Overheard

"As far as I'm concerned, an 'artist' is someone who paints pictures, just as a 'doctor' is someone who fixes your knee."

Previous "Overheard" posts

John Ashbery and Fred Astaire on The Mike Douglas Show

In a dream:

I was watching the start of the The Mike Douglas Show, the daytime talk show that I watched countless times after school as a kid. The guest host for the day: Fred Astaire. Also appearing: the poet John Ashbery, who was going to read a poem entitled "Dedicated to Fred Astaire." And coming up later in the show: "A special feature on language-poetry and experimental music."

That would have been some Mike Douglas Show.

As I ponder this dream, it occurs to me that Philadelphia, for many years the home of The Mike Douglas Show, is now the home of PENNsound, a spectacular archive of recorded poetry housed at the University of Pennsylvania. And a few years back, I watched an online broadcast of John Ashbery at the U of P's Kelly Writers House.

But how does Fred Astaire fit in? Elaine Fine thinks that a wonderful television clip might be in the background of this dream.

The Mike Douglas Show (Wikipedia)

PENNsound (University of Pennsylvania)

John Ashbery at the Kelly Writers House (University of Pennsylvania)

Fred Astaire sings, Oscar Levant plays (YouTube, via Musical Assumptions)

"Giant Steps"

Michal Levy's 2001 animation of John Coltrane's "Giant Steps" is a thing of beauty, and as vivid a demonstration as possible of the architecture of a jazz solo. (As I learned while browsing her site, Levy is also a saxophonist.)

Giant Steps, a film by Michal Levy (michalevy.com)

John Coltrane, tenor saxophone
Tommy Flanagan, piano
Paul Chamber, bass
Art Taylor, drums

recorded May 5, 1959

(Baby steps, giant steps: How many children in 2007 still learn to play "Mother May I?", the game that is the source of Coltrane's title?)

Overheard

"It looks like bacon with my glasses off."

Previous "Overheard" posts

PowerPoint and the war

In corporate and government bureaucracies, the standard method for making a presentation is to talk about a list of points organized onto slides projected up on the wall.

Edward Tufte, "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint"

*

Here may be the clearest manifestation of OSD's [Office of Secretary of Defense] contempt for the accumulated wisdom of the military profession and of the assumption among forward thinkers that technology -- above all information technology -- has rendered obsolete the conventions traditionally governing the preparation and conduct of war. To imagine that PowerPoint slides can substitute for such means is really the height of recklessness.

Retired Army Col. Andrew Bacevich

You can see several of the slides here:

Iraq War Plan Assumed Only 5,000 U.S. Troops Still There by December 2006 (The National Security Archive)

Related reading

Andrew Bacevich (faculty profile, Boston University)

"Delusional" Iraq plans envisaged only 5,000 troops by now, group says (CNN)

A Prewar Slide Show Cast Iraq in Rosy Hues (New York Times)

Edward Tufte, The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint (edwardtufte.com)

Toast

Wikipedia on toast:

Toast is often buttered.

Toast (Wikipedia)

Calvin Trillin on marriage

Calvin Trillin, talking about his book About Alice, a memoir of life with his wife Alice Trillin, who died in 2001. The two were married for 36 years:

I wrote once years ago that long-term marriage is now intertwined in the public mind with the music of Lawrence Welk. You really sort of have branded yourself a square if you've been married a long time and write about it in anything other than a list of atrocities or what various people did to each other in the marriage.

I don't feel embarrassed by having had a happy marriage. I feel a little bit embarrassed about the idea that I know something about it. I guess there are industries in this country based on the idea you can know something about it, or you can learn about it or something, but I think an awful lot of it is just luck.

Calvin Trillin talks about About Alice (PBS NewsHour podcast)

"Ice and Snow Blues"

I'm gonna build me a castle, out of the ice and snow
I'm gonna build me a castle, out of the ice and snow
So I can freeze these barefooted women 'way from
     around my door

That's the first chorus of Clifford Gibson's "Ice and Snow Blues," recorded in New York City on November 26, 1929. This lyric is one of the most striking blues conceits I know, a surreal image of the singer-guitarist in a frozen Xanadu. Barefooted women, keep out!

As I learned by chance this afternoon, the ice-and-snow conceit did not originate with Gibson. Pearl Dickson's "Twelve Pound Daddy" (recorded in Memphis, December 12, 1927) has it too. It happens that I have this song on Frank Stokes' Dream: The Memphis Blues, a compilation LP that I bought as a young blues fan, 35-or-so years ago:

I'm gonna build me a castle, out of ice and snow
Lordy, out of ice and snow
So when my blues come around, I can freeze them
     from my door

I wonder whether the weather in November 1929 inspired Clifford Gibson to make ice and snow the starting point for a new song. On Monday, November 25, 1929, the New York Times had an item with the charming title "Mercury to Rise Today: Bears Rake Leaves Into Den as Snow Falls in Palisades Park." The paper noted a Saturday "cold snap that sent New York into its heavy overcoats and covered much of the remainder of the country with snow and frost." Was Gibson making his way from St. Louis to New York during that cold snap? Did he get off the train in New York with this unusual blues conceit in mind? Did a recording engineer suggest doing a song about the weather?

Today's weather brought Clifford Gibson's song into my mind, as I'm typing in a house that's covered in ice and snow. There are no barefooted women outside though -- or inside either. My wife Elaine is here, and she's wearing socks. Happy Valentine's Day, Elaine!


[Above, a tree in the front yard.]

Links

Clifford Gibson (1901-1963) was a brilliant guitarist. His 1929-1931 recordings are available on one CD: Complete Recorded Works, 1929-1931. (Included: A killer duet with Jimmie Rodgers, the Singing Brakeman.)

Pearl Dickson's "Twelve Pound Daddy" can (still) be found on Frank Stokes' Dream: The Memphis Blues, 1927-1931 (Yazoo Records).

It was a page from Michael Gray's The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia that alerted me to the Pearl Dickson connection: Background on "Ice and Snow Blues" (Amazon Online Reader, Amazon account required).

Julia Child and Rachael Ray

My daughter, whose does a great Rachael Ray imitation, will like this commentary, by chef Anthony Bourdain:

Where the saintly Julia Child sought to raise expectations, to enlighten us, make us better -- teach us -- and in fact, did, Rachael uses her strange and terrible powers to narcotize her public with her hypnotic mantra of Yummo and Evoo and Sammys. "You're doing just fine. You don't even have to chop an onion -- you can buy it already chopped. Aspire to nothing . . . Just sit there. Have another Triscuit . . . Sleep . . . sleep. . . ."

From a longer commentary on Food Network personalities:

Nobody Asked Me But (ruhlman.com, via kottke.org)

September 6, 2011: That link is gone, but the commentary lives on at the Internet Archive.

Levenger Pocket Briefcase, revised

In the mail this week, the latest Levenger catalogue, offering three styles of the Pocket Briefcase®. The Pocket Briefcase is a beautiful object, but an expensive one (the standard model sells for $38). A simple modification brings much of its utility to all. Behold the Pocket Briefcase revised:

Before

A portable, pocket-sized leather writing pad and a supply of 3 x 5 cards can become your indispensable tools for on-the-go thinking.

After

   binder clip
A^portable, pocket-sized leather writing pad and a supply of 3 x 5 cards can become your indispensable tools for on-the-go thinking.

Yes, the Pocket Briefcase revised is the good old Hipster PDA.

Hipster PDA (43 Folders)
Levenger Shirt Pocket Briefcase