Jay Bennett (1963-2009)

Jay Bennett, ex-Wilco, died on Sunday in Urbana, Illinois. At the time of his death, he was in need of hip-replacement surgery and without health insurance. Unspeakably sad.

Jay Bennett, dead at age 45 (Chicago Sun-Times)
Jay Bennett dies at age 45 (Chicago Tribune)

Ah, dialogue

The television is on in the background, "for warmth" — it's a wet, grey day. And thus I just heard a visitor to the Ponderosa raise his voice to insult Ben Cartwright:

"You, sir, you sired a litter of lazy, shiftless whelps! Like father, like son!"

Not really a litter; Adam, Hoss, and Little Joe are the children of different mothers, as any child of television knows. But still a wonderfully loopy bit of dialogue.

A related post
Television in the background

Memorial Day

One hundred years ago. From "Memorial Day Fete to Last Three Days," New York Times, May 29, 1909.

Brushing without looking

It occurred to me this morning how odd it is that one stands and watches in the mirror while brushing one's teeth. Yes, the mirror is just there. But there's no need for visual feedback when aiming a brush at the mouth. So I did something odder than watching myself: I turned away from the mirror to brush, and found myself hearing, for the first time really, the sounds of toothbrushing in my head. I discovered that brushing my lower molars makes a different sound from brushing all other teeth.

Then I did something odder still: I decided to write this post.

It makes sense that shutting off one sort of sensory data would make another sort more noticeable, as when people close their eyes to play or listen to music. Music is much more interesting than toothbrushing, and saves this post from being only about brushing my teeth without looking.

Agatha Christie, thickest spine

A limited edition of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple fiction is said to have the thickest spine in bookdom, "measuring over a foot long, with 4,032 pages." Long? Wide? Deep? Whatever. Only 500 copies.

From today's Hi and Lois

Yes, today's.

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The Boombox Museum

Tom Lehrer, "Lobachevsky"

In light of recent events, my friend Norman points me, as I now point you, to a great Tom Lehrer song, "Lobachevsky." Enjoy.

(Thanks, Norman!)

Maureen Dowd, weaving, not linking

More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Josh Marshall, May 14, 2009

*

More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Maureen Dowd, May 17, 2009

Three thoughts about the Josh Marshall-Maureen Dowd affair:

1. Dowd's explanation of how a paragraph from Talking Points Memo ended up in her New York Times column —

i was talking to a friend of mine Friday about what I was writing who suggested I make this point, expressing it in a cogent — and I assumed spontaneous — way and I wanted to weave the idea into my column.

but, clearly, my friend must have read josh marshall without mentioning that to me.

— seems absurd. It credits friend and columnist alike with uncanny, savant-like powers of recall. It also fails to explain why Dowd didn't credit her alleged source for this observation. How'd you like to see your cogent sentence turn up without attribution in your friend's Times column? Some friend!

2. Weaving is an odd metaphor for what Dowd appears to have done — i.e., copied and pasted a useful bit that she then forgot to credit.

3. The corrected version of Dowd's column credits Marshall in a way that seems, well, demeaning:

Josh Marshall said in his blog: "More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq."

If you don't recognize Marshall's name, you wouldn't know that "his blog," unnamed, is a widely-read site for political news and commentary. The tone here reminds me of the ways in which traditional media will often credit "a blogger," unidentified. Worse still, Dowd doesn't even provide a link.

Sheesh.

Exhibits A and B
Josh Marshall's post (Talking Points Memo)
The corrected Maureen Dowd column (New York Times)

No mercy

The forms of physical abuse reported by witnesses to the Committee included punching, flogging, assault and bodily attacks, hitting with the hand, kicking, ear pulling, hair pulling, head shaving, beating on the soles of the feet, burning, scalding, stabbing, severe beatings with or without clothes, being made to kneel and stand in fixed positions for lengthy periods, made to sleep outside overnight, being forced into cold or excessively hot baths and showers, hosed down with cold water before being beaten, beaten while hanging from hooks on the wall, being set upon by dogs, being restrained in order to be beaten, physical assaults by more than one person, and having objects thrown at them.

Abu Ghraib? Guantánamo? No, Irish orphanages, reformatories, and schools, run by Roman Catholic religious orders, principally the Christian Brothers and the Sisters of Mercy. The passage above is part of a just-released 2,600-page report, nine years in the making, by Ireland's Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse.

Report Details Abuses in Irish Church-Run Reformatories (New York Times)
The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse
Executive Summary
Commission Report

LP, CD, DVD

I remember my firsts. (Cassettes, MP3s — I have no idea.)

LP
The Beatles, Something New (Capitol)

It must have been 1964. This LP must have been a present for my birthday (eighth). Help!, still among my records, still playable, was my second LP.

CD
Son House, The Complete Library of Congress Sessions, 1941-1942 (Travelin' Man)
Mississippi John Hurt, 1928 Sessions (Yazoo)
David Murray, McCoy Tyner, Fred Hopkins, Elvin Jones, Special Quartet (Sony)
World Saxophone Quartet, Metamorphosis (Nonesuch)

Yes, blues and jazz. I bought these CDs in 1991 in Bloomington, Indiana, at a record store specializing in blues, jazz, and classical music. Yes, the store is now defunct.

DVD
Carnival of Souls (Criterion Collection)

Herk Harvey's great 1962 horror film. I'm not sure when I bought this DVD (2000? 2001?), but I remember wondering whether a DVD purchased in New Jersey would play on a computer in Illinois. One reason among many that I think of my name is a synonym for naïf. I had heard something about "region codes."

Do you remember your first analog and digital artifacts? Please, share them in a comment. (Why not?)