I kind of miss the good old days of spam—just a little. It was like all America was one big, happy trailer park: Bigger breasts! Bigger penis! Cleaner septic tank! That’s what everyone wants, right? The under-the-counter drug ads were an additional delight: Get your meds from Mexico! Hey, hey! Excellent Zanax! Okay, getting twenty…
Joe Lovano
Tenor sax man Joe Lovano, one of the leaders in “post-Ornette” jazz, is shown here in 1995 with George Mraz on bass and Al Foster on drums. Two years later, Lovano made one of the greatest free jazz albums ever—Trio Fascination*—with Dave Holland on bass and Elvin Jones on drums. *Trio Fascination (edition one) to…
Kathy Griffin’s My Life on the D-List—I can’t stop watching! Oh, wait, yes, I can.
I was always a fan of Kathy Griffin, dating back to the days of the Suddenly Susan TV show. Susan got terrible reviews, but I was a devoted fan, sticking with the show even through the last, stumbling season, or at least the first half. I even watched the show in reruns for awhile, before…
George Russell
Back in the fifties, the heyday of “intellectual jazz,” George Russell was perhaps the most cerebral of them all, not that it netted him much at the box office. But he did get on the tube now and again, on those Sunday afternoon “public service” broadcasts the networks put on to satisfy the FCC and…
You heard me—a total monarchist
I was riding on the metro last week, about 7 PM, listening to the two young women in front of me. “He’s like a total monarchist,” one of them said. This was way over my head. Was this a new putdown? A riff on the less savory aspects of the Bush fils presidency, or at…
Humor at the New Yorker. No, I’m NOT kidding!
In the past, it’s true, I have on occasion made fun of the New Yorker, driven beyond endurance by its obsessive orotundity, but this squib by David Owen is pretty funny.
Justice Scalia, very big, very fat liar
In his already infamous dissent in Boumedienne v. Bush, Justice Scalia released a massive volley of palpable falsehoods, including this one: “At least 30 of those prisoners hitherto released from Guantanamo Bay have returned to the battlefield.” Nino has an obsession with “the battlefield.” His use of “returned” is intended to make us believe that…
Obsessive-compulsive factoid o’ the day
“Deësis” is an example of “diæresis.” That is, the two dots over the second “e” in “deësis” form a diacritical mark indicating that the second “e” is to be pronounced separately from the first. “Deësis,” from the Greek δέηοις (“prayer”), refers to any art work depicting Christ enthroned, with the Virgin on one side and…
David Broder is a liar
Ken Silverstein blows a massive hole in David Broder’s credibility right here. The trouble started with reports that Big Dave was giving speeches at political fund-raising events and lobbbyists’ conventions. Broder refused to speak to Silverstein about this, because reporters don’t have to answer questions, and, when asked about it by Washington Post omsbudsman Deborah…
Can’t stop the schadenfreude
I know that similar documents, expressing the horrors that await unwary interns in the offices of Democratic senators and representatives, surely exist, but that won’t stop me from linking to this “do’s and don’t’s” list for those brave Alaskans working for Rep. Don Young, the Republican most famous for engineering funding for the Bridge to…