El Coyote neon

[“As seen in Los Angeles.” El Coyote Cafe, 7312 Beverly Boulevard.]

Visiting El Coyote is a thing to do in Los Angeles.

No more chicken and waffles?

East Coast Foods Inc., the parent company of Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles, has filed for bankruptcy. A very strange story. We ate at a Roscoe’s last week while visiting Los Angeles.

Things to do in Los Angeles

[An incomplete list.]

Meet Rachel and Ben at LAX. Hi, Rachel and Ben! Driving back to Rachel and Seth’s place, discover that Rachel’s car has a tire with a leak, the work of what looks like a big plastic spike. Buy a can of Fix-A-Flat. Hope. Hear the sound of rim on street. Pull over by a hydrant — the only available spot — and change tire. Everyone participates: guarding against traffic, reading jack directions, finding the spot for the jack, loosening lug nuts, jacking up the car, changing the tire. Appreciate the benevolent neighborhood elder who watches over us. The only person strong enough to loosen the lug nuts: Rachel. Talk about this point often, with pride. Go to El Coyote, “Serving Los Angeles Since 1931.” Look at pictures of the stars who have eaten here: Shirley Temple Black and Fred Willard mean the most to us. James Hong (from the Seinfeld episode “The Chinese Restaurant”) ate here. Eat. Drink. Chips, guacamole, salsa: excellent. Fajitas, okay. Margaritas: weak. Ambience and neon: extra great. Before going to sleep, have a cup of tea: first caffeine since the early afternoon.

Get a new tire. Get three more new tires. They’re needed. Walk many blocks while waiting. It’s counter-cultural to walk in Los Angeles. Visit a used-record store. One curmudgeonly owner, one assistant, many, many LPs. Walk to pick up car. See Jane Lynch having lunch at a restaurant table right on the sidewalk. We love her from Christopher Guest’s movies. Walk on by, in appropriate leave-the-stars-alone fashion. Get car and go to Larchmont Bungalow, a lovely place to have lunch. Have lunch. Bison burger. Salads. Turkey melt. Note to self: “tea” in Los Angeles doesn’t always mean “black.” Go to Salt and Straw. Freckled Woodblock Chocolate? Yes. Notice that the ice cream becomes more enjoyable as one continues to eat it. Go to Landis Gifts and Stationery. Buy paper for writing letters. Look in many other stores. Looking, not buying, is plenty of fun. Return to home base. Sing many songs with guitar and ukulele. “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” now with fambly-improvised lyrics on two coasts. Go to Pann’s before dropping Ben at LAX. But it’s Monday: the restaurant’s closed. (Diners close on Monday?) Go to Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles instead. Great chicken, great cornbread, great macaroni and cheese, good waffles. Iced tea, black and unsweetened. See Ben off. Hug. Watch Karen Kingsbury’s “The Bridge Part 2” on DVR. It’s rather dull, and not nearly as bad (that is, good) as “Part 1.” There’s no Bridge (the bookstore) in “The Bridge,”  which takes away most of the fun. Have a glass of wine.

Wake up to horrible news from Belgium. Go to an office-supply store. A kind employee does Rachel’s xeroxing for free. Go to the post office to buy stamps. The post office doesn’t take cash. Go to the Hammer Museum. See the exhibition Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933-1957. Look for evidence of our friend Seymour Barab’s sojourn at Black Mountain as a visiting musician. He’s not in the exhibit but he’s quoted in a book in the gift shop, recalling a summer of “esoteric incomprehensible conversations” between Charles Olson and Stefan Wolpe, each trying to out-talk one another. As far as Olson is concerned, that sounds about right. See the exhibition Still Life with Fish: Photography from the Collection. Allen Ruppersberg’s photographs of roadsigns with magazines are terrific. See the exhibition Catherine Opie: Portraits, photographs that look like paintings by Old Masters. One photograph looks like Jonathan Franzen. Yes, it’s Jonathan Franzen. Then discover a Millet and two Van Goghs in the permanent collection. The Hammer is a perfect museum: lots to see and find interesting, but not exhausting. And free, always. Go to Simplethings for lunch. Cobb salad, Cuban sandwich, meatball sandwich. A tie with Roscoe’s for best food. Go to The Grove. Looking, not buying, is plenty of fun. Go to Clifton’s for dinner. Experience vague film-noir feelings in the downtown parking garage. Experience vague film-noir feelings on the downtown sidewalks. Where is everyone? (Aside from the panhandlers.) Experience strong surrealist feelings in Clifton’s. It’s like the Grand Cosmo of Steven Millhauser’s novel Martin Dressler , with meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Look: here, or here. Stuffed animals. A sequoia. A chapel. Four floors of cafeteria, the upper floors now closed. And a basement with a phone booth (minus phone). Wonder about the large blue object on a desk in a Red Bull billboard. (A Bluetooth speaker.) Watch the news. Give up. Watch Fixer Upper . Have a glass of wine.

Walk to LACMA. Learn from a helpful LACMA employee going in to work that the museum is closed for the day. We got our Mondays and Wednesdays crossed. Cross the street to visit the Craft & Folk Art Museum instead. See the exhibition Little Dreams in Glass And Metal: Enameling in America, 1920 to the Present. Learn about enameling. See the exhibition Made in China: New Ceramic Works by Keiko Fukazawa, witty commentary on consumerism and patriotism in the People’s Republic. Like the Hammer, just enough museum. Walk to Farmers Market. Notice a billboard for Mad Old Nut. Notice how few people are walking on any given stretch of sidewalk. Browse in Farmers Market. Buy two apples at Farm Boy Produce. It must not be unusual for people to buy single pieces of fruit: they have napkins. Eat lunch at Lemonade. Ahi tuna, avocado and cherry tomatoes, beef with miso, chicken and kale, chicken with mozzarella and pesto, chili soup. A best-food tie with Roscoe’s and Simplethings. Go to Book Soup. Looking, not buying, is plenty of fun. Go to Magnolia Boulevard, Burbank, a street full of old furnishings and old clothes. Try on hats. Feel the weight of a 1940s(?) men’s coat. Looking, not buying, is plenty of fun. Be impressed by the array of books and supplies in The Writers Store. Screenwriters need brass fasteners, brass washers, and mallets. Go to Genghis Cohen for dinner. Something happened there to inspire the Seinfeld episode with James Hong. The food really does taste like the New York Szechuan of bygone days. Do Facetime with Ben. Watch the news. Give up. Watch Modern Family . Watch Flip or Flop . Have a glass of wine.

Learn about peripheral vision and flexibility. Go back to LAX. Hug.

Thank you, Rachel and Seth, for a wonderful four days in your city. We are fam-b-ly.


[A hydrant in Flattville, as seen in Google Maps. Thank you, hydrant, for giving us a place to stop and fix a flat.]

More things to do in Los Angeles
2014 : 2012

Another Henry report card

[Henry , March 30, 2016.]

Henry last received a report card on January 30. There must have been more frequent report cards Back Then.

If this panel were all that survived of today’s strip, one could still identify the floating object as a report card. The notch in the envelope’s edge is the giveaway. Trust me: I was a schoolkid, not Back Then, but Back Far Enough.

Related reading
All OCA Henry posts (Pinboard)

Duke Ellington, Rotterdam 1969

Duke Ellington and His Orchestra. Rotterdam 1969 . Storyville Records. 2016.

The tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves, quoted in Stanley Dance’s The World of Duke Ellington (1970):

“When there’s that fusion between guys who all feel like playing, when everything’s going down right, and we’re playing his music the way it should be played, then it's the greatest jazz band there is.”

That’s the case here.

Concert recordings of the Ellington band at times disappoint. The codified solos, the codified between-tunes patter, the lengthy (and dreaded) medley of hits: a sameness can set in. And yet live recordings are crucial to the Ellington canon: think Fargo 1940, Newport 1956. The only complete Ellington performance of Black, Brown and Beige available was recorded in concert at Carnegie Hall in 1943. The best performances of Suite Thursday and A Tone Parallel to Harlem are those preserved in recordings of 1963 Paris concerts. And the last official Ellington recording is of a concert performance: Eastbourne, England, December 1, 1973.

Rotterdam 1969 (recorded November 7, 1969, during a month-long European tour) is in many respects a great concert recording, with inspired musicianship and excellent sound quality. The instrumentation is a bit unusual: the band was trumpet-heavy but short on trombones, with Norris Turney sitting in with the section (and sometimes serving as a relief alto for an ailing Johnny Hodges). The late ’60s brought the Ellington band significant losses: Ellington’s writing and arranging companion Billy Strayhorn died in 1967; Jimmy Hamilton (clarinet and tenor) left in 1968; Buster Cooper (trombone) left in 1969. But the band was still rich in distinctive soloists: we hear from each member of the reed section (and Turney), from Cat Anderson, Lawrence Brown, and Cootie Williams; from Victor Gaskin and Rufus Jones; from Ellington (of course) and Wild Bill Davis. Other losses were to come: Brown would leave in January 1970, and the greatest blow came in May 1970, with the death of Hodges.

The concert begins and ends in slightly ragged fashion: a few bars of “Take the ‘A’ Train” crossed with “C Jam Blues” at the beginning, a few uncertain bars of “Satin Doll” at the end. But as “C Jam Blues” falls into place, with solos by Cootie Williams, Paul Gonsalves, Lawrence Brown, and Russell Procope, it’s clear that this band has come to play. I can imagine Harry Carney, at the far end of the reed section, pumping out the tempo with his left leg, as he so often did in concert. The piano sound on “Kinda Dukish” and “Take the ‘A’ Train” (“Billy Strayhorn’s ‘Take the “A” Train,’” as Ellington would always announce) is especially percussive, and the band’s performance of “Rockin’ in Rhythm” (a tune Ellington first recorded in 1931) is the most driven I’ve heard.

As in any Ellington concert, there are tunes that showcase individual musicians. No ballads for Paul Gonsalves on this night: he solos at a frantic tempo on “Up Jump” and ends with a delirious cadenza. He and Harold Ashby and Norris Turney engage in a three-tenor battle on “In Triplicate” (and for three or four seconds their collective improvising foreshadows the avant-gardism of the World Saxophone Quartet). Cat Anderson sets off high-note fireworks on “El Gato”; Rufus Jones has a brief feature on “Come Off the Veldt.” Wild Bill Davis, who created the famous “one more time” arrangement of “April in Paris” for Count Basie, does “Satin Doll” in the same manner. Johnny Hodges gets the most solo time: “Black Butterfly” is a sinuous 1936 tune in which the alto has at times the breathiness of a flute; “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be,” “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” and “R. T. M.” are exercises in establishing a deep sense of swing. It’s all Johnny Hodges being Johnny Hodges — beyond category, to borrow an Ellington term of praise.

And there are medleys. The first is a delight. It begins with a bit of “Caravan,” followed by a long “Mood Indigo” with just Lawrence Brown, Harry Carney (bass clarinet), Russell Procope (clarinet), and the rhythm section. How poignant to hear Brown, a most urbane trombonist, pick up a plunger mute and take on the role of his one-time section mate Joe "Tricky Sam" Nanton as growl specialist. The band returns for “Sophisticated Lady,” a chance for Carney to demonstrate the wonders of circular breathing as he sustains a note on his baritone for nearly a minute. The second medley is a showcase for the singer Tony Watkins, and it’s a reminder that Ellington aimed to please all sorts of audiences, including those who might enjoy lyrics about "makin’ that love scene." I have often found Ellington’s choices in male singers puzzling, and Watkins’s performances here leave me puzzled still.

The great highlight of this recording is “La Plus Belle Africaine,” which Ellington wrote for the 1966 World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal — “after,” as he points out, “writing African music for thirty-five years.” This piece always puts me in mind of “Ad Lib on Nippon” from The Far East Suite (1967): each piece has a long introductory section for piano and bass, after which a new theme begins and a member of the reed section takes on a solo role. Ellington’s piano is especially inventive in this “La Plus Belle Africaine,” sounding sometimes like a pizzicato violin, sometimes like a drum against Victor Gaskin’s bowed bass. And then Harry Carney enters on baritone, with a massive sound that suggests canyons, or cathedrals, or both. (In forty-seven years with the Ellington band, “La Plus Belle Africaine” was his greatest moment.) The piece ends by returning to the piano and bass, now with an element of call and response: Ellington and Gaskin playing a phrase, the audience replying by snapping fingers. The piece ends with a snap: in other words, the audience gets the last note, in a moment that’s witty, elegant, and moving.

First The Conny Plank Session , and now Rotterdam 1969 . How many more later-period Ellington performances remain undiscovered? There’s at least one more from Rotterdam: Storyville hopes to release a quartet session recorded after this concert, with Ellington, Davis, Gaskin, and Jones.

Thanks to Storyville for a review copy of this recording, which will be released on April 1.

The program:

Take The “A” Train/C Jam Blues : Kinda Dukish/Rockin’ in Rhythm : Take The "A" Train : Up Jump : La Plus Belle Africaine : Come Off the Veldt : El Gato : Black Butterfly : Things Ain’t What They Used To Be : Don’t Get Around Much Anymore : Medley: Caravan/Mood Indigo/Sophisticated Lady : Medley: Making That Scene/It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing/Be Cool And Groovy For Me : Satin Doll : R. T. M. : In Triplicate/Satin Doll

The musicians:

Cat Anderson, Benny Bailey, Mercer Ellington, Ambrose Jackson, Cootie Williams, Nelson Williams, trumpets
Lawrence Brown, Chuck Connors, trombones
Harold Ashby, Harry Carney, Paul Gonsalves, Johnny Hodges, Russell Procope, Norris Turney, reeds
Duke Ellington, piano; Wild Bill Davis, organ; Victor Gaskin, bass; Rufus Jones, drums; Tony Watkins, vocals

Related reading
All OCA Ellington posts (Pinboard)
Rotterdam 1969 (Storyville Records)

[Bjarne Busk’s excellent liner notes and Ken Vail’s Duke’s Diary, Part Two (2002) are my sources for the dates in the second paragraph.]

Oscar's Day No. 1317

A nice cartoon from George Bodmer: mom jeans telling dad jokes. Pretty corny, in more ways than one.

Robert Walser: trifles and trivialities

Robert Walser, “Frau Scheer,” in Berlin Stories , trans. Susan Bernofsky (New York: New York Review Books, 2012).

Related reading
All OCA Robert Walser posts (Pinboard)

Boris Trail

[Mark Trail , March 28, 2016.]

There must be some way out of here, as the poet said. But there’s no way to unsee Mark’s sudden resemblance to Frankenstein’s monster. Cave . . . bad. Escape . . . good.

Related reading
All OCA Mark Trail posts (Pinboard)

[Mark, Carina, and Gabe have been stuck in this cave since February 2.]

A real-life Bookman

In New York: A Serendipiter’s Journey (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961), Gay Talese describes the work of John T. Murphy, “veteran sleuth” and Supervising Investigator for the New York Public Library. Murphy and a staff of seven tracked down missing books. An excerpt:

Although people who maliciously keep overdue books thirty days or more can be jailed, Murphy is content to regain the books and collect the five-cents-per-day-overdue charge, and then ban the culprit from the libraries. Many fines have run into hundreds of dollars per person. Not long ago Murphy’s men caught a little lady in Brooklyn with 1,200 overdue books. They were able to track her down, despite all her pseudonyms, by matching the handwriting on her various cards and by noting that she invariably borrowed novels of light romance. Librarians were alerted to the handwriting style and the lady’s penchant for light romance, and it was only a matter of time. When the lady was caught she was sent to a mental hospital; she was an insatiable kleptomaniac — but one of New York’s most well-read crooks.

Talese first wrote about Murphy for The New York Times (July 4, 1960), in an short article titled “Library Sleuths Trail Lost Books.” The image below is from a larger Times photograph of Murphy and books.

Also from this book
Chestnuts, pigeons, statues : “Fo-wer, fi-yiv, sev-ven, ni-yen” : Klenosky! : Leeches, catnip oil, strange potions : Tie cleaning in New York

[If you’re not familiar with Lieutenant Bookman, see here and here.]

From The Big Short

From the last minutes of The Big Short (dir. Adam McKay, 2015). Mark Baum (Steve Carrell) is on the phone:

“I have a feeling that in a few years people are going to be doing what they always do when the economy tanks. They will be blaming immigrants and poor people.”

And Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling) follows up with voiceover narration:

“But Mark was wrong. In the years that followed, hundreds of bankers and rating agencies executives went to jail. The SEC was completely overhauled. And Congress had no choice but to break up the big banks and regulate the mortgage and derivatives industries.

Just kidding.

The banks took the money the American people gave them and they used it to pay themselves huge bonuses and lobby the Congress to kill big reform. And then they blamed immigrants and poor people. And this time, even teachers.”

That last sentence puzzled me — it seems an especially novel charge. But at least one deep thinker at the Heritage Foundation did indeed blame teachers’ unions for the housing bubble.

I strongly recommend The Big Short , which takes an inventive approach to telling a Strangelovian story. Breaks in the fourth wall and explanatory cameos by Anthony Bourdain, Selena Gomez, Margot Robbie, and Richard Thaler add to the general sense of unreality. This film would make a nice double-bill with Inside Job (dir. Charles Ferguson, 2010): two sides of the same rotten coin.

[Paragraph breaks for Vennett’s voiceover are mine.]