On Duke Ellington’s birthday

[October 27, 1973.]

Edward Kennedy Ellington was born on April 29, 1899.

YouTube has some brief 1973 clips of Duke Ellington in Sweden. At the Duke Ellington Music Society, Sven Eriksson reports that this footage was shot for Finnish television (YLE) in the city of Umeå on October 27, 1973. The Westminster Abbey performance of the Third Sacred Concert, mentioned in the interview, took place on October 24.

I’d never before seen Ellington on film this late in his life. (He died on May 24, 1974.) His charm is on display in the airport scene, as he removes his hat to bow to the ladies. But Ellington here is impatient. To a reporter at the airport: “No, you listen. You talk too much; you don’t listen enough.” And to the reporter in the longer interview scene: “We don’t do tours. We do this fifty-two weeks a year.” (Don’t these people read the papers?)

The most revealing comments here concern what the reporter calls “the jazz scene” (Ellington hated the word jazz) and the business of music:

Jazz? Well, I mean, the word to me means freedom of expression. That’s what I think of it, that’s all. And if it is accepted as an art, it is the same as any other art. The popularity of it doesn’t matter, doesn’t mean anything, because when you get into popularity, then you’re talking about money and not music.

When you say “Well, young people,” that means that young people are dictating. They are the dictators or the dictatresses of the day as far as the arts is concerned, and this is not true. The young people are the people who are buying, because they are told to buy, and they cannot buy what is not pressed. And there’s a little man known as a sales manager who tells them how many million to press. And then they tell the little children, they say “Now you buy this million,” and they do it. It has no relationship to music, and it has nothing to do with taste.

Other posts for Duke Ellington’s birthday: 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011.

[For fanatics only: Russell Procope is visible behind Ellington at 0:14, Harry Carney at 0:22. I think that’s Mercer Ellington on the far left at 0:15. Ellington’s hat looks like the one he wore when recording This One’s for Blanton with Ray Brown in 1972. Who else could pull off wearing a hat like that? Thelonious Monk, I guess.]

Vegan phở

From Tara Parker-Pope in the New York Times: recipes for vegan phở. Or pho.

[Elaine, take note.]

Rice and beans à la Hannity

Earlier this week, Sean Hannity explained to his radio audience why poor people needn’t go hungry:

I have friends of mine that eat rice and beans all the time. Beans: protein. Rice: inexpensive. You can make a big pot of this for a week for relatively negligible amounts of money for your whole family and feed your family. Look, you should have vegetables and fruit in there as well, but, you know, if you need to survive, you can survive off it. It’s not ideal. You can get some cheap meat too and throw in there as well for protein. There are ways to live really, really cheaply.

Hannity no doubt has no idea what he’s echoing. Here’s what John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939) says in a chapter telling the story of industrial agriculture in California:

Now farming became industry, and the owners followed Rome, although they did not know it. They imported slaves, although they did not call them slaves: Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, Filipinos. They live on rice and beans, the business men said. They don’t need much. They wouldn’t know what to do with good wages. Why, look how they live. Why, look what they eat. And if they get funny — deport them.

That reference to “cheap meat” also makes me think of The Grapes of Wrath, and of the Joad family’s staple diet: pork, potatoes, biscuits, coffee. No fruits or vegetables, except for the peaches that young Ruthie and Winfield eat while picking (and which give them horrific diarrhea). Almost no dairy products either: the family buys a bottle or can of milk just twice. The storekeeper who sells Ma Joad some hamburger would fit well in Hannity’s picture of things: “That hamburg is purty nice stuff. Use the grease that comes out a her for gravy. Purty nice. No waste. Don’t throw no bone away.”

And Hannity no doubt would nod in agreement when the storekeeper says “I ain’t guaranteein’ I’d eat her myself; but they’s lots of stuff I wouldn’ do.”

Blackwing Pages for the taking

I will phrase carefully: it appears that California Cedar, maker of the replica Palomino Blackwing pencil, may have used images from Blackwing Pages for commercial purposes with neither permission nor attribution.

Cal Cedar has previously claimed “fair use” concerning a photograph from Blackwing Pages that it used in a promotional video with neither permission nor attribution. Use is the key word, and this company’s business practices give new meaning to the term Blackwing user. Nobody likes to be used.

Related reading
All Blackwing posts (via Pinboard)

Inappropriate stock photo accompanies news item

[Daily News, as seen on April 26, 2012.]

The New York Daily News’s version of a news item about a woman attempting to live on sunlight and dying in the attempt is accompanied by a stock photo whose infotip reads “Female healthy lifestyle.” You can mouse over the photograph at the Daily News to see the infotip in all its inappropriateness.

Overheard

“I’m gonna give you three seconds to put that violin down, nice and easy.”

Related reading
All “overheard” posts (via Pinboard)

[The television was on in the background, for “warmth.” It was Steve McGarrett (Jack Lord) speaking. ¿Quién es más macho: David Janssen, Lloyd Bridges, o Jack Lord?]

Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, April 26, 2012.]

There are five-string cellos, and there are left-handed cellists, Charlie Chaplin among them. And there may be, somewhere, a left-handed five-string cellist. But come on.

If there is an in-joke here, it remains very inner. To the average comics reader, or to me, today’s Hi and Lois will look merely goofy. I made a few improvements in about five seven ten minutes, using the open-source Mac image-editor Seashore. Nothing to be done about those F-holes though. Skritch.

[Hi and Lois, later that same day.]

Related reading
All Hi and Lois posts (via Pinboard)

[“Very inner”: after the poet Ted Berrigan: “There’s a great inner logic to this poem, which I try to keep very inner.”]

Tim Johnson on the line

My congressman made the New York Times yesterday: Tim Johnson (R, Illinois-15), who retires this year, was the subject of a short profile that emphasized above all his habit of telephoning his constituents:

“I am almost like a dinosaur,” said Mr. Johnson, who would agree to be interviewed only by, yes, phone. “I think people think I am unique,” he added, clearly embracing the notion of understatement. “My style makes you sufficiently out of the mainstream, and people can wonder how effective you are.”

He cuts a slightly disheveled swath through the Capitol at all hours, his calling often cited by colleagues as his chief accomplishment after a decade of service here. “Tim had his finger on the pulse of his district,” Speaker John A. Boehner said in an e-mail, “and always reminded members that at the heart of every democracy are representatives who will listen first, learn, and then lead.”

I’ve never understood what’s so extraordinary about this phone habit. According to the Times, Johnson calls 4,000 constituents a year. (His district has a population of 700,000.) Skip Thanksgiving and Christmas and the calls average eleven a day. Count only working days (251 in 2012), and the average jumps to sixteen, still not that many calls to make. Johnson has never called me, though he has sent long and thoughtful responses to several letters and e-mails. The one occasion on which I heard him respond to constituents, a 2009 “town-hall meeting” on health care, was deeply dispiriting. I wanted to hang up.

[If you click through to the Times article, don’t miss the lively comment thread.]

Infinite Jest in the App Store

To the left, the App Store rating for the iOS version of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. The most hilarious element, for a novel with a halfway house as a principal setting: “Infrequent/Mild Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or References.” O RLY? No one who’s read the novel could possibly describe the drug use therein — or sexual content or violence, for that matter — as infrequent or mild. Unless, of course, they were on drugs.

That must be it: the App Store is on drugs.

I don’t mean to suggest that those under twelve not be permitted to read Infinite Jest. Nor do I mean to suggest that the novel should be available with a higher age restriction. I would salute any reader inspired to try Infinite Jest. But I don’t think a youngster would get very far. Matters of syntax, vocabulary, and range of reference would have something to do with it.

Related posts
All David Foster Wallace posts (via Pinboard)
The Daily v. NYTimes for iPad

More imaginary liner notes

My imaginary liner notes for the fifth and sixth 45s in Van Dyke Parks’s singles project are now available for your reading pleasure at Bananastan Records. Number five: “The All Golden” b/w “Sassafras,” with art by Klaus Voorman and Billy Edd Wheeler. Number six: “Missin’ Missisippi” b/w “The Parting Hand,” with art by Sally Parks and Stanley Dorfman. My favorite passage from the notes:

Journeying from Malibu to Paris to Madagascar to Wall Street to Trinidad to Galicia to Mississippi and beyond, these recordings are the work of a musician whose windshield is bigger than his rear-view mirror. Fare forward, traveller.

I feel honored to be part of the endeavor.

[The windshield may be found in this interview.]