The Blaguives
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Fall 2004
24 November 2004: Amazon has published a top-fifty list for the year, and, scanning it, I found that I had read eight of them and owned two more. That seems about right. Anything greater than 20% would make me a slave to buzz. Looking a little harder, though, I see that two of the books that I've "read" are pictorial - Getmapping's New York City atlas, and the New Yorker cartoon omnibus. This hasn't been a good year, chez moi, for polishing off books.
I haven't said anything about the great Gilbert Stuart show at the Metropolitan Museum, although I've been to it twice. It's great in three different ways. First, by lining up various portraits of Washington that you might be forgiven for having thought of as copies of a single master, the exhibition breaks the iconic impermeability of these images and makes it possible to see them critically - to judge, for example, the different shades of the first President's character that each embodies. (I may be chauvinist, but there's no doubt in my mind that the Met owns the best of the right-facing three-quarter shots.) Second, the abundance of first-class pictures puts Stuart squarely in league with Sir Joshua Reynolds; he is certainly no American provincial. Perhaps the most awesome is Stuart's 1823-4 portrait of John Adams. Finally, there is the picture of Bostonian Lydia Smith, who was not quite 25 when Stuart painted her in 1808-10. Lydia isn't the most beautiful girl ever to have her portrait painted, but the bright willing hopefulness of her slightly averted gaze has captured my heart, and the painting itself is terrifically fine. This picture, currently in a private collection, is not on-line, so you'll have to get to know Lydia in person, between now and the middle of January. She is a very good reason to visit New York.
The funniest thing at the show - also a Met "treasure" - is the portrait of Matilda de Jaudenes, a Philadelphia girl who got snapped up by a money-grubbing and very minor Spanish grandee. She is presented by the museum as an unwilling sitter, but I have always taken her to be quite pleased with her gaudy, goofy outfit. The doodad atop her head may make her the United States's first fashion victim.
23 November 2004: Well, it's up. From now on, you can simply click on "Daily Blague," either directly above or on the Menu Bar, and you'll be whisked to Daily Blague: the Blog, powered with all of Movable Type's features. For the time being, the first DB entry on any day will appear both here and on DB:tB - except of course today; there is no need for this paragraph to appear there.
Red State, Blue State? I think I've hit on the perfect litmus test for determining which kind of state you belong in. Do you prefer Donald Duck to Daffy Duck? Pluto to Sylvester? Fantasia to "Hollywood Steps Out"? Then you're - not Blue. If you think you have no preference, it's been too long since you've watched our pop culture's seminal cartoons. I think you'll find that they're hugely different. Disney's cartoons are, well, just what you'd expect: sweet. They're 'family fare.' Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes, in stark contrast, are sarcastic, risqué, and culturally sophisticated. Mel Blanc's vocal characterizations and Carl W. Stalling's music are as sharp and rude as Hell's Kitchen used to be - well, they've got the same tang. Kathleen noticed something else: while the Disney characters are normally gendered (Donald Duck, Minnie Mouse), the creatures at Looney Tunes fall into a rather different pair of bins: male and dim or doomed (Sylvester, Elmer Fudd, Wile E Coyote) or 'other,' neither masculine nor feminine. Bugs Bunny acts like a wise guy most of the time, but he's awfully prone to cross-dressing. Daffy Duck - well, now that we're more frank about these things, we can see that Daffy Duck is a drama queen.
St Cecilia's Day, 2004: This will be very brief. I can hardly keep my eyes open. It has been a long day, hosting-wise.
When did the Pierre become a Four Seasons Hotel? I realize that that nobody really checks in and out; the billionaires have bought all the suites. But still. That's where we'll be this Thanksgiving. That the hotel was elitist was okay. But part of a chain?
If you don't have a recording of today's Handel (yes, that Handel), get one now. This is her day.
And let me say it once again. I'm glad to be hosted at Hosting Matters. En-slightly-fin.
19 November 2004: Yesterday was a red-letter day for both of us. My site was unlocked at Earthlink and I was able to authorize a transfer to Hosting Matters. You will find this news boring and immaterial, but just you wait until it happens to you. Which, I have learned, was the meaningful nub of all my mother's curses.
As for Kathleen, the much more comprehensible news is that Gold went effective and started trading this morning on the NYSE. What's Gold? Only the latest ETF.
Bonne nuit/bonne journée.
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18 November 2004: Much as I like to believe that nihil humanum alienum est mihi, there are things here and there that I don't get. Sports, for one. I sort of see the point, but the effort knocks the wind out of me. (And yet I'll jump through any number of hoops in the kitchen, if all we're talking about is effort. In my calmer moments, I attribute my lack of interest in sports to unusually rocky hand-eye coordination. I never did manage to hit a golf ball in all those lessons that my father paid for - dont il y en avait exactement deux.) The Museum of Modern Art is another. The very idea is problematic. Does 'Modern' mean 'recent,' or 'in the Modernist style'? Either way, what are Matisse and Monet doing in there? Luckily for you, Édouard, at Sale Bête, belongs to New York's art world, and has already attended a chic reception, complete with camera. Take a look.
The terrible thing about my memory - and this would have happened when I was twenty - is that I can no longer recall the sound of Sondra Radvanovsky's voice. Little parts of it, yes, come back to me, largely because of the verbal tags that I put on them, in the form of references to other sopranos. I cannot wait to hear her again. Oh, really? Do I want to hear her badly enough to venture her performances next May of Franco Alfano's Cyrano de Bergerac (an opera of 1936)? Yikes!
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17 November 2004: As I write, I am coming down from the best night at the Met that I've ever had. Indeed, I'd given up on the possibility of having such a thing. But I wanted to see Verdi's I vespri siciliani on stage once in my lifetime, because every time that I listen to James Levine's great recording of the opera, it's my favorite Verdi. What I'm coming down from, however, is not the Verdi, which was beautifully familiar, but from the magnificence of Sondra Radvanovsky's voice, which was a Big Surprise. My old friend Michael had told me that she 'wasn't bad,' which was all I needed to plunked down $170 for the ticket. All the better, really; because I sat through her singing with my mouth agape. If I may quote from the mash note that I just sent to her Web site, her voice has "Beautiful phrasing, an exquisite legato, and no problems. Your voice is simply beautiful, and it produces correct notes. That your acting and interpretation are superb simply make for an experience that has become totally unexpected." Sorry about saying 'beautiful' three times in two seconds, but it was a mash note. If you are interested in opera and close to New York, buy a ticket.
So much for last night. Night before, I took my daughter to Jules for her birthday. As the reviews suggest, Jules has its ups and downs, but I always like it, and in the back its possible for my old-fart ears to hear conversation over the general din. I went downtown early so that I could visit the St Mark's Bookshop. Earlier in the day, I had dropped into the Barnes & Noble across the street to pick up some Alice Munro. I've read her stories in The New Yorker for years but somehow not registered their greatness; Jonathan Franzen's rave in the latest NYT Book Review indicated a fresh look. But B&N's shelves were utterly innocent of the Canadian master, which Megan, when I told her, found unsurprising. St Mark's, of course, had a good selection, including the latest, Runaway, which I must say I'm finding impressive. I also bought The Middle Mind, Curtis White's 2003 enlargement of his 2002 essay in Context. Important stuff, about which you'll be hearing more from me.
16 November 2004: So, Panamiste wasn't so crazy after all. Gothamist is looking for bilingual Parisians to start up a carnet on Gothamist lines. I won't be surprised if I've called the name; I can't quite see Parisiste - it sounds like a reason to call the doctor. For those of you whose French stopped in high school, Paname is one of the French capital's affectionate nicknames.
Will Portico be inaccessible for a day or two, or (gulp) more? I had always heard that transferring a site from one host to another could be problematic, and now I'm finding out why: the DNS nameserver doesn't turn on a dime. Also interesting to learn was the fact that, as of this morning, but with luck not for long, this site was 'locked' in Earthlink's 'wholesale portal.' It made me recall Bette Midler crying, "I've been kidnapped by K-Mart!"
15 November 2004: Today's link, one appropriate to this day of the week, is to be tucked away in a handy place where it will be available when you need it. And you'll probably need it. The Owl is Purdue University's online Writing Lab; the link will take you to the Grammar and Punctuation branch of the site.
Who knew? Don't ask. It turns out that Movable Type won't function properly on an Earthlink-hosted site. So I'm in the middle of moving to Hosting Matters. That's to say that the site is up on two servers, Earthlink's and Hosting Matters's; as soon as the DNS registration becomes effective - and I've assured myself that the new location is accessible and so on, I'll take Portico off Earthlink. Do I know what I'm doing? How can Earthlink be making do with Perl 5.00404? What is Perl? Or, as Sally White asks in Radio Days, "Who is Pearl Harbor?"
12 November 2004: Ai-yi-yi! My head. Want to know what I'm in the market for? The new blogs are up - but I can't post to them. A crushing error message tells me that compilation has been aborted because BEGIN was unsafe! Well, I expected these little problems. I've written to the good people at MT three times so far, but before hitting this snag, I figured out the problems while waiting for responses. (That's why I paid for the software.) There's something about having nothing else to do until help arrives that licenses what at first seem to be pointless experiments. But compilation errors...
I'm far too frazzled to scout for links. Scavenging at a post-election doorprize from Crooked Timber, I did find a wacky set of pictures that illustrate Secretary Rumsfeld's ninja manner of speaking.
Last night, Kathleen and I sat down to dinner at - 11:50 PM. 23:50! I was a basket case then, too, because, working late (nothing new), she had failed to materialize well over an hour after calling to say that she was on her way. Here's why. (Of course it could have been worse - 65 people are now homeless. But then things could always be worse.) At 42nd Street, imagining my state of mind, she jumped the track and called from the street while hailing a cab. Tonight, Kathleen got home at a record-breaking 8:50. Chinese is on the way.
11 November 2004: There will be those who will not be surprised to learn that I've done this, although not with 20,000 books. I'm sure they'll take pictures of the San Francisco installation, once Adobe Books's stock has been rearranged by color, but I hope that they document the arrangement. What a festival of serendipity for bookbuyers - who will have to wait, I suppose, before they can take their purchases home.
Nancy Franklin ends her review (in the current New Yorker) of TV journalism's election coverage with a sobering thought: the fourth estate may have joined the three branches of government in concluding that the interests of Blue voters are of no interest. For my part, I couldn't care less, because I haven't watched the news on TV (any station) in well over twenty-five years, with (seriously) only two or three exceptions, such as 9/11 (and then not for long). Indeed, I think that television and the nation alike would be vastly improved if the former were to abandon its sleek but mindless attempt to keep the latter informed.
Que faire? Watch the Blogosphere grow.
Happy Birthday to Genevieve Megan Miles Keefe - Many Happy Returns!
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10 November 2004: Coo'ull!
Illustrated here you will find a
cartogram of the late
election that weighs counties, votes, and populations all in one handy picture.
Looks rather like China, doesn't it. Michael Gastner, Cosma Shalizi, and Mark
Newman, at the University of Michigan, have concocted a series of diagrams that
would appear to rebut the Michelle Malkin nonsense that appeared in USA Today.
But I can't imagine a conservative looking at this map without flinching at its
deformation of the familiar and making comparisons to flag-burning. Click the
link for more cartograms.
Last June, I wrote a page entitled "The Anxieties of Honor" that, given all the talk about 'morality' that we've heard since the election, strikes me as more au courant than it was when I wrote it. It's today's PdJ (Page du Jour)
Permalink | Portico | Page du Jour
9 November 2004: The ist-as-in-Gothamist folks (see opposite) have launched a new site: Londonist. (Can Panamiste be far behind?) Those damned plinths in Trafalgar Square bring out the American in everybody over there. The latest proposal to be shot down calls for a nine-foot statue of Nelson Mandela. What's not to like? If he doesn't deserve a statue, who does?
Depressed about Southern voters? The returns-by-county map that the Times published last week showed a pretty little necklace of blue dots running (I believe) from Memphis to Atlanta, taking in Birmingham and some other urban areas on the way. It also showed that the only urban areas to vote for Bush lie well west of the Mississippi River. If you've given up on the South, this page by Ed Kilgore on New Donkey may put some color back in your cheeks. (Thanks to JMM at TPM).
Amazingly (to me), I finished the penultimate installment of my Corrections Reading Journal, and I've no doubt that I'll cover the final two-dozen pages on Wednesday. I don't mean to sound impatient or rushed, but I did promise myself that I'd complete this possibly ill-considered but really rather rewarding project before going to work on Daily Blague: the Blog. Today's PdJ is the latest entry, but a look at the Corrections Index (linked from the bottom of the page) is almost a chart of the illness that made me so ineffective for nearly all of 2003 and nearly half of this year.
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8 November 2004: Why, you ask, was my childhood so
unhappy? One of the reasons, certainly, was the horror of becoming a teenager,
which
I dreaded for years. Neither young nor old, teens were simply ridiculous. They
still are. The best thing that society could do for the poor dears would be to drop
the concept, so that, at sixteen, you'd better start acting grown-up, while, until then, you'll
eat with the children. To be a happy teenager requires either
sweet cluelessness or plain psychosis; in either case, you're
scarred for life. This superb example of late-50's teen joie de vivre to the
right comes from
Stone, a blog
run by Marc Cenedella of the East Village and -
Fredonia?.
The wonderful thing about Furniture Porn, in case you haven't seen it yet, is that it exposes the essence of video sex: power and violence. I doubt that anybody's going to be turned on by the very funny sight of two upholstered chairs humping on a Manhattan rooftop, but the fact that their animation never leaves the slightest doubt about the human behavior that's being simulated suggests (to put it mildly) that what we're seeing when we watch video sex is something less than human nature.
Weekend Special III: Y'all are just not gonna believe this. Manhattan is just so depraved!
Weekend Special II: Hello? Hello? Why didn't you tell me about Pink Martini's new CD, Hang on Little Tomato? Do I have to do everything around here? The title song ought to have no trouble finding its way into the Hymnbook of the BabbleBushian Exile. (I just made that up; now, somebody go start a blog.)
Weekend Special I: You will read Andy Borowitz, now. Then you will pack your bags. And buy a hockey stick at Paragon. Then, Penn Station...Oops! Not so fast! A fine lady who happens to be fighting in Iraq has a few words about sticking to one's guns.
5 November 2004: I hab a code. Writing is no fun when you're all stuffed up. Internautation makes for headaches. So does deciding whether Yassir Arafat is dead or 'no longer alive.' And as for 'The New Map,' two friends have already sent me links to two sites (thanks, Lauren, and thanks, Brian) featuring a proposed replay of the principal Civil War issue, which was not slavery, children. I have some thoughts about the 'new geography' that I look forward to developing once work on The Corrections (see below) is behind me and I've got the new Web log up and running. Get out the Vicks!
You can't imagine how slowly work is going on the final instalment of my 'reading journal' of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections because of my cold. Or maybe you can, seeing that I began this project just over two years ago! It's a big novel, but, sheesh! I'm not sure that I'll ever dare read the whole thing - my journal, that is. I will say that the periodic perusals that these journals transcribe has left me with no doubt that The Corrections is one of the great American novels. Beautifully written and generously expansive, its tale of the five Lamberts is intimate while you're reading it, and epic when you think about it. It is also utterly American without being at all provincial. Interestingly the only people whom I know to have disliked it have always been on good terms with their parents. That would be two people.
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4 November 2004: All I can say is: it hasn't hit me yet. I spent yesterday in a fury of blogging. To cap it off, I finally 'paid the two dollars' and acquired access to Movable Type. I even printed the fourteen-page mode d'emploi. Watch out, Blogosphere.
More on my reactions to the elections - trust me, I took it much better than I did Dubya's first victory - some other time. For now, il faut rire. Attached is a link to 9 Interviews, where actors and 'collaborators' simulate the interview racket at the annual MLA conventions. 'Tis a festival of academic nombrilisme. (On parle theory ici.)
I must thank the author of Douze Lunes, who has refocused his creativity on a new site, L'homme qui marche, for writing a heartwarming letter to me yesterday, affirming his love for and faith in the United States, notwithstanding recent developments.
3 November 2004: Me? You've got to be kidding. Tonight, no minute comes to an end. I mean last night of course. Today, who knows. No hour comes to an end? No election?
My link today is French. It's so French, even I don't understand it. One of the great French bloggers has written contrapuntal guides to (a) insulting Quebecois if you're French and (b) insulting the French if you're Canadian. Pathetic entertainment, given the day's gravity, but qu'est-ce-que c'est que je peux faire?
Election Day Special: Florida Forever! (A few seconds' patience may be necessary.)
2 November 2004: Malcolm Gladwell writes about resilience in the current New Yorker. A good thing to read about this morning, because even if, as I pray, Mr Kerry wins the election soundly, this nation's internal disorders will probably continue to rage.
Does this mean that New Yorker's needn't fear another terrorist attack from Al Qaida? (I've added Obsidian Wings to my list of sites, under Affairs.) At Sale Bête, Édouard remembers seeing a posting about notable differences between various translations of Osama bin Laden's latest public address, but I'm not surprised that he's putting off going back to daily Kos to find it. dKos is terrifyingly TMI.
Nose runny? Post-nasal drip of gag-inducing, Niagaran proportions? Clear mucus, no allergies? Hmmm. Gosh. Oh! You're taking Altace! Let's try a drug holiday. (At least it's not Remicade!)
Good manners prohibit my letting go altogether. That's why there's The Poor Man.
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1 November 2004: The last panel in the following linked page of Get Your War On introduces to the Blogosphere a word, or pair of words, that I haven't seen until now, the eve of the election - not, at least, used with such casual, and to my eyes scary, deadpan.
Better late than never? I am never going to sympathize with the Bush Entourage or its supporters, but I wonder if I haven't been mistaken to put off trying to understand them. Reading Maureen Dowd's column in the Times today, I took the following passage and tried to translate its 'backward logic' into Neo-speak:
The Bushies' campaign pitch follows their usual backward logic: Because we have failed to make you safe, you should re-elect us to make you safer. Because we haven't caught Osama in three years, you need us to catch Osama in the next four years. Because we didn't bother to secure explosives in Iraq, you can count on us to make sure those explosives aren't used against you.
The situation in Neo-speak would be something like this: We have tried to hunt down Osama bin Laden, but the job is so difficult that only a team with our resolve could ever hope to succeed. We never offered a deadline for his capture, because we know how hard capturing him will be. We don't think that Kerry knows, and we don't think that he has the resolve to try. Ditto the explosives.
Maureen Dowd's a lot more fun to read, but her 'backward logic' is the kind of irritant that makes Bush supporters fume. What we want to do instead is to make them think again. A hopeless task? Perhaps, but unless we try we're on the road to civil war, and this time there is nothing like the horror of slavery to justify such a catastrophe. What I want Bush supporters to do is to demonstrate to me that the Administration has done everything in its power to prosecute the war against terror. The evidence that I've encountered - always beginning with Donald Rumsfield discarding the TPFDL during the planning of our Iraqi misadventure - suggests just the opposite.
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29 October 2004: The actor Jeff Bridges has one of the most hands-on Web sites that I've ever seen. All the links, as well as the navigational tools, are clever doodles, and even the text is handwritten. In addition to some fun links - be sure not to miss this one - there is also a gallery of photographs taken by Mr Bridges on the sets of various movies that he has been in. My favorite is the one of the racecourse stands from Seabiscuit. (The camera never lies? Depends on which camera you're talking about.
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28 October 2004: Idly curious, I was surprised to find that Seymour Hersh's prophetic, March 2003 account of Donald Rumsfeld's 'war' with the Pentagon is still on-line. Bless The New Yorker! Having read this when it first appeared, I was perfectly prepared for what subsequently happened in Iraq, and I don't know how many times I've bored friends silly with cries of "Tip-Fiddle! Tip-Fiddle!" even though I could never remember what TPFDL stands for. ("Time-phased forces-deployment list.") Why the Kerry campaign hasn't made any hay out of this is mildly mystifying, understandable only to political junkies. Re-read it and weep. Then talk to me about 'standing firm.'
Perhaps the most poignant quote in the piece is the remark of 'a former intelligence officer':
When you kill the tip-fiddle, you kill centralized military planning. The military is not like a corporation that can be streamlined. It is the most inefficient machine known to man. It’s the redundancy that saves lives.
The leading figures in the Bush Entourage have had little or no military experience, and lots and lots of corporate-executive experience (successful or otherwise). Their lack of respect for military wisdom is tantamount to a lack of respect for soldiers' lives. Disrespect is the salient characteristic of this Administration, but it's not quite as bad as the duplicity of the BA's insistence that we 'support the troops' by not criticizing its conduct of the war.
The rapper Eminem is not on my watch list, but everybody seems to be talking about a very dark video that he has produced with Guerilla News Network. It is also very - very - anti-Bush. How it will be sliced and diced to serve the ends Rovean propaganda it is not difficult to imagine; throughout the clip, Eminem appears to be urging Americans to rise up and take angry action against the President. Only at the last minute is the punch pulled, and the sacked palace revealed to be a - polling site. We're so inured to anger at the moment that we easily forget how scandalous the video would have been in the equally tempestuous, but better-behaved climate of the late 60's. I don't recommend watching "Mosh"; it's a disheartening experience. I'm beginning to pray for a solid victory next Tuesday, by either candidate. Anger gets ugly fast.
27 October 2004: Today is our fair city's subway system's centennial. One hundred years ago today, there was only one line, running up the East Side from City Hall to 42nd Street, turning toward Times Square, and proceeding from there up the West Side (under Broadway) to 145th Street. About 150,000 riders tried it out on Opening Day. By Opening Day Plus One, everyone took it for granted.
The subways aren't better than ever, but they're certainly better than they've been at any point in my lifetime. Recovering from the Depression turned out to be a lengthy process. Read a brief history here and (with a great map at the bottom of the page) here. Take a ride in Brooklyn on some vintage subway cars. See the prize-winning suggestions for improving the subways at the Straphangers' site. Nominate someone for the revived post of Miss Subways - even if it does mean visiting the New York Post. (I think it may be too late - at least for 2004.) Make a reservation at Ellen's Stardust Diner, just off Times Square; it's owned by Miss Subways for March and April, 1959. Hmm... that sounds good.
The New Yorker has, to no one's surprise, endorsed John Kerry for President.
[Oops! We knew the magazine was pro-Kerry, but as it happens, The New Yorker has never endorsed a presidential candidate before - that would be since 1925. Thanks, Jason Kottke!]
But it's entire Comment section has been given over this week to a bill of particulars against the Bush Administration. To say that next Tuesday's election is going to change the future of America is both fatuous and misleading: it represents not a choice of policies but a decision about allowing an incompetent incumbent to continue damaging everything he touches (including 'and' and 'the'). To say that the election will determine whether America is going to have a future - a real, long-term future - would be more like it.
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26 October 2004: For those of you who have been mystified by friends laughing at the words 'loofah' and 'falafel,' I have provided a link straight to Count 78 of Andrea Mackris's complaint against Bill O'Reilly. The complaint itself is no longer news, so don't bother reading the rest of it. What's funny in an icky sort of way about Count 78 is imagining the, er, mounting excitement that induces Mr O'Reilly - allegedly, of course - to forget the first word and, even better, to replace it with the second. File under: Our Literary Journalists. (Read hilzoy's very intelligent analysis of the brouhaha at Obsidian Wings.)
There was a big fire in the neighborhood last night. I couldn't see the flames myself - and I wasn't sure that the fire wasn't in Queens until the resounding sirens made its greater proximity clear - but while it was filling the air with oily black clouds, I could find nothing about it on the Web. In this age of terror alerts, I find that - disappointing. I guess we're not as far along as I'd thought. This is, after all, the most densely-populated Congressional district in the United States, and the Vinegar Factory is surrounded by apartment buildings. Doubtless there's an open blog somewhere that I don't know about. Do you?
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25 October 2004: Gone fishing; meditating blog. But fun abounds. Four months ago, I didn't know Fafnir from Fafblog. Now I'm laughing like a sophomore at this newboy's comment. Doesn't matter if you didn't read Giblets' rant. Suffice it to say that it began:
In the nonstop panic attack that is the modern American national security climate, it is difficult to see who may best lead America... difficult for stupid people! For while many things may be unclear in the heady rhetoric of the campaign season, one thing is certain: Giblets will destroy you if you do not vote for him.
22 October 2004: Have you seen the Mona Lisa? When we were at the Louvre last November, we didn't even bother. While far from the least of the museum's holdings, it is famous for being famous. Unfortunately, it happens to be quite small (77 x 53 cm) and rather dark, you can't get very close to it, and there is always trop de monde. So people come away disappointed. Word of disappointment, however, has done nothing to diminish the eagerness of the uninitiated.
Looking for something more pop cultural? There have been several Web animations attacking the Bush Administration's environmental record with satire, and this is not the best of them (as I recall), but there's something about the smirking line dancing midway through that catches me. Of course, I can remember when 'The Monster Mash' was a hit.
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21 October 2004: Don't miss Fafblog on the draft; not only does Fafnir rattle on like a Dixiecrat senator from the old days, but the Questioner's sane, sensible voice amps up the nonsense factor. While you're still chuckling, expand your knowledge of phone-sex possibilities.
Okay, fun's over. Public service time. On Monday, I ran a link to the transcript of Jon Stewart's appearance on Crossfire. Today, I looked at the video clip. It is (as no lawyer would be surprised to hear) ten times more intelligible than the transcript. What's more, Mr Stewart - who seems to me to be channeling the Matthew McConaughey role in Contact - obviously commands the show. Could this be the end of Tucker Carlson? To be honest, who cares about him. Watch the clip if you can - it may very well turn out to have been historic.
As everyone knows by now, Kerry and Bush are distant cousins. Very distant, going back more generations than most of us can count. They both spring from old New England families - in some cases, the same old New England families. But you don't have to go back centuries to find Bush cousins who prefer Kerry. (Thanks, Édoard!) Meet the Houses.
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20 October 2004: So true, and it sounds better in French, too: "Si vous êtes réellement anti-américain, vous ne pouvez effectivement que souhaiter la victoire de George W. Bush." Laurent Gloaguen, at Embruns.
"Technorati's Top 100 Blogs List is out. I went over it four times, but still couldn't find Talking Points Memo, and that gave rise to questions about Technorati that the 'About Technorati' page doesn't answer.
A year ago, I tried inserting a genuine Web log in this column. What a fiasco! Of course, I wasn't reading any blogs in those days, so fiasco is just what I deserved. In July of this year, I thought I was very clever when I figured out how to simulate features of a blog, more or less, but I've since learned that appearance isn't everything; there are many tools and resources that effectively plug blogs into the blogosphere, and they are licensed by Movable Type, TypePad, and others. The easy thing to do would be to set up a real blog, duplicate the content between here and there, and find out how it all works. "Roger, pay the two dollars." Well, I would, but it's more than two dollars. Consider this a solicitation for suggestions.
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19 October: Who knows where Atrios got this lovely little satire on Rush Limbaugh? As so often happens, I got it from Édoard at Sale Bête. And for seriousness from an unexpected source, the transcript of Jon Stewart's appearance on Crossfire.
The last of David Orr's literary Web sites to get my attention is Moby Lives! It wasn't going to get any attention at all, because Mr Orr wrote that, while it was excellent, it was 'currently on hiatus.' But then I bumped into a link claiming that the hiatus had ended. Moby Lives! falls into the bookchat genre, but it is not without a genuinely literary aspect, and its coverage, while knowing, seems less resolutely insiderish. As a serious reader, you just might care to know what appears on this page.
In a conversation with Elvis Costello that appears in the current issue of Vanity Fair (which doesn't seem to have Web site), Joni Mitchell complains that everyone she knows claims to have Attention Deficit Disorder - and to be proud of it. This may explain why there aren't any (or many) literary Web sites. Nobody has taken the time to read the literature. As to undiagnosed ADD claims, they've got to be seen as the badges of smug laziness that they really are.
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18 October 2001: Here's a bumper sticker for intelligent people who still have bumpers:
The bumper sticker was made by Two Unemployed Democrats Co., which has a Web site at www.seeyageorge.com. Paying attention has been the great American failing - throughout our history. That's the good-bad side of democracy. When things work well, you don't have to think about them. As this bumper sticker suggests, things haven't been working well.
Thanks to Ron Suskind for handing out a handy triage device: is your political outlook faith-based or reality-based? Thanks to Dubya, it can't be both!
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15 October 2004: Nuts. A fantastic and important article - and not online. That would be David Owen's "Green Manhattan," in the current (October 18) issue of The New Yorker. Studded with amazing factlets - Manhattan is 800 times more densely populated than the national average! A density of seven households per acre is sufficient to support public transportation - Mr Owen's piece argues that conventional environmental thinking is all wrong about the Big Apple. Our biggest environmental disasters today are cars, which New Yorkers don't need (and ought not to be allowed to park in the street!) and lawns. Yes, lawns. Of which Mr Owen writes: "The modern suburban yard is perfectly, perversely self-justifying: its purpose is to be taken care of." A trait that's typical of most vanity badges. Ever since Jefferson, Americans have been complaining about cities, but Mr Owen shows how wrong it is for the Sierra Club to describe suburban sprawl as 'urbanization.'
Faute de mieux, then, are links to something unusual: two articles in the same issue by the same writer. Anthony Lane writes with uncharacteristic calm and admiration about Ronald Reagan in the movies, but reverts to his Nathan-Lane-inflected 'natural' voice about new releases. Reading them might persuade you to buy the magazine.
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14 October 2004: The question about last night's debate, in my opinion, is simply this: did Dubya's smirky but sweaty last-minute channeling of Billy Graham, the Charles Durning character in O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Ryan O'Neill work with the electorate? We will see. I think it was all a little too late.
What a fun day! I came to the computer this morning to find a message on the screen about Windows updates, which meant that the machine must have looping in limbo all night long. That was the first problem. The second was trying to install a new HP printer. According to the installation window, there was a failure to connect with 'the device,' but once all the software had been installed, everything worked fine. By then, however, I'd written down the serial number (which quite wonderfully appears on the printer's display panel) and gathered my receipt and a telephone number for support. When I restarted the machine (for the seventh or eighth time today, thanks to the first problem, I had no problems. How long will that last? Just par for the course in Microhell. Reading this in Jason Kottke's blog simply strengthened my resolve: the next machine will be an Apple!
Our ongoing consideration of David Orr's tour of the literary Web: I doubt that any Web site has roused the elitist in me faster than Fanfiction. 'Fanfic' is for people whose response to literature is to try to squeeze sequels out of their generally adolescent imaginations. Following in David Orr's footsteps, I looked into growths on the corpus of Jane Austen, and found nothing that wasn't jejune. Each one of the 'stories' that I looked at - and I confined myself to the 'Books' Directory - petered out quickly, often immediately, as if the author had tasted the emptiness of the enterprise. (I did, however, steer clear of Lord of the Rings derivatives, so I may have missed something. If I did, it can't have been literary.) There 'columns,' too, but according to the listings, the most recently updated column was last modified in May of this year. The proliferating spoor of short attention spans soon gave me a headache. Godawful Fan Fiction is supposed to be the antidote, but it's actually even more headache-making. Besides, if you don't have Internet poisoning, you don't need an antidote.
Phew: that almost wraps up this project.
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13 October 2004: I don't know what Publishers' Lunch is doing on a list of 'literary' sites. It is a purely commercial, subscription-oriented clearing house, hardly more literary than, say, a book distributor's invoices. Then again, everybody's a writer these days, even if nobody's a reader. If, as David Orr claims, Everyone Who's Anyone In Adult Trade Fiction Publishing "will tell you more about the book world than any five 'How-to-Publish' treatises combined" - and I see no reason to doubt him - then why he is taking up my time with such a site? As to The Literary Dick, I would say that it has fizzled out. I would not say that I understood its purpose, since much of the writing has nothing to do with mysteries of any kind. Your response to The Underground Literary Alliance may be gauged by the strength of your conviction that John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces was a masterpiece. And by your toleration for revolutionary hullabaloo.
So don't bother with any of those - sorry to put those links in your way! Go instead to the hilarious London News Review Book Diary. The link will take you to a posting that I found quite sidesplitting, if anything so deadpan can be thus described. The author, one Sean, visits a UK site that lists the books set for publication in Britain on any given day - and then he makes up thumbnails out of whole sail. Here, at last, is a truly literary site, and although it's humor tends toward the insiderish (at least from my perspective), I wish I were half as funny. (You probably didn't know that I try to be funny.)
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12 October 2004: For those who wonder, quite rightly, in my opinion, if our national security hasn't been handed over to a clod of specialists in directing the parking at football games, I suggest finding grim - funny grim, but mostly grim - confirmation in Kieran Healy's account of a disaster drill at the University of Arizona.
Getting back to our tour of 'literary' blogs, David Orr himself says that Web del Sol is confusing. It's definitely in need of Edward Tufte! Simply to say, as does the 'About' page, that "Web Del Sol cannot be classified as a literary publication or an Internet portal in the traditional sense (though it contains both subsets), but rather as a literary arts new media complex which pushes the envelope of both definitions" - well there's nothing simple about that, is there - doesn't excuse design overload. Helpless, I clicked the top left button, 'Columns,' and came across a list of enterprises, including a joint venture that caught my eye and took me to Rain Taxi, the online version of an alternative literary magazine. Where WDS is a volcano of information, Rain Taxi is neat as a pin. I read two reviews in the current (Fall 2004) issue, one of Nicholson Baker's Checkpoint, and another about a scholar's attempt to reconcile Emerson and Ellison, among others. Both were better than just interesting, and I look forward to visiting this site when I'm not on the prowl. Rain Taxi, in turn, led me to Frank, an ambitious and adventurous review published by an American in Paris. Like Words Without Borders, however, it published original material. That's not what's in short supply on the Web. What's in short supply is judgment and guidance.
Reading the Interview with Anthony Lane on Identity Theory, I suddenly realize that movies don't work if you haven't done a lot of reading. Without the resonance that familiarity with our great literature provides, Grand Illusion is simply a failed, boring Jerry Bruckheimer project. Robert Birnbaum's interviews, in any case, are intelligent, and there are lots of them. I've added a link on the left, so have a look at his roster and bookmark a few to visit later.
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11 October 2004: We'll take a little break from the literary blog problem in order to vent what may be our final expression of election fatigue. (Ha Ha Ha - or is it heh heh?) Yes, we're tired, but the election must go on, n'est-ce pas? If you have a drop of energy left, then click here for an archetypal confrontation. (We're so tired that we muffed the link late last night.)
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Weekend Special: They've done it again at JibJab: "It's Good To Be In D.C." (sung to Dixie)
8 October 2004: Words Without Borders deserves a note unto itself, and as much attention as anyone can spare. This intelligent online magazine offers a new front page every month, organized around a geographical or subject-matter theme ("Writing from North Korea," the Independent's foreign-literature prize). Links take the visitor to translated excerpts from various writers' work; every now and then, the original text is also made available. The site has one of the clearest layouts that I've encountered on the Web, which of course only makes the foreign more familiar. This is a site that I plan to visit and support, as I think every cosmopolitan reader ought to do. Even literate Americans have no idea of the provincial limitations of their native language; while American books are translated world-wide, hardly anything is translated into American.
But Word Without Borders helps me to understand something that I'm looking for in a literary site: not literature itself, but appraisals and appreciations of literature.
But, hey, it's Friday night. How about a good old practical joke? (Thanks to Heather and friends.)
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7 October 2004: And by the way, they're not, these literary sites, all blogs. My misstep. David Orr mentioned three poetry sites in his NYTBR article (see below, 5 October), and I thought I'd get these out of the way with a few words. I'm not competent to pass judgment on contemporary poetry, because I rarely read it. The older I get, the more important meter and palpable rhythm - elements of memorability - become; nor do I have time for the impenetrability of, say, John Ashbery. The fact that most of the readers of contemporary poetry are also writers of contemporary poetry is disconcertingly without parallel in other fields of endeavor (I exclude blogging here, because for many it is not an endeavor).
Mr Orr's three sites do nothing to make me feel that I'm missing something. Cosmoetica is a wildly undisciplined site, rudely written, almost deliberately unattractive, and its owner's presumption at rewriting Milton is, well, gasp-making. If you find something compelling about this site, let me know. I may not agree, but I won't bark, either. Foetry, like the chattering sites that I looked at on Tuesday, is about the world of poetry, not poetry itself; specifically, it investigates corruption in the poetry-prize circuit. Its clever design needs a bit of tweaking. Sign up in the forum, and poetry's equivalent of STASI files will tumble down upon you in an avalanche. At least, I presume so; not having signed up myself, I couldn't check it out. Poetry Daily offers a fresh recent poem every day. "From The Farm Accounts of Mrs. C. Jones," by Sarah Kennedy, may not be there when you read this, but it is good enough to re-read, and I was quite taken by
... every month
a careful list of profit
and expense. ...
although I'd have made a single line of fine pentameter out of the last two - philistine that I am. One out of three, in an area that's far from the top of my list, isn't bad.
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6 October 2004: 'Literary' blogs continued: The Complete Review is a site worth checking out once you've read a book and are curious about what others think. (The reviews on Amazon, while literary in content, are too often not quite literate.) There is a grading system that I didn't try to puzzle out, based on the reviews that appear in such magazines as The New Yorker (not that there are really any other 'such' magazines); excerpts from these reviews are followed by the site's own review. Sadly, the writer/s behind The Complete Review is/are invisible. Does one person write all the reviews, or are there several contributors? This is crucial information, because the value of any review is weighted by the reader's accumulated responses to other reviews by the same hand. I'm not asking for names and addresses here, but tags would be helpful. The site's use of the first-person plural is misguided: committees don't write reviews.
Based on the site's evaluation of Donna Tartt's novel of last year, The Little Friend, I would not recommend The Complete Review as a source of prospective advice. It's last word on Friend is "boring." While not the breathtakingly un-put-down-able novel that The Secret History was, The Little Friend cannot be dismissed as "boring" by any reader with a good ear.
At present, The Complete Review's look and feel are fairly rudimentary, suggesting a preponderance of enthusiasm over judgment. Let's hope things mellow.
I learned of the Fish-Biscuit wedding by trawling through sites associated with my IRT subway stop, as compiled by nyc bloggers. There's nothing like a good sendup, and Fulminious's sense of exaggeration is really quite elegant. In other amusing notes, check out this combo of baby and bath-water.
The vice-presidential debate, you ask? I say that I am totally mystified by the success in any line of work of a man so extravagantly unattractive as Dick Cheney. His imitation of a dog guarding its bowl of chow is startlingly repellent, and if I had to sit through his sneering and snarling in person, I'd have to smack him. For more political analyses, check out the usual suspects. For more information about the impressive Gwen Ifill, have a look at her PBS page.
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5 October 2004: If you're reading this, then Earthlink has cleared up its Web-hosting problem. I love Earthlink, but - Grrrr.
So what about the sites that David Orr wrote up for the Book Review in "The Widening Web of Digital Lit"? Are they literary? I looked at three today, and the only 'literary' page that I came across was at the end of a link. Claire Muccio in The Morning News offers some cheeky thumbnail reviews of recent books. I was with her until she got to the one book on her list that I'd read, but then she'd only just begun to read it. There is definitely room on the Web for more of this sort of thing - quick, clever, articulate, and either provocative or provoking. Room for several such sites, really.
As for Bookslut, Maud Newton, and Beatrice, these sites concern themselves with literary chatter. They're not about books but about the authors, publishers, agents, and others who produce books - and (how could I have overlooked this?) their critics. While a few of the items are piquant - make the right bid, and Raymond Carver's fishing boat will be yours - the content of interesting books is not a primary concern. All three sites are well-conceived and well-written, and for people in the publishing biz they're probably must-reads. But outsiders who loiter on these sites are estopped from complaining about not having enough time for reading.
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4 October 2004: As readers of The New Yorker and The New York Times know, Andy Borowitz is a funny guy. Wouldn't you know, he has a Web site that reflects this characteristic. This week's Times Book Review ran a two-page exploration of 'literary' blogs; I'll be checking them out this week. HSEITHB. (Hope springs eternal...)
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1 October 2004:
Everything
got dropped yesterday when a big box from Amazon was opened. An addict of
Getmapping's London and Edinburgh atlases, I never thought that New York would
tempt the publishers, but that's probably because the Number One thing that I
dislike about Gotham is the grid system of endless avenues and no vistas. It
is possible to get lost in Manhattan, but you have to be very drunk.
In any case, the New York Photo Atlas is more interesting than I thought it would be. Bear in mind, this is not a 'New York from the Air' sort of book. This is a map of the city made up of photographs taken from direclty overhead, more or less. To put it concisely: finding the Empire State Building takes a second more than you'd expect. Madison Square Garden, hardly a prepossessing edifice, is in contrast a real standout from the perpendicular.
For me, there's a slight unexpected bonus. Not so slight for me personally, mind you. The fact that the photographs of the Bronx bleed upward into Westchester means that each of the three places that I lived in until I was twenty (when we moved to Houston) are clearly visible from the air. All right, 29 Hathaway Road falls in what ought to have been the gutter between photographs, and I won't know if it's really there until I've had a chance to examine the book under direct sunlight with a magnifying glass. But The Wellington (on Palmer Road) and our house on Paddington Circle (enfin la vraie Bronxville!) are magnificently there, even if their rooftops say nothing much about the houses I lived in. The trees, of course, are thirty to fifty years taller.
30 September 2004: Our great friend, Susan Babcock, has worn many hats, and her latest is that of film producer. Documentarian Jake Gorst has written and directed an adaptation of Farmboy, a memoir of growing up on a farm in the Thirties that Susan's father, John, published a few years ago. Home movies, photographs, and interviews are interwoven with charming atmospheric reenactments in which the author's boyhood self is played by the author's grandson, Nathan John Swartz. We're impressed!
29 September 2004: Somebody's got to do it - but you'd think they'd be on the payroll. I wonder if anybody who works for Starbucks has visited each and every outpost. Somehow it seems unlikely. Perhaps nobody has. But somebody out there is certainly trying. Once you've taken that in, be sure to explore the 'Call me Winter...' link.
28 September 2004: Because I had to take three history of science courses as part of my Great Books major, I can tell you that I met the word "libration" a long time ago. But I've never known what it meant, honest. Until now. I see that the term comes from libra - and we all know about the unsteadiness of Libras (they're always quick to tell one). But who was ready for the proof? Not I. I was calmly sure that the moon simply sits up there, just short of three hundred thousand miles away, implacably turning its other half to the stars. To find out that this is not true, that in fact we get to see sixty-two percent of the moon's surface (rather rather more than half - and yes, I meant both 'rathers'), is not on paper a difficult novelty. But to see it, here - my Lord, the moon could wobble itself right into somebody's tennis game.
If you have a dial-up connection, don't worry: the video will load itself slowly but then begin to spin inexorably. Really very upsetting! But at least we're looking at it. (Thanks to Laura Klann Heid.)
27 September 2004: It's time to acknowledge that I can't get through the day without reading Fafblog. Notwithstanding an occasional Ali G intonation (or perhaps because of it), the author of this site, who divides himself like Gaul into three parts - Fafnir, Giblets, and the Medium Lobster - is an altogether intelligent writer. Exuberantly elusive, but unquestionably brainy, he has, in correspondence with yours truly, compared himself with the Elder Pitt, a crack that would have brought down upon his head the derision of the entire House of Commons back in the day when MPs knew who the Elder Pitt was. Now that they don't, it's refreshing simply to hear the name. One might wish for a slightly more, er, designed Web site, one with permalinks for example, but one doesn't complain. One suggests instead that one's friends scroll down until they get to the entry where Giblets goes Homeric about having the latest cell phone. And then the next latest.
Now that I've screwed on my weekday, DB self, I'm thinking, I assure you, of nothing but this weekend's New York Times Magazine cover story about political blogs. Of the three pros who got the lion's share of Matthew Klam's intelligent attention, I read only the site to which I've already posted a link, Talking Points Memo. Josh Marshall is so monastic that he hasn't deigned to notice the attention. Which is upsetting. More later - I want to think about why Jason Kottke calls the article 'odd.' .
Weekend Special: Another doll, this one a little
boy from Spain, Guillermo Wiandt Eskurdia.
24 September 2004: Surf's up, and it's awesome! The wave doesn't look like much at first, but as the zoom pulls back (where's the camera, anyway?), one begins to think of The Poseidon Adventure. If that young man survived without a broken back, I'll be astonished to learn it. Visitors of a certain disposition will doubtless find much else on www.big-boys.com to entertain them (never was a site more aptly named), but everyone ought to check out this ultimately reassuring video, involving a concrete wall and an F-4 Phantom Jet.
23 September 2004: This morning, something for the ladies. Discretion prevents me from disclosing how I came across the Web site of Julietta Fiscella, pathologist and fashion designer, but I can assure you that I didn't find it on one of my own safaris. Dr Fiscella, who hails from Rochester, New York, has had the bright idea of decorating handbags, totes and such with cunning little designs of a medical nature: a microscope, a blood-pressure cuff, and a lung design that's not nearly as off-putting as you might expect from a person who looks at diseased tissues all day. I almost forgot: there's a necktie, too. You might find just the right gift for the medico in your family.
The Department of Idiocy rules! Airliner diverted from Washington to Bangor because Cat Stevens was a passenger! (Remember him?) Sits on tarmac for over four hours! That's the part I really like. I'd have been arrested for sure if I'd been on that plane - if I hadn't managed to kill myself first. Stupidity on this order I find toxic. Tom Ridge, a good-old-guy who has never been an even halfway-bright bulb on any chandelier that he has found himself screwed into, excuses himself on cue.
(Is it possible to look at any photograph of Tom Ridge ever published and not realize that he has the IQ of a football?)
Say what you like about whether Cat Stevens, now Yusuf Islam (my Lord, he's been Yusuf Islam since Harold and Maude appeared on video!), ought to be allowed entry to our sacred but vulnerable precincts; we'll focus on the he-said/he-said battle between HeimatSicherheit and United Airlines, each blaming the other for the oversight of letting this retired, mostly looseleaf artist board a plane. Even really famous and well-known 'terrorists' can permeate our borders! Osama, give it a try! Maybe you'll get to Rolla, MO!
22 September 2004: I have a slight tendency to brag about the Metropolitan Museum of Art, viz. my proximity to it. C'est à dire qu'it makes me cool. Imagine my state of abashment (comment se dit cela en français?) when I learned of the far superior Sheboygan Art Museum, which, as everybody knows, is so big that it can be seen from the moon. A museum with bowling lanes! Not to mention a Hall of Carpets. Visitez-le!!
21 September 2004: Did I really link to 'Gay Boy Friend' late last night? Yikes. (The blonde can sing, though, don't you think? Not that she gets much of a chance.) It's an Internet problem, I swear. General interest Web sites fall into two categories, the wicked and the political, and, Lord, am I in political-fatigue mode. It's gotten so bad that I'm ready to promise to worship and glorify Dubya if he will only crown himself King of the Texans. The White House will become a museum of democracy, and Crawford can become our new Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen). But then, as you know, I've been reading about Cheneymagne.
But, seriously, here are a few thoughtful words from Umberto Eco about the difference between looking forward and looking (being) backward. The contrast that he draws reminds me of the 'Vespers' section of Auden's Horae Canonicae - an infusion of poetic pessimism that I have never been able to shake.
(The link is to the entire poem; for those of you who don't know your canonical hours, you must scroll through 'Prime,' 'Terce,' 'Sext' and 'Nones' before getting to 'Vespers.' By all means, read the entire poem. It's great.)
20 September 2004: I spent Sunday night working out a fascinating theory about how the roughly simultaneous invasions of Saracen, Hungarian, and Norse marauders, which plagued Europe for a hundred and fifty years, starting, amusingly, during the zenith of that earlier hyperpower, Charlemagne, were terrorist acts! But, hey, there are no links to Charlemagne! So I had to settle for this out-of-tune paean to what scares the bejesus out of terrorists everywhere.
Happy Birthday, Riann!
Weekend Special: Our Connecticut friend's daughter, Riann. She'll be three on Monday. Ain't she a doll?
17 September 2004: There's nothing like a Web
video to make you feel that the networks are profoundly irrelevant. That's not
to say that you can trust everything you see.
Grand Theft America, a
reverse tribute to Katherine Harris, is probably sound (Thanks for the link to
Édouard at
Sale Bête). But for a
critique of the
Pentagon piece, check out the
related comments at
Towleroad, my source for this
link.
I'd heard that we could expect a wet weekend here in New York, as Ivan dumps its hoard of water. But the NOAA projection suggests otherwise. (It may have changed by the time you read this.) Genug schon with the hurricanes.
16 September 2004: Astonishingly, I keep forgetting to push my own new pages here. If you've been thinking about reading The Master, by Colm Tóibín (can anybody tell me how to pronounce that?), I'll be happy to provide some encouragement.
But seeing as I wrote that, it's not exactly news to me. The source of today's outside encouragement, such as it was, was this article in the Times, which confirmed something for which I wasn't exactly seeking confirmation. I'd followed the solar storms in the blogosphere - Kerry must attack, must master some dirty tricks! - but I was slow to realize that they might amount to something. Pardon my maladresse. You kids out there are our hope. Vote!
15 September 2004: Certain friends of mine ought not to open the following link during workday hours - you'll know who you are when I say Metronaps. (Me, I couldn't even take a nap in kindergarten.)
Thanks to Ken Roberts for forwarding a not-at-all-bad faux-Sinatra reworking of a classic for our times, Strangers on My Flight. Makes me want to fish out that old Joe Piscopo parody. Now that the funny guy is talking about running to replace Gov McIamgay, maybe they'll reissue it.
14 September 2004: Boomers of a certain age - antiques dating from before 1950 - often feel that nobody has been brought up outside a monkey cage since we were in eighth grade. Nothing excites this contempt more than poor cell-phone habits. Ever-vigilant Gothamist, staffed by exceptions to my suggested rule, has discovered a still-handy manual from the Bell System on How To Make Friends on the Telephone. My favorite suggestion: talk to the person at the other end of the line, not to the handset. Still, sadly, a vital point to make.
Today's second treat will definitely be repeated in March - guess why. It's hard to know whether more of this sort of thing will be a boon, but for the moment the field is vast and empty, and Frank Lesser has it all to himself. I think. I love the perversion of the original song's romance, which was total crap and not even, it turns out, Irish (see the links). Londonderry Air remains a great tune - a whistler's delight. Which is how it ought to be heard and known.
13 September 2004: On Saturday afternoon, I had two errands to run on the West Side, and I walked from one to the other down Central Park West. It was a lovely day, and there were plenty of people out and about between 81st Street - the northern perimeter of the American Museum of Natural History (dinoville) and 72nd Street, where the Dakota acts as a gateway to the Park Drives that, on weekends at least, remain as innocent of motorized vehicular traffic as they were when the building was new. The general mood echoed the weather, suggesting that 9/11 was something that everybody could handle.
I'm always been asked for directions, even in foreign cities where I don't speak the local language - it comes with the height and the absent-minded scowl. In front of the Natural History Museum, though, I intervened for the first time without having been asked. Two dudes were wondering rather audibly where 79th Street was. It took several exchanges to convince them that 79th Street could be found behind the Museum, which blocks this important cross street's access to CPW. My good deed for the day. Or was it? Now that I've glanced at the Museum's Web site, and learned that it talks of a '79th Street entrance,' I worry that I may have sent the guys on a wild-goose chase. That's what I get for intervening! Or, rather, it's what they get.
Walter Kirn, author of Up in the Air, has a piece in the Sunday Times magazine suggesting that it's better to let memories of 9/11 go if that's the only way to prevent politicians from exploiting them. Indeed. I think I've got a better way to honor to the wound, however - at least for New Yorkers who don't hold Woody Allen's love life against him. Manhattan.
I'll say more about this tomorrow, if the link is still there, but for now just read the story of Atlanta Police Officer Stanley Street. Why did he have to rob a bank three times? I'm not sure that even Carl Hiaasen could have dreamed this one up.
Weekend Special: Time on your hands? Yearning to do something creative? PhotoShop handy? Amaze your friends!
10 September 2004: During the past year, I've crossed the border that separates acquisitiveness from its opposite. If time is money, stuff is time, and I'd like to have a lot less of it. But donations can be a hassle, especially if you're trying to get rid of a lot of stuff in one blow. So I'm delighted to read that Real Simple Magazine has rounded up a bunch of sponsors for what promises to be the biggest tag sale ever, at Central Park's Great Lawn on 16 and 17 October. Proceeds will benefit the Fund for Public Schools. This sounds like a super-good idea.Why, there's even a drop-off location not too far from our self-storage unit.
And when I've gotten rid of stuff I don't need, I may have some room for a Go Bag.
9 September 2004:
Did I say Eustace Tilley? I meant, of course, Eustace Penguin,
Cartoonbank's mascot.
As I wrote two days ago, the latest New Yorker cartoon compilation consists of a great big book of over 2000 drawings and two CD's with all 68, 647 cartoons that the magazine has published since its inception in February, 1925. Now that I've had a chance to look at the discs (ha! what else have I been doing since Tuesday?), I can report that, while the resolution isn't great - not a problem for high-contrast, linear drawings, but a drawback for the many cartoons that involve wash - the point of the CD's is primarily documentary. If you want to review all of the published cartoons by Richard Taylor, for example, no problemo. If you want to know when Charles Addams's patent-lawyer gag, "Death ray, fiddlesticks! It doesn't even slow them up!", was run, no problemo. It took but a minute to find a cartoon that Kathleen taped to her office door in 1993, Gahan Wilson's picture of a pedestrian with an enormous cell phone into which he's saying, "Wonderful! This way I can go block after block talking to myself and nobody looks at me as if I were crazy." Only eleven years ago? Seems like a lifetime. If you're crazy about the cartoon, you can probably buy it, framed and matted, from Cartooonbank. That's why the whole package, books and CD's, costs a mere $60. It's a catalogue. But don't hold that against it.
Mr & Mrs Smith! I Confess! Foreign Correspondent! A batch of vintage Hitchcocks has just appeared on DVD. You don't need a link to stock up, but let me apply a small hatpin: Mr & Mrs Smith is one of the top five screwball comedies ever made. Something of a stepchild because Hitchcock fans aren't looking for comedies and screwball fans find it a bit dark, this labor of love - Carole Lombard was a pal, and wanted Hitch to direct her - looks a lot better now than it did in 1941. All right, I'll make it easy.
8 September 2004: Visit the parallel universe of the neo-barbs - short for the new barbarians, or biking Vikings, for the operetta version of our Iraqi misadventure. (Via Sale Bête.) Imagine being somewhat less than horrified to read the following in the newspaper:
Another Swedish ambush technique is to stop American troops on the street and tell them Swedish jokes. The Americans die of boredom waiting for the punch line, which does not exist. Worst of all, the Swedes have simply gone on being Swedes, paying high taxes and enjoying a wide variety of government services. All American efforts to transform Sweden in to a laissez-faire capitalist paradise simply fall on barren ground.
But by all means, visit www.despair.com, a site unlikely to inspire despair in anybody who's not attached to a human-resources death squad.
7 September 2004: The doorman buzzer rang rather early this morning, and I wondered who could be delivering what. Presently a guy from DHL was at the door, carrying a square-topped box large enough to hold two telephone directories. While I tried to sign his handheld, the image of Eustace Tilley floated into view. Goody, I thought. The cartoons.
All the cartoons. All 68,647 'drawings' ever published (up to some recent cut-off date) by The New Yorker. On two CD's. Plus a book of more than two thousand cartoons in print. Lots of printed cartoons have appeared in earlier compilations, but a good many haven't, or so my rapt perusal of random pages tells me. The year of publication appears in the corner of each even-numbered page, a feature that renders the collection a sedimentary archeology of the magazine's sense of humor. From the bimbos and naked housewives of the olden days to 'Queer Eye for the Dead Guy,' The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker is American history at its easiest to swallow.
Some day, the cartoons will have to be annotated. What's so funny about four winged bankers turning their backs on two possible former colleagues, one of whom says, "You just can't talk to that bunch. They all avoided probate"? This 1967 drawing, by Mischa Richter, refers to that year's best-seller - which, aiming for another kind of immortality, has been updated ever since.
What's the word for opening the Bible and taking a random verse as revelation? (Now, there's question for Microsoft's impending search engine.) In an adieu of sorts to summer, I came upon Roz Chast's 1984 triptych, "More Hamptons." Which are, Fanhampton, Tubhampton, and Roofhampton. I realized that I'd been so busy this summer, rethinking Portico, that I never spotted anybody soaking up sunlight on the roofs of neighboring walk-ups.
Copyright (c) 2004 Pourover Press