Archive for the ‘Music’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Random notes: January 31, 2013.

Thursday, January 31st, 2013

Obit watch: Patty Andrews, the last surviving Andrews Sister. (NYT. A/V Club.)

If a publisher is reissuing a non-fiction book, do they have an obligation to go back and do fact checking? What if the facts have been called into question since the book was issued? What if the book is “38 Witnesses” by A.M. Rosenthal of the New York Times?

In the years since, however, as court records have been examined and witnesses reinterviewed, some facts of both the coverage and the book have been challenged on many fronts, including the element at the center of the indictment: 38 silent witnesses. Yet none of the weighty counter-evidence was acknowledged when Mr. Rosenthal’s book was reissued in digital form by Melville — raising questions of what, if any, obligation a publisher has to account for updated versions of events featured in nonfiction titles. Dennis Johnson, the publisher of Melville House, said he knew about the controversy but decided to stand behind Mr. Rosenthal’s account. “There are, notably, works of fraud where revising or withdrawing the book is possible or even recommended, but this is not one of those cases,” he said. “This is a matter of historical record. This is a reprint of reporting done for The New York Times by one the great journalists of the 20th century. We understand there are people taking issue with it, but this is not something we think needs to be corrected.”

What is there to correct?

As early as 1984 The Daily News published an article pointing to flaws in the reporting. In 2004 The Times did its own summation of the critical research, showing that since Ms. Genovese crawled around to the back of the building after she was stabbed the first time (her assailant fled and returned) very few people would have seen anything.
The article quoted among others Charles E. Skoller, the former Queens assistant district attorney who helped prosecute the case and who also has written a book on it. “I don’t think 38 people witnessed it,” said Mr. Skoller, who had retired by the time of the interview. “I don’t know where that came from, the 38. I didn’t count 38. We only found half a dozen that saw what was going on, that we could use.” There were other mitigating factors as well; it was a cold night, and most people had their windows closed.

This 2009 NPR interview goes into more detail about the many problems with the popular narrative of the case.

This lead made me giggle:

George Ryan was released from a federal prison in the dark on Wednesday morning, and Illinois became a state with only one former governor behind bars.

Hey, as long as we’re talking about crooked governors:

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s approval rating has fallen sharply among New York voters since he pushed restrictive gun laws through the Legislature, a poll released on Wednesday said.

And lying politicians:

…it is also curious that the White House refuses to provide any documentary evidence that he actually used the shooting range at Camp David, since he claims he uses it “all the time,” or that a presidential friend has not come forward to confirm the president’s comments.

Posted in Books, Clippings, Guns, Law, Media, Music, Obits, Schadenfreude | Comments Closed

Random notes: January 8, 2013.

Tuesday, January 8th, 2013

Those of you who have been following Radley Balko and The Agitator know that Balko’s been on the story of Mississippi forensic pathologist Dr. Steven T. Hayne like flies on a severed cow’s head at a Damien Hirst exhibition.

For those of you who don’t follow Balko (I don’t click through as regularly since he moved to the Huffington Post), the NYT summarizes the story:

The filings, based on new information obtained as part of a lawsuit settled last spring, charge that Dr. Hayne made “numerous misrepresentations” about his qualifications as a forensic pathologist. They say that he proposed theories in his testimony that lie far outside standard forensic science. And they suggest that Mississippi officials ignored these problems, instead supporting Dr. Hayne’s prolific business.

More:

In one case, Dr. Hayne performed an autopsy of a young boy and concluded he had been suffocated. Some weeks after the boy was buried, his 3-year-old brother told the police that he had been killed by his mother’s boyfriend. Officials exhumed the body, and Dr. Hayne had a cast made of the boy’s face. By comparing his initial notes of face wounds with the cast, Dr. Hayne testified, he found it probable that the boy had been suffocated by a large male hand. The boyfriend was convicted.

Worth noting for the record: the Innocence Project has also been involved with Dr. Hayne. Dr. Hayne and the project settled a lawsuit out of court last year, and the project paid him $100,000. The NYT article touches on this some: one key point is that, in the process of preparing their defense, the project claims to have discovered new evidence that contradicts Dr. Hayne’s sworn testimony in various cases.

Bob Dylan: The Copyright Extension Collection, Vol. 1. No, that’s the real title.

…the point of the release was to keep the recordings under copyright protection in Europe, where the laws are in flux. Currently, recordings can be copyrighted in Europe for 50 years, a much shorter term than in the United States, where recordings made since 1978 will remain copyrighted until 70 years after the death of the last surviving author.

Posted in Clippings, Law, Music | Comments Closed

Random notes: January 3, 2013.

Thursday, January 3rd, 2013

The shooting, on Nov. 26, was one more jarring reminder of just how common killings seem to have grown on the streets of Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city, where 506 homicides were reported in 2012, a 16 percent increase over the year before, even as the number of killings remained relatively steady or dropped in some cities, including New York.

How’s that strict gun control working for you, Chicago?

First they came for the large sodas, and I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t drink soda. Then they came for the energy drinks…

Obit watch: Patti Page. NYT. A/V Club.

The NYT profiles Christopher Tinker, auto mechanic in Baltimore. Why? Christopher Tinker’s great-grandfather was Joe Tinker.

Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds,
Tinker and Evers and Chance.
Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,
Making a Giant hit into a double,
Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:
Tinker to Evers to Chance.

Yeah, that Joe Tinker.

In 1993, he paid $220 for one of the original baseball cards, which were issued by tobacco companies. But the card was eventually lost, and Tinker thought about how to replace it. One day he walked into a Baltimore tattoo parlor, and the idea hit him. Six hours and nearly $500 later, he had his great-grandfather’s image engraved on his arm.

Lake Tahoe has a bear problem. Actually, Lake Tahoe has two bear problems:

More than a thousand bear complaints a year are reported to officials on the lake’s California side alone. They break into homes to forage in refrigerators, at times surprising terrified residents. They den under porches and have learned to twist the tops off food jars. They make the trash-can exploits of the Southern California bruin nicknamed Glen Bearian look like the fumblings of an amateur.

Problem #2:

It’s not uncommon for people who have sought state approval to have a bear killed to receive an onslaught of threats. Homes have been vandalized. Even complaining about a problem bear to game wardens — who some see as the enemy — can bring scorn.
“People have been approached and yelled at in grocery stores simply for reporting bear activity,” said Placer County Sheriff’s Capt. Jeff Ausnow. “They’ll say, ‘You can’t do that because they’re going to kill it.’ This is a very emotional issue here.”

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Law, Music, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 12, 2012.

Wednesday, December 12th, 2012

The great Ravi Shankar. (LAT. NYT. A/V Club.)

When I was in school the first time around, I became a big Ravi Shankar fan. I went to see him in concert when he came through Austin, and bought several of his albums. “Live at Monterey – 1967“, as it turned out, was a great way to annoy Lawrence. (Don’t feel sorry for him: Lawrence had, and has, his own ways of getting back at me.)

Edited to add: updated with the A/V Club obit. Also: A/V Club obit for Reinhold Weege, creator of “Night Court”.

Posted in Clippings, Music, Obits, TV | 1 Comment »

Random notes: December 6, 2012.

Thursday, December 6th, 2012

Dave Brubeck obits: NYT. LAT. A/V Club.

The demise of “The Anarchist” raises questions about the theater business. Did the lead producers’ devotion to Mr. Mamet — and the hope of a lucrative “Glengarry” revival — mean staging a new work that wasn’t right, or ready, for Broadway? Should playwrights direct their own work, as Mr. Mamet did with “The Anarchist” and his last new drama on Broadway, “Race”?

Posted in Clippings, Music, Obits, Theatre | Comments Closed

Here. Have some more crap.

Thursday, November 8th, 2012

A/V Club obit for Elliott Carter.

NYT obits for Darrell Royal and influential former wine columnist Frank J. Prial.

Another election result that amuses me:

The referendum in Tuesday’s election asked voters whether Michigan should retain a recently enacted state law that allowed the governor to appoint “emergency managers” with broad oversight of financial decisions, budgets and union contracts for struggling local governments. The law was intended to help municipalities avoid bankruptcy or default, but it has been criticized for infringing on the rights of local governments.

The referendum failed, 53% – 47%.

Emergency managers currently oversee three school districts in Michigan, including the Detroit public schools, and the city governments in Benton Harbor, Escorse, Flint and Pontiac. Now it is unclear what the vote means for their work, as well as for a fledgling financial consent agreement between the state and Detroit, which has wrestled with billions of dollars of long-term debt and nearly ran out of money this year.

And another one: voters in San Francisco actually rejected a proposal “that would have taken the first steps toward draining Hetch Hetchy Reservoir and drastically revamped the way much of the Bay Area gets its water.”

The Prop. F initiative was the culmination of a years-long effort by environmentalists to restore Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park. The valley was flooded in 1923, when the city dammed the Tuolumne River to create a water system that now serves 2.6 million people in San Francisco and 29 other Bay Area cities.The measure, supporters said, would have compelled the city to take a much-needed look at its water usage and come up with a plan to replace the water and power now supplied by the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. A separate vote in 2016 would have been required before the O’Shaughnessy Dam could be demolished.

From the Department of Wow: University of Houston cornerback D.J. Hayden is in the hospital. His condition is listed as “critical but stable” according to the HouChron. What happened?

Hayden had surgery to repair a tear in the main blood vessel that leads to the heart, an injury suffered when he collided with a teammate during Tuesday night’s practice, a person familiar with the situation told the Chronicle on the condition of anonymity.

This Statesman “story” is…just…odd.

Edited to add: A little more information on D.J. Hayden and his injury:

In a statement released by UH, [team physician Dr. Walter] Lowe confirmed that Hayden required immediate surgery Tuesday night for a tear of the inferior vena cava, the large vein that carries blood from the lower half of the body back to the heart.

More from Dr. Lowe: “This injury has never been seen or reported in association with a football injury and is more associated with high-speed motor vehicle.” Huh? There’s a photo caption: “…a freak injury normally associated with high-speed motorcycle wrecks.”

Dr. Lowe also apparently said that this kind of injury has a “95 percent fatality rate”. I have no problem believing that.

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Food, Law, Media, Music, Obits, Politics, Sports | Comments Closed

Unbridled optimism.

Tuesday, November 6th, 2012

Well, not really. But one of the things I’ve seen in the past few days that has given me some hope for civilization is Theremin World, your source for everything theremin related.

(I actually kind of want the Moog Music Etherwave Plus. But:

  1. I have no detectable musical talent. This has been confirmed by precisely calibrated instruments placed in orbit by NASA.
  2. I have limited space, so I’m not sure where I’d put it.
  3. I’m sure the people who live next to and above me would enjoy hearing me practice.
  4. $499 is a good Smith and Wesson. Or a sizable chunk of one, depending. (My local gunshop has some nice Model 10s that came in as police trade-in guns, complete with heavy barrel, for just over $400. It also has a 29-2 with an 8 3/8″ barrel for just over $800 that I’ve fallen in love with.))

Posted in Music | Comments Closed

Odd juxapositions.

Tuesday, November 6th, 2012

Obit watch: Elliott Carter, noted contemporary American composer and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for music.

“As a young man, I harbored the populist idea of writing for the public,” he once explained to an interviewer who asked him why he had chosen to write such difficult music. “I learned that the public didn’t care. So I decided to write for myself. Since then, people have gotten interested.”

In other news: remember 2 Live Crew? Remember Luther Campbell? Have you ever wondered what he’s up to these days? Answer: coaching high school football.

This is Luther Campbell now: married to a lawyer, raising a 3-year-old named Blake, living on a lake, starting his own line of rum. He loves the album “Jagged Little Pill” by Alanis Morissette and the song “Bitter Sweet Symphony” by the Verve. He is asked how this all ties together, Coach Luke and Uncle Luke and Mr. Obscenity turned molder of young minds, despite his past, the reputation, the rapsheet. He does not see this as a redemption story. He does not view himself as changed. Same guy, different job. Same play, next act.

I kind of wanted to snark on this story, but it actually turns out to be a story of a man trying to redeem himself, help kids, and make his little corner of the world better.

“If I never met him, I’d probably be dead or in jail,” said Marquise Blanchard, a defensive end. “He took me under his wing like I was his son. Most of us don’t got no dads. But he’s a daddy figure.”

Posted in Clippings, Music, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Going to Montana soon…

Thursday, October 25th, 2012

“These inmates can make a weapon out of a chewing gum wrapper,” said Steven Kayser, whose company sells a floss product advertised as prison-safe. “Floss is right up there on the danger list.”

And yet, the cries for gun control continue.

In other news: gee, I really miss Frank Zappa.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Law, Music | Comments Closed

Random notes: September 27, 2012.

Thursday, September 27th, 2012

Sorry, folks. My normal schedule has been disrupted by a (thankfully not serious) personal matter.

“Who’s a good boy? Yes, you are. You’re a good boy. You sniff out drugs. Yes you do. And you don’t steal guns from the city and sell them. No, you don’t. And you don’t owe tens of thousands of dollars in child support in Texas. Good boy! Go catch the ball!”

(Hattip: Balko.)

The guy APD shot Tuesday night? Died in the hospital. (Linked article contains more details on the shooting.)

Obit watches: The WP is reporting the death of Herbert Lom.

John Silber, former Boston University president.

Andy Williams. (A/V Club. NYT. LAT.)

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Law, Movies, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Apropos of nothing in particular…

Monday, September 17th, 2012

There was a time in my life when I was listening to the original cast recording of “Evita” (or, at least, certain tracks off of it) pretty much every day. I’d forgotten how much I liked some of those songs (and, for that matter, how good Mandy Patinkin is) until now. Especially “And The Money Kept Rolling In (And Out)“.

And the money kept rolling out in all directions
To the poor, to the weak, to the destitute of all complexions
Now cynics claim a little of the cash has gone astray
But that’s not the point my friends
When the money keeps rolling out you don’t keep books
You can tell you’ve done well by the happy grateful looks
Accountants only slow things down, figures get in the way
Never been a lady loved as much as Eva Peron

This guy’s no Patinkin, but he’s pretty good, and this is the best video I could find on YouTube. (There is one video that claims to be Patinkin performing the song, but it is almost unbearably poor quality.)

Actually, I take back the “apropos of nothing in particular”, because what got me going down this path was the “Stuff You Missed in History Class” podcast, and especially the “Why did it take more than 20 years to bury Eva Peron?” episode. There is a comment in the liner notes to that cast recording that the story of Eva’s body is almost as fascinating as the story of her life, and I’ve agitated for Rice and Weber to do a musical about the saga of Eva Peron’s body.

Posted in History, Music, Politics, Theatre | Comments Closed

What could possibly be better…

Tuesday, September 11th, 2012

…than insurrectionist music and cheesy ’80s videos?

“If you’ve got a crush, don’t need an octopus”?

Posted in Music, Squid | Comments Closed

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »