QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"If you get quoted in The Wall Street Journal, you might get rich. If you get quoted in Rolling Stone, you might get laid." From Dan Baum's New Yorker screed, first on tweeter, now at DanBaum.com. … [Read more...]
Newspaper Blogger Shares Stage with Publicists
Science and technology columnist Dave Brooks of the Nashua Telegraph has come up with a novel approach to generating material for his GraniteGeek blog on the paper's website: He's handing over partial control to the University of New Hampshire news service. The publicity organization will "post … [Read more...]
Rearview Frontier
"Star Trek" was shot for Desilu Productions, on the lot its founders, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, bought from RKO Radio Pictures, the prolific studio that had made "King Kong," "Citizen Kane," the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals and countless B pictures like "I Walked With a Zombie." In time, … [Read more...]
GOOD MORNING MR. PHELPS: YOUR TEMPLATE
EUPHEMISM OF THE WEEK
Law, Mugar buy Opera House, Orpheum, Paradise for $22.5M "We are actively working to divest our remaining non-core assets as we continue to enhance our liquidity and de-lever our balance sheet," Michael Rapino, Live Nation's president and CEO...(from the Boston Herald). … [Read more...]
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: HERBERT
From the relentlessly easy to underrate Bob Herbert: "We're confiscating shampoo from carry-on luggage at airports while at the same time handing out high-powered weaponry to criminals and psychotics at gun shows..." … [Read more...]
THE SONG IS YOU
by Arthur Phillips, where the iPod is a character and the obsessive fan finds a voice. Among the very few novels I can think of where musical descriptions approach poetry. On this morning's second hour of On Point with Tom Ashbrook. Now a zesty download from Podomatic. … [Read more...]
ALT NOMINEES: BRENDAN GLEASON
NETFLIX KETCHUP: Finally watched In Bruges, a very clever if sordid script but one of the best supporting performances from Brendan Gleason (The General). The way his eyes roll back into his head, his (ferociously impractical) death scene against anybody's. … [Read more...]
BLUSHING BETTY BOOP
Children can also intuit sexuality long before they've got a clue what it is, and Pinocchio is the dirtiest Disney feature ever. The unavoidable Exhibit A is the Freudian no-brainer of the hero's lengthening proboscis, though I'd forgotten that in the scene when it happens he's a) locked in a cage … [Read more...]
B. KLIBAN AGAIN B. KLIBAN
OBAMA, MEET MIKE DAVIS
Anyone else notice how rad Bill Moyers has been during the meltdown? Past two guests have included William Greider and Mike Davis, author of the inimitable City of Quartz, best book about Los Angeles. … [Read more...]
William Greider used to be in the mag at left: Here is a very different way to understand the problem: to restore the broken financial system, Washington has to fix the Federal Reserve. Though this is not widely understood, the central bank has lost its ability to govern the credit system--the … [Read more...]
https://www.artsjournal.com/riley/2009/04/william_greider_used_to_be/
PROTO-COUNTRYPOLITANS
Linthead Stomp: The Creation of Country Music in the Piedmont South by Patrick Huber (North Carolina) A new, canny take on Old, Weird America, this colorful, contrarian book does much to dispel a spate of antediluvian tropes, musical and otherwise. The myth holds that prewar country music was a … [Read more...]
EIGHT ARMS TO HOLD YOU
Also: random … [Read more...]