Archives for October 2003

BuzzMachine is wicked on the Brad Pitt-Jennifer Aniston Middle East peace initiative, tossing off a pair of sentences I desperately wish I’d written:

That’s what the Middle East needs: a laughtrack.

And that’s the wonderful thing about stars: They have no idea how stupid they are and they have no one to tell them.

(He really should have spelled Aniston’s last name right, though, even though the original story doesn’t.)

Lileks, whom I wish would write about cultural stuff more often, knocks it way out of the park with today’s fugitive essay on Fantasia:

When I look at the great animation of the past, I have the same reaction I have when I see a skyscraper from the end of the Jazz Age boom. Magnificent, utterly American – and for all the machinery involved, it all comes down to the movement of the human hand.

The hand behind the mouse creates something different than the hand behind the pen. Better and worse and worse and better. Classical animation is dead, I think. Frescos, meet oil.

I know he’s right. I wish he weren’t.

Finally, don’t read this story about “earworms” (the technical term for songs that get stuck in your head) unless you want to have your whole day ruined.

You’re tempted now, aren’t you?

If I’ve been scarce around here, you can blame my recent initiation into the fine American art of tailgating. The rumors are true; I gave over my entire Sunday to football and associated activities. You have to hand it to the diehard fans out there every Sunday in the parking lots of America with their grills and coolers; they really know how to turn a football game into a mere occasion for more important pursuits. Never let it be said, pace Oscar Wilde, that they don’t take meals seriously; in this respect, at least, there is nothing shallow about them. I’ve only lately recovered from yesterday’s demonstrations of their depth.

Like I said, this was a first for me (and, for a while at least, a last). On the strength of my native sympathies with the Detroit Lions, I was invited to the Lions-Bears game here in Chicago. Read: sacrificial lamb. The Bears fans who brought me even provided a honolulu-blue Barry Sanders jersey for me to wear, the better to be picked out by the orange-and-navy-clad multitude as an object of pity and curiosity, if the Bears prevailed, or–well, I didn’t find out what my role would entail in the unlikely case of a Lions victory. All for the best, I’m sure.

Left in relative peace thanks to the Lions’ harmlessness on the field, I was able to enjoy the $3,000 view from inside the architectural b

As I was washing the blood off my computer keyboard (now there’s a sentence I’ve never before had occasion to write), I managed to knock the “B” key off. Have you ever tried to reinstall a key on an iBook with nine fingers? Or ten, for that matter. I finally had to give up and seek outside help.

I am not having a good day.

P.S. For those who asked, yes, it’s the finger.

New to “Sites to See” as of today is Cup of Chicha, of which (whom?) Our Girl and I are both fans. Click here or in the right-hand column, as you like it.

We urge you to troll through the roll, by the way. Not all the sites will be equally to your liking, but all are at least worth an irregular peek, and I check out most of them at least once every other day. Right now I am especially fond of Household Opera and Pullquote, and of course life without my daily doses of Maud, Old Hag, and You-Know-Who
would scarcely be worth living.

OGIC has her own favorites, which overlap substantially but not completely with mine. I’ll let her fill you in.

Did I mention that we are members in good standing of the Cool Lit Club? And that you’re not?

I don’t know about OGIC, but I’ve answered just about all of my mail. (I understand she’s tailgating today. Harrumph! No doubt she’ll tell you all about it….)

I’m heading into a four-deadline, two-play week, by the way, so you won’t be hearing as much from me as usual, but I promise not to disappear even close to completely, and Our Girl has plenty of stuff on her mind. We’ll keep you fed and happy.

In the meantime, here’s a playlist. I recovered nearly all my data after that horrendous hard-drive explosion, but one thing I did lose was my mp3 files, every last one of them, arrgh. The good part is that I’ve been ripping lots and lots of CDs in the course of the past couple of weeks in order to reconstitute my Lost iTunes Jukebox, and my listening has been nicely eclectic as a result. Here’s what I played (and ripped) as I answered your mail this evening:

1. Elgar Introduction and Allegro, performed by Benjamin Britten and the English Chamber Orchestra (one of the most underrated of all string-orchestra masterpieces, conducted by a great composer to boot).

2. Coldplay, “Yellow”

3. Django Reinhardt and the Quintet of the Hot Club of France, “Swing 42” (I can’t hear this record often enough, for some reason)

4. Paul Whiteman, “Dardanella” (arrangement by Bill Challis, solo by Bix Beiderbecke)

5. Gerry Mulligan and Zoot Sims, “Davenport Blues” (in honor of Bix, obviously)

6. Luciana Souza, “Doce de Coco” (from Brazilian Duos, a CD you must own)

7. Faur

By way of The Corner, this letter to the editor of the Rocky Mountain News:

I just got back from Wesla Whitfield‘s last set at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel (right in time to reset my clocks), and I simply had to sit
down and tell you how wonderful it was. The room was full of singers, among them Julie Wilson and Mary Foster Conklin, and Whitfield was well aware of it, for her singing was everything that cabaret ought to be and sometimes is: sly and playful, daring and free, musically impeccable, devastatingly emotional. (I could–and should–say all the same things about her accompanists, Mike Greensill on piano and Sean Smith on bass, for they, too, were flying.)

I’m reading Wil Haygood’s In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis, Jr., and finding it engrossing. Perhaps you have to be older than 30–if not 40–to expect to find Davis interesting, but Haygood’s anecdotage is quite arrestingly good. Here’s an amazing story that comes from Keely Smith: