Richard Cohen is conflicted. On the one hand, torture seems like a bad thing. On the other hand, this Cheney fellow, he says it works. “He says he knows of two CIA memos that support his contention that the harsh interrogation methods worked and that many lives were saved.” “Cheney says he once had the…
Author: Alan Vanneman
Dizzy Gillespie—“Tin Tin Deo”
Dizzy Gillespie, trumpet, & Christopher White, bass, and that’s all.
Fred, Fred, n’ Scat
The May issue of Bright Lights Film Journal is now available. I have a review of one of Fred Astaire’s worst pictures, Let’s Dance, co-starring the resistible Betty Hutton, along with a pan of a short book on Fred by Joseph Epstein. In addition, I take a look at Busby Berkeley’s strange Hollywood Hotel, which…
Coleman Hawkins and Charlie Parker
https://youtu.be/mZ5eGEest0g Very rare clip showing Coleman Hawkins and Charlie Parker pretending to play tunes they’ve already recorded. Worth seeing Parker in particular, because there’s almost no film of him. Predictably, he’s eager to show his disgust at having to follow a used-up has-been like the Hawk. According to Ken James, who definitely seems to know…
Christopher Hitchens, one for seven, but this one cleared the fences
It’s a little late in the game to ask what is the deal with Christopher Hitchens. About one in seven columns is about how he was right about Iraq, or at least that anyone who disagreed with him was wrong. Another seventh are about the joys of drinking on the job—the old “hot type” days…
Scalia to Britney: Drop Dead!
The Supreme Court issues a ruling affirming, sort of, the right of the FCC to punish “fleeting obscenities.” Justice Scalia, writing for a 5-4 majority, took a whack at the “foul-mouthed glitteratae from Hollywood.” For those not up on their Latin, the “ae” ending indicates that the good Justice was directing his ire at trash-talking…
Ross Douthat, Enters Dancing
I haven’t been kind to Ross Douthat in the past, referring to him with perhaps an excess of sarcasm as Ross Dumbfuck. Well, I won’t descend to that level today, but I will say that his debut column in the New York Times, “Cheney for President,” is not a winner. “Watching Dick Cheney defend the…
Anne Applebaum, totally, totally not bashing the World Health Organization
“For, of course, WHO is not a stand-alone organization but, rather, a part of the United Nations. As such, it is afflicted by many of the same illnesses, so to speak, as other U.N. agencies. Like them, WHO is by definition not accountable to voters, and it is rarely scrutinized by the press. Its leaders…
Face of the Bass Times Two: Christian McBride & Niels Pederson—“Bye-bye Blackbird”
Over at the New Yorker, past is prologue
In its obituary for J. G. Ballard, the New Yorker uncorks the following line: “Ballard had already made a name for himself as a writer of science fiction that was short on technology—no robots, no spaceships—and so eerily prescient in its portrayal of global warming (floods, famines) that it can hardly be called fiction.” Yes,…