In a nearby restaurant:
“Are you kidding? I have an eight o’clock final.”
Well played, young scholar.
Related reading
All “overheard” posts (via Pinboard)
[For clarity: the student was just saying no, to something.]
Monday, April 30, 2012
Overheard
By
Michael Leddy
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6:57 PM
comments: 2
As exams approach
Best wishes to all givers and takers of final examinations.
Related reading
How to do horribly on a final exam
How to do well on a final examination
[Sisters Olga and Vera Bogach were friends with and models for the painter William James Jr., a grandson of William James. Vera married a painter named Joe Gropper. That’s all I know.]
By
Michael Leddy
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6:47 AM
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Sunday, April 29, 2012
On Duke Ellington’s birthday
Edward Kennedy Ellington was born on April 29, 1899.
YouTube has some brief 1973 clips of Duke Ellington in Sweden. At the Duke Ellington Music Society, Sven Eriksson reports that this footage was shot for Finnish television (YLE) in the city of Umeå on October 27, 1973. The Westminster Abbey performance of the Third Sacred Concert, mentioned in the interview, took place on October 24.
I’d never before seen Ellington on film this late in his life. (He died on May 24, 1974.) His charm is on display in the airport scene, as he removes his hat to bow to the ladies. But Ellington here is impatient. To a reporter at the airport: “No, you listen. You talk too much; you don’t listen enough.” And to the reporter in the longer interview scene: “We don’t do tours. We do this fifty-two weeks a year.” (Don’t these people read the papers?)
The most revealing comments here concern what the reporter calls “the jazz scene” (Ellington hated the word jazz) and the business of music:
Jazz? Well, I mean, the word to me means freedom of expression. That’s what I think of it, that’s all. And if it is accepted as an art, it is the same as any other art. The popularity of it doesn’t matter, doesn’t mean anything, because when you get into popularity, then you’re talking about money and not music.Other posts for Duke Ellington’s birthday: 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011.
When you say “Well, young people,” that means that young people are dictating. They are the dictators or the dictatresses of the day as far as the arts is concerned, and this is not true. The young people are the people who are buying, because they are told to buy, and they cannot buy what is not pressed. And there’s a little man known as a sales manager who tells them how many million to press. And then they tell the little children, they say “Now you buy this million,” and they do it. It has no relationship to music, and it has nothing to do with taste.
[For fanatics only: Russell Procope is visible behind Ellington at 0:14, Harry Carney at 0:22. I think that’s Mercer Ellington on the far left at 0:15. Ellington’s hat looks like the one he wore when recording This One’s for Blanton with Ray Brown in 1972. Who else could pull off wearing a hat like that? Thelonious Monk, I guess.]
By
Michael Leddy
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9:43 AM
comments: 1
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Vegan phở
From Tara Parker-Pope in the New York Times: recipes for vegan phở. Or pho.
[Elaine, take note.]
By
Michael Leddy
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9:01 AM
comments: 0
Friday, April 27, 2012
Rice and beans à la Hannity
Earlier this week, Sean Hannity explained to his radio audience why poor people needn’t go hungry:
I have friends of mine that eat rice and beans all the time. Beans: protein. Rice: inexpensive. You can make a big pot of this for a week for relatively negligible amounts of money for your whole family and feed your family. Look, you should have vegetables and fruit in there as well, but, you know, if you need to survive, you can survive off it. It’s not ideal. You can get some cheap meat too and throw in there as well for protein. There are ways to live really, really cheaply.Hannity no doubt has no idea what he’s echoing. Here’s what John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939) says in a chapter telling the story of industrial agriculture in California:
Now farming became industry, and the owners followed Rome, although they did not know it. They imported slaves, although they did not call them slaves: Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, Filipinos. They live on rice and beans, the business men said. They don’t need much. They wouldn’t know what to do with good wages. Why, look how they live. Why, look what they eat. And if they get funny — deport them.That reference to “cheap meat” also makes me think of The Grapes of Wrath, and of the Joad family’s staple diet: pork, potatoes, biscuits, coffee. No fruits or vegetables, except for the peaches that young Ruthie and Winfield eat while picking (and which give them horrific diarrhea). Almost no dairy products either: the family buys a bottle or can of milk just twice. The storekeeper who sells Ma Joad some hamburger would fit well in Hannity’s picture of things: “That hamburg is purty nice stuff. Use the grease that comes out a her for gravy. Purty nice. No waste. Don’t throw no bone away.”
And Hannity no doubt would nod in agreement when the storekeeper says “I ain’t guaranteein’ I’d eat her myself; but they’s lots of stuff I wouldn’ do.”
By
Michael Leddy
at
6:51 AM
comments: 9
Blackwing Pages for the taking
I will phrase carefully: it appears that California Cedar, maker of the replica Palomino Blackwing pencil, may have used images from Blackwing Pages for commercial purposes with neither permission nor attribution.
Cal Cedar has previously claimed “fair use” concerning a photograph from Blackwing Pages that it used in a promotional video with neither permission nor attribution. Use is the key word, and this company’s business practices give new meaning to the term Blackwing user. Nobody likes to be used.
Related reading
All Blackwing posts (via Pinboard)
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Michael Leddy
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6:45 AM
comments: 0
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Inappropriate stock photo
accompanies news item
The New York Daily News’s version of a news item about a woman attempting to live on sunlight and dying in the attempt is accompanied by a stock photo whose infotip reads “Female healthy lifestyle.” You can mouse over the photograph at the Daily News to see the infotip in all its inappropriateness.
By
Michael Leddy
at
9:42 PM
comments: 0
Overheard
“I’m gonna give you three seconds to put that violin down, nice and easy.”
Related reading
All “overheard” posts (via Pinboard)
[The television was on in the background, for “warmth.” It was Steve McGarrett (Jack Lord) speaking. ¿Quién es más macho: David Janssen, Lloyd Bridges, o Jack Lord?]
By
Michael Leddy
at
3:51 PM
comments: 8
Hi and Lois watch
There are five-string cellos, and there are left-handed cellists, Charlie Chaplin among them. And there may be, somewhere, a left-handed five-string cellist. But come on.
If there is an in-joke here, it remains very inner. To the average comics reader, or to me, today’s Hi and Lois will look merely goofy. I made a few improvements in about
[Hi and Lois, later that same day.]
Related reading
All Hi and Lois posts (via Pinboard)
[“Very inner”: after the poet Ted Berrigan: “There’s a great inner logic to this poem, which I try to keep very inner.”]
By
Michael Leddy
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8:24 AM
comments: 8
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Tim Johnson on the line
My congressman made the New York Times yesterday: Tim Johnson (R, Illinois-15), who retires this year, was the subject of a short profile that emphasized above all his habit of telephoning his constituents:
“I am almost like a dinosaur,” said Mr. Johnson, who would agree to be interviewed only by, yes, phone. “I think people think I am unique,” he added, clearly embracing the notion of understatement. “My style makes you sufficiently out of the mainstream, and people can wonder how effective you are.”I’ve never understood what’s so extraordinary about this phone habit. According to the Times, Johnson calls 4,000 constituents a year. (His district has a population of 700,000.) Skip Thanksgiving and Christmas and the calls average eleven a day. Count only working days (251 in 2012), and the average jumps to sixteen, still not that many calls to make. Johnson has never called me, though he has sent long and thoughtful responses to several letters and e-mails. The one occasion on which I heard him respond to constituents, a 2009 “town-hall meeting” on health care, was deeply dispiriting. I wanted to hang up.
He cuts a slightly disheveled swath through the Capitol at all hours, his calling often cited by colleagues as his chief accomplishment after a decade of service here. “Tim had his finger on the pulse of his district,” Speaker John A. Boehner said in an e-mail, “and always reminded members that at the heart of every democracy are representatives who will listen first, learn, and then lead.”
[If you click through to the Times article, don’t miss the lively comment thread.]
By
Michael Leddy
at
1:09 PM
comments: 0