Ballaké Sissoko and Derek Gripper

Ballaké Sissoko is a Malian kora player. Derek Gripper is a South African classical guitarist who has brought his instrument to kora music. I had the good fortune to hear these musicians last night in a short (free) concert at the University of Illinois’s Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.

Sissoko and Gripper’s musicianship and empathy are extraordinary, as they improvise their way through duets, shifting right before one’s ears from major to minor modes, from meditative lyricism to rhythmic grooves, always knowing (as improvising musicians do) when a piece is coming to an end. It’s as if Sessoko and Gripper follow the music where it leads them. And with both playing nylon strings, it’s sometimes impossible to know without looking, or even while looking, who’s doing what.

Sissoko and Gripper are now touring North America. If you have a chance to hear them, I’d say to take it. Here’s a sample.

New directions in eating

Our favorite restaurant in the whole wide world, Siam Thai, added a new dish not long ago: khao soi, or khao soy. Our restaurant serves a northern Thai version: it’s a semi-soupy dish, with soft and crispy noodles and two enormous chicken drumsticks in a thick, spicy, curry-like broth (made with a dash of coconut milk). On the side: lime, shallots, pickled mustard greens, and chili flakes in oil. Mao, the restaurant’s owner, told us that it’s her favorite dish when she goes out to eat and that she’s never found it made properly. So she decided to add it to the menu. She told us we would like it, and whaddaya know — she was right. But then we like everything at Siam Thai.

A related post
A strip-mall restaurant recommendation

Kafkish

Gary Gulman, from his Max special Born on 3rd Base :

“One of the most pretentious things you can say is ‘Kafkaesque.’ That’s just — you’re showing off. We’re working-class. Just say ‘Kafkish,’ which has the benefit of also sounding like a kosher pastry. ‘Can I get a pound of the Kafkish?’”

Gary Gulman is a brilliant comedian. His skill in going off on — nay, settling down with — a tangent and coming back from it as if nothing had happened is a wonder. I am looking forward to seeing more. Highly recommended.

A related post
Gary Gulman on the origins of postal abbreviations

[There are half a dozen instances of “Kafkaesque” in these pages, and they’re all okay.]

Mystery actor

[Click for a larger view.]

The pursed lips signify surprise — she wasn’t expecting company while cleaning out the safe. And she may not be expecting anyone to recognize her as a familiar face. Do you?

I was a bit baffled, even after seeing her name in the credits: wait a minute, is that —? But I think this one is easy. Leave your guesses(es) in the comments. I’ll drop a hint if appropriate.

*

Here’s a clue: Of the many avenues, paths, roads, &c. that might lead to a career in film and television, this performer chose a good one.

*

Someone got it — the answer is now in the comments.

More mystery actors (Collect them all)
? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ?

[Garner’s Modern English Usage notes that “support for actress seems to be eroding.” I use actor.]

Alterations & Repairs

[Click either image for a larger view.]

If you are in a city of any size, you’ve probably seen them in dry cleaners’ windows. The first time I saw these images, I thought they were honest-to-God representations of people who worked inside. O, the naiveté.

This man and woman appear to have now reached retirement age, ceding their seats to more modern-looking tailors: this one and this one.

Two doctors talking

From American Fiction (dir. Cord Jefferson, 2023), the Ellison brothers in conversation. Cliff (Sterling K. Brown), a plastic surgeon, says he’s keeping an eye on their mother. Thelonious, known as “Monk,” a novelist and professor, has something to say.

Cliff: “I’m a doctor.”

Monk: “So am I.”

Cliff: “Right. Maybe if we need to revive a sentence.”

As a member of an English department, Monk is the odd man out in his family of doctors and lawyers. I love this exchange, which reminds me that when I asked students to please not call me “Doctor,” I would quote Elaine: “A doctor is someone who can fix your knee.”

I have to take back what I wrote about The Holdovers: I think American Fiction might be the best new movie I see all year.

Confused

“You must have me confused with a normal person”: Larry David (Larry David) in “The Dream Scheme,” this past Sunday’s episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

To my surprise and delight, the series seems to be ending on a high note. I suspect that the final episode will be something of a meta variation on the final episode of Seinfeld, with Larry going to jail — maybe in Atlanta, maybe in Los Angeles. Who else might be in the cell?

“Happy Reunion,” four times

One of my favorite Duke Ellington pieces is “Happy Reunion,” a feature for the tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves. Here is what I believe is the earliest version, from 1958 — a fairly straightforward mid-tempo ballad. As the years went by, the tempo slowed and the melody faded as Gonsalves‘s refashioning and embellishing of the tune became the tune, with his solos becoming variations on his variations. (Consider Coleman Hawkins’s 1939 “Body and Soul” and later versions.)

My favorite performance of “Happy Reunion” came online not long ago, a live recording from a 1971 London concert. I’ve probably listened to it on LP at least a hundred times.

Then there’s a “Happy Reunion” from the 1972 Ellington residency at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. There’s considerable drama underlying this Ellington–Gonsalves duet, something I wrote about in a post some years back. A videotape was long available on YouTube but has disappeared. Get it while you can, at Facebook, or at Vimeo, where you can also see Ellington talking (with unusual frankness) and playing, beginning at 32:54. Gonsalves arrives, apparently unannounced, at 58:58.

And now there’s a third “Happy Reunion” I can share, from a 1973 London concert. It‘s one of Gonsalves’s final performances with the Ellington orchestra, recorded by someone in the audience.

Many thanks to Ian Bradley for making this last “Happy Reunion” available.

*

MAy 23: Another “Happy Reunion” recently came online, from a 1971 performance in Norway, with bass and drums as in the London performance.

Related reading
All OCA Ellington posts (Pinboard)

[1958: Jimmy Woode, bass; Sam Woodyard, drums. 1971: Joe Benjamin, bass; Rufus Jones, drums. 1973: Joe Benjamin, bass; Quentin “Rocky” White, drums.]

Postal abbreviations

Not new, but new to me: Gary Gulman explains how the states got their two-letter abbreviations.

Thanks, Lu.

[I’ve watched his 2019 and 2023 Max specials. Highly recommended.]

Review: Carol Beggy, Pencil

Carol Beggy. Pencil. New York: Bloomsbury, 2024. xiv + 136 pages. $14.95 paper.

This small book is a big disappointment. It’s a volume in the series Object Lessons, short books devoted to the contemplation of everyday things: barcodes, hyphens, rust. Other volumes in this series might be terrific. But Pencil is not.

The first sentence to bring me up short, on page three, was about Henry Petroski’s The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance:

He not only details the history of pencil-making but breaks down the process of its manufacture.

I noticed that the word its has no referent. A possible revision:

He not only details the history of pencil-making but breaks down the process of the pencil’s manufacture.

But don’t they amount to the same thing? Better:

He details both the history of pencil-making and the modern manufacturing process.

Am I being picky? Let’s see.

On page six:

A pencil used to be the go-to tool for when a cassette tape needed to be rewound.

A possible revision:

The pencil was once the go–to tool for rewinding a cassette tape.

On page nineteen:

The Musgrave Pencil Company is family-owned and operates out of Shelbyville, TN, which was dubbed “Pencil City, USA,” because a half dozen manufacturers once had factories in the Middle Tennessee town.

A possible revision:

The family-owned Musgrave Pencil Company is based in “Pencil City, USA,” the Middle Tennessee town of Shelbyville, once home to a half dozen pencil manufacturers.

Many sentences are, well, unnecessarily cluttered. On page eighty-three:

When writing his book on the pencil, Petroski devotes the opening of his first chapter to Thoreau and how he made lists of everything he used each day, what was in his cabin in the woods, and the animals, trees, and weather he spotted along the way.

A possible revision:

Petroski begins The Pencil with Thoreau and his lists: of the things he used each day, the contents of his cabin, the animals, trees, and weather conditions he observed.

Often the parts of a sentence can be rearranged to the writer’s (and reader’s) advantage. On page eighty-one:

Tucked into a back corner of the historic cemetery are the graves of some of the best-known US writers and thinkers in the mid– to late-nineteenth century along Authors Ridge.

A possible revision, putting all the details of location in one place:

Tucked into a back corner of the historic cemetery is Authors Ridge, which houses the graves of some of the best-known nineteenth-century American writers and thinkers.

And often the writing is marred by plain carelessness. Many sentences lack necessary punctuation. Here’s one, from page fifty-three:

The problem is that when you spot these claims there never appears to be any attribution and thousands of these references show up in searches.

Elsewhere, words are missing. On page fifty-eight:

I learned a lot from the other members then and still [continue to learn?].

On page sixty-seven:

I know that there are some out [there?] confused by the thought that there are members of a pencil collecting group who travel great distances to meet with their fellow collectors.

That sentence could benefit from rewriting to eliminate the repeated “that there are”:

I’m sure some people are amused by the idea of pencil collectors traveling great distances to meet.

And back on page twenty-two, there’s just a mess:

the Blackwing 602, which it’s distinctive, flattened ferrule

I don’t know what accounts for such writing. In an afterword Beggy mentions a missed deadline and “life, health, and the world such as it is in 2023” getting in the way of her finishing the book. What I do know is that Bloomsbury, a reputable publisher, put this book out, as it is, and is charging $14.95 for it. Bloomsbury, that’s unconscionable.

I suspect that Mary Norris’s Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen (2015) strongly influenced Pencil. Like Norris, Beggy has worked as an editor (at The Boston Globe ) and has written a chatty, digressive book. But Norris’s book has a premise — her life as a copyeditor at The New Yorker — that admits of manifold personal asides and digressions. Beggy’s subject is the pencil. Many of the asides and digressions in Pencil have little to do with that subject (or object).

My favorite bit in Pencil : Beggy’s explanation of why reporters take three writing instruments with them on assignment: ballpoint pen, felt-tip pen, and pencil. In those paragraphs the pencil and the personal mesh nicely.

Related reading
All OCA pencil posts (Pinboard)

[An excerpt from a Stephen Sondheim interview that I posted in these pages appears in this book, properly credited. But credit should really have gone to the site with the interview itself.]