From the BBC: When Duke Ellington played Kabul, with a brief clip from a 1973 interview. The Ellington band visited Afghanistan in 1963 while on tour for the United States State Department. Impressions from the tour prompted the Ellington-Billy Strayhorn collaboration The Far East Suite (1967).
Related reading
All Duke Ellington posts (Pinboard)
Monday, September 23, 2013
Duke Ellington in Afghanistan
The worst sentence in Salinger so far
I’m up to page 137 in David Shields and Shane Salerno’s Salinger, “the interminable official book of the acclaimed documentary film.” The following sentence, from Shields, appears on page 133. It is the worst sentence I have read so far:
This is the moment at which — amid war, champagne, and male bonding — Salinger revealed his anatomical deformity to Hemingway, according to Kleeman.The “deformity,” as explained elsewhere, was an undescended testicle. Yes, a great secret of the book is that Salinger had an undescended testicle. Which supposedly explains his (Salinger’s, not the testicle’s) choice to avoid “the media glare.”
Revealed is an awkward word here. I hope that Salinger told Hemingway about it and didn’t — what with all the bonding — drop trou. And that closing “according to Kleeman”: not the way to end a sentence.
That a writer should shun publication and daunt biographers for years on end, only to fall into these hands: karma must indeed be a bitch. I remain on the lookout for a sentence still worse: I’m trying to get my money’s worth from this book.
Related reading
All J. D. Salinger posts (Pinboard)
[“Acclaimed documentary film”? The film was just recut after unfavorable reviews.]
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Lands’ End misspelling
As seen on this page. Sheesh.
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September 26: It’s been fixed.
Related reading
All misspelling posts (Pinboard)
[Yes, the company name has a misplaced apostrophe.]
Friday, September 20, 2013
PBS misspelling
IDEALOGICAL VOTE IN HOUSE: That was the caption on PBS’s Washington Week a few minutes ago. Sigh.
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9:36 p.m.: And now it’s online, at the 9:52 mark.
Related reading
All misspelling posts (Pinboard)
[I know: it’s a variant. But on a nationally televised show, it’s a misspelling.]
Don’t open the yellow door
You don’t want to know what’s behind that door. You really don’t want to know what’s behind that door. You Really Don’t Want To Know What’s Behind That Door. YOU REALLY — was I shouting? Oh, sorry. But you really don’t want to know what’s behind that door.
I spotted this door “somewhere in east-central Illinois.” This post is for my friends Sara and Stefan and all readers of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.
Related reading
All David Foster Wallace posts (Pinboard)
[You do not want to know what is behind that door.]
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Death of an adjunct
The real face of higher education: Death of an adjunct (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).
Chrome New Tab page
An update to Google Chrome has changed the New Tab page, which now shows a Google search box and thumbnails of the user’s most frequently visited sites. Delete the thumbnails and you’re left with stupid grey rectangles, at least for a while.
The changes are a poor choice, for two reasons:
1. Chrome’s address bar/search box, the so-called “omnibox,” makes an additional search box unnecessary.
2. There may be good reasons for a user to want to keep browsing history out of view. Obviously embarrassing websites: of course. But also: if you’re opening a tab to show, say, a news item to your spouse, the last thing you want on the screen is the browsing you’ve been doing for a birthday present. D’oh.
Google Support has more to say about these changes: Use the New Tab page. I’m looking for directions on how to Curse the New Tab page. For now, I will make up my own.
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9:24 a.m.: An extension solves the problem: Empty New Tab Page.
Domestic comedy
“I believe I’ve seen this.”
“Maybe you’ve just seen the hair.”
“I’ve seen the makeup and the shoulder pads as well.”
Related reading
All domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)
[The eighties: the horror.]
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