Doc Watson (1923–2012)

Sad news tonight in the New York Times: the guitarist and singer Doc Watson has died. This man was a giant — though it feels superfluous to say so. Here is a YouTube sampler of his art:

“House of the Rising Sun” (with Clarence Ashley) : “Deep River Blues” : “Southbound” (with Merle Watson) : “Summertime” (with David Grisman and Jack Lawrence) : “Black Mountain Rag” (with Jack Lawrence)

Fathers and sons and ringtones

I was waiting on line in Barnes and Noble. The lone cashier, thirty or so, was talking to the customer at the register about the Nook. The cashier said that he was resolved to acquaint himself with every new development in “technology” — which no doubt meant end-user digital technology. The one thing that he didn’t want, the cashier said, was to turn into his father. Why, it took his father a month to figure out how to add different Lady Gaga ringtones to his phone for different numbers.

Sigh. A good son would not let his father fumble for a month setting up Lady Gaga ringtones. A good son would at once dissuade his father from adding even one Lady Gaga ringtone to the phone. It’s so inappropriate.

[Waiting on line in a chain bookstore these days makes me sad. I hear the World of Tomorrow laughing at me.]

The Beach Boys in Newsweek

A member of Brian Wilson’s band speaks:

“When my friends hear I’m touring with the Beach Boys, they’re like, ‘Oh, so you’re doing fairgrounds and stuff?’” he says. “And I’m like, ‘No, we’re with Brian Wilson.’ But, you know, when we performed Pet Sounds and Smile, that was art. That was Brian. Now we are kind of at the fairgrounds.”

From Andrew Romano’s long report on the Beach Boys’ summer reunion tour: The Beach Boys’ Crazy Summer (Newsweek).

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Beach Boys reunion dream

Memorial Day

One hundred years ago. From “10,000 Will March on Decoration Day. About Fifty Posts Will Be Escorted by G.A.R. Regulars and National Guardsmen.” New York Times, May 29, 1912.

[G.A.R.: Grand Army of the Republic.]

Misses Rheingold

The New York Times reports on a reunion of Misses Rheingold (or Miss Rheingolds). The reunion took place in conjunction with a New-York Historical Society exhibit on beer in New York City: Beer Here: Brewing New York’s History.

For New Yorkers of a certain age, Rheingold is synonymous with beer. I knew the jingle, or one version of it, as a child:

My beer is Rheingold, the dry beer.
Ask for Rheingold whenever you buy beer.
It’s refreshing, not sweet;
It’s the extra-dry treat.
Won’t you try extra-dry Rheingold beer?

Here is a ninety-three-year-old woman singing another version of the lyrics. And here is a commercial with a third version.

On the rare occasions when my parents split a can of beer with lunch on a Saturday or Sunday, I would have a sip in a Dixie. Cold cuts, potato salad, and beer still seem to me to constitute the Platonic form of lunch.

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SCHAEFER

[I knew the Schaefer jingle too. Is it so wrong for a child to sing beer jingles?]

Ellington and an iPhone app

InstaCRT is an iPhone app that projects a photograph onto a CRT (cathode ray tube) in Sweden and returns a photograph of the resulting image. That’s nice.

What interests me more though is the music in the app’s demo video. “What is that music?” I asked myself. And a voice replied, “It’s a slowed-down loop of the first four bars of ‘The Brown-Skin Gal in the Calico Gown,’ by Duke Ellington and Paul Francis Webster.” Here is the 1941 Ellington recording, with Herb Jeffries singing.

Minimalist iPad stand

[Photograph by Michael Leddy.]

It’s a doorstop, or an iStop, two dollars or so at the hardware store. The minimalist-est stand I could get.

Other repurposed household items
Bakeware as laptop stand
Dish drainer as file tray
Tea tin as index-card holder
Wine cork as iPad stand

A mistaken bit of iPad folklore

Fraser Speirs demolishes a mistaken bit of iPad folklore about apps in the multitasking bar. John Gruber says Speirs is right.

Mac recommendation: AppDelete

Helping Elaine with a computer problem yesterday made me remember how much I like Reggie Ashworth’s Mac app AppDelete. AppDelete removes apps and their associated files and folders — the bits and pieces left behind when one drags an app to the trash. AppDelete is modestly priced ($7.99), and its developer is a good guy. My only connection is that of a happily paid-up user.

How to improve writing (no. 37)

From an NPR underwriting plug for OfficeMax: “offering Forever stamps, like at the post office.”

Like at the post office, like on NPR! The awkward “like at” aside, it makes little sense to tout the stamps sold (not offered) at OfficeMax as the same stamps sold at the post office.

Better: “selling Forever stamps, saving you a trip to the post office.”

[This post is no. 37 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

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