It was up tonight — briefly. The techs must have been rehearsing.

Here’s a good friend, Carl Weissner, playing Chopin. He hasn’t played for, oh, about 50 years. “This is the schmaltzy version — Viennese,” he says. On top of that he’s combining two different pieces. “But,” he adds, “what the hell.” (Recorded on my new little gizmo, a Flip Video Mino. The image is sharper when […]

I went to the John Cage birthday celebration at St. Mark’s Church yesterday. Big crowd. Awful sound. A couple dozen people mumbled into a bad p.a. system. It was impossible to understand what they were saying, with a few exceptions. This guy came prepared, though, with his own music and his own setup. His name […]

I’ve been calling him the Gasbag, but Thomas Frank has come up with another description for him — the best I’ve read anywhere: John McCain is “a hood ornament on a hit-and-run machine.” Frank writes in his weekly Wall Street Journal column: The man no longer stands for anything. He has transformed himself from a […]

Aug. 12 — Did someone say war profiteers? Check out the top 25 and this private army. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

The Gasbag’s latest McBullshit gets a review called “Changing Lanes” from Elizabeth Kolbert in this week’s New Yorker. She notes that “he’s opted out of truth altogether.” Really. As if the hype for his so-called “straight-talking days” was ever credible in the first place. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

I’ve been waiting for Q&A to post a transcript of the Chris Hedges interview on Sunday night. But it’s been two days already. Nada. So click the link and watch the video. It’s stunning. [Aug. 12 — Finally, the posted transcript.] The reason for the interview is publication of his latest book, “Collateral Damage: America’s […]

See this. Postscript: July 30 — The Gasbag Express, aka the Low-Road Express? Of course. As today’s NYT editorial notes, “…it is hard to imagine a worse role model than the one Mr. McCain seems to be adopting: President Bush.” (Objection: seems?) Which brings our Calvin Trillin out of the Straight Up woodwork. BUSH’S PRESIDENTIAL […]

Two of my favorite passages in Naked Lunch are “Dr. Benway Operates” and “The Man Who Taught His Asshole to Talk.” But my favorite description of the book comes from William S. Burroughs’s explanation of the title. “The title” — which Burroughs credited to Jack Kerouac — “means exactly what the words say: naked lunch, […]

Here’s wot got left out: Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency Enjoy the Fourth! EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Well, almost. Time to take a break. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Does everyone know what the Straight Talk Express would bring to the White House if voters are stupid enough to elect Mr. Gasbag? You would think so. Even The Wall Street Journal knows. It would mean “The Return of Dr. No.” And what does Dr. No (a k a Phil Gramm), the Gasbag’s top economic […]

When Rupert Murdoch said The Wall Street Journal would target The New York Times in the competition for readers, he was talking about a lot more than prose style. But if you’re taking aim at The Times it helps to show that WSJ reporters know how to write, really write. Long before Murdoch took over […]

Now that The Wall Street Journal is reporting general news as never before, one of my small pleasures is to compare matching stories in The New York Times. The comparisons are not always exact, but they are revealing just the same. Here, for example, are two excerpts. Both show the so-called Straight Talker for what […]

From The Writer’s Almanac (last item): On this day in 1215, King John of England put his seal to the Magna Carta, one of the first historical documents to state that subjects have rights beyond the power of their rulers. The right to a trial by jury and the right of habeas corpus, which prevents […]

Which lede do you like? 1. Jess Bravin in The Wall Street Journal: The Supreme Court ruled that foreign prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay may challenge their detention before a federal judge, a historic decision that rebuffs the Bush administration’s years-long effort to curtail the legal rights of terrorism suspects. 2. Linda Greenhouse in The […]

Mark Morford usually gets it right. (He’s one of the savviest, funniest columnists around.) This time he flubbed it, methinks. Musta taken a happy pill when he wrote his latest. It appeared this morning: Barack Obama isn’t really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway. This is what I find myself offering up […]