The Brooklyn National Anthem

Spring has sprung, the grass has riz.
I wonder where the birdies is.

My mom has recited these words, perhaps without knowing their borough-wide significance. Ladies and gentlemen, please rise for the Brooklyn National Anthem.

Spinal Tap and the BBC

The volume sliders for BBC video clips go up to eleven. See and hear for yourself, as Prince Charles busts a move, or several of them:

Prince Charles' Amazon dance (BBC News)

791 Broadway

William Weaver remembering his friend Frank O'Hara:

"I remember just going down the street with him when they were tearing down some brownstones. I said, in the usual clichéd way, 'Oh what a pity they're tearing down those brownstones.' Frank said, 'Oh no, that's the way New York is. You have to just keep tearing it down and building it up. Whatever they're building they'll tear that down in a few years.'"

[Quoted in Brad Gooch's City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara (New York: HarperPerennial, 1993).]

791 Broadway, Frank O'Hara's last Manhattan address, now appears to be awaiting demolition. Here's the story:

Frank's Last Place (Jeremiah's Vanishing New York)

Call Letter Origins

You may listen to a radio station daily, but do you know what its call letters really mean? If not, try Call Letter Origins. Charming and no doubt occasionally fanciful bits of lore abound therein.

Some of my favorites:

CFLC: "Canada's Finest Little Community" (Brockville, Ontario).

KAND: Wolf Brand Canned Chili (Corsicana, Texas).

WLBB: "We Love Butter Beans" (Carrollton, Georgia). A Judge Tisinger, the station's first owner, liked his beans.

WMBD: "World's Most Beautiful Drive" (Peoria, Illinois). That drive would be Peoria's Grandview Drive.

WPLJ: "White Port and Lemon Juice" (New York, New York). I know that one from the Mothers of Invention recording of "WPLJ."

I'm surprised to learn that New York's WMCA (home of the Good Guys of my musical youth) is named for the Hotel McAplin, the station's first home. And New York's WOR? "World of Radio."

These stations all survive (CFLC as CFJR), most of them programming the syndicated stuff one can hear up and down the dial. (What dial?)




A related post
Five radios

Betsy Blair (1923-2009)

Betsy Blair, an Academy Award-nominated actress also known for her forthright memoir describing her youthful marriage to Gene Kelly and her firsthand experience of the Hollywood blacklist, died on Friday in London. She was 85 and had lived in London for many years. . . .

Winsome and red-haired, Ms. Blair was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar for her role as Clara Snyder, Ernest Borgnine’s shy love interest in the 1955 film version of Paddy Chayefsky’s television play “Marty,” directed by Delbert Mann.

Betsy Blair, 85, Actress and Wife of Gene Kelly (New York Times)

The Jupiter String Quartet

I heard the Jupiter Quartet last night, playing Haydn, Beethoven, and Shostakovich in the Great Hall of the Krannert Center at the University of Illinois. If you, reader, ever have the opportunity to hear the Jupiter String Quartet: go.

So many of our more "celebrated" classical musicians play in a way that seems to say "Look at me, how passionate I am, how intensely self-absorbed." The members of the Jupiter Quartet play in a way that seems to say "Listen to the music. That's why we're here." The quartet's musicianship and expressive communication — among themselves and with their audience — are extraordinary. And these people are still so young! Catch them if you can: their touring schedule's on their website.

Mint garlic tea tasting

Elaine and I tried some mint garlic tea this afternoon. We used Bigelow's Mint Medley Herb Tea ("Blend of cool garden spearmint & peppermint") and three cloves of pressed garlic. We shared: garlic, like money, don't grow on trees.

After careful research, we have arrived at the following conclusions:

1. We do not like Bigelow's Mint Medley Herb Tea. We probably wouldn't like any mint tea.

2. We'd rather eat garlic. We like garlic. We knew that already.

There are many online recipes for garlic tea that call for water, a few halved cloves, lemon, and honey. In these recipes, the garlic merely flavors the water as it boils. One could make a much more potent tea by crushing some garlic in a cup and adding the other ingredients. I like garlic. You know that already.

"Be irish"

Be irish. Be inish. Be offalia. Be hamlet. Be the property plot. Be Yorick and Lankystare. Be cool. Be mackinamucks of yourselves.

James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939)

Happy St. Patrick's Day.

(The name Leddy is Irish.)

Vladimir Nabokov's index cards

Index cards were gradually loading a shoe box with their compact weight.

Pnin (1957)

*

The manuscript, mostly a Fair Copy, from which the present text has been faithfully printed, consists of eighty medium-sized index cards, on each of which Shade reserved the pink upper line for headings (canto number, date) and used the fourteen light-blue lines for writing out with a fine nib in a minute, tidy, remarkably clear hand, the text of this poem, skipping a line to indicate double space, and always using a fresh card to begin a new canto.

Pale Fire (1962) [From Charles Kinbote's foreword to his edition of John Shade's poem.]

*

After a leisurely lunch, prepared by the German cook who came with the house, I would spend another four-hour span in a lawn chair, among the roses and mockingbirds, using lined index cards and a Blackwing pencil, for copying and recopying, rubbing out and writing anew, the scenes I had imagined in the morning.

Foreword to Lolita: A Screenplay (1973)

The photographs of Nabokov's research materials for Lolita and of the author at work with index cards are by Carl Mydans, taken in September 1958 in Ithaca, New York. I found them in the Life photo archive, here and here.

Related posts
Nabokov’s unfinished (Review of The Original of Laura)
Raymond Carver's index cards
Writing and index cards

Mint garlic tea

On NPR's Weekend Edition this morning, garlic farmer Chester Aaron recalled visiting the country of Georgia:

Every morning, they'd have a cup of mint tea into which they pressed three cloves of garlic. And if they were in their eighties or nineties, they pressed five cloves of garlic. And if they were over a hundred, they pressed six to eight cloves [laughs] of garlic. Every morning, mint garlic tea.

Weekend Edition is looking for garlic recipes.

Related post
Mint garlic tea tasting