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Categories
Meta
Managers Roam
They probably didn’t have the letters to spell it, but perhaps it should have read “news woman.”
Goshen Sunset
Take the Lamb. The Ghini is off.
Looking for a good way to waste $188,000 on something incredibly ugly?
Another Gig, Another Rainstorm, Another Blues
Reminder that tonight I’ll be playing with Mike Skliar at the Underground Lounge on the Upper West Side, from 8.30 to 10 pm. I’ll have one new (or, rather, updated) song — “Homeland Security Blues,” which will sound familiar to those who remember the Ghouliani administration. When Reagan was elected president, Dead Kennedys updated their famous “California Uber Alles,” a song originally about Governor Jerry Brown, noting, “We’ve got a bigger problem now.”
Bring your umbrellas and come on out; we promise the levees will hold.
A Rearrangement Thrums
The anagrammers return:
Another Old Police Car
Car 54, There You Are!
Sunday Afternoon in Sunset Park / Bush Terminal
I took a long bike ride Sunday afternoon, down through Bensonhurst and Bay Ridge to the Belt Parkway, around under the Verrazano Bridge to 65th Street, and back through Sunset Park and Bush Terminal. I didn’t have the camera, just the cell phone, but I took a few photos anyway. Wrapped up the weekend with The Corpse Bride which was quite fun and like all Tim Burton’s work, beautiful to look at.
Update: The modified walk sign in the first photo is apparently the work of ThunderCut, a pair of Brooklyn artists mentioned in New York Magazine recently.
Anagram Puzzle
A few years ago, the theater down the block from me, known for years as the Plaza, was bought by the owners of the Pavilion (at the other end of Park Slope) and renamed the Flatbush Pavilion. They showed a sequence of the worst imaginable movies, trying (I guess) to attract a crowd of undiscriminating teenagers. It worked, except for the crowd part, and the theater closed last summer. The marquee continued to display the names of the two dreadful Summer 2004 crap movies that were playing there, until this week, when someone rearranged the letters as shown at right.
Update:
dailyheights.com displays two suggested anagrams:
OH NO INFERNAL GERMANS VANISHING FINE MARVEL
and
MAN OF NINE GROINS MARVELS IF HE HAVIN LAGER
With God On Our Side
bobhowe pointed me to an article in the Times of London that says a study shows,
Religous belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today.
It’s not the most solid of research work, relying mainly on the fact that the U.S. is more religious than most other “prosperous democracies” but also has the highest rates of murder, STD transmission, and abortion. The more secular western democracies do seem saner than the U.S., but I’m not sure if there’s any causality there, or if perhaps people seek religion when they feel their society is in trouble.
I’ve been listening to a lot of early Bob Dylan, thanks to the recent release of No Direction Home and Live at the Gaslight: 1962, mikeskliar‘s lending of Live at Carnegie Hall, 1963 and my belated purchase of Live 1964. Dylan’s song “With God On Our Side” appears on several of those albums (here’s a sound clip of a gorgeous version with Joan Baez). It’s one of his early protest songs, among the better of an often strident lot, and the Times article reminded me of it.
I liked the albums more than I thought I would. I think Dylan has aged well; his early years as a Woody Guthrie imitator don’t do that much for me. But despite some tedious songs (“It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Going On and On For Ten Minutes Over Two Chords”) and some silliness (howling “I’m going down to West Texas behind the Louisiana line” in his ersatz hillbilly accent, apparently not realizing that Louisiana is east of Texas) there is some great music on these discs. His gorgeous version of the traditional “Barbara Allen” on the Gaslight Tapes, his beautiful melodic harp on the No Direction Home version of “Blowin’ In the Wind” or his credible Sonny Terry rhythms on “Sally Gal” proving that he can indeed play harp when he bothers to pay attention to it.
He was indeed so much younger then. What ever happened to the charm and humor and openness that makes Live 1964 such a delight? Listen to the laughter, the freewheeling duets with Joan Baez and interactions with the audience (“Does anyone know the first verse to this song?” he asks at the start of “I Don’t Believe You,” a sweet presage to the later bitterness of 1965, when he snarled “I don’t believe you” at a fan protesting his shift to electric rock).