A two-year-old recites William Shakespeare’s sonnet 18. Even if he drops lines, he deserves at least as many views as a three-year-old reciting a Billy Collins poem.
Update, March 13: Summer’s lease hath all too short a date. The video has been removed from YouTube.
A related post
xkcd: “Compare and Contrast”
[Thanks, Stefan.]
Monday, March 12, 2012
Toddler recites Shakespeare
kennethkoch.org
A new website devoted to the work of the poet Kenneth Koch: kennethkoch.org.
If you think Billy Collins is a good poet, read Kenneth Koch. Koch is the real thing. There, I said it.
Saturday, March 10, 2012
A “spect-op” in Los Angeles
From a New York Times article on Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass, a 340-ton boulder delivered to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art:
The scene on Miracle Mile was reminiscent of the excited and diverse crowd that has come out at night to watch the convoy as it zigged and zagged through the region. There were cameras, baby strollers, folding chairs, politicians and other people of every race and economic class. The was also a surfeit of rock puns: Someone was even playing “We Will Rock You” as the truck passed the La Brea Tar Pits.It was also a “spect-op.”
In Long Beach the other night, people lined the streets and waited for hours to be rewarded by what Alexis Dragony praised as the “extraordinary and flawless maneuver of the rock” making a turn. “We cheered as it negotiated the corner — just flawless,” she said. “It was truly performance art.”
Related reading
All David Foster Wallace posts (via Pinboard)
Word of the day: wirra
It’s the Oxford English Dictionary ’s word of the day:
Irish English. Expressing sorrow, distress, or regret: “alas!” “woe!” Cf. wirrasthru int. Freq. reduplicated. Chiefly preceded by “Oh”; cf. the etymology. Chiefly in representations of Irish English speech.The word derives from the Irish Mhuire: “in a Mhuire (broadly) /ə wɪrə/ < a , vocative particle +Muire, the name of the Virgin Mary.” My favorite of the OED ’s six citations, from S.J. Weyman’s Wild Geese (1908): “‘Oh, whirra, whirra, what’ll I do?’ the Irishman exclaimed, helplessly wringing his hands.”
Why is wirra my word of the day? Because after lo these many years, I remember it from a Little Rascals short that I saw in childhood (again and again) on television. Oh, wirra, wirra, wirra, someone said. I think it was Alfalfa in drag.
Friday, March 9, 2012
Separated at birth?
Conductor, organist, and harpsichordist Ton Koopman and neurologist and psychologist Oliver Sacks.
Related posts
Amsterdam Baroque
Ted Berrigan and C. Everett Koop
Elaine Hansen and Blanche Lincoln
[Photograph of Ton Koopman by Marco Borggreve, found here. The Oliver Sacks photo seems ubiquitous online.]
Stripes
This sign (on the side of a tractor-trailer) reminds me of the Italian cookies I have known from childhood as stripes.
Do these stripes map out what’s packed in the trailer? Breaker one-nine, breaker one-nine, can someone explain these stripes?
Amsterdam Baroque
The Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Choir, under the direction of Ton Koopman, are on a short American tour, performing the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Elaine and I were fortunate to hear them last night performing the Mass in B Minor. Such music, and such musicianship. I have no more words.
If you’re anywhere near Berkeley, Chapel Hill, Newark, New York, or Tucson and can go, go. Here’s a page with the touring schedule.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Media Matters on Limbaugh
Media Matters reports: Who’s Advertising On Rush Limbaugh? As of yesterday, forty-five advertisers had dropped out. Lots of PSAs in their place.
Media Matters also has a timeline of Limbaugh’s remarks re: Sandra Fluke. I think it’s fair to say that the sheer hatefulness of his remarks has been underreported.
3:25 p.m.: Now it’s forty-eight.
March 10: Now it’s ninety-eight.
Related posts
Homer and Limbaugh and epithets
Netflix and Limbaugh
Overheard
In a distant grove — or was it hallway? — of academe, a student complaining about an essay assignment:
“I mean, she wants an introduction, a thesis statement. I’m sorry: this is, like, too much.”
What especially strikes me about this complaint: the assumption that an introduction and thesis statement are one despot’s demands, not elements of a college essay, made explicit for a student’s benefit. What will “she” demand next: sentences? paragraphs? a staple in the upper-left corner?
Related reading
All “overheard” posts (via Pinboard)
[Thanks, Michael.]
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Beetle Bailey watch
I don’t read Beetle Bailey very closely: I already have enough to do monitoring for problematic art and text in Hi and Lois. Today’s Beetle Bailey might be meant to remind us that group-living impinges upon one’s privacy. Or perhaps the Walkers have never seen a urinal. Guys, get it together.
Other Beetle Bailey posts
Beetle Bailey ketchup
Comic strip anachronisms
Missing bathrooms
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