“[T]he city’s one big night”

One hundred years ago: “Thousands Turn Out in New Year Revels; Throngs of Merry Noisemakers Stretch from 23d Street to Columbus Circle,” New York Times, January 1, 1911.

Happy New Year to you, reader.

Van Dyke Parks on “Orange Crate Art”

The California Report interviews Van Dyke Parks about his song “Orange Crate Art.” A sample:

“It was in about 1995. I had a piano exercise in front of me; I loved it. It was in E flat. It reminded me of something I might have played as a child, like Schumann. So it was a beautiful song. I just determined to put some lyrics to it, and the first thing that came to mind was the word orange.”

Listen to it all:

Van Dyke Parks on “Orange Crate Art” (KQED)

Related reading
All Van Dyke Parks posts (via Pinboard)

Geraldine Doyle (1924–2010)

[Poster by J. Howard Miller.]

Cellist, metal presser, icon: Geraldine Doyle, Iconic Face of World War II, Dies at 86 (New York Times).

Amy Winehouse’s to-do list

From 2001, the work of a seventeen-year-old list-maker: Amy Winehouse’s to-do list.

Other posts with lists
“Ambercroombie & Flitch” (Ways to be cool)
Blue crayon (Supplies for an imaginary camping trip)
Johnny Cash’s to-do list (“Kiss June”)
Review: Liza Kirwin, Lists (Artists’ lists)
Whose list? (A found list)

Billy Taylor (1921–2010)

Sad news:

Billy Taylor, a pianist and composer who was also an eloquent spokesman and advocate for jazz as well as a familiar presence for many years on television and radio, died on Tuesday in Manhattan. He was 89 and lived in the Riverdale area of the Bronx. . . .

Dr. Taylor, as he preferred to be called (he earned a doctorate in music education from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1975), was a living refutation of the stereotype of jazz musicians as unschooled, unsophisticated and inarticulate, an image that was prevalent when he began his career in the 1940s, and that he did as much as any other musician to erase.

Dr. Taylor probably had a higher profile on television than any other jazz musician of his generation. He had a long stint as a cultural correspondent on the CBS News program Sunday Morning and was the musical director of David Frost’s syndicated nighttime talk show from 1969 to 1972.

Billy Taylor, Jazz Pianist, Dies at 89 (New York Times)

I think that Billy Taylor must be the first jazz musician I ever saw — on television, when I was a kid. Here’s a sampler of his art, courtesy of YouTube:

An unidentified blues
“Here’s That Rainy Day” (with John Lewis)
“I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free”
“In a Sentimental Mood”
“Three Blind Mice”

Miss E.Z. Peel

My supermarket (that is, the one where I do my “marketing”) is selling clementines for the ridiculous price of $4.11 a box (cheap!). These clementines (from Brazil) are selling under the name “Miss E.Z. Peel.” Here is the United States Patent and Trademark Office description of the Miss E.Z. Peel service mark: “The mark consists of a stylized image of a clementine peel with a silhouette of a lady holding a clementine.”

With a name like Miss E.Z. Peel, she’s no lady. And really, clementines are delightful as they are, with no need for sexualized hype. (One Chiquita Banana is already one sexualized fruit too many.) What is more disturbing about this branding gimmick though is that Miss E.Z. Peel strongly resembles a fetus-like, E.T.-like creature. What is meant to look like the seamless curve of chin, neck, and shoulder-length hair looks (at least to my eyes) like the gaping maw of the massive-headed creature, ready to devour the tender fruit now in its claw-like grasp. No joke: my wife Elaine had to explain this image to me before I could see it as its maker intended. When we first saw Miss E.Z. Peel in the store, all I could do was stare.

I’ve presented a stylized photograph of the Miss E.Z. Peel silhouette here, extra creepiness added via iPhoto’s Vignette effect.

[Photograph by Michael Leddy.]

A related post
Duck-rabbit

“Why Is Illinois So Corrupt?”

Shane Tritsch of Chicago magazine gets some answers: “Why Is Illinois So Corrupt?”

Adam Wheeler, prose stylist

The Boston Globe reports that Adam Wheeler’s Harvard application was filled with inconsistencies. His prose wasn’t that great either. The Globe quotes a sentence from an essay accompanying Wheeler’s application:

My belief is that the conceptual basis of the multidisciplinary and cross-cultural study of texts, traditions, and discourses must consist of a commitment to connectivity — in part for all the reasons that bombard us every day as virtual cliches.

Here is a perfect example of what Michael Harvey’s The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing calls “the pompous style.” Look past the abstractions (“conceptual basis”), the nominalizations (“My belief is that” for “I believe”), and the prepositional phrases (seven of them), and the sentence reveals itself as a laughable tautology.

E-mail and punctuation

In the news, a not-yet-published study of readers’ reactions to e-mails:

In one of the first studies of its kind, researchers [Frank McAndrew and Chelsea Rae De Jonge] have identified three commonly used e-mail elements as being highly influential in shaping how others perceive us — regardless of whether those conclusions are accurate.

The study looks at the effects of punctuation, typos, and voice on reader-response. Some of the conclusions confirm what common sense would suggest — that use of the first person adds intimacy, that typos aplenty signal a lack of care. The more provocative conclusions concern punctuation:

E-mails with no question marks or exclamation points were perceived as being sent by a superior, while those that included lots of question marks and exclamation points were interpreted as coming from a subordinate.

In general, question marks conveyed anger and confusion, while exclamation points, as you might expect, communicated happiness. The absence of both types of punctuation implied apathy, and a high frequency of such punctuation caused readers to assume the sender was female.

“I guess it's the old stereotype of women being more expressive and emotional. A text message or email that’s chock-full of question marks and exclamation points comes across as a little girlie, for lack of a better way to phrase it,” says McAndrew, adding wryly: “Real men don’t use punctuation; they use caveman-like direct, short sentences.”

Yipes. Notice that McAndrew’s final (publicity-seeking?) sentences make use of five different punctuation marks.

Related posts
E-mail etiquette
How to e-mail a professor
How to punctuate a sentence
How to punctuate more sentences

“The white stuff”

Re: journalism: I hereby call for an end to the use of that tired phrase “the white stuff” (as heard on the local news this evening). Cocaine? Dandruff? No. Snow.

And re: weather: I hereby call for an end to snow, at least for a while.

Related posts
“Ice and Snow Blues” (A blues lyric)
Inclement weather (John Milton and us)
“It’s spitting” (A weather idiom)
“It is snowing.” (A Pierre Reverdy prose-poem)
Snow, dirt, paint (A photograph)
Snowbound (A one-act play)