[Part I here.] Whatever was I talking about when I said that the lyrics of “Walk Away, Renee” were poetry? You might think the lyrics aren’t so special; just the usual rock pap. But bear with me and see whether … Continue reading →
Recently I wrote a post that featured the Yeats poem “The Second Coming.” Today I decided to look up more about the poem’s background, and came up with this: Modernists read the poem as a dirge for the decline of … Continue reading →
THE SECOND COMING William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and … Continue reading →
RIP, Michael Brown. Who’s Michael Brown? you ask: Michael Brown, a keyboardist and songwriter who at 16 was a writer of the 1966 hit “Walk Away Renee” for his band the Left Banke and composed “Pretty Ballerina” for it as … Continue reading →
I was in my car listening to NPR the other night (yes, sometimes I listen to NPR) and someone mentioned that, back in the 30s, half of John Steinbeck’s first draft of Of Mice and Men had been eaten by … Continue reading →
A little while ago I wrote a post featuring great monotonous songs. Today I’m going to write about great crescendo songs, which consist of either a single crescendo or in some cases a series of crescendos. A lot of songs … Continue reading →
The US reports that ISIS has lost 25% of the territory it once held. Although I hope this is true, I’m not at all sure I believe them, and they sound a bit shaky about it themselves: …a U.S. assessment…determined … Continue reading →
Ace points out that in the OU SAE case, even the ACLU (boy, that’s a lot of acronyms in one sentence) has been extremely reluctant to admit that the university acted unconstitutionally in expelling the two student ringleaders of the … Continue reading →
A lot of people on the left might think the phrase “conservative comedy” could only be either (1) a sarcastic description of everything the right does, or (2) an oxymoron. I once had an argument with an acquaintance on the … Continue reading →
I was surprised to read that Jamelle Bouie of Slate will be happy to see Jon Stewart go. As he himself says, Bouie’s a “liberal, college-educated millennial–the almost prototypical viewer” for Stewart’s show, so why’s he so thrilled (his word, … Continue reading →
You may or may not be familiar with the Duggar family of the reality TV show “19 Kids and Counting.” I don’t watch the show often, but I’ve seen it now and then, and one theme that began a while … Continue reading →
Here’s an article on the laborious and idiosyncratic complexity of the relationship between pointe shoes and the ballet dancer. The shoes are hand-made (and for professional ballet dancers, custom-made) but they are not worn as is. There is a lengthy … Continue reading →