Straight Up’s staff of thousands interrupts Big Apple Portraits to bring you this news: author/journalist David Ehrenstein has listed his 10 must-read blogs in the current issue of The Advocate. Among them, he includes Straight Up. The pleasure of being listed is that he puts us in such great company. The other nine blogs are: […]
BIG APPLE PORTRAITS, PART 3
And now we come to “Inwood,” Bill Osborne’s video impressions of the largely Hispanic, upper Manhattan neighborhood where he lived on his recent stay in New York. The images convey a very different city from both the glamorous hustle of Times Square at night, in Part 1, and the austere presence of the art deco […]
BIG APPLE PORTRAITS, PART 2
Since I’m away, my staff of thousands has come up with a brilliant idea to amuse you and me together: Videos by the composer Bill Osborne, which he made on the fly while he was in New York not long ago. He thinks of them as improvised Big Apple portraits, which he’s edited to fit […]
BIG APPLE PORTRAITS, PART 1
Since I’m away from the Big Apple, Straight Up’s staff of thousands has had a brilliant idea to amuse you and me together. It will be posting a series of short videos made on the fly by my friend, the composer Bill Osborne, while he was in New York not long ago. He thinks of […]
GOD AND YOU
Given Tom DeLay’s pious horseshit, Bill Frist’s equally pious participation in an upcoming church-sponsored telecast to portray the Democratic “opposition to certain judicial nominees” as an assault on “people of faith” — not to mention the election of the new pope Benedict XVI — my staff of thousands thought it useful to post “God’s Total […]
D’ARCY RE-REDUX
We interrupt holiday in the Pacific — “we,” as in Straight Up’s staff of thousands — to ask what happened to the KCRW report by David D’Arcy on “the effort to recover the art stolen by the Nazi and the complications involved in that,” which was to air on April 5? Some of you may […]
HOLIDAY IN THE PACIFIC
Goin’ to an island in the Pacific. Goin’ without my laptop. Back later. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
DAVID D’ARCY REDUX
Word comes from David D’Arcy that he’ll be back on the air, though not at National Public Radio. The top-notch arts reporter axed by, after Ronald Lauder’s minions at the Museum of Modern Art complained about an exposé of his they didn’t like, is to host a show on Los Angeles radio station KCRW on […]
SAFE AIRWAVES FOR VNRs
Remember those prepackaged news stories — a k a Video News Releases (VNRs) –which Bush regime is so fond of distributing? Well, the Government Accountability Office today issued this decision by the Comptroller General. Here’s the bad news: Prepackaged news stories are complete, audio-video presentations that may be included in video news releases, or VNRs. […]
A) MARK GREEN, B) DEAR LEADER, AND C) MSM
Like a lot of Democrats, I get messages from Mark Green, the former public advocate for New York City and the president of the New Democracy Project. As much as I agree with his low opinion of our Dear Leader, I can’t help noticing: Green’s latest message delivered the same old, same old, and did […]
GAWKING ALL THE WAY
As Gawker says about David Brooks’s blooper correction: “We’d roll the laugh track if anyone actually knew what the hell he was talking about. Or cared.” Also, check Paul Krugman’s funny-if-it-wasn’t-so-true refer (this morning, too): In its April Fools’ Day issue, Scientific American published a spoof editorial in which it apologized for endorsing the theory […]
MALCOLM GLADWELL BLINKS AT ABBIE CONANT
By Jan Herman If Malcolm Gladwell had written about you in his latest best seller, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, you’d probably know it in a New York minute. If you were Abbie Conant, who is the subject of the book’s final chapter, you wouldn’t. When pressed, Conant recalls speaking with Gladwell (right) […]
CREELEY REMEMBERED
Robert Creeley, who died yesterday at 78, wrote poetry with a spare minimalism that clarified, condensed and dissolved the distance between thought and feeling, between the real world and the imagined, between language and meaning. He was often more explicit than Samuel Beckett and much more approachable, but no less dense or elusive. Listen to him reading two poems: […]
THE LITTLE BEAST
Go to BestCommercialEver.mpg and click on it for something different. Thanks, Martin. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
EPITAPH FOR JOHNNIE
Famed defense attorney Johnnie Cochran is dead. R.I.P: If the heart won’t stirYou must inter. — Leon Freilich EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
TERRI-IZING AMERICA
Today’s column by Paul Krugman — “What’s Going On?” — is too good to go unmentioned. It’s a perfect example of what makes him indispensible. He says in the mainstream media what many think in private, and he says it with coherence, persuasive logic and a level-headed marshalling of facts that most of us cannot […]
MIRANDA WARNING 2
I’m being suckered here: Dear Jan Herman, Thanks very much for your attention to my work! And if you have any doubts that “America” is a pro American text, you can check it out: http://www.america-is.com/press. (It is for your reading only.) Best,Paulo José Miranda Miranda is charging five bucks on the America-is site to read […]