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…
Vote for McCain, or Greg Mankiw Will Shoot His Dog
Can’t be that bad? Actually, it’s worse! If Obama is elected, Greg says, well, he just might not feel like writing as many articles as he used to. I don’t know about you, but living in a world that contains significantly fewer Greg Mankiw articles than the current one gives me the damn fantods. Here’s…
Anne Hits a Winner, Cohen Goes For the Jugular
I’ve been fairly hard on Anne Applebaum over the past few years, finding her if not actually neo-con then certainly neo-con-ish, tending to treat all foreign policy issues as a matter of toughness and will. “If we just stand up to the Russians/Taliban/Iranians/etc. then we’ll win!” The question of whether it’s worth traveling half-way around…
James Carter vs. Joshua Redman, Monk vs. Parker “Straight No Chaser”/ “Now’s the Time”
They both get a bit squeaky at times, in the tedious tradition of sax “battles,” but still this isn’t bad stuff.
The Revenge of Krugman
Paul Krugman is apparently tired of being called “shrill” while wearing his “columnist” hat, particularly, so it would seem, when the label is applied by the Washington Post’s own David S. “Massively Boring” Broder. Since I read Dave’s column on a fitful basis, I’ve never caught him in the act of dissing Paul, but presumably…