RIP Betty White
Betty White died just a couple of weeks short of her 100th birthday, and as far as I can tell she was healthy to the end and died in her sleep. Here’s a fairly comprehensive piece about her life. White … Continue reading →
Category Archives: Arts
Rick Beato on autotune
Oh how I detest autotune. Rick Beato doesn’t detest it quite as much as I do, but he’s not the least bit fond of the way it’s commonly used today:
Continue reading →Maus
[NOTE: The topic of the two-volume graphic novel Maus came up in a recent thread, and I’ve decided to republish a review that I first wrote in 2009. So here it is.] I recently reread the two-volume graphic novel Maus, … Continue reading →
Joan Didion dies at 87
RIP. Didion specialized in the non-fiction essay, one of my favorite genres. I read her 1968 work Slouching Towards Bethlehem (title taken from Yeats’ wonderful poem “The Second Coming”) a couple of years after it came out and admired it … Continue reading →
Milan Kundera on the left’s dream
From The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera: Totalitarianism is not only hell, but all the dream of paradise– the age-old dream of a world where everybody would live in harmony, united by a single common will and … Continue reading →
Music and snobbery
As part of my newish – or rather, renewed – interest in popular music, I’ve been listening to a lot of music old and new. No doubt it’s at least partly as an escape from the political dolors du jour. … Continue reading →
“Get Back”?
There’s a huge number of reviews and discussions about the new Beatles documentary “Get Back.” I won’t even bother to link to any; they’re easy enough to find. Lots of people are raving about it, but they tend to be … Continue reading →
Instant cultural gratification
Commenter “Zaphod” offers this quote: “Now, if you will excuse me, I am going to pour a drink for myself and my wife, and we are going to watch The Magnificent Ambersons. One wonders what Tarkington would have thought of … Continue reading →
Your Love Will Save the World
Bee Gees time again! The Bee Gees wrote over 1000 songs, and many of them were never released. Particularly during the early 70s, when their sound was in transition from their earlier baroque rock British Invasion sound to a more … Continue reading →
RIP Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Sondheim, one of the giants of the American musical theater, died three days ago at the age of 91. Sondheim’s Wiki entry describes him this way: Sondheim was praised for having “reinvented the American musical” with shows that tackled … Continue reading →
Songs of broken hearts
There are countless songs about broken hearts. It’s a natural subject, because the phenomenon of hearbreak is so common, and people undergoing the pain of the experience often turn to music to release their emotions, universalize them, and even for … Continue reading →
Dave Brubeck, fake it till you make it
One of the things I’ve discovered through my recent delving into popular (and unpopular) music has been how many musicians have quirky, interesting life stories. In particular, so many came from a musical parent or parents, and so many were … Continue reading →