Over at Politico, Klaus Larres (German) and Peter Eltsov (Russian) have a quasi-hagiographical take on German chancellor Angela Merkel, who is in fact an impressive figure.1 Unfortunately, Klaus and Peter aren’t always so impressive themselves, swallowing whole Merkel’s “no nonsense” approach to the financial crisis in Greece, groaning that “some well-meaning but perhaps not very…
Author: Alan Vanneman
Republican Cool
Scott Walker thinks that all pregnant women should be forced to submit to an ultrasound procedure, because ultrasounds are “just a cool thing out there,” according to this report from Politico. Perhaps pregnant women could come up with a list of cool things out there for Mr. Walker to submit to, whether he wants to…
Pseudo New Yorker
Legal humor here “See, I’ve got this movie playing in my head, in my head. I’ve got this movie playing in my head, in my head. And this little doohickey is recording it.” “Okay, now, when I yell ‘Action!’, you take off all your clothes, and then, you know, we’ll just go from there.” “I’m…
Who Am I?
It’s well-known that our computers are watching us. If you do a little online research on Smithfield hams or Katy Perry’s underpants, “interest-appropriate” ads will appear on every site you visit. For a while I’ve been seeing a lot of come-ons for an “amazing” video showing a chick who’s half naked and half enclosed in…
Zoot Lives! The 1986 Memorial Concert featuring Gerry Mulligan
A nice salute to Zoot Sims, featuring Gerry Mulligan on baritone sax, sounding very aggressive, with Roger Kellaway, piano, Bill Crow, bass, and Bob Rosengarden, drums. Posted by Jazz Video Guy
Seymour Hersh’s inconvenient truths
Philip Giraldi has a nice—nice, if redundant—piece in the American Conservative pointing out that Seymour M. Hersh’s recent piece in the London Review of Books, “The Killing of Osama bin Laden” is likely to be a lot more accurate than the mainstream media, which somehow resent being told that the US government doesn’t always tell…
Joe Lovano, Danilo Pérez, Richard Bona, & Jack DeJohnette live 2012—“Ask Me Now” & “Think of One”
Sax, piano, bass, and drums, respectively. Posted by a7dana7
I’d like to score the world some coke
Everybody—well, at least five—is talking about how much they luv Don “Mad Men” Draper’s chef d’œuvre, “I’d like to buy the world a Coke,” which I’ve mangled just a bit in my headline. Well, let me just say that when I came home from Vietnam and saw this manipulative masterstroke of capitalistic co-option on TV,…
Rape Now and Then
In a recent posting, Classical Mythology Too Triggering for Columbia Students, Reason’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown focuses of the most recent—or one of the most recent—follies de jour in America’s academia, rage among four students at Columbia who discovered that Ovid’s Metamorphoses contain a whole lotta rape. According to the complaint, one student “said her professor…
Pseudo New Yorker
Legal humor here “Just white bread folks, huh? I don’t think so.” “A striking case of technological convergence, yes. But somehow it’s still scaring the shit out of me.” “Damn! You never know what’s going to come out of those things!” “Are they bringing us toast or taking our butter? That’s the question.” “Must be…