Ben Folds on the tyranny of cool

From To the Best of Our Knowledge, Ben Folds on a cappella groups and the tyranny of cool:

I mean, look, if you looked up reality show singing contest a cappella cover artist that would pretty much be dork, you know? But they know that, and it’s like they’ve just broken the chains of that, which I really admire. I think that’s hard to do in an overly commercialized world of cool. Everyone can’t be cool. That’s so boring, and so old, and they’ve been doing that since I was a kid, and I thought it would stop one day, and it just keeps going. It’s creative bullying, is what it is. And so I like to take the side of these people.

Folds, whose music is popular among a cappella groups, is a judge for the NBC show The Sing-Off. Here’s one central-Illinois-centric example of Folds’s music, nearly a cappella (there’s some percussion): “Effington.”

[What I know of Ben Folds’s music I like, and I owe my acquaintance with it to my children.]

Eight syllables

How a bright college freshman might say it: “This legislation must be implemented with the utmost diligence.” Ponderous, ponderous.

How President Obama said it: “You should pass this bill right away.” (And variations thereupon.)

“It is a general truth that short words are not only handier to use, but more powerful in effect; extra syllables reduce, not increase, vigour”: H.W. Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926).

And yes, they should pass this bill right away.

The easy and the difficult

This observation has been running through my head for several days:

What a technology makes easy to do will get done; what it hides, or makes difficult, may very well not get done.

Donald A. Norman, The Design of Everyday Things (New York: Basic Books, 2002). Originally published as The Psychology of Everyday Things (1988).

A word-processing app makes it easy to play with fonts and margins and spacing but more difficult to see a document as a whole so as to make useful revisions. Apple’s iTunes makes buying music easier than ever, but learning something about that music is not nearly as easy. I’m happy to have a files-only version of The Incomparable Ethel Waters (a 2003 CD, out of print). But when were these seventeen tracks recorded? Who’s playing on them? Who knows.

A related post
Don Norman on Google’s users

Google users

Don Norman on Google:

“Most people would say ‘we’re the users, and the product is advertising.’ But in fact the advertisers are the users and you are the product. They say their goal is to gather all the knowledge in the world in one place, but really their goal is to gather all of the people in the world and sell them.”

And now they’re buying Zagat.

Mother Jones on the Kochs

Three reports from Mother Jones on Charles and David, the brothers Koch:

One: The Koch Brothers’ Million-Dollar Donor Club

Two: Inside the Koch Brothers’ Secret Seminar, with audio excerpts: “If you want to kick in a billion, believe me, we’ll have a special seminar just for you.” [Laughter.]

Three: Chris Christie Lets Loose at Secret Koch Brothers Confab

Here at Orange Crate Art, our purchasing agents are instructed not to purchase Koch products: Angel Soft Toilet Paper, Brawny Towels, Dacron Fiber, Dixie Products, Georgia-Pacific Paper Products, Lycra Fiber, Mardi Gras Products, Quilted Northern Toilet Paper, Soft ’n Gentle Toilet Paper, Sparkle Paper Napkins, Stainmaster Carpet, Vanity Fair Paper Napkins, Zee Paper Napkins. Our Midwestern agents are now also instructed not to purchase from Menards, one of the Kochs’ million-dollar donors. (Here’s a list of Menards-related “conflicts” — a pretty unsavory record, Kochs or no Kochs.)

[Every time I post something Koch-related, my stats show — almost immediately — a visit from Koch Industries. Hello, Koch Industries. Thanks for reading.]

EXchange names on screen

[Gail Patrick, Cary Grant, Randolph Scott, and OXford 6262.]

Seven years after his wife (Irene Dunne) was lost at sea, a man (Cary Grant) remarries (Gail Patrick). His first wife then reappears, having spent those seven years stuck on a deserted island with another man (Randolph Scott). He’s back too. Hilarity ensues. My Favorite Wife (dir. Garson Kanin, 1940) is a brilliant comedy. It’s a film I would like to see in a theater, with the laughter of a crowd.

For anyone who’s read the rumors about Grant and Scott, there are several added comedic elements in the film.

[“It’s for a friend of mine. He’s waiting downstairs.” Yes, that’s what he says. Really.]

More exchange names on screen
The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Baby Face : Born Yesterday : The Dark Corner : Deception : Dream House : The Little Giant : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Murder, My Sweet : Nightmare Alley : The Public Enemy : Side Street : Sweet Smell of Success : This Gun for Hire

“C’est moi!”

Looking at my blog stats, I noticed several visits from a runners’ website, where a discussion thread shifted to the subject of the subjunctive. Wrote one poster, “This guy has a beard, an easy smile and big glasses. He must know what he's talking about.”

That guy is I. Thanks for your confidence, Nader!

Roger Ebert’s fall

Roger Ebert, writing about diminishing mobility and a recent fall out of bed:

For years we live in innocence. We walk around all day and never give it a moment’s thought. For years, every single day in tolerable weather, I woke up around 6:30 and walked for 90 minutes around the Lincoln Park ponds. I wore a pedometer and aimed for 10,000 steps a day. Some days I topped 25,000. I loved it.

Now Chaz asks why I don’t wear my pedometer. Its count would be too depressing.

A fall from grace (Chicago Sun-Times)

“For years we live in innocence”: I had an eye exam last month and remember saying, when my optometrist praised my maculae, “I guess at some point you don’t take these things for granted.”

Roger Ebert is a national treasure. I hope he feels better soon.

From The World of Henry Orient

Marian Gilbert lives in the Sixties on Manhattan’s East Side. She is visiting a friend in Greenwich Village for the first time:

The food was delightful, and not at all the sort of thing we ever had at home. Plates of cold meat, a basket of rye bread, bowls of mayonnaise and butter, lettuce and sliced tomatoes, and a kind of pie made out of cheese and bacon. The Hamblers dranks beer and we had cold milk from a crockery pitcher. We all took some of everything, and as the others piled most of the food on the bread to make sandwiches, I did the same. It was delicious, the sun poured in through the window, and I began to feel as though I had stumbled on a small heaven.

Nora Johnson, The World of Henry Orient (1958)

I’ve loved the 1964 film The World of Henry Orient (dir. George Roy Hill) since kidhood and thought it would be smart to read the novel, which turns out to be just as terrific. Gil narrates, so we see as little of the mysterious pianist Henry Orient as Gil and her friend Valerie Campbell Boyd see. In other words, there is no part for Peter Sellers here: the novel is about children. But it’s for grownups, much darker and sadder than the film (screenplay by Johnson and her father Nunnally Johnson).

The passage above reminds me of my kidhood fascination with delicatessen food, the stuff of all true feasts. Gil’s “a kind of pie made out of cheese and bacon” adds the perfect touch of naiveté. (Or naiftiness, as Lucy van Pelt would say.)

Nora Johnson is still writing, and she has a website.

[How do you spell naiftiness?]

Recently updated

Julia Child and Rachael Ray: Anthony Bourdain’s hilarious commentary on Food Network stars can still be had via the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.