Musings: Cast your vote; break the tie.

Look at the August poll--now just about over--in the sidebar to the right. 6 voters. 3 who think America should be saved by the Democratic dream team, and 3 who think I deserve better pay. Cast your vote. Break the tie. The gods are listening.

Musings: Ah, a simpler time, then.

And you think the pharmaceutical industry is nutty now. Recall this popular children's cough remedy, available between 1898 and 1910. Robitussen just can't compare.

Musings: What a week, what a week--

So Jonbenet's "confessed" killer goes free, The Office (thankfully) wins "Best Comedy" at the Emmys, the Tigers try to rally themselves before the brutal stretch run of September, and I survive my first day of teaching yesterday.

Another earnest group of students, another fifteen-week run through reading and grading and nervous lectures and ironing my shirts in a rush before I take off to campus, and feeling like I'll never get caught up, and asking over and over and over, "How soon till Thanksgiving break?" before finally it's Christmas and I'm on a plane back home and I've made it through another term.

Whew.

More coffee, please.

The Whining Stranger's Song of the Day: 30 August 2006

"Kashmere" by the Kashmere Stage Band (included on the compilation Funky 16 Corners, 2001)

This group--who performed and recorded in the late 1960s and early 70s--ranks up there with Kinky Friedman and Stubbs barbecue sauce among the coolest exports ever to emerge from the Lone Star state. You will be astounded by the preternatural tightness of the rhythm section on this funky number; you will be more amazed when you think that this was a high school band! Whereas my crappy high school stage band tried to keep together on arrangements of "Birdland" or tunes from Cats, these guys could lay down grooves that invite the b-boys to lay the cardboard down and break till the brink of dawn.

For more info, check out this NPR story on the band from earlier this month.

The Whining Stranger on Film: A Sympathetic Academic on Film

Add Steve Carrell's character in Little Miss Sunshine to the ongoing history of celluloid literature professors. Saw this flick last night and loved it, not just for Carrell's sympathetic melancholy academic, but for the whole panoply of dysfunctional--but kindhearted--family types the film offers. Abigail Breslin as the seven year-old competing for the beauty pageant honor named in the film's title is the most moving child actor (with none of drunk-driver Haley Joel Osment's maudlin puckering) since Paper Moon-era Tatum O'Neal.

And the film's finale is choice--an appropriate, but laugh-worthy, commentary on the grotesqueness of child beauty contests.

Musings: Ah, scholars--

"Autum, to me the most congenial of seasons: the University, to me the most congenial of lives." --Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels (1981)

Now, understand this from the get-go: most days I love my job and enjoy the neighborhood in which I live. I love being a professor. I like being close to campus. I like the morning walk that takes me from my home to the university at which I teach. I like greeting the day by passing stately brick buildings and eventually entering the stately brick building that houses my office and the classrooms in which I teach.

But I also fear that I'm becoming a curmudgeon at age thirty-two. I find myself frustrated often by the undergraduates that surround me. I forgot about it over the summer, I think, but with their return to town en masse over the past week that frustration has re-emerged. Part of the problem might be that I entered this career expecting that undergraduates would tend to be the way I was as an undergraduate: that is, not insanely ambitious, but at least intellectually curious. The type of kids who read The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald on the weekends not because it's been assigned to them, but because it's fun to read. Students who check out Ingmar Bergman films when they show near campus because it's exciting to discover great art...

Alas--

Last night, walking the dog in the early evening, I saw a pile of undergraduates piling into an SUV with an open bottle of vodka and uncapped beers all around. (And this in a college town that--as I posted earlier--seems to lead the universe in drunk-driving catastrophes.) Then turning back onto my own street, I saw my neighbors from two doors down amusing themselves with a giant water balloon slingshot, taking turns dousing each other with the explosive splash of landing-balloons-plus-gravity, laughing like hyenas all the while.

Sigh.

Trust me, I wasn't a prudish undergrad. (Rather, I was enamored with the idea of a "studious by day, dissolute by night" Byronic balance.) Nor was I a humorless student. But I did aspire to be smart, cool, thoughtful.

Maybe it's narcissism, certainly it's idealistic, but I continue to search the neighborhood and the campus for visions of a younger me.

Musings: Three Reasons to Smile

1. The cover of the latest issue of Sports Illustrated.



2. A new graduate student in my department told me the other day that, bearded, I am a dead ringer for Johnny Damon. I imagine this kid was just sucking up as he'd heard me say earlier that I'm a lifelong baseball fan who would have loved to play centerfield in the majors, but still--



3. The film version of the Amy Sedaris-Stephen Colbert-Paul Dinello vehicle, Strangers with Candy, which I saw last night, and which made me laugh so much that my stomach hurt.

The Whining Stranger on Politics and Current Events: "Welcome to America."

If you haven't seen this yet, make sure to watch George Allen's demeaning remarks directed at an American college student, voiced gleefully on his recent listening tour--and then pay attention to Allen's equally grotesque attempt to save his ass afterward. God bless America.

The Whining Stranger on Books and Reading: Two Appropriate Texts for This Time of Year

Here are two works by American masters that seem completely appropriate at this busy time, the start of the academic year.

First, a poem, "Dolor," by Theodore Roethke:

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper-weight,
All the misery of manila folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplication of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.

And then this, the brilliant opening to Don DeLillo's 1985 novel, White Noise:

The station wagons arrived at noon, a long shining line that coursed through the west campus. In single file they eased around the orange I-beam sculpture and moved toward the dormitories. The roofs of the station wagons were loaded down with carefully secured suitcases full of light and heavy clothing; with boxes of blankets, boots and shoes, stationary and books, sheets, pillows, quilts; with rolled-up rugs and sleeping bags; with bicycles, skis, rucksacks, English and Western saddles, inflated rafts. As cars slowed to a crawl and stopped, students sprang out and raced to the rear doors to begin removing the objects inside; the stereo sets, radios, personal computers; small refrigerators and table ranges; the cartons of phonograph records and cassettes; the hairdryers and styling irons; the tennis rackets, soccer balls, hockey and lacrosse sticks, bows and arrows; the controlled substances, the birth control pills and devices; the junk food still in shopping bags--onion-and-garlic chips, nacho thins, peanut creme patties; Waffelos and Kabooms, fruit chews and toffee popcorn; the Dum-Dum pops, the Mystic mints.

The Whining Stranger's Song of the Day: 19 August 2006

"The Chicken" by Jaco Pastorius (from The Birthday Concert, 1981)

Jaco was the greatest electric bass player ever. Here he and his Word of Mouth Big Band give an ol' JB-band tune the major punk-jazz treatment. It's funky, it's fast. And Jaco's interplanetry ostinatos will put a tear in your eye. He died way too young.

The Whining Stranger's Daily Haiku: 19 August 2006

placid Saturday
pianistic excursion
I sing for myself

The Whining Stranger on Politics and Current Events: Not as Green As I Thought

I just took the Ecological Footprint Quiz at earthday.net. I went in thinking I'd score well. I walk to work; I drive a fuel-efficient car; I eat vegetarian dinners maybe 4-5 nights a week.

As it turns out, my Ecological Footprint is 18 acres, and more horrifying, if everybody lived like me we would need 3.9 planets.

Go ahead, test yourself.

Musings: This is the best 80 cent lunch ever

Trust me. It's unreal how good this for such a ridiculously low price. Thank you, Big Lots!

The Whining Stranger's Song of the Day: 18 August 2006

"Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo" [i.e. "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly"] by Ennio Morricone (1966)

I stare down the work on my desk like the Man with No Name. Were it not for the building's anti-smoking policy, I would stick stubby cigarillo in my mouth and emit meaningful plumes of nasty burnt tobacco smoke. I rub my hand over my unshaven cheek. I glare with squinty eyes. I remove sidearm from beneath poncho. And I emerge from this showdown untouched, leaving a fallen villain in the blood-soaked dust.

The Whining Stranger on Politics and Current Events: One Child Beauty Queen = Tens of Thousands Distant Dead Children

Here I am, all in a tizzy about the damn media again. Why am I so easily moved to anger given the predictability of American news agencies. Here's my beef: sure, I want to see JonBenet Ramsey's killer brought to justice. I find her death--and her life, actually--to be an undeniable tragedy. But I would like a little balance in my news coverage. There are tens of thousands civilians dead in Iraq and Darfur, many of whom--duh!--are children. Sure, they didn't wear blue eyeshadow and perform cute dances in cowboy boots. Yes, they didn't sing in adorably warbly little voices with curled blond hair.

But they do deserve a little more attention, no?

This post seems to articulate what is painfully obvious, I know, and I'll feel a tiny bit better if I hit "publish" and get it online.

The Whining Stranger's Daily Haiku: 18 August 2006

humble fajita
Mexican restaurant reward
patience, hard worker

The Whining Stranger's Song of the Day: 17 August 2006

"I Predict a Riot" by Kaiser Chiefs (from the album, Employment, 2005)

What happened to these kids? I remember in 2005 finding them everywhere--on Letterman, in music magazines, in correspondence from music-loving hipster former students. I jumped on the bandwagon. I downloaded this tune. I played it out my car window.

And then?

They've vanished.

The pop music career trajectory moves at the speed of light now.

The Whining Stranger's Daily Haiku: 17 August 2006

desk piled with work
seemingly endless travails
my blessings save me

Musings: Five Great Beards for the Ages

As I take another break, mid-afternoon, here on campus, and run my fingers through two-weeks of new beard growth, I find myself contemplating the great hirsute icons who've inspired me to put the razor away again.

So, Casey Kasem-style, in reverse order, here they are:

5. Croatian tennis great Goran Ivanisevic



Goran tried to revive the Bjorn Borg look in the 1990s, long after the Ice Man had retired from the game.

4. Soul music legend Marvin Gaye



If I had to choose which vision of Marvin to put on a stamp, I'd pick this one. "Let's Get It On"-era Marvin. Never has somebody who embodied virility so thoroughly been able to hit notes so high.

3. All-Star outfielder Johnny Damon (pre-Bronx makeover)



When Johnny Damon first arrived in Spring Training for the Boston Red Sox with full beard and long hair flying out of his cap, I thought baseball had finally again discovered a quirky superstar in the best Mark Fidrych vein. Then Johnny got famous and got interviewed and I realized he's, sadly, a lout. Then he joined the Yankees and went clean-cut. Still, look at that beard. It was a good run for a while.

2. Tintin's seafaring buddy Captain Haddock




Slubberdegullions! That's some kickass facial hair.

1. Inventer of modern fiction Ernest Hemingway



You know this was coming. Pretend to be surprised.

Musings: A Redeeming Googlism

Somebody found me today by googling four of my favorite words: "donald fagen philip roth."

I could not be more pleased.
Jimmy Buffett be damned.

The Whining Stranger's Song of the Day: 16 August 2006

"Every Little Bit Hurts" by Brenda Holloway (1964)

This ranks for me as one of the top ten, maybe top five, greatest songs in the Motown catalogue. It's got a great gospel pulse, bluesy piano, and a scorching pained vocal from the sadly under-appreciated Ms. Holloway. She's a textbook case in considering how arbitrary fame is. She sings better than Diana Ross, she looks better than Diana Ross, and yet-- Well, as far as I know Brenda Holloway didn't date Berry Gordy, so maybe that's the kicker.

In any case, seek this song out if you don't know it. Seek it out too if you're only familiar with Alicia Keys's recent live version. The Keys version is hot but--to quote another Motown classic--"Ain't nothing like the real thing, baby."

The Whining Stranger's Daily Haiku: 16 August 2006

[Note: And here I introduce another regular, or semi-regular, feature to the blog, a brief poetic interlude each day to keep my whimsy afloat and my pretentious pseudo-Zen practice a-rollin'. Today's inaugural entry is composed in honor of snacks in my desk drawer here on campus.]

rice crackers assuage
my mid-afternoon hunger
tonight, a cold beer

Musings: My Life is Good, But--

I woke up this morning feeling that my life is good. Tremendously good. Last night we drank red wine and had potato-rosemary bread and ate jambalaya. We walked the dog. I smoked. I played the piano. I finished Don Quixote and read a bit of Dostoevsky ("White Nights") in bed. Good life, right?

And then, surfing the web for Plimpton content I read this, from Daedalus Howell, on his blog: Drawn and Quarterly.

My life is grand, it is, but there's still room for jealousy.

The Whining Stranger's Song of the Day: 14 August 2006

"Rapture" by Blondie (from the album, Autoamerican, 1980)

This one is best appreciated in video form, in all its early-MTV glory. Deborah Harry--as Marc Jacobs knows so profitably--remains iconic, not just a sultry chanteuse but an image for the ages. And look for Jean-Michel Basquiat's cameo around 1:57 into this. Look, too, for the grafitti, and listen to DH's rap, which for many pop music fans was an introduction to an emerging culture that was about to storm big on a national level in the next few years.

Proustian Years in Review: Part 4: 1981

For me, 1981:

• my first ever taste of chapati, experienced while visiting the Indian family who lived across the street.
• a handheld General Electric tape recorder that I got for Christmas and which I used to record top hits off the living room stereo, by holding the microphone up to the speaker. (Songs I recorded included Kim Carnes's "Bette Davis Eyes" and Olivia Newton-John's "Physical.")
• the confetti I helped clean up off my grandmother's rec room carpet, the night that my aunt got married.
• the communion wafer I swallowed to tick another Catholic sacrament off my checklist.
• Raiders of the Lost Ark, viewed with my father at a theater downtown.
• being introduced to Mad magazine by my best friend.
• die-cast metal "dinky" cars kept in a blue plastic case.

And what, may I ask, was 1981 for you?

Musings

Unfortunate Googlisms, continued--

So somebody found me by googling, "Writing a Eulogy Jimmy Buffett Style."

Hm.

Frankly, I'd rather just be writing Jimmy Buffett's eulogy.
OK, I know that hurt my karmic ledger, but dammit, you know how I feel about Jimmy Buffett.

The Whining Stranger on Music: Ten Recordings To Get a Jazz Collection Started

As promised, this is my response to Caleb McDaniel's Jazz Primer. First, a few disclaimers about my bias as a jazz fan. One, I'm not especially big on vocal recordings. Granted, I love Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Johnny Hartman, Blossom Dearie, et al. But given a choice between a long saxophone solo and a vocal interpretation of a standard, I'll always go for the sax. Secondly, in terms of periods, I'm especially weak for jazz between 1955 and 1964, a preference that's obvious if you look over this list. That said, here are ten recordings I'd recommend. I think you could pick all of these up for around two hundred bucks if you wanted to be a sudden jazz expert for (maybe just over) two bills.

1. Louis Armstrong, The Complete Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings (1925-1929)




Armstrong, as historian Ted Gioia reminds us in his History of Jazz, essentially ushered in the Age of the Soloist in jazz history. This collection (on 4 cds) features many of the early highpoints in his career. As a bebop-favoring late-teenager, I used to think Armstrong's music was corny, but somewhere in my mid-20s I saw the light. I can't listen to "West End Blues" or "Big Butter and Egg Man" now and not be awestruck by the sublime logic of his playing.

2. Miles Davis, Kind of Blue (1959)



I don't think I've ever seen a best-of-jazz list that didn't include this album. It constitutes one of those legendary moments in the history of recorded jazz for its stellar line-up alone: Davis on trumpet, John Coltrane on tenor sax, Cannonball Adderley on alto sax, Bill Evans on piano (with Wynton Kelly, in my mind the greatest accompaniest of the post-bebop era, on one track), Paul Chambers on bass, and Jimmy Cobb on drums. Kind of Blue popularized modal jazz, of course, but it also features one of those rare moments of every musician bringing his best game to the studio. Imagine a pro basketball game in which a team makes no turnovers, perhaps. Everything went right like that here.

3. John Coltrane, Giant Steps (1959)



Most canonical lists, having to choose only one Coltrane recording, would likely cite his magnum opus, A Love Supreme, from 1964. I've always been partial to Coltrane's Atlantic recordings from 1959-1960, though. This is the first flowering of the confident improviser who emerged over the next few years as (in my opinion) the greatest soloist in the jazz pantheon. Coltrane's tone is still bluesy here; his musical vocabulary is becoming increasingly comprehensive; but he'd not yet exploded into the full realization of what Ira Gitler called "sheets of sound." Great writing too: "Giant Steps," "Naima," "Mr. P.C.," "Cousin Mary," all became standards.

4. Duke Ellington, The Blanton-Webster Band (1939-1942)



Much classic Ellingtonia over three discs here. The tunes, dating from the 78 rpm era, are short at under three minutes each, but you'll find many high points from Duke's early mature period represented here: Billy Strayhorn's "Take the A Train," "Concerto for Cootie," "Never No Lament"... This probably isn't my favorite Ellington album (the more anomalous trio session Money Jungle, with Charles Mingus on bass and Max Roach on drums likely holds that honor), but this is certainly the one I would more readily cite for canonical representation, as a definitive marker of Ellington's genius as a composer and bandleader.

5. The Quintet, Jazz at Massey Hall (1953)


Five names: Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, Max Roach. 'Nuff said. But if you need me to say more, I will say that this isn't the cleanest recording available of Bird and Diz's complementary genius, but it is an important one. If you'd rather just hear Parker, I'd recommend his sessions for Dial. Or for Diz alone, go to his RCA Victor sides.

6. Charles Mingus, Mingus Ah Um (1959)



An accessible introduction to the great rowdy compositions of this post-war genius of the upright bass. Famous numbers from the Mingus book, like "Goodbye Porkpie Hat" (his elegy for Lester Young) and the churchy "Better Get It In Your Soul" are represented here, as is his political anthem, "Fables of Faubus." As you get used to Mingus, though, you'll want to move to more challenging records, like the less restrained records on Candid, or the brilliant, Black Saint and the Sinner Lady on Impulse.

7. Bill Evans, Sunday at the Village Vanguard (1961)



This, for me, is the high water mark for jazz piano in the trio format. Evans's rapport with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian is legendary. There's never been a more poetic voice on the keyboard, either. He'll break your heart.

8. Thelonious Monk, Monk Alone: The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings (1962-1968)



I'm actually more of a fan of Monk's quartet recordings--especially those with John Coltrane or Charlie Rouse on tenor sax--but hearing this angular, dissonant virtuoso of the piano by himself is a nice way to immerse yourself in his idiosyncratic style. Marvel at the cubist way he approaches familiar tunes; lose yourself in his spaces and tension-building moments of hesitation.

9. Sonny Rollins, Saxophone Colossus (1956)



Call me a trite, but never has an album been more aptly titled. Sonny is a giant. Still.

10. Dexter Gordon, One Flight Up (1964)



Because every jazz collection needs some representation from the amazing Blue Note records catalogue of the 1950s and 60s. And because, as I just said to my partner in the car this morning, no Dexter Gordon record has ever disappointed me. This one is gold just for the epic opener, "Tanya."

The Whining Stranger on Politics and Current Events: This Just In...

According to a headline from my favorite junky news-source (not for news junkies, of course, but just plain junk), Yahoo News: Poll: Bush May Be Hurting Republicans.

And in other developments, scientists have discerned that cancer may be harmful to one's health.

Also, Peter Schweizer, of USA Today, author of the provocative (by which I mean nauseating) tome, Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy, points out--as his headline reads--that Gore Isn't Quite As Green As He's Led The World To Believe. Read the piece, and then perhaps, like me, you'll find yourself asking, "Why do conservatives challenge dissent by trying to expose hypocrisy? So Al Gore is a spoiled rich guy who leads an overly indulgent life. Big deal. That's what rich guys do. But does that negate the problems regarding global warming to which the (Real Elected) President has tried to call attention?"

I'm tired of so-called critical thinkers in the public sphere playing I've-called-you-on-your-hypocrisy as though it's a trump card in public debate. Is this what passes for political engagement? If so, I'll open another Colt 45 and continue to wait for the oceans to boil over.

The Whining Stranger on Music

Debating the Jazz Canon

Caleb McDaniel has an excellent post on his blog, Mode for Caleb, in which he offers his introductory picks for stocking a new jazz recording collection. Read it here.

I vow now: as soon as I get through some of the work on my desk I will write my own primer in response.

Some Art I Have Seen and Liked: Part 4: Aztec Josephine Baker by Alexander Calder (ca. 1929)

This wire mobile is maybe the best way for a modern artist to try to capture the ethos of La Baker, she who is so visible, but so little understood. At the heart of Baker's elusiveness was movement--the uncopyable dance step; or the savvy use of her much-photographed body in an ongoing subversive commentary on the nonsense of modernity--and this work captures that.

The Whining Stranger's Big List of Ultimate Fetish Objects and Talismans: Part 4

My bike.

The thrift store steal of a lifetime, I found this enviro-friendly vehicle at Goodwill for twenty bucks about a year and a half ago, and had to have it, not just for mobility's sake, but to complete the professorial cliche. It has one speed (pedal hard) and uses those old-school throw-your-pedal-in-reverse kind of brakes. (After riding a mountain bike for years, I admit I've nearly propelled myself into traffic for not having a feel for the pedal-brake). On days when I ride to campus I look forward to the end of the day, when I cruise through our residential neighborhood with the wind in my hair.

And I always pretend I'm George Plimpton, riding home from The Paris Review.

The Whining Stranger on Books and Reading: One Book, etc.

[Note: To date I've resisted memes in filling my blog content, if only because I'm fixated enough on my own various small obsessions never to lack content. This one, which I came across on Light Reading (by way of Kate's Book Blog) was too good to pass up though.]

1. One Book That Changed Your Life

Without a doubt, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. It's a novel that contains the whole history of American culture (and even crosses the pond in meaningful ways) yet offers such a completely personal version of experience. It's comprehensive without sacrificing accessibility. It's erudite but steeped in the vernacular. Novels should contain multitudes, it convinced me, but they need also embody the writer's best sense of hope. This one does all that.

2. One Book That You've Read More Than Once

While I've read Ellison's novel many times (maybe five, six), I'll say J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey here. I'm smitten with the Glass family. I admit I'm enamored with the thought of New York apartments and genius families. ("Oh, to have more academic relatives to talk with!" says the guy who has to explain what he does exactly every time he returns home for a family visit.) As an adolescent reader I was taken with Salinger's prose style. Now older, I find myself drawn to the book's major problem: where does the cynical, ironic deep thinker turn to settle his/her monkey mind and find true spiritual calm?

3. One Book That You'd Want a Desert Island

This may appear to compromise my reading tastes, but I'm an unbashed lover of baseball, and so I'll say Bill James's Historical Baseball Abstract for its heft, and for its digestability. Anecdotes, sidebars galore!

4. One Book That Made You Laugh

I'll say the first half of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections or the first half of Robert Sedlack's The African Safari Papers. Apparently family dysfunction really hits my funny bone. Go figger.

5. One Book That Made You Cry

The second half of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. Apparently family dysfunction really hits my--

6. One Book That You Wish Had Been Written

...or at least finished according to its author's plan? Definitely Ralph Ellison's second novel, posthumously published in much-edited form as Juneteenth. I actually cried when I first read this one too--for its flashes of greatness, and for its tragically unfinished quality.

7. One Book That You Wish Had Never Been Written

Now that's just mean. If I answer this, instant karma's gonna get me.

8. One Book You're Currently Reading

Still trudging through Don Quixote. Oh, to be a faster reader!

9. One Book You've Been Meaning to Read

Where to start? David Bodanis's E=mc2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation. Or Zadie Smith's On Beauty. Or George Plimpton's Shadow Box: An Amateur in the Ring.

There. Now wasn't that fun?

Musings: The Cruel Part of the Summer

One of the few downsides of living a life governed by the academic year is that August inevitably carries a bit of melancholic weight. These are the last few weeks of unstructured time before the rigor of classes, and meetings, and stringent commitments sets in. Autumn's cool, crisp winds come nipping in at the corners of your sun-bleached, laissez faire existence. Soon you'll be living by alarm clocks and datebooks again.

This is the month of Jay Gatsby's downfall. This is the busy time of looking ahead to the busier time of school starting.

I sigh.
And I wonder how another summer has so quickly passed.

The Whining Stranger's Pantheon of Great Heroes and Key Influences: Part 5: Marcello Mastroianni (1924-1996)

He makes the pantheon for his performance as Guido Anselmi in Fellini's 8 1/2 alone. When Mastroianni turns to the camera, wearing chunky dark shades at the spa, in the film's opening section, I coo, I melt. My man crush speeds like a runaway train. He's suave, with his baritone voice. He's dashing with his slicked back hair. But Mastroianni also offers a moving vision of vulnerable narcissism. (Spare me the invincibility of your Steve McQueens, this cat hurts.) His character is self-obsessed but recognizes that self-obsession as a potentially loathesome quality. He loves those close to him but inevitably disappoints them for not being able to slip the bonds of his own gigantic ego.

And those sunglasses! I always buy chunky shades--always!--in tribute to him.

The Whining Stranger on Music: The Whining Stranger Digs Classic Album Covers, Part 1

I know I'll seem like an old grump in writing this, but I do long for a time when records (a word I use in talking to undergraduates at times, to raised eyebrows and general confusion) were bigger, and their sleeves gave them a real objet d'art feel. I like the shine of the compact disc, true; I dig the portability of the mp3 (after venturing around NYC with my girlfriend's mp3 player in my pocket, I'm sold on the new technology--finally), but aesthetically I just can't get past the grandeur of the long-ago album sleeve. Here are five noteworthy covers:

1. The Beatles by The Beatles [aka "the White Album"].



This cover is so zen in its simplicity. Maybe I'm especially inclined toward this one because its my favorite of their recordings--so diverse, so chaotically lovely--but I admit I've always been mesmerized by the slightly crooked setting of their name.

2. Porgy and Bess by Miles Davis



An elegant record with a saucy cover. What's with the flash of knee? What's with the not-so-demure feminine hand hooked around the trumpet? Meow.

3. The Hissing of Summer Lawns by Joni Mitchell



Joni's covers--usually painted by herself--are always amazing. This one has a certain baroque charm in the intricate pattern on the snake's belly. All that greenspace is hypnotic too, befitting one of the greatest album titles in pop music history.

4. Bookends by Simon and Garfunkel



I dig san serif fonts on album covers. I dig candid photos. Paul and Artie look so wide-eyed here. I know the inticmacy is staged, but even if its a performative candor it's so suitable for the music you hear within.

5. Gettin' Around by Dexter Gordon



The recently released Van Gelder Edition of this album is in frequent rotation on my stereo right now. But the cover! I could compile a list of fifty favorite album covers just by sorting through Reid Miles's designs for Blue Note Records back in the 50s and 60s alone. I love the use of space. I love the bicycles. And look--another san serif font! Brilliant.

Musings: Scrapple from the Apple: The Whining Stranger's Back from NYC

So, Friday night I landed, tired, back into my quiet college town, after ten days in the greatest city in the universe. It's over: I took Manhattan, the Bronx, and the Staten Island ferry too. A good trip overall. I was sufficiently productive with the library research I was supposed to do, and I maximized my time in the city, enjoying ten days as a flaneur in midtown, Greenwich Village, Chinatown, SoHo, the financial district... Baseball brought me to Queens and the Bronx. The unlimited-ride MetroCard I bought on Day 2 was my greatest resource. Some highlights and things I did, and discovered:

1. Midtown Manhattan hotel rooms at twilight invite shadowy self-portraits:



2. Ms. Liberty's a looker, even on an overcast afternoon, as viewed from the tip of Battery Park. (I also saw her from the Staten Island ferry, but didn't have my camera to record that first meeting of wayfaring intellectual and gigantic female icon.)



3. My favorite on-the-go lunch is, without a doubt, gyros bought on the cheap from the vendors around the corner from Radio City Music Hall, where I stomped on the avenue in bad sneakers, but sans transistor or large sum of money. A good lunch: greasy, sloppy goodness in a pita with an ice cold can of Coke, and all for five bucks.



4. This unassuming basement venue is--as I knew it would be--the greatest jazz club in the world. The staff could be a little more personable, but man, I sat three feet from Greg Osby (who was fantastic) and couldn't settle the litany in my mind of famous musicians who'd played (and recorded seminal albums) on the stage before me ("Trane!" "Sonny Rollins!" "Bill Evans!" etc.).



...but I also heard amazing jazz from the Mingus Dynasty group here, at Iridium, on Broadway on Tuesday night. A great pick-up performance, and a personal highlight for me, when Ku'umba Frank Lacy acknowledged my applause from the front table with a nod and a finger pointed in my direction.



...and the best serendipitous jazz moment of my visit was getting to catch the Dave Holland Quintet for free at Castle Clinton in Battery Park on my last night in town. Chris Potter and Robin Eubanks were particularly otherworldly.



5. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is overwhelming in its grandeur. I had to limit myself to my bread-and-butter, the modern and contemporary collections. While I can't pretend I wasn't disappointed that they didn't have Romare Bearden's The Block on view, I was moved at seeing Picasso's portrait of Gertrude Stein in person for the first time.



6. At Yankee Stadium, you get this for forty-five dollars:



...but at Shea Stadium, you get this for only sixteen:



So what if Shea's a dumpier ballpark. I like the Mets better anyway. (Though I did have a blast joining the boo-birds in the Bronx when A-Rod struck out three times. I could strike out for less than 25 million bucks a year, dude.)

And those are some highlights from my time in the big city. Sadly, now I'm staring at a mess of work to do in the next three weeks. When-oh-when will those syllabi be finished?