Song Covers I Now Like Better Than The Originals
Saturday, September 05, 2009
I Want You Back (Jackson 5) - Steel Train
Won't Get Fooled Again (The Who) - Richie Havens
Streets Of Philadelphia (Bruce Springsteen) - Richie Havens
Here Comes The Sun (The Beatles/George Harrison) - Richie Havens
Strawberry Fields Forever (The Beatles/Lennon/McCartney) - The Bobs
You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Bob Dylan) - Madeleine Peyroux
Helpless (Neil Young) - K.D. Lang
A Less Severe Kind Of PTSD
Thursday, September 03, 2009
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I have many intrusive thoughts and they include an image of my father on his deathbed and my view from an operating table surveying the enormous garden tools surgeons were about to use to cut into my chest. I suppose these two would support the claim of researchers that vivid, unshakeable memories are formed at moments of high emotion.
These two would be among the most frequent and most unnerving in my Rolodex. But I think they're less impact-ful than one that came shuddering in again this afternoon.
It was my first day at my work-study job at Northwestern University. After running an errand for a professor I returned to the desk where I was sorting some papers only to find it occupied by a physically grotesque maintenance man, a big, older guy in the final weeks before his retirement. I told him I needed to sit down and do my work. He said, "Sure I'll move. You're my bread and butter."
Freaks me out every time. God, I don't want to become that guy.
A Fan And A Supporter
Sunday, August 16, 2009
I wanted just to receive Sarah Palin's Facebook missives but I fear I'm now listed as a "fan" and among her "supporters". Am I right? I was supposed to just subscribe to her notes? I feel like an elderly Florida Jewish woman pressing a ballot to my forehead and accidentally voting for Pat Buchanan.
I hope I can sort this out and that Facebook isn't guilty of offering a false dilemma. I want to be able to choose among "Subscribe", "Fan" and "Support". It's bad enough we can only have "Friends" and not "People I Want To Keep Tabs On For Whatever Reason".
I'm a fan of Mel Gibson but I don't want to be viewed as supporting him. I'm a supporter of nearly all fast food chains but not a fan. I would subscribe to Bernie Madoff's notes from prison if he were allowed to use Facebook but I wouldn't want to be anywhere near the words "fan" or "supporter".
I am a fan of Maureen Dowd and a supporter through my purchases of the Sunday New York Times. I see "Modo" has in today's op ed made an excellent semantic data compression by calling Sarah Barracuda, "Sarahcuda". I was on that one a long time ago.
While sorting out this death panel nonsense Maureen Dowd mentions the movie Logan's Run. I would never be able to call forth that excellent illuminating reference because in Logan's Run, if you watch carefully, you can see a woman's ass cheeks. (The movie has a euthanasia theme? Really?)
I'm going to allow myself to be listed as a fan and supporter of Sarah Palin because I want to try to figure out, without the benefit of computer-driven textual analysis, whether she's actually writing her own Facebook Notes.
Also, I secretly root for her and I don't know why.
Also, I want to make clever remarks on "secondary meanings" and such. For example: In my view the most important sentence in all of her recent notes is this: Yesterday President Obama responded to my statement... The rest of the sentence, paragraph, note can't compare to the power of these words for a woman fighting for legitimacy in the national dialogue.
Score one for the "Sarahsaurus" <==invoking both dinosaurs coexisting with humans and a thesaurus.
Gilbert Gottfried At Caroline's Tonight
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Saw Gilbert Gottfried's standup at Caroline's tonight with married friends Kim and JK and their friend Joe.
As we approach the doorman I notice JK is holding a $20 bill along with our numbered ticket. He's planning to bribe our way in early and with better seats. I ask him, "Does this work? Do people actually do this anymore?" "I don't know", JK says, "I've never tried it before." I tell him he's my hero.
The doorman stops us because the number on our ticket is too high. JK says, "Is there any way we can get in here right now?" "No", says the doorman. JK says "There's no way we can get in here right now and get a better table?" "No", the doorman says. "There's no way we can get in here right now?", JK intones. Excruciating.
I don't know JK all that well but there's always been an easy connection between us. Certainly Kim is the grounding wire for that connection. Some time has passed since she and I, with no small affection, weathered her twenties together (my early thirties) in a friendship full of dark humor and dark psychological alleys. Looking back, I think there was a kind of unspoken assumption that if we could sort her out we would be accomplishing something bigger than just a couple of people talking in Washington Square Park. We didn't get very far.
But I became her accomplice in the David Mamet sense--by listening. And we established a bond which has weathered even long periods of no communication (mostly my fault). JK knows me almost exclusively through stories of me and Kim from those chaotic--and fun--days nearly two decades ago. The comfort level, the trust, between JK and me is an especially wonderful feeling, coming as it does through the conduit of Kim's memories spoken within their marriage.
Maybe this is saying more about me, but also in this little doorman scenario I flash on the Wisconsin upbringing JK and I share. I once felt the need to shave in a truckstop mensroom just because, like Everest, that living cliche was there. By my own goofy calculus, JK is taking a similar psychic flyer.
I have a little running commentary about how Kim's a true New Yorker, and grew up a rich kid. She knows how to get things done. Whereas JK and I are weighed down by Wisconsin-ness, and all that entails. There's an implicit test of menschness when dealing with a doorman. Of course this has nothing to do with JK's real competence. What a shame he seems headed for no outcome at all. His offbeat and inspired gesture is falling in the woods with no one to hear it. Shouldn't the doorman at least make off with the money while delivering no improvement in our entertainment situation and robbing us like huckleberries?
FINALLY the doorman sees the twenty dollar bill. He says, "You want to get in here right now?" JK says "Yeah" and hands him the twenty. JK is my hero. "You want to get in here right now?" the doorman says. "See if you can get us a good table" JK says. Did I mention JK is my hero?The doorman calls over a waiter, or host, to escort us to a table. Just then Kim jumps into the arms of Gilbert Gottfried's wife, who we're informed has reserved us a great table in advance. Kim tells her "I wasn't sure you'd gotten my email."
I was having a great time already. A really great time.
And Gilbert Gottfried's lunacy advanced the night into the sublime. The unforgettable bit for me was this: Gilbert describes checking into a motel with suicidal intensions. Jesus arrives in a vision to inspire him to live onward. Heading out the door, Jesus offers to make a gesture as long as he's stopped by earth, like maybe ending all wars. Gilbert says, no, go on, get outta here. But then begs Jesus, cajole's him, nags him, to take a piece of cake with him.
Manson Still Interests Me
Sunday, August 09, 2009
The fortieth anniversary of the Tate-La Bianca murders...
She was pretty, out of her mind, rebellious, with fashion-daring, a good haircut, and a taste for LSD -- just like the girls in my movies. Instead of being a "good soldier" for Charlie and participating in the murders of Leno and Rosemary La Bianca, which she certainly believed was the right thing to do at the time, I wish she had been with us in Baltimore on location for Pink Flamingos the day Divine ate dog shit for real...
Never been a big fan of Charlie Rose as an interviewer. But his is the best interview of Manson.
Launch Sequence To A New Persona
Sunday, June 28, 2009
My dance vocabulary is not sufficient, but even I can identify in Michael Jackson's breakthrough performance in 1983 the following:
Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Fred Astaire
Elvis, of course
Chuck Berry
Karate kicks
Vaudville poses (how many bows does he take in the middle of the number, not just after it?)
There are probably a half dozen references (samples) I recognize but can't pinpoint. (Who in the pantheon used to reach out and shake hands with an imaginary companion?) Like Shakespeare's play Hamlet, there's something for everybody in this dance.
I was going to write that, like the play Hamlet, Jackson's breakthrough moment, the one that survives the passage of time, is nearly incoherent. Fragmented. Not an artistic whole. At the very least Jackson's a long way from heeding the character Hamlet's own advice to the players: Suit the action to the word, the word to the action. Does anybody believe his naive, misdirected hip thrusts could have anything to do with a paternity scenario?
But this morning I realized there is an organizing idea, or maybe a frame tale, to this stylishly patchwork five minutes. His dance, at age 25, is really the dance of a teenager. (So are his limbs.) It's supremely well executed, with flashes of individuality, yes. But those flashes leap from between pop culture references. His overarching persona is a talented kid who's watched too much TV having a Risky Business moment. And like Tom Cruise acting out Bob Seger's Old Time Rock And Roll, incredibly, Michael Jackson is lip-syncing. Pretending. The overall effect, like the moment for Cruise's character in the movie, is to invoke a state of sexual inexperience, which is maybe a state of anticipation, but one certainly dominated by the imaginary.
Elvis, of course
Chuck Berry
Karate kicks
Vaudville poses (how many bows does he take in the middle of the number, not just after it?)
There are probably a half dozen references (samples) I recognize but can't pinpoint. (Who in the pantheon used to reach out and shake hands with an imaginary companion?) Like Shakespeare's play Hamlet, there's something for everybody in this dance.
I was going to write that, like the play Hamlet, Jackson's breakthrough moment, the one that survives the passage of time, is nearly incoherent. Fragmented. Not an artistic whole. At the very least Jackson's a long way from heeding the character Hamlet's own advice to the players: Suit the action to the word, the word to the action. Does anybody believe his naive, misdirected hip thrusts could have anything to do with a paternity scenario?
But this morning I realized there is an organizing idea, or maybe a frame tale, to this stylishly patchwork five minutes. His dance, at age 25, is really the dance of a teenager. (So are his limbs.) It's supremely well executed, with flashes of individuality, yes. But those flashes leap from between pop culture references. His overarching persona is a talented kid who's watched too much TV having a Risky Business moment. And like Tom Cruise acting out Bob Seger's Old Time Rock And Roll, incredibly, Michael Jackson is lip-syncing. Pretending. The overall effect, like the moment for Cruise's character in the movie, is to invoke a state of sexual inexperience, which is maybe a state of anticipation, but one certainly dominated by the imaginary.
If you think of him as a teenager at a fantasy distance from the song's decidedly sexual groove and its lyrics of post-coidal anguish, the performance suddenly takes shape as an artistic whole. The nonsensically nonsexual juxtapositions (like invoking Fred Astaire) make sense in a bedroom adolescent world. And the performance becomes, it is, in front of millions, so intimate.
I wonder, though, if at least two aspects of this performance might have reverberated negatively in Jackson's head over the years. First, that the launch sequence for earning gazillions with worldwide fame was so full of unabashed borrowing. The old cliche is that a mature artist doesn't borrow, but steals. Later he would not steal, or borrow, but buy Paul McCartney's catalog--the exploited kid becoming the exploiter receiving checks every time Sir Paul wanted to tour his own music. How that must have felt, especially when his stake in the songs of the Beatles became his principal (perhaps only) income asset. How much better it would have been for him (now rotting in a funeral home) to retain McCartney's friendship and creative kinship. Jackson did have his own well to draw from.
And, as mentioned--and I didn't remember this thinking back to first seeing this performance--the launch of Michael Jackson, the gloved one, was lip-synced. Thanks to YouTube, his solo legacy may be reformatted with thumbnails of lip-syncing at key junctures, a blow to the performance chops he surely had. How did he get away with it when others have been so lambasted? The Superbowl looks pathetic to me. All hat and no cattle. To be sure his voice, complicated by real physical problems, was nowhere close to the vocal strengths of his Mount Rushmore companions, Elvis and Sinatra, both of whom could achieve lift-off with little or no accompaniment. Elvis liked stagecraft and pyrotechnics, but he didn't need them. Jackson's "I'm a fake" panics, like those experienced by all performers, must have run even deeper than his talent.
I hadn't seen this performance in years. It brought out in me real sadness, where before I think my only emotion was a small sense of relief--at not having to watch this guy twist in the wind any longer.
I wonder, though, if at least two aspects of this performance might have reverberated negatively in Jackson's head over the years. First, that the launch sequence for earning gazillions with worldwide fame was so full of unabashed borrowing. The old cliche is that a mature artist doesn't borrow, but steals. Later he would not steal, or borrow, but buy Paul McCartney's catalog--the exploited kid becoming the exploiter receiving checks every time Sir Paul wanted to tour his own music. How that must have felt, especially when his stake in the songs of the Beatles became his principal (perhaps only) income asset. How much better it would have been for him (now rotting in a funeral home) to retain McCartney's friendship and creative kinship. Jackson did have his own well to draw from.
And, as mentioned--and I didn't remember this thinking back to first seeing this performance--the launch of Michael Jackson, the gloved one, was lip-synced. Thanks to YouTube, his solo legacy may be reformatted with thumbnails of lip-syncing at key junctures, a blow to the performance chops he surely had. How did he get away with it when others have been so lambasted? The Superbowl looks pathetic to me. All hat and no cattle. To be sure his voice, complicated by real physical problems, was nowhere close to the vocal strengths of his Mount Rushmore companions, Elvis and Sinatra, both of whom could achieve lift-off with little or no accompaniment. Elvis liked stagecraft and pyrotechnics, but he didn't need them. Jackson's "I'm a fake" panics, like those experienced by all performers, must have run even deeper than his talent.
I hadn't seen this performance in years. It brought out in me real sadness, where before I think my only emotion was a small sense of relief--at not having to watch this guy twist in the wind any longer.
I Can't Help Myself
Friday, June 26, 2009
Sportsbras (imported from my Hamlet blog)
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
I Will Be Brief (imported from my Hamlet blog)
Sunday, May 25, 2008
From an interesting young economist named Ian Ayres (I've read his book called Supercrunchers). Perpend:
Polonius's is a supernegation of his own claim, a negation deluxe: Since brevity is the soul of wit and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief.
I have a bachelor's in economics. I'm thrilled with a new energy in the field for applying the powerful tools of economic analysis to genuine, everyday problems--something I didn't really encounter at Northwestern in the early Eighties--problems like speakers droning on and on. Though not exactly a real economic study, this blog post offers a refreshing look at a talented economist's mind in motion.
Why people start with "I'll be brief":
The problem:
A simple study:
A proposed solution:
Thus it remains and the remainder thus.
People who say that they’re going to be brief often aren’t.
Indeed, the very time taken to say that you are going to be brief works to negate the claim.
Polonius's is a supernegation of his own claim, a negation deluxe: Since brevity is the soul of wit and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief.
I have a bachelor's in economics. I'm thrilled with a new energy in the field for applying the powerful tools of economic analysis to genuine, everyday problems--something I didn't really encounter at Northwestern in the early Eighties--problems like speakers droning on and on. Though not exactly a real economic study, this blog post offers a refreshing look at a talented economist's mind in motion.
Why people start with "I'll be brief":
Of course, one of the strongest reasons for starting with this statement of intent is as a soft form of commitment. I’m giving the audience permission to cast aspersions toward me if I speak for too long.
The problem:
One of the problems is that people underestimate how long they speak.
A simple study:
It would be useful at Quaker meetings (or other places where people share the floor) to have speakers immediately, upon finishing an oration, estimate how long they spoke. I bet initially many people would report that they speak fewer minutes than they actually do.
Or (like asking people if they think they are better or worse than the average driver), you could ask them if they think they generally speak longer or shorter than the average meeting speaker. I’m guessing most people believe they are more concise than their average neighbor.
A proposed solution:
Better yet, groups might develop a norm to have speakers publicly estimate how many minutes they intend to speak before they begin: Instead of saying, “I’m going to be brief,” it would be a stronger commitment to say to the moderator, “Please interrupt me if I speak more than X minutes.”
The problem of speakers droning on at conferences and meetings isn’t one of the biggest problems in the world — but it is an example where cognitive error leads to a persistent dysfunction.
Thus it remains and the remainder thus.
Why Bush Is Our Most Shakespearean President (imported from my Hamlet blog)
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
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Bush is our most Shakespearean President. Not the most comfortable thought, but blogger Kenji Yoshino on Slate's Convictions makes at least one strong case for him because he...invents words.