Tom’s Essay (2008) | Hacker News Reader

Tom’s Essay (2008)

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com

A good read.

I didn't realise that Tom's Diner is Monk's Cafe from Seinfeld.

Also, just had a look at it on gmaps; got a kick out of seeing Penske trucks around it.

Is there any sweeter recompose? I'm a huge Waits fan, huge Seinfeld fan. I have never imagined a connection before now, but my God.

> Is there any sweeter recompose? I'm a huge Waits fan, huge Seinfeld fan. I have never imagined a connection before now, but my God.

What's the connection to Waits? As far as I know, the Tom of Tom's Diner (and Tom's Essay) isn't Tom Waits, and I don't think he covered the song.

I am an idiot, I skimmed the article, and thought it was about Tom Waits Nighthawks at the Diner (which is also a painting).

I used to live around the corner from Tom's Restaurant in the 1980s (it's just south of Columbia University), but I think I only ate there once. When I saw it later on Seinfeld it looked very familiar, but it took me a while to convince myself that it was actually the restaurant from my old neighborhood.

Here is a really nice live version of the eponymous song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkYPge6ZKSQ

And this is the version most people know: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLP6QluMlrg

Ironically that version is very heavily compressed. Flipping through a bunch on YouTube I couldn't find any that weren't shitified in some way. Playing it on Spotify high quality (requires premium I think) was the best version I could find: https://open.spotify.com/track/7f9sC9fvtjYSZYOLSmKJlq?si=5L3...

But... this was not the version referenced by Brandenberg. That was the acapellla version, which I also could not find a decent version of online. https://open.spotify.com/track/6OKUhXuJMvoVPde9fMJJzy?si=gLJ...

A small thread from 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18414132

(Reposts are fine after a year: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

Cheers Dan

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