Need worked

Signage on a store’s stock cart. Like a couple three and pop (for soda), “need + past participle” is a familiar element in downstate-Illinois speech. And it’s the one of those three that I like. (Omit needless words and all that.)

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Illinoism

Song Cycle and “That (In)famous Line”

I’m honored to find myself so mentioned in Richard Henderson’s Song Cycle (New York: Continuum, 2010), a brand-new volume in the “33 1/3” series devoted to Van Dyke Parks’s 1968 album Song Cycle.

The reference is to an essay that I wrote in 2004 about a line from Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks’s “Cabinessence,” a song from SMiLE, the album abandoned by the Beach Boys in 1967 and finished as a Brian Wilson album in 2004. The line in question: “Over and over the crow cries uncover the cornfield.” Beach Boy Mike Love is said to have demanded from lyricist Parks an explanation of this line’s meaning, which demand Parks was unable to honor. Thus the line has come to represent the alleged obscurity of Parks’s lyrics. “Acid alliteration,” Mike Love called it.

Richard Henderson has written a terrific book. He begins by recounting his first acquaintance with Song Cycle as a thirteen year-old in 1968 Detroit. He goes on to track Van Dyke Parks’s youthful work in music, film, theater, and television; his entry into studio work and the folk-music scene in California; the rise of Warner Bros. Records; the varieties of “psychedelic” music; the critical success and commercial disappointment of Song Cycle; and Parks’s subsequent endeavors, among them, a stint at Warners’ Audio-Visual Services, where Parks devised the idea of making short promotional films of the label’s performers: “music television,” he called it. The heart of the book, a song-by-song meditation on Song Cycle, offers no code-cracking: the album remains a beautiful, ineffable work of art (thank goodness). Henderson is especially helpful in identifying Song Cycle’s specific inspirations: among them, the rural American poet Will Carleton and Misha Goodatieff, a Russian violinist who played at a Los Angeles restaurant. Goodatieff’s cousins brought the balalaikas that are heard on the album.

If you’d like to read what I wrote about “Over and over the crow cries uncover the cornfield,” here it is: “That (in)famous line.” I stand by every word.

[The Beach Boys’ recording, which appeared on the 1969 album 20/20, is titled “Cabinessence.” Brian Wilson’s 2004 recording is titled “Cabin Essence.”]

Get back the old Google Image Search

If the new Google Image Search — what with its endlessly loading page of images — no, wait, more images — no, wait — is driving you slightly crazy —

In Firefox, install the Greasemonkey extension. Then install the Google Images direct links script. Adding these two items to Firefox will take a minute or two at the most. Now when you do an image search, the crowded, endlessly loading page will switch almost instantly to the old Google Image Search.

If you’d rather skip Greasemonkey, here’s what to do: do an image search, scroll down and click on “Switch to basic version,” and bookmark the resulting page. An image search for a hyphen gives a nice blank page to start with: like so. Adding a keyword to your bookmarked page — e.g., images — makes it easier to call up Image Search.

You can use the bookmark trick in any browser. There’s also an extension for Safari 5, with which I have no first-hand experience.

One annoying thing about the new Google Image Search is that switching to the old (“basic”) version requires scrolling down and clicking a box at the bottom of a page that’s endlessly loading images. A poor, poor choice of design: it’s like having to turn the volume up to eleven before pressing mute. Still worse is that the scroll and click are required (at least for now) with each new search: there’s no defaulting to the old image search. So it’s extensions and tricky bookmarks to the rescue.

The all-in-one room

[Illustration by James Kingsland. Click for a larger view.]

Mary and Russel Wright:

Our main thesis here is that formality is not necessary for beauty. It shows not less, but more, respect for the good things of life to plan an easier, smoother-running meal in a setting that suits its purpose — and to have more time in which to enjoy the meal and its setting.

We look forward to the day when living room, dining room, and kitchen will break through the walls that arbitrarily divide them, and become simply friendly areas of one large, gracious, and beautiful room. We think that day is not too far away.

Guide to Easier Living (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1950).

The above two-page spread of the “all-in-one room” follows these two paragraphs. Servantless living at its best!

The parenthetical numbers (35, 36, 37) point the reader to an appendix listing manufacturers and distributors. 35: General Electric. 36: Chambers Range Company. 37: St. Charles Manufacturing Company. As I have just learned, old Chambers ranges are highly prized. (Rachael Ray uses one.) And St. Charles Cabinetry is alive and well.

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Easier living with Mary and Russell Wright

Word of the day: artificer

I woke up this morning from a dream of teaching the first three episodes of James Joyce’s Ulysses to a room of utterly unprepared English majors. Things were pretty bad. At one point I had to run from the room to bring back a student who herself had fled when a peer mocked her poor grammar. Yes, pretty bad: so bad that I never got to mention the name of Stephen Dedalus. But that was okay: I too was unprepared.

I want to say that I wouldn’t dream of attempting to teach three episodes of Ulysses in one class meeting, but of course I just did.

And now the word-of-the-day from Anu Garg’s A.Word.A.Day is artificer. That word means James Joyce. Stephen Dedalus’s friends are calling to him, spinning Greek variations on his name:

— Stephanos Dedalos! Bous Stephanoumenos! Bous Stephaneforos! —

Their banter was not new to him and now it flattered his mild proud sovereignty. Now, as never before, his strange name seemed to him a prophecy. So timeless seemed the grey warm air, so fluid and impersonal his own mood, that all ages were as one to him. A moment before the ghost of the ancient kingdom of the Danes had looked forth through the vesture of the hazewrapped city. Now, at the name of the fabulous artificer, he seemed to hear the noise of dim waves and to see a winged form flying above the waves and slowly climbing the air.

James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)

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Bandbox (More words and works of literature)

Easier living with Mary and Russel Wright

In the New York Times this morning, Alexandra Lange writes about Mary and Russel Wright’s 1950 book Guide to Easier Living. Elaine and I borrowed this book from the library several years ago and in an instant understood that the people who designed our house in the late fifties must have had the Wrights’ ideas in mind. Said the Wrights,

We look forward to the day when living room, dining room, and kitchen will break through the walls that arbitrarily divide them, and become simply friendly areas of one large, gracious, and beautiful room.

Well, that’s our downstairs, gracious as ever.

The twenty-first-century name for this layout appears to be “open concept kitchen/dining/living area.” But our kitchen/dining/living area is an open secret, as our house is built into a hill and looks like a one-story house from the street.

[Note: Comments at the Times seem to be mistaking what the Wrights described for the so-called great room. The great room, with its raised ceiling, is a much later development.]

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Old house, new concept

From a back-pocket beacon to a cog

Bad metaphors of the day, from Michael Robinet, Vice President of IHS Automotive, as quoted in the New York Times:

“This is not some sort of flash-in-the-pan investment strategy. . . . During the bankruptcy process, G.M. China was the beacon in the night that G.M. always had in its back pocket, and China will be a vital cog in G.M.’s machine going forward.”

From a back-pocket beacon (no flash in the pan!) to a cog: here is why metaphor-making should be left to trained professionals.

Thanks to Stefan Hagemann for alerting me to these metaphors.

Related reading
All metaphor posts (Pinboard)

Posting the news

[“Men and a woman reading headlines posted in street-corner window of Brockton Enterprise newspaper office on Christmas Eve, Brockton, Mass.” December 24, 1940. Photograph by Jack Delano (1914–1997).]

A beautiful photograph from the Library of Congress. This window seems to anticipate the layout of Arts & Letters Daily. The Enterprise, founded c. 1881, is still publishing.

Don’t miss the photograph in its original size, with Santa’s schedule and a matter-of-fact announcement of another Brockton earthquake. I like the stenciling on the street lamp and “Society PRINTING” in the upstairs printshop.

Other Jack Delano photographs
Packing oranges
Sylvia Sweets Tea Room (Also in Brockton)

iPan

A magical and revolutionary product at an unbelievable price. Starting at $4.99.

A large, high-resolution display. An incredibly responsive surface. All in a design that’s thin and light enough to take anywhere. iPan isn’t just the best device of its kind. It’s a whole new kind of device.

Tater Tots sold separately.

“California Gurls,” “California Girls”

My daughter Rachel passes on the news that Brian Wilson has commented on Katy Perry’s “California Gurls” (featuring Snoop Dogg):

“I love her vocal,” the Beach Boys’ creative mastermind said Monday through his manager. “She sounds very clear and energetic.”

Wilson also liked the version that includes a guest rap by Snoop Dogg that makes a nod to the original.

“The melody is infectious, and I'm flattered that Snoop Dogg used our lyric on the tag,” Wilson noted. “I wish them well with this cut.”

A generous if slightly odd response. (Your song has sold millions: good luck with it.) Never to be outdone by “cousin Brian,” “California Girls” co-composer Mike Love has also now commented, but you’ll have to read the article (via the link above) for his response.

If you haven’t listened to the Beach Boys’ “California Girls” in a while, listen. Listen. Listen. Here are ten things to listen for:

1. The instrumental intro. (Were Nelson Riddle’s intros for Sinatra songs an influence here?)

2. The skating-rink organ.

3. The cowboy-movie bass line.

4. Mike Love’s “hip” and “dig.” Very hip. Dig?

5. Mike Love’s pointing upward when singing about “the northern girls.” North is up! (Oops: you’ll have to watch for this one.)

6. The chord changes in the chorus: B C#min7 A Bm7 G Am7 B.

7. The vocal harmonies in the chorus.

8. The high background harmonies in the second verse.

9. “I seen all kind of girls.”

10. The instrumental break before the final chorus (mimicking the bass line), and the “oh-bee-doo” as the break ends.

11. The four vocal lines of the outro: surpassed perhaps only by the round that ends “God Only Knows.”

[“Katy Perry’s ‘California Gurls’ (featuring Snoop Dogg)”: names and words I never thought I’d type. “Listen. Listen. Listen”: from “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)” (Brian Wilson–Tony Asher).]

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I am a California girl.

(Thanks, Rachel!)