Ned Raggett
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nedraggett.bsky.social
Ned Raggett
@nedraggett.bsky.social
9.4K followers 1.7K following 18K posts
Hi! I write about music at various spots (@thequietus.com, @thewiremagazine.bsky.social, Shfl and my Patreon, also in the past @allmusic.com, @pitchfork.com, @bandcamp.com etc. etc.). Plus podcasting about #Tolkien with friends at @bythebywater.bsky.social
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nedraggett.bsky.social
It was a delightful time at the @coyotemedia.org writers and supporters get-together earlier this evening. Among other things I met @soleilho.com’s lovely pooch Honey and also got a pin celebrating Disco the dog. Who was also there but I forgot to get a shot directly.
Honey, a small brown dog, looking quizzically at the camera while sitting on a wooden bench. A jeweled pin showing Disco the terrier, an SF parrot and Sutro Tower on a card reading “Happy holidays and best wishes for a fabulous 2026 from Becka, Andrew and Disco.”
December 3, 2025 at 4:06 AM
nedraggett.bsky.social
Among the many reasons @gruffrhys.bsky.social is all that is how he ended his _American Interior_ anniversary tour/presentation shows earlier this year. He departed the stage through the audience, singing softly and playing his acoustic guitar, and that was it.
Photo of a stage setup for Gruff Rhys showing chairs, a table with equipment, a small doll propping up a sign saying "The End" and a large projected screen simply reading in all caps "RESIST PHONY ENCORES."
December 2, 2025 at 6:51 PM
nedraggett.bsky.social
I imagine this was a truly oily situation in the courtroom.
After all of Johnson’s antics, which also saw him deliver a closing statement that mostly involved him ranting about losing his ex-wife, the jury took about an hour to deliberate. Ultimately, they found Johnson liable for $40 million in damages. Johnson said in his opening statement that “he tended to get ‘hot headed’ and that it may be due to the ‘gingerness’ in him.” The blogger added that he was “not wealthy” and that his Substack wasn’t widely read, in a seeming appeal to the jury. “Johnson showed up to court with a wrinkled suit, his tie was on backwards and was torn at the bottom,” Ortiz pointed out, adding that Johnson did not have a lawyer and represented himself in court. He also noted that Judge Mark Pittman expressed disappointment in Johnson’s actions throughout the trial.
December 2, 2025 at 4:24 PM
nedraggett.bsky.social
Meantime on #DragRaceEspaña
At the Drag Race España reunion, Ferrxn, in blonde wig and spaghetti strap dress on the right, says, referencing a still from her audition video featuring her dressed as a blonde clown with a huge black mustache, "I have to admit, it was the mustache of a spark plug."
November 30, 2025 at 11:08 PM
nedraggett.bsky.social
Meanwhile on the season finale of #DragRaceUK
A clip from Sillexa Diction’s audition tape shows her in a full black-shaded look in front of some plywood paneling and a bit of a suspect looking wall. Watching, an off-camera Caitrin Feelings says “Is this where they go to shag in Yorkshire?”
November 29, 2025 at 3:06 AM
nedraggett.bsky.social
Meantime on #CanadasDragRace
In the Canada’s Drag Race maxichallenge, Carson Kressley, seen from behind on the left in red, says “Oh, hello” to Paolo Perfeccion, wearing pink, hose, garters, platforms, a riding crop and a gag.
November 29, 2025 at 2:24 AM
nedraggett.bsky.social
Some have Black Fridays, I had hawks in the fog during an early morning walk.
A hawk chilling on a fence for a large ranch house on a hill, with fog in the air.
November 28, 2025 at 5:05 PM
nedraggett.bsky.social
Anyway my job this year was to bring a good apple pie, thus getting this from a very great spot in SF.
A Three Babes Bakeshop box for pie. Said Three Babes Bakeshop’s excellent apple pie.
November 27, 2025 at 5:35 PM
nedraggett.bsky.social
It was a fine early morning. Best of the day to all. Thanks for hanging with me and my randomness on here.
A view of a sunrise, hills, and some nearby trees and houses.
November 27, 2025 at 5:14 PM
nedraggett.bsky.social
Hell with it, I'm just going to post the whole thing here via screencap and alt text. It's Kaleb Horton, man, his writing always deserves the second read, especially since it could have just easily been lost forever like so much else. Read it, share it.
A look at forgotten Hollywood landmarks By Kaleb Horton Let's say you come in from down south, and you're looking for an unsung movie landmark. So you fly in to LAX, rent a car, blow right past Hollywood, leave Los Angeles county heading north, go over the Grapevine, gape at the monumental hills and, wow, there really is a Smokey Bear Road, then you turn off the air conditioner when the sign tells you. Once you come down the grade too fast and see the world's loneliest Denny's, you're well on your way to what you're looking for – the middle of nowhere. You're going to Kern County to find the spot where Alfred Hitchcock filmed one of the greatest scenes in movie history, the crop duster sequence from "North by Northwest." It takes place in Indiana, of course, but the Indiana road sign and the imported corn field can't deceive this Bakersfield native. The parched and desolate heat of the scene feels too much like Kern County. The scene people know off-hand — Cary Grant running from an airplane — isn't why "North by Northwest" is a classic. The film's greatness, as was often the case for Hitchcock, lies in its build-up, its suspense, its mood. The plane moment is almost anticlimax. It is those five minutes before Grant's desperate escape that constitute a mathematically perfect suspense scene. So expert is Hitchcock's hand that he creates suspense, a slow burning dread, with no camera tricks and no music in broad daylight. Grant's character is a prototypical James Bond. His perfect suit, fast wit, high-alcohol tolerance and effortless charisma have got him out of every predicament so far. In the city, among people, he has powers. Take him away from people, put him nowhere, and he's just like us — totally helpless. He has no powers: His suit is no good out here; his million-dollar tailoring and perfect haircut is just vanity now. No amount of pretending can provide escape. Here, is the one place where he can die, and he gets by on the grace of God. All he can do is wait for what's coming. So when you seek the lost landmark of this scene, you're looking for an idea as much as a place. You're on Highway 99 now, going 30 miles north of Bakersfield, looking for an unassuming patch of dirt that carries spiritual weight. The scene was filmed neart Garces Highway to the west of Delano. You'll think there's a handy exit for it. There's not. You'll probably get lost in Delano, counting on a connection. You're at once a million miles from Hollywood and a hundred miles away. It's lonely. The horizon sprawls forever like there's nothing past it. There are broken down trucks on the side of the road, plumes of smoke from faraway fires. You'll find Garces eventually. You'll pass a bar called Rosy's Place, abandoned houses, an oil field, a prison, a cemetery, a sign that says "we clean headstones," and a whole lot of gold-on-brown punctuated by an occasional trailer or car going faster than you. You're looking for where Garces meets Corcoran Road. That's where this "North by Northwest" scene was filmed. You'll get a vague idea where it is but you'll never be exactly sure, since there's little impetus for clear signage 10 miles from a prison. Maybe Corcoran Road is unlabeled. Besides, that Indiana sign and the prop cornfield haven't been there in 56 years. If you're anything like me, you'll lose the light and call it a day, unsatisfied with the route you took. You return to I-5 northbound. From the 5, you'll meet Route 46, and go through a place called Lost Hills, then back in to the location from Corcoran Road instead. That's how Hitchcock probably did it. More intuitive. Still in the middle of nowhere, but on your way to Corcoran Road, you're right next to another Hollywood landmark: Blackwells Corner, James Dean's last stop. It's a glorified Texaco, and gas is 50 cents a gallon more than it should be. They sell Jelly Bellys and '50s kitsch artifacts — plates with Marilyn Monroe's face on them, and so forth. They really figured out how to cash in on death. You don't want to stop here. But I stopped. I asked the kid at the Blackwells Corner counter how to get to Corcoran Road. He gave me a look that said "there's no reason to go there," and then wearily told me where to go anyway. I was about 8 miles from the destination. Going there is a meditative experience. You're not just going to the middle of nowhere. You're going to the perfect nowhere. Going alone, in the hypnotic heat of the Central Calfiornia Valley, you might even forget what year it is. There is no reason to believe the road would be so well preserved for half a century, intimately tied to the career of an actor born in Bristol 111 years ago, but it has been. There's an abandoned house. A barn with a cross on it. But almost nothing has changed in 56 years. At some point new lines were added on the road. There's overgrowth where there didn't used to be overgrowth. A couple discarded Budweiser cans from who knows when, but mostly it's identical. This is the same sleepy loneliness that Alfred Hitchcock used to make great art in 1959. And that may sound dull, but tranquility is the point. You stand on that dirt and there's no distraction from what's in your soul. It's an inner destination, not an outer one. I told my grandma about it when I got back to Bakersfield. She told me her Uncle Harold thought it was the prettiest road in America. And she showed me a picture of a Corcoran grade school class posing in the dirt with Grant and Hitchcock. It's just a field trip picture. The kids are fidgeting, many with arms folded, some shielding their eyes from the sun, all with obedient smiles. They'd all be in their sixties now, but they'd remember where this road is. It emphasized the ugliness of James Dean's last stop becoming a place to sell T-shirts. It's about what we preserve, and what we don't, and what we remember, and what we don't. It's easy to find shrines to morbidity and hard to find meaningful places. For those, you have to go looking.
November 26, 2025 at 9:52 PM
nedraggett.bsky.social
It’s only Tuesday but it’s time.
Snoopy versus the popcorn in _A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving_
November 26, 2025 at 1:33 AM
nedraggett.bsky.social
A chance to see a one-off screening of Seijun Suzuki’s _Branded to Kill_? Don’t mind if I do. Had the Criterion issue forever so this is for the big screen of it all.
Digital poster for the 4K restoration of _Branded to Kill_.
November 25, 2025 at 3:09 AM
nedraggett.bsky.social
Advance screening time. See you all in a couple of hours.
A digital screen projection promo image for _Wake Up Dead Man_ featuring the main cast with Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc at the center.
November 23, 2025 at 11:56 PM
nedraggett.bsky.social
Meantime on #DragRaceEspaña
In the Drag Race España werk room, the queens are with their loved ones for the makeover episode. Nix in the center in red, looking at Laca Udilla, says "And don't you dare put a mustache on your mother."
November 23, 2025 at 11:07 PM
nedraggett.bsky.social
A movie that takes place where you're from. (Though there's been so much filmed at the Hotel del Coronado that's *set* elsewhere -- _Some Like It Hot_ is a prime example -- that this might be the closest I can properly get.)
The poster for the satiric black comedy _The Stunt Man_, featuring a demonic figure in dark shadows controlling a movie camera setup.
November 23, 2025 at 10:54 PM
nedraggett.bsky.social
A quick combined @highway62.bsky.social and @johncoulthart.com and @paulduane.bsky.social alert that I’m rewatching _Super Inframan_ for the first time in a while via @arrowvideo.bsky.social’s new Shawscope box and had forgotten the “teenager happily diving into Dennis Wheatley” moment.
The character of Liu Mei-mei, daughter of the professor helping fight all the evil bad monsters and all, earnestly reading Dennis Wheatley’s _The Devil And All His Works_ in a scene from the 1975 Shaw Brothers film _Super Inframan_.
November 23, 2025 at 7:26 PM
nedraggett.bsky.social
Love...
Exciting and new...
Because if you're going to have Pope Leo standing somewhere at a mike looking into it, why not be Jack Jones smooth about it?
November 23, 2025 at 1:56 PM
nedraggett.bsky.social
Meanwhile on the season premiere of #CanadasDragRace
In the Canada’s Drag Race confessional, Paolo Perfeccion, in boy mode with a mesh tank top and fuller hair, says “the women sluts of America.”
November 22, 2025 at 3:54 AM
nedraggett.bsky.social
Meantime on #DragRaceUK
On the Drag Race UK main stage, Caitrin Feelings, riffing on the English country garden realness theme with a kind of Oz look in various shades of green, including glasses, and a blonde wig, says “I’m off to go and see the Wizard of Oz and ask him if he can give me a BBL.”
November 22, 2025 at 3:08 AM
nedraggett.bsky.social
And so #RoddyBottum speaks at @citylightsbooks.bsky.social with #BrontezPurnell — a fine night out! And also an early evening night out, which frankly I very much appreciate.
In City Lights. seated with shelves of books behind them, Roddy Bottum, in pink knit cap and blue and white buttoned shirt, speaks into a microphone while Brontez Purnell. in black Wire T-shirt, sits and looks at him on the left.
November 21, 2025 at 4:13 AM
nedraggett.bsky.social
I gotta say, this part from York was especially bracing.
Legal, frictionless app-based gambling is the most dangerous consumer product rollout of my lifetime, and is causing a growing public health crisis that should be treated with the same urgency as though half of men aged 21–45 suddenly became addicted to heroin. At least the upside with heroin is that we’d quickly run into a supply problem, and these men would experience the added barrier of interacting with a human to get it. Setting aside the ominous future ahead of all of us when an entire generation of men are entering their post-college lives with a hopeless addiction to the endorphin rush of losing all of their money, it’s just so boring to hear about gambling on television and podcasts. There are precious few shows left on TV that don’t have a gambling odds ticker scrolling across the screen while some sweaty millennial degenerate nerd yells about the spread. I find myself gravitating towards the grizzled boomers who still want to talk X’s and O’s. Give me Rex Ryan screaming about Dan Campbell’s playcalling any day. I genuinely find that more entertaining than some podcast dweeb earnestly telling me what’s on “his card” for the weekend’s games, or some guy on Twitter freaking out about how the games are rigged because he lost the mortgage on a parlay. You’re all such fucking dorks!
November 20, 2025 at 9:58 PM
nedraggett.bsky.social
Well, gotta say I hadn't realized there was a forthcoming film out there that makes _Rebel Moon_ look like, I dunno, _2001_ or whatever, but by gum I think it exists. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holigua...
From Wikipedia: Holiguards Saga — The Portal of Force is an upcoming supernatural action thriller film directed by Kevin Spacey and written by Sergey Torchilin and Lado Okhotnikov. It stars Spacey, Dolph Lundgren, Tyrese Gibson, Brianna Hildebrand, Disha Patani, and Eric Roberts. It is the first installment of the Statiguards vs. Holiguards franchise. Premise In a divided future, ancient Holiguards and Statiguards fight secretly for humanity. A woman discovers she's born to rival leaders as a Statiguard plans to attack Paris and unleash the Prime.
November 20, 2025 at 9:53 PM
nedraggett.bsky.social
So here's my Mani live-in-concert story, one of the two times I saw him. Too long for just one post and to make it easier, just c/ping my FB post instead. A true dude, and the posts from people I know who met or interviewed him saying he was a prince of a guy make it clear we lost a good one.
So, never saw the Stone Roses, but was following Primal Scream for a stretch, Gillespie's general wannabeness aside, and of the four times, saw them twice with Mani. The second time, and the final time overall, was an early 2000s gig for _Evil Heat_ over here in California with Chris Barrus and, I want to say, Eve McGivern. As the band members come on stage one by one, they get various cheers, including Gillespie, but Mani comes on stage and the place almost erupts in cheers and general love. He had a big ol' smile on his face -- and I also remember Gillespie looking clearly narced off. To which I say, "Yeah, that figures." I'll add that Mani almost launched himself into those performances, the dude was on in the best way. He made what I generally thought were the pretty weak/rote 'rock' songs the band released around then sound like absolute crushers, and when it came to the more dance-specific tracks like "Shoot Speed Kill Light" or the like, goddamn. I can easily recall almost a wild look in his eyes when he started up that bass on "Kowalski." Damn, folks, that's how to leave a mark.
November 20, 2025 at 5:15 PM
nedraggett.bsky.social
I cannot begin to describe how amazing it was last night to see a screening of the new @turasatanaofficial.bsky.social documentary with Peaches Christ, in the company of Tura's daughter Jade, manager Siouxzan Perry and the director Cody Jarrett. See this movie as soon as you can, it's on streaming.
At the SF Alamo Drafthouse screening of _Tura!_, a new documentary about the life of actress/dancer/cult figure Tura Satana, a post-film chat features moderator Peaches Christ in full drag on the left; on the right are Satana's daughter Jade, Satana's manager Siouxzan Perry and doc writer/director Cody Jarrett, the latter of whom is speaking to the audience.
November 20, 2025 at 3:19 PM
nedraggett.bsky.social
It was an absolute treat to be asked by Michael Horton to contribute the essay to the first time ever vinyl issue of the debut album by his still remarkable early 1990s duo with Philip Haut, Supercollider. Art by Rudy Vanderlans, who originally released this on Emigre back then. More info in thread.
The cover of the vinyl issue of the debut album by the duo Supercollider, featuring the band's name in staggered groups in black letters on a day-glo yellow/green rectangle set against a bar-code like series of black bars and a white semicircle against a black background. My essay for the reissue of Supercollider's debut album -- admittedly somewhat small print and the entirety would not fit in the alt text here, I'm sorry to say. It appears in black letters on a day-glo yellow/green box on the right, while on the left is a black and white photo of the duo performing live from the early 1990s, Michael Horton on guitar up front at the mike while Philip Haut is on drums and other instruments seated behind him.
November 17, 2025 at 12:26 AM