“Making Progress”

[“Making Progress,” xkcd, October 23, 2017.]

Don’t miss the mouseover text. See also this post about making slow progress.

[I just realized that xkcd almost certainly owes something to Rudolf Modley’s pictorial symbols.]

Dick Cavett’s Vietnam

Tonight, on many PBS stations: Dick Cavett’s Vietnam, with excerpts from episodes of The Dick Cavett Show, period footage, and new interviews.

“Really too small for an atelier”

K. has called on Titorelli, a court painter who turns out portraits of judges:


Franz Kafka, The Trial, trans. Breon Mitchell (New York: Schocken, 1998).

Related reading
All OCA Kafka posts (Pinboard)

Close reading

“While Trump has disputed the story [of what happened in his phone call to Myeshia Johnson] — even claiming to have still-yet-to-be-produced “proof” to back it up — the White House has largely seemed to confirm that he said the things he has been accused of saying”: a good example of close reading, from Aaron Blake of The Washington Post.

I suspect that close reading will at some point extend to the “is” of “There is no collusion.” And notice that it’s always “no collusion with Russia” or “no collusion with the Russian government,” omitting reference to interested individuals.

Proust at auction

On October 30 Sotheby’s will auction an extremely rare copy of Du côté de chez Swann, one of five first-edition copies printed on Japanese paper. The book carries this inscription:

A Monsieur Louis Brun
Ce livre qui passé à la N[ouve]lle Revue française n’a pas oublié son amitié première pour Grasset
Affectueux souvenir
Marcel Proust

Estimated price: €400,000–600,000. Must start saving up!

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)

[Sotheby’s translation: “To Mr. Louis Brun: this book, which is moving over to the Nouvelle Revue Française, has not forgotten its first friendship for Grasset. With affectionate memories, Marcel Proust.” Brun worked for Bernard Grasset, whose eponymous publishing house brought out Du côté de chez Swann in 1913. In 1916 Proust changed publishers, from Grasset to Gaston Gallimard and Éditions de la Nouvelle Revue Française.]

“Dig the gonest”

Still making progress through my dad’s CDs: Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, Ivie Anderson, Louis Armstrong, Fred Astaire, Mildred Bailey, Count Basie, Tony Bennett, Art Blakey, Ruby Braff and Ellis Larkins, Clifford Brown, Dave Brubeck, Joe Bushkin, Hoagy Carmichael, Betty Carter, Ray Charles, Charlie Christian, Rosemary Clooney, Nat “King” Cole, John Coltrane, Bing Crosby, Miles Davis, Matt Dennis, Doris Day, Blossom Dearie, Paul Desmond, Tommy Dorsey, Billy Eckstine, Duke Ellington, Bill Evans, Gil Evans, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Erroll Garner, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, Stéphane Grappelli, Bobby Hackett, Coleman Hawkins, Woody Herman, Earl Hines, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Dick Hyman, Harry James, Hank Jones (my dad did tile work in his house), Louis Jordan, Stan Kenton, Barney Kessel, Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross, Peggy Lee, Mary Ann McCall, Susannah McCorkle, Dave McKenna, Ray McKinley, Marian McPartland, Johnny Mercer, Helen Merrill, Glenn Miller, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Thelonious Monk, Wes Montgomery, Gerry Mulligan, Red Norvo, Anita O’Day, and now, Charlie Parker.

By way of YouTube, here are two great ballad performances, from the Parker compilation Best of “The Complete Savoy & Dial Studio Recordings” (Savoy Jazz, 2002), with Parker, alto; Miles Davis, trumpet; Duke Jordan, piano; Tommy Potter, bass; and Max Roach, drums:

“Embraceable You” (George and Ira Gershwin). Recorded in New York City, October 28, 1947. This is the take in which Parker begins his solo by quoting Sam Coslow’s “A Table in the Corner.” Gary Giddins gets credit for identifying the source.

“Out of Nowhere” (Johnny Green–Edward Heyman). Recorded in New York City, November 4, 1947.

And here, from the Parker compilation Best of “The Complete Live Performances on Savoy” (Savoy Jazz, 2002), is my transcription of a bit of patter from a radio broadcast. The announcer is Symphony Sid, broadcasting from the Royal Roost, March 5, 1949. Please imagine Parker’s group playing Lester Young’s “Jumpin’ with Symphony Sid” as Sid speaks:

“Oh what a frantic place, the Royal Roost, ladies and gentlemen, the Metropolitan Bopera House here on Broadway between 47th and 48th Street, right opposite the Strand Theatre. Aww, the music is so crazy where the lights are low and the music is a real knocked-out groove, ninety-cents admission, and all you got to do is sit back and relax, from nine-thirty till four, and dig the gonest.”

The Royal Roost stood at 1580 Broadway, Manhattan. The Strand Theatre: 1579. The Metropolitan Opera House was eight blocks away, at 1411 Broadway.

Also from my dad’s CDs
Mildred Bailey : Tony Bennett : Charlie Christian : Blossom Dearie : Duke Ellington : Coleman Hawkins : Billie Holiday : Louis Jordan

[As much as I like Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross, I wasn’t about to separate all those individual names with semicolons for the sake of one vocal trio. Why links to the recordings? It’s increasingly difficult to find YouTube uploads of commercial recordings that can be embedded.]

Still smoking

[Hi and Lois, October 22, 2017.]

Oh, wait — they’re birds. I thought there were little flecks of ash around him.

Thirsty Thurston first appeared in Hi and Lois on June 9, 1961. He has been smoking for more than fifty-six years.

Related reading
All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

[Even Andy Capp gave up cigarettes, in 1983.]

“An essay test!”

[Peanuts, October 22, 1970. Click for a larger view.]

Yesterday’s Peanuts is today’s Peanuts. Or more precisely, October 22, 1970’s Peanuts was this past Thursday’s Peanuts.

You can read the entire run of Peanuts at GoComics. Begin here.

Related reading
All OCA Peanuts posts (Pinboard)

A Night at The Garden

Available for online viewing: A Night at The Garden, Marshall Curry’s seven-minute assemblage of archival footage of a 1939 German American Bund rally at Madison Square Garden. The 20,000-strong event was advertised as a “Pro-American Rally.” George Washington, swastikas, and a protester beaten. Draw your own parallels and conclusions.

Churchill on looking at nature

Once you begin to study it, all Nature is equally interesting and equally charged with beauty. I was shown a picture by Cézanne of a blank wall of a house, which he had made instinct with the most delicate lights and colours. Now I often amuse myself when I am looking at a wall or a flat surface of any kind by trying to distinguish all the different colours and tints which can be discerned upon it, and considering whether these arise from reflections or from natural hue. You would be astonished the first time you tried this to see how many and what beautiful colours there are even in the most commonplace objects, and the more carefully and frequently you look the more variations do you perceive.

Winston Churchill, Painting as a Pastime (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1950).

No painter, I. But this passage makes me think of the way everything looks different after a day at a museum, where you might see Cézanne’s House in Provence or House and Trees or The House with the Cracked Walls. Churchill’s essay is about much more than hobbies and pastimes; it’s about attention.

[This passage so captured me that I didn’t even stop to ask whether a wall should be considered part of nature.]