Archives for January 6, 2015

Yes, I’ve been fortunate beyond my wildest dreams and am well aware that it would be churlish to ask for more. Be that as it may, I still wish that I:

• Could read and speak French fluently

• Owned a Frank Lloyd Wright-style beach house on Florida’s Sanibel Island (this one would do quite nicely)

• Could play piano half as well as Nat Cole

• Were far more patient than I am

• Would someday get the chance to work on a musical (I know, I know, be careful what you wish for!)

• Had been friends with Louis Armstrong

• Knew how to do reasonably complex home repairs

• Owned an etching by Giorgio Morandi (this is my all-time favorite)

• Could sing and/or dance

• Had met Mrs. T years and years before I finally did

* * *

Gerry Mulligan’s New Sextet plays Mulligan’s “Just Want to Sing and Dance Like Fred Astaire.” The band also includes Dave Samuels on vibraphone, Tom Fay on keyboards, Mike Santiago on guitar, George Duvivier on bass, and Bob Rosengarden on drums:

From 2005:

I figure I’m entitled to a little more than my train fare and the satisfactions of a job well done. Obviously the White House agrees, which I assume is the reason why presidential appointees are given such handsome-looking documents to hang on their walls. It went without saying that I’d put mine in a first-class frame, one identical to the ones I use in the Teachout Museum—but where to hang the damn thing? It’s too big to fit in any of the remaining empty spots (of which there are no longer very many) on the walls of my minuscule one-bedroom Upper West Side apartment, and when I considered taking down a piece of art to make room for my commission, my heart sank.

I thought and thought, and suddenly it came to me: why not the bathroom? Not only is it tastefully decorated in cornflower blue and yellow, but it’s next to the living room, thus allowing me to show off for my visitors by leaving the door discreetly ajar. But would it be disrespectful to hang a presidential commission there? Though a friend assured me that many actors keep their Oscars in the bathroom, I wasn’t satisfied. Such a gesture smacked of phony humility….

Read the whole thing here.

“Children often have a sense of fun, but it is very rare for them to take a predominantly humorous view of life, still less an ironical pleasure in the spectacle of human folly. If humour comes into their daydreams at all, it is as comic relief to thrills and romance.”

David Cecil, Max: A Biography of Max Beerbohm