At his blog, Matthew Yglesias snickers at Washington Institution Mark Russell, noting in amazement that Mark’s trademark toothless wit is offered as special bonus for anyone ponying up $440,000 for the Shoreham’s “44th Commander-In-Chief” package—four days and nights in the Shoreham’s Presidential suite, tickets to the Inauguration, and more! “I’ve gotta say, ‘in-room dinner with…
Words stolen from Alan Vanneman’s brain, when he was helpless and asleep
“I Often Dream of Trains may be the most Syd Barrett-influenced album of Robyn Hitchcock’s career ….” David Malitz, Wash Post, Nov. 20, 2008. Oh, and how about that mammoth shit?
It was worse than a crime, it was a kirchick
Over at the New Republic, Jamie “Joe Lieberman is stunning” Kirchick inadvertently creates a new noun in his pathetic attempt to shelter the Joeman from the righteous wrath of the Democrats, who most certainly should bounce Joe’s lying ass from the chair of the Homeland Security & Government Affairs Committee, that noun being “kirchick /cur’chik/…
Lowering the Bar
Over at the Weekly Standard, Stephen F. “Dick Cheney is stunning” Hayes is chatting with Sarah Palin. Stevo’s a definite Palinite, but, as he tells us, he’s not afraid to ask the tough questions: I started by asking her about the question of the day–whether the federal government should bail out the Big Three automakers….
Little Rootie Tootie Mania!
Well, pretty much. Back in the early fifties, Thelonious Monk wrote a tune, so the story goes, for his son Thelonious Jr. called “Little Rootie Tootie.” He recorded it for Prestige, which was not all that excited about Monk’s limited sales. Then after Monk moved to Riverside, the tune was redone, with Hall Overton rewriting…
Stan Getz—“Out of Nowhere,” Dusseldorf, 1960
Stan Getz used to worry about being the Jewish Lester Young. Well, nice work if you can get it, I would say. When Stan was on, as he very often was through the Fifties, he was half a step behind Lester, if that. Here in Germany in 1960, with Jan Johansson piano, Ray Brown, brass,…
I, Cheé•wa•wa
Granted, “chihuahua” is a difficult word of many of us to decode. Excuse me for not reading Inca! Or Aztec, or Mayan, or whatever. So it’s not too surprising that advertisements for Beverly Hills Chihuahua offer a phonetic spelling—“cheé-wow-wä,” to be precise—along with two pictures of the damn critters. But why do they put an…
At the Movies
The Bright Lights Film Journal has a couple of pieces by me in their latest issue, Cast Away and Ascenseur pour l’échafaud (Elevator to the Gallows), plus a brief take on Iron Man, from a few months back. The whole issue, not terribly safe for work, is here. Cast Away, the Tom Hanks/Robert Zemeckis study…
Krugman, the gift that keeps on giving
Big Paul waxes bitchy in his blog today. “On my way to teach, this morning: ‘Vote for the hero and the hottie.’ Yes, it was on a pickup truck.” Yes, it was on a pickup truck and, yes, the driver was a massive douchebag with a beard, with a Nobel prize duct-taped to the dashboard….
The Apostasy of Anne, the Sadness of Sarah
Anne Applebaum’s slapdown of John McCain, which I heartily praised here, is causing some heartburn on the Right. “There have been a number of absurd reasons given recently by self-described conservatives who are endorsing the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate in his bid for the presidency, but none are quite as unconvincing as…