William Parker in the NYT

“He’s the kind of figure it might be tempting to label a giant if such shorthand weren’t sure to strike him as distastefully hierarchical”: The New York Times has an article about the bassist and composer William Parker. His latest release is a 10-CD set, Migration of Silence Into and Out of the Tone World.

Related posts
The William Parker Quartet : Wood Flute Songs

Milford Graves (1941–2021)

Milford Graves has died at the age of seventy-nine. Never heard of him? That’s okay. His website describes him as “percussionist, acupuncturist, herbalist, martial artist, programmer, and professor.”

NPR has an obituary. And here, from YouTube, are fifteen wild minutes with Graves and John Zorn.

*

February 22: The New York Times has an obituary.

The Beach Boys at the zoo

Look: it’s long-lost footage of the Beach Boys in 1966 at the San Diego Zoo. That’s where George Jerman shot the cover photograph for Pet Sounds.

Did the zoo really ban Messrs. Wilson, Wilson, Wilson, Jardine, Johnston, and Love for life? It’s clear at least that the Boys were not welcome to return. Here’s why.

Related reading
All OCA Beach Boys posts (Pinboard)

Digable

I was teaching something by Digable Planets — no doubt “Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)” — but I couldn’t find the tune on the cassette. I may have put the cassette in the player the wrong way round.

Related reading
All OCA teaching dreams (Pinboard)

[This is the twenty-first teaching-related dream I’ve had since I retired. In all but one, something has gone wrong.]

2-D, 9-A

Elaine made me a Valentine’s Day crossword. “Poof — you’re a crossword!” she said.

But seriously: what she made was a deeply transgressive puzzle, with uncrossed letters, a two-letter answer (US), and red squares instead of black.

One sneaky clue: 2-D, four letters, “Chat or film.” And my favorite, also sneaky: 9-D, four letters, “Favorite pad.” I was not expecting such sneakiness.

Clues shared with permission. Answers in the comments.

Play, do

[From the New Yorker website.]

This phrasing surprises me, but a quick search confirms that play is a common verb with crosswords. Still, it’s never occurred to me to play the crossword. I do it, or them. Maybe do sounds a little lowbrow to The New Yorker ?

[Google: “play the crossword,” 892,000 results; “do the crossword,” 1,330,000. The Google Ngram Viewer returns no results for “play the crossword.”]

A Grape-Nuts shortage

I somehow missed it. From The New York Times:

After a monthslong, nationwide shortage of its polarizing cereal, the maker of Grape-Nuts is trying to reassure customers that the familiar wheat-and-barley breakfast will soon be back, still with no grapes or nuts.

The cereal’s manufacturer, Post Consumer Brands, announced on Thursday that it would be shipping the cereal at full capacity by mid-March, after supply-chain constraints and higher demand during the pandemic caused a shortage in late 2020.

“We recognize that the temporary Grape-Nuts shortage has been frustrating to fans given that Grape-Nuts is a one-of-a-kind cereal and there is no other cereal like it on the market,” Kristin DeRock, the cereal’s brand manager, said in a statement.

Well, there are cereals like it: Nutty Nuggets, Rocky Pellets, Stony Orbs, and other store brands. But our stash of “the familiar wheat-and-barley breakfast” should last through mid-March.

Other Grape-Nuts posts
Breakfast with the Food Network : Everything I always wanted to ask about Grape-Nuts : Cereals in the hands of an angry blog (Close-reading boxes)

[Monthslong? Yes, it’s a word. Only Nutty Nuggets are real.]

“Weeks of inward winter”

At Dreamers Rise, a passage from Charlotte Brontë’s Villette that seems made for these times.

Bushmiller under the El

Today’s Zippy has one Ernie Bushmiller, one Nancy Ritz, and two beautiful black-and-white panels of life under the El. Which El? The El, the one in the strip.

Notice the meta sign in the first panel.

At the intersection of Nancy and Zippy
All OCA Nancy posts : Nancy and Zippy posts : Zippy posts(Pinboard)

Valentine’s Day

[Lapis lazuli heart amulet. From Egypt, 26th–30th Dynasty, c. 664–334 BCE. Height: 1 9/16″. From the Cesnola Collection, purchased by subscription, 1874–76. Metropolitan Museum of Art. From the online collection. Click for a larger view.]