dancing with chores, and I pulled out this album that I haven’t listened to years. I’m Your Captain.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

“He was, and is yet, most likely, the wearisomest, self-righteous pharisee that ever ransacked the Bible to rake the promises to himself and fling the curses on his neighbors.” Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights I know that guy!

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Pull those coconut halves out of your closet, and get ready to follow Count Binface on a quest.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Disagreeing with the chaos is not enough. The US ambassador hosted Tamara Lich and other disruptive agitators in a gesture calculated to undermine Canada’s sovereignty. It’s a continuation of the “51 State” threats coming from the highest levels of the US government. So, fuck your wine industry.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Remember those people who were crushed in the imploded submarine, Oceangate? Well, the final reports have been issued. Should people be in jail for the corporate money-based decisions they made? youtube.com/watch?v=JGRj...

youtube.com

Oceangate Titan: It was WORSE Than We Thought

YouTube video by Two Bit da Vinci

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Birthday celebrants of the world, unite!

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

So far, so good. The Wealth of Nations is divided into five ‘books,’ each carrying its own thesis. The English is in the style of 1776, so there is lot of rearranging sentences, just to understand what he’s saying. As I said, so far, so good. I may take a little side dish of a novel, for fun.

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Michael Van Lane @mvanlane.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

These three albums form a musical tryptych. Surprisingly , the Daryl Hall is the least mainstream and most unexpected. They were all to be released at the same time but RCA balked at releasing Hall’s contribution and kept in the vault until 1980.

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