Archives for January 4, 2005

Dear OGIC: In case you’re wondering, your black blouse is hanging patiently in my coat closet, making everything smell much prettier. (I still can’t figure out whose watch we found in the cabinet above the kitchen sink, though.)

Our readers write:

– “You are doubtlessly correct that the word posses will fail to catch up with the word

– It’s “Critics Week” at WNYC’s Soundcheck, and I’ll be taking my turn at the microphone this Friday. Here’s what the show’s Web site says about my upcoming appearance:

Terry Teachout, drama critic for the Wall Street Journal and music critic of Commentary, offers his favorites of 2004 from across the cultural spectrum. The week rounds out by allowing listeners to weigh in on their picks of the year.

Soundcheck airs in New York weekdays at two p.m. on 93.9 FM. To find out more about this week’s episodes (mine included), or to listen online via streaming audio, go here.

– “The Art of Romare Bearden” closes this Sunday at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and I’m ashamed to confess that I haven’t been to see it yet. I know, I know, I’ve been busy as hell, but Bearden is one of my favorite American artists, so I’m going to do my very best to get there this week. If you’re in the same boat, go here for more information.

With Our Girl gone, I’ve been consoling myself by working on the right-hand column. In addition to updating the “Teachout in Commentary” and “Second City” modules with fresh links, I also undertook a major revision of “Sites to See,” the “About Last Night” blogroll. I’ve added a bunch of new blogs, as well as replacing a few old ones that either got knocked off inadvertently or were temporarily inactive, and I’ve also reorganized some of the categories under which the blogs are listed. We’ll be doing some compensatory pruning in the next few days, and you can also expect some new Top Fives shortly. (For those who wrote to tell me that the link to my new Commentary essay on Haydn was broken, it’s fixed now.)

Here are the “Sites to See” categories, from top to bottom:

– ART LINKS: Web sites (including artsjournal.com, “About Last Night”‘s invaluable host) that provide regularly updated links to English-language news stories and commentary about the arts.

– ART BLOGS: Blogs that are primarily (but not always exclusively) about the arts. We don’t break them out into different art forms–i.e., books, music, whatever–because we want to encourage interdisciplinary surfing.

– MEDIA/GOSSIP: Blogs and Web sites about the media and/or gossip (duh).

– PUBLICATIONS: Mainstream media Web sites, usually with substantial art-related content. (Whenever possible, we link directly to the arts pages of these sites.)

– RADIO: Art-related sites devoted to specific radio shows or hosted by radio stations. (This one’s new.)

– ARTIST SITES: Non-blog sites with frequently updated content maintained by artists and performers who interest us. (This is new, too.)

– CRITIC SITES: Ditto, only for critics.

– USEFUL SITES: Mostly reference-type sites about the arts and related subjects, plus a couple of on-line stores we like.

– OTHER BLOGS: Interesting blogs and bloggish sites that are not primarily arts-oriented.

Our Girl and I encourage you to comment on “Sites to See.” Bear in mind, though, that we’re mainly interested in hearing about artblogs and art-related sites that we haven’t yet discovered, or gotten around to blogrolling. We’re especially eager to build up “Radio Sites” as quickly as possible, and we also want to blogroll all the best arts pages of America’s regional newspapers.

If you have a new or underappreciated artblog that you think our readers might find interesting, feel free to send us your URL. Please don’t ask us to exchange links, though–we don’t do that. If your blog looks interesting to us, we’ll keep an eye on it, and if it remains both interesting and active, we’ll add it to “Sites to See.”

Now, go visit a blog you’ve never read before.

“I don’t want to own anything that won’t fit in my coffin.”

Fred Allen (quoted in John Dunning, On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio)