Here’s Jonathan Franzen on what’s wrong with the modern world. You’ll have to read this twice, or, at least, I will have to (and intend to).

I’m wary of what a playwright friend calls “old poopism,” and Franzen, a novelist I admire tremendously, does come across here as an old poop. Whether or not we have the time to read impenetrable writers like Karl Kraus (of whom I’d never heard, even after reading I think five biographies of Franz Kafka), we have little or no access to his writing or his ideas. Or, at least, we never did — until the Internet, which is one of those pesky new-world developments Franzen seems to be deploring.

(Full disclosure: I make my living almost entirely via these newfangled things associated with the Internet. But whether or not that contributes to my bias, I’ve always been more interested in the future than the past.)

Culturally, here’s where I most often hear old poopism, and no, it isn’t with regard to technology. Most of the people I come across all over the country embrace technology; those who don’t, want to but don’t know how to. I have a friend who is 84 and exceedingly interesting (he went from the CIA into real estate, and then Democratic politics; there is some joke waiting to be made there); another friend and I were trying to teach him how to text when we were all out of town together, and then discovered his shortfall: an ancient cellphone with all the computing power of an Etch-a-Sketch that turned texting into a hard-fought endeavor. He hasn’t gotten a smartphone yet (Ken, are you listening?), but he’s a regular on Facebook and email. My mother, at age 88, wishes she could understand some of these things, because she sees the benefits — long-distance interaction with relatives that includes more than just a phone call. So, again, whether it’s with clients or friends or relatives or colleagues, I don’t see any resistance to technology.

No, it’s music where I see it.

If I hear one more person proclaim the musical superiority of the ’60s or ’70s, I’m going to throw up. Because never before in the history of humankind have we had so much access to so much music, a lot of it really really good.

I could point you to some current musical favorites — and, in fact, I will. TV on the Radio is a terrific rock n’ roll band, one that acknowledges the past of straight-ahead rock n’ roll while bringing into play harmonic inventiveness and studio wizardry and the sort of oddball sounds and buzzes that to my ear always lend an extra dimension. Danger Mouse, whether recording with Gnarls Barkley or Broken Bells or on any of his innumerable other projects, is perhaps the foremost production talent since Brian Eno. Like Eno, Danger Mouse brings a distinctive sound and a sharp intelligence to everything he touches; unlike Eno, he can also play guitar, and drums, and keyboard, and bass — as I witnessed when I saw Broken Bells in concert two years ago. Gnarls Barkley especially shows that he, partnered with Cee-lo Green, can effortlessly summon up the best of Motown and make it fresh and danceable. Finally, I’m smitten with Of Mountains and Men, a merry alt-folk group from Iceland. Their sound is cheery and pours out of the radio like a perfect poolside cocktail.

I could go on — I like AWOL Nation and Polica as well, to name just two more — but I take the time to make this point because I guarantee you most people you run into over 35 are expressing their belief that music was somehow “better” as recently as… their early 20s. And it wasn’t. It just had a different emotional impact for them because they were in their early 20s. It is that way with technology (see Franzen, above, who seems to be extolling the virtues of the 19th century equivalent of a German literary fanzine) and it is that way with politics, and it is that way with culture.

Here’s my feeling: The past is past, and it isn’t coming back. One thing we know for sure about the past is this: No one lives there any more. If you’d like to shape the future, in your daily life or in the world, it’s better to make a clear-eyed assessment of its potential rather than to knee-jerk reject it for a prior era you’re romanticizing.

In my adolescence, I was fortunate to meet the right person at the right time. I’m speaking of my mentor, Rich Roesberg.

There’s no one who has made a greater influence on my cultural life.

Growing up in the Pine Barrens and surrounding environs of southern New Jersey made artistic and intellectual engagement hard to come by. People who, last decade, abhorred the encroachment of big-box chain bookstores, to the supposed detriment of small independent bookshops, had no idea what it was like growing up in a place with no bookstore nearby. If there had been a Borders bookstore anywhere near me when I was growing up, it would have been a godsend.

As it was, though, I had my own godsend. One day my mother went into a Hallmark greeting-card store in a strip mall to buy some cards. The store also carried books — in fact, it was called Blatt’s Books — and I found in the back some secondhand comic-books. What I discovered when I took them to the front counter was the assistant manager, an elder in his late 20’s named Rich Roesberg, and a conversation about comic books that over the 35+ years since then has broadened into art, music, politics, and much, much more. “Uncle Rich,” as my gang and I started calling him, became my oasis.

Here’s an abbreviated list of what I found through him during my impressionable adolescent years:

1. A deep admiration for Brian Wilson, Van Dyke Parks and the Beach Boys
2. An appreciation for dada and surrealism
3. R. Crumb
4. John Cage
5. Cut-up (Brion Gysin’s technique)
6. Soupy Sales
7. The Bonzo Dog Doodah Band
8. Jean Shepherd
9. Bob & Ray
10. Steve Ditko (it was Roesberg who made me see how wonderful his work is)
11. Bill Irwin
12. Ernie Kovacs
13. Steve Allen
14. Uncle Floyd
15. Charles Bukowski
16. John Fante
17. Alfred Jarry
18. William S. Burroughs

In which a policewoman in Long Branch, NJ responds to a call from residents complaining about “an old scruffy man acting suspiciously” — and winds up booking Bob Dylan on a stroll before his concert.

Favorite part: Even after he gave his name, she didn’t know who he was. Those kids today.

An actor friend from New York was in town Monday night, so another theatre friend and I joined her for drinks. I proposed the Dresden Room, a favorite old haunt of mine, because it’s classic Hollywood, because neither of them had been there before, and because I thought the one friend might enjoy saying she’d had a drink where they shot so much of “Swingers” and so many other movies. Plus, I just like the joint. I only wish Marty and Elayne had been on that night, but they don’t play Mondays. (The guys who do Monday nights were pretty good, but completely lacked the wonderful kitsch and showmanship brought to the Dresden Room by Marty and Elayne for 31 years now).

Anyway, we had some drinks and a very nice time. My friend who’s local I get to see all the time, but the other one I get to see only once a year. Thoroughly enjoying myself, when the tab came, I decided just to pick it up. The drinks, plus tax and tip, ran $53.

Late this afternoon I had a drinks meeting at a lounge in Burbank. This was a business meeting, and also a friend meeting (as in, my one companion said, “Why do we always have to wait for business to socialize?” Precisely.). I ordered some appetizers, and then we ordered more appetizers, and we each had some drinks, all of it, it turned out, at happy hour prices. And it was a pretty happy hour — the end of a day successful in many ways (a good prognosis for my friend in the hospital who got released; a good bill of health on my dog, recovering from surgery; financially a good day; and more) that I was now celebrating while having this meeting, in preparation for something I’m starting in two weeks. That project is through my company, so I rightly figured I’d be picking up the tab. When I turned away, it turned out that one of my companions had already asked for the check and slipped the server his credit card. So he picked it all up. I watched as he signed it. The total: $53.

While I don’t believe in karma per se, I do believe that when you do something nice for no good reason, the next time someone does something nice for you, you tend to notice it better. And, hey, the coincidence of the dollar amount was certainly eye-catching.

Here’s something nice I’m going to do for you. Here’s Marty and Elayne. Next time you’re in town, you should check them out.

More about this later. Just not quite ready yet.

Well, to me anyway, that album would be “The Tenement Year” by Pere Ubu.

I was listening to this disc yesterday yet again and marveling over how beautifully it comes together, the squeaks and squonks of this offbeat band coalescing into an propulsive pop masterpiece that pulls into close rivalry with the best of Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks as idiosyncratic wordplay crashes against thunderous guitar and drums and musical textures that absolutely thrill and soar.

Then I happily found this encomium from a kindred spirit, celebrating the album’s 25th anniversary. Had it been 25 years? Yes, it had.

I highly recommend you read that remembrance, above, and then watch this video. If this doesn’t fill you with joy and wonder, we’re not on the same wavelength. Listen to those twin drum sets consorting and jousting with each other, to the tasty guitar fills, to the unexpected synthesizer sine waves that somehow buoy the oddball poetry of the words. It’s all deeply, deeply satisfying. And, as one friend said after I emailed him the link yesterday, “Good video, good song, and great dance moves.” Yes!

Here’s Part Two of that interview with the curator of the David Bowie Is show in London. (And Part One is still available here.)

Two notions I find especially interesting here:

First, the idea that David Bowie is someone we project onto: “The truth is, when you get Bowie fans in a room they have absolutely nothing in common.” That may be true — but isn’t the same true of other major groups from that time, like the Rolling Stones? We now live in an era of niches; we used to live in an era of mass markets. So perhaps Geoffrey Marsh hasn’t recognized this changing dynamic and is projecting onto his exhibit what he wants to see.

Second, I’m intrigued by the idea that Bowie’s 10-year “disappearing act” was actually performance art, and Bowie trying to play Marcel Duchamp. But, again, that sounds like someone in the visual arts telling us that it’s all about visual artists — so, more projection.

My further thoughts about these two points: I think all artists are what we project onto them; and I doubt that even David Bowie could tell you with surety why he took off 10 years. He just did.

Mr. David Bowie is back in the news, with a new record after a 10-year hiatus (beating the break John Lennon took to bake bread and watch the wheels) and a fancy new museum retrospective.

Re the latter, here’s part one of an interview with the curator of that show, “David Bowie Is,” which opens Saturday in London to massive publicity and record (couldn’t resist the pun) ticket sales. (Thanks to Rich Roesberg for sending me that link.) The show runs through August 11, should you find yourself in London. (In fact, it will run through August 11, whether or not you’re in London. Which I will not be.)

Re the former, on the day of its release, the new Bowie CD, “The Next Day” was happily found on my kitchen table, having been shipped by Amazon and delivered by a competitor of the USPS. I like it very much, and find it full of surprises. One of the surprises: the prominence of saxophone, an instrument I’ve never much associated with Bowie’s work. Another: that it’s a rather stripped-down album, mostly straight-out mid-tempo rock music featuring vocals, guitars, and drums. That’s rather traditional, but in the Bowie oeuvre, I think of that as rather untraditional. In some ways, this sounds more akin to the two Tin Machine albums, when Bowie decided to try to be a regular bloke in a band with three other guys, but more palatable. I miss the odd textures and surprises, circa the work he did with Eno, or on “Scary Monsters” or “Outside” (which features the fantastic “Heart’s Filthy Lesson,” one of his best songs and one of his best-produced songs).

What I haven’t enjoyed in all the recent press coverage are the blithe claims that this album is a return to form for Bowie, the implication being that he’s been off-form. I wonder how many of these people have heard his last two albums, “Heathen” and “Reality.” “Heathen” had many of the fine qualities I’m missing from the current album — which, seemingly alone, Sasha-Frere Jones noted in The New Yorker, in praising that disk — and “Reality” was a truly, truly fine pop album. I like both of them a lot, and play them frequently, and they’ve lived in my wife’s CD rotation for more than a year. Moreover, we saw Bowie on his last tour — which may have, indeed, been his last tour, but we’ll see — and he was in fine form then, too. The songs sound good on record, and sounded great live. It’s easy for critics to paint the picture that after 10 years away Bowie has had a magnificent re-emergence, but the two disks he did before stepping away bear further listening. They don’t deserve the criticism.

p.s. I hate the cover art above. Deeply. Strenuously.

File this under “shoot me first”: Here’s your chance to see the band Yes perform not one, not two, but three of their incredibly tedious, wandering, and self-indulgent albums, all in one night. Their lead singer (replacement for Jon Anderson): the leader singer in a Yes tribute band. This will make for their second lead singer drafted form a Yes tribute band.

I saw this band last year (with the previous tribute-band-singer) and feared mightily for the health and well-being of drummer Alan White, who looked to be in serious need of immediate medical attention. I said to that to my friend, but she was more concerned about another member she felt “looks like he’s at death’s door.” I’m not saying they’re bad because they’re old — the Beach Boys are older, but they were terrific in concert last year — I’m saying they seemed sick. And bad. And boring.

Glad I saw The Beach Boys last year when I had the chance (and in one of the flat-out best shows I’ve ever seen), because now Brian Wilson is saying sail on, sailor, to the notion of the band ever getting together again. Wilson made the announcement last night while accepting a Grammy for the band’s work last year, announcing the end of reunions.

At one point, I would have been glad for that, because the thing touring the U.S. as “The Beach Boys Band” is in no way The Beach Boys — it’s Mike Love, Bruce Johnston, and some other guys, with nary a Wilson brother in site. (Let alone founding members Al Jardine or David Marks.) But last year’s tour, and the accompanying album of new music, were surprisingly strong. Now, though, there are no good vibrations left among the true Beach Boys. The 2012 outing will be their last, and That’s Why God Made the Radio will remain their career-capping recording. But don’t worry, baby, there’s a lot of great music still out there, and a fine legacy to look back on.

Surf’s up.