THIS is a CLOSE-UP?

It was 1999, and for most people, Robert Palmer was a cultural footnote, the guy from the ‘80s videos, forever wearing sharp suits while mannequin-like ladies mimed and jiggled behind him . He was four years away from dying way too young at 54 years of age, but his at-that-point moribund career had preceded his physical demise, as his first solo album in a half-decade, entitled Rhythm & Blues , came and went without much notice or fanfare. No hits, no videos of note, just a record on a tiny label distributed by a reissue arm of a multinational company about to get kneecapped by technological innovation. In other words, blip and blink. The reviews -- that is, what reviews were generated -- didn't help, either: “ …not groundbreaking or particularly innovative ” said Dave Kendrick of the Hartford Courant (in an otherwise positive blurb at the time of the album’s release), and “ there is neither actual rhythm nor blues on or anywhere around this album (except perhaps the blues f

"What is the cost of lies?" When I was younger -- my family and I were lower middle class, living outside of a small town in the middle of northern lower Michigan -- there were limited options for media. Top 40 radio and three and a half TV channels and a few local movie theaters were the windows to the larger world, a place that seemed to offer no pathway to connection aside from how one would feel from the stories the media offered up. Of course, most of those stories were loosely tethered to fact, even the oxymoronic "based on a true story," but in the mostly literal mind of a preadolescent, they felt as real as the warmth of the clothes dryer in my bedroom. Now, I live in a world of overwhelming media options, where several lives could be lived in parallel fashion with completely different media experiences, where choice is both a tyranny and a paradox. On a daily basis, this means that I miss stuff that I know would be appealing, but with only so many hours