If you’re as old as I am you’re probably dead, but if not you might remember the strange foreboding that gripped some of us back in the day when the fateful year of “1984” began to loom on the calendarial horizon: It was actually going to be 1984! We had been bred and baked in…
Author: Alan Vanneman
Truffles To Die For
(Author’s note: Some years ago I wrote three novellas in imitation of Rex Stout’s detective novels, featuring his rotund, orchid-fancying semi alter ego Nero Wolfe, as narrated by his wise-cracking assistant Archie Goodwin. They’re available, for free, if you click here and scroll down past all my “pay to read” books to Three Bullets. I…
Thailand Jazz—“In Walked Bud”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlhVDcDvysE I don’t have any names, because everything is in Thai script. The tune, and the lyrics, written by Jon Hendricks, do get around. Posted by Nok DekPerdNote
American Catholics and American Jews are not happy campers. And neither, it seems, are America’s evangelicals
This conversation didn’t happen, but it could have: Monseigneur Vivaldi: “Have you read that Pennsylvania grand jury report? Over three hundred priests accused of sex abuse! We’ve hit rock bottom! It can’t get any worse than this!” Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò: “Hold my beer.” Yes, Viganò’s now notorious letter is rockin’ the church in ways…
Elizabeth Nolan Brown, getting it so very, very wrong in so many varied ways
Elizabeth Nolan Brown, or “Dizzy Miss Lizzy” as she’s known around town, writes the “Reason Roundup” for Reason magazine’s online site each morning, covering the news that’s hot of the griddle. Usually, she’s excellent—check out last Friday’s riff on the continuing fraud of “sex trafficking”, a joint project of liberals and conservatives to throw people…
Kenny Barron & Elena Pinderhughes—“Shuffle Boil”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVoY1hbnFNg Taking a break from “In Walked Bud” for some fabulous jazz flute, supplied by Elena Pinderhughes. According to online comments, Jonathan Blake is the drummer. The bassist is Kiyoshi Kitagawa. “Shuffle Boil” is a fairly obscure Monk tune. He first recorded it on a date led by saxophonist Gigi Gryce, more or less as…
Lauren Gussis’ “Insatiable”—let me count the clichés. Okay, I give up.
When word hit the street that Lauren Gussis, one of the “geniuses” behind the TV series devoted to heroic mass torturer/murderer Dexter, had come up with something even more shocking—a Netflix original about a fat teen-ager who became not fat and hence “Insatiable”, the howls of outrage among the easily outraged—those who seek to expel…
Daniel Drezner, harrumphing audibly, but not (alas!) intelligibly
Okay, whole lotta’ unpackin’ goin’ on here, whole lotta’ unpackin’ goin’ on. A couple of weeks ago, WashPost guy Dan Drezner, whom I (sometimes) like, uncorked a whole lotta nonsense due to the death of Princeton professor of international affairs Robert Gilpin, writing in praise of Gilpin in a column bearing the pungent subhead “It’s…
Roy Mor & Ofer Ganor—“In Walked Bud”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2nxfUK0G3w Jazz Globus Festival, November 2017. Roy Mor
Once more into the breach, atom-wise
The 73rd anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima has come and gone, prompting Stevens Institute of Technology professor Alex Wellerstein, self-proclaimed “historian of science, secrecy, and nuclear weapons,” to unleash a “debunking the myths” twitterstorm on the subject, prompting me to respond in near-knee-jerk reaction, since I’ve already debunked the debunkers before—mostly here, but also…