Fractionals

So Nick Southall (who I am not, I swear, stalking) quasi-inadventently leads me, via a cryptic entry, to the blog of fellow Stylusite Sam Bloch. And I'm reading it, thinking, isn't he one of the guys on Stylus (which my love-hate relationship with will probably feature in a Wednesday's Emotional Setup at some point) whom I hate, whose writing I loathe and revile (even if I do sometimes agree with them - no one said it was a rational loathing). And I remember that this is why I thought so, but then I read the blog, and damned if it isn't great, and I reread some of his best reviews (and that Think Tank piece in particular needs to be widely disseminated - in lieu of defending that album i'll just pass it along, I guess), and really, his top ten includes Rings Around The World and Singles Going Steady and Chairs Missing and XTRMNTR, and I think that maybe I'm being just a bit too curmudgeonly recently about good ol' Stylus. I think I've grown too accustomed to mentally filing their writers as hit or shit, so if I see something that kind of mildly hints at annoyance I just write the person off. And I think that's being unfair to Sam (even though it has no effect on him whatsoever and I'm sure he doesn't care). His blog is definitely worth reading. I mean, he's certainly not one of those unreadable pomo bastards who delight in not actually telling us anything at all. In fact, his stuff reminds me a great deal of the way I used to write a few years back (although, in a burst of TMFTML-like humility (to digress further, that completes our regularly scheduled diptych of references for the day, Southall and TMFTML - I'm pretty sure I'm the only raging fanboy of both), I must say that I think his stuff now is better, certainly more coherent than my stuff then (or, the crowd snickers, right now, you tosser); and I am forced to capitulate to the fact that he writes for Stylus and I am merely the incipient Arts & Culture editor of a university newspaper in Ontario. But who gets paid more, eh?). So kudos to Sam, and even if he decides this whole criticism thing is too much technique, not enough groove (don't we all feel that way sometimes?), I hope he keeps writing.

Can you tell I can't get to sleep?