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I really like that play. I've seen it in 3 different productions! I'd love to see a production. The closest I can probably come right now is to pick up a performance on CD from our library system. I see there are some scenes available on You Tube, so I'll those out also. One of the coolest features out there (for theatre lovers) is Now Playing at Samuel French: http://www.samuelfrench.com/now-playing (I see 6 or 7 productions in the US, mostly this spring). Also DPS page-to-stage: http://www.dramatists.com/pagetostage/productions.aspx But French is the agency representing Stoppard.

I really like that play. I've seen it in 3 different productions!

Sorry -- I lived in Chicago and had very up and down mail service. I find it entirely plausible that shit would sit on a shelf for a week. What is somewhat likely is that DG has a good carrier and then he or she was on vacation and the replacement did in fact let a lot of stuff pile up.

Read that about 25 years ago and fond it moderately entertaining and reasonably well written. Then moved on to Boyd's Ice-Cream War and Brazzaville Beach, both with African settings. Of the three, Brazzaville is the most memorable. "Moderately entertaining is about right. I do want to read Ice Cream War. Just finished: Mister Johnson - Joyce Cary -1939 Set in Nigeria and western Sudan during pre-WWII British colonial rule, this is the story of the larger-than-life African Mister Johnson and his roller-coaster fortunes in the colony. I can see some objections to its picture of life in the colony but overall I think his view is unsparing but not ungenerous, towards both Africans and British, black and white (including Moslems). I found it more rewarding that Boyd's A Good Man. Now I do remember that as a good one, though it's lain unopened on my bookshelf for decades. On this African theme, you'll have to read (re-read?) Graham Greene Burnt Out Case, etc. I'm reading A Bend in the River at the moment, then hope to move on to Chinua Achebe (I've read Things Fall Apart but I want to read the trilogy this time), and perhaps some other African authors. I've read the Greene book, and might very well read it again in this new context. Thanks for the good suggestion. Have you read Alan Paton's Cry the Beloved Country? I thought it was really interesting. A somewhat more obscure novel is Ayi Kwei Armah's The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (though apparently it inspired a Branford Marsalis album...). For a really obscure post-apartheid novel, you might try Phaswane Mpe's Welcome to Our Hillbrow, though it is awfully depressing.

I am finally completely done with attempting to ship things from the US to Canada. I was having 3 used books sent and there was a $3.75 tax due (which is totally BS in the first place but so be it) and then $7.50 handling that I had to pay for (on top of whatever I already paid in shipping when I ordered). A 200% markup/holdup. I'm done. On the positive side, I am saving quite a bit of money, but at the cost of being further disengaged with newish music (or more often repackaging of old music).

About 2/3 done with 49th Parallel - the first in Dos Passos's USA Trilogy. It does get a bit easier as you get deeper into it. At times it feels like a somewhat spicier Drieser or maybe a more scattered Steinbeck. It's quite interesting that over time, Dos Passos swung very far to the right, briefly backing McCarthy! and even campaigning for Goldwater and Nixon! I'm assuming this is pretty closely related to why English professors act as if Dos Passos never wrote a thing after the USA Trilogy... Anyway, at my current rate, I think I'll be done in just over two weeks.

A lot of times short stories can carry over pretty well as movies, so long as too much isn't added to fill out the running time. Full novels just always lose so much in translation, and somebody gets grumpy because their favorite scene got cut. If you can find it, it is definitely worth watching John Huston's The Dead, based on a James Joyce story from Dubliners.

Hmm, he's coming through town at the end of April. I'll try to remember.

Amen. The Exorcist blew the book away. I agree with Bladerunner being at least as good as Do Androids Dream..., but I don't see the movie as being an adaptation of the book. More of a "inspired by" thing. Exactly. It was more like a Cliff's Notes version of the book. If even that, really. Yeah, i remembered that the film was different enough from the book for it to be a controversial inclusion but it's starting to come back to me just how different it was now. I did leave out Naked Lunch though. Oh, don't get me wrong. I wasn't faulting you for mentioning it, because taking the title of the thread literally, well... it WAS as good as the book, since both were outstanding. It's similar to The Shining in that it was a fantastic movie, just very different than the fantastic novels they were derived from. I've thought about breaking Do Androids… back out several times, but never have. I still think it's his most interesting read, but I'm biased as I was a huge fan of Bladerunner before reading the book. It's really too bad his books have been so badly butchered in the cinema... Though, I would be thrilled to see some big budget director like Nolan or Abrams take on Lies, Inc. I'm going to be honest and say I didn't watch all of it (ran out of time on my rental copy), but A Scanner Darkly is not a complete butchery. However, I also wouldn't say it is superior to the book...

Got through Lethem's Lucky Alan in about a day and a half (it is very short - 150 pages). I have to admit, I didn't think very highly of it. Two stories were sort of interesting but not really well developed (title story and "Pending Vegan"), and "The Porn Critic" had some grubby fascination, and that was about it. Definitely glad I borrowed this from the library. One more novella, Albert Cossery's The Colors of Infamy, and I launch into Dos Passos. What I wasn't expecting is that Patrick Modiano's Suspended Sentences would be ready from the library. I'll have to read this after Dos Passos. Modiano won the Nobel Prize in Literature last year, and there is now all this interest in him. It appears that most of his best work is all tied up in memory and history and an obsession with Occupied France. Anyone have a favorite novel? What is particularly intriguing is that this seems to be the same ground that Emmanuel Bove trod, so there is surely a dissertation in that (for somebody else to write...).

Because at some point, music companies will simply cut their losses and refuse to even reissue the product they own, let alone release new recordings. At some point it won't even be worth it for advertisers to support legacy jazz festivals. Of course, those of us who have hoarded the music can listen to it in our man caves to our hearts' content.

To be fair, I did make it to an Electric Ladyland gig (many of the members are also in Polar Bear) at a street fair in London and the crowd was pretty young. This is a crossover thing (also Get the Blessing) that seems to be succeeding in the UK in a way that I don't see in North America (except perhaps for New York of course, which is the ultimate outlier).

It's also a bit less impressive when you realize the list covers several years (not one season) and more than a few players have passed away due to old age. This always happens when someone starts questioning the significance or self-sufficiency of something that is pretty evidently in decline yet has a few fervent adherents. Upthread someone said it best, talking about jazz lovers being in a cocoon, tuning out unpleasant news. And for the most part paying far more attention to remastered material they own on 2 or 3 releases already than to new music, which is either too hot (brash avant jazz) or too cold (boring retreads of bop and postbop music by young lions who aren't fit to carry Miles' mouthpiece). It's just the stuff from the past that is just right...

I think if the Jarman piece was an earworm for you, you might also check out Snurdy McGurdy and Her Dancin' Shoes - Roscoe Mitchell on Nessa Records. This is a very joyful record.

I think this is a book one either really likes or dislikes. I'm slowly coming back around to Naipaul -- only having read A House for Mr. Biswas and A Bend in the River. I have a few other early works to get to, and then I'll see about In a Free State. I have to be in the right frame of mind to appreciate him. I have just a few more pages to go in my rereading of Nightwood. It's still quite brilliant, though hardly as shocking as it once would have been. I do think I have a better understanding of the doctor this time around. Not much sympathy for Felix on either reading, I'm afraid. A couple of short things remaining (Joseph Roth's Weights and Measures and Jonathan Lethem's Lucky Alan) and then I am delving into Dos Passos's USA Trilogy. I might see if the library has the individual books, as the hardcover is just not going to be easy to read on the train.

Turtles all the way down.

And don't forget the huge popularity of instrumental electronica in the 1990s and early 2000s. Yes, though I am not sure how much of that charted aside from something like US3 Cantaloop (which if I recall accurately, many here loathe). Looking through these various posts and key threads, with a semi-detached eye, there really is just so much snobbery it is pretty sickening. Any artist that is under 50 that gets halfway popular is almost immediately knocked off the pedestal. I have indulged from time to time, though try to stay out of it, mostly since my emotional attachment to jazz is probably half of what it was 10 to 15 years ago. But yes, in terms of its overall cultural relevance, I do think jazz is now dead. Sure, there are some legacy projects (perhaps more in Europe where there is some public funding keeping this stuff going) and a few cities where jazz seems truly alive, but not for the majority of people who couldn't care less.

Ok, this is a new one on me. I guess sellerz gotta sell.

I'm sure we'd all concede that jazz was always less popular than vocal music, but instrumental singles were still feasible in the 60s and perhaps even the early 70s. Jazz would have been heard on the radio, feature prominently in soundtracks (whereas it is quite an anomaly nowadays) and successful record labels could be launched dedicated to jazz. I don't think any of these things is true any more, except in the narrowest technical terms. Yes, you can launch a boutique label and have some CDs pressed, yes, there are some internet radio stations with jazz, etc. While I think it is extremely foolish for anyone to go to college to study jazz or jazz studies or however it is labeled, I also have pity on these kids. They are longing for a world that ended when Gen X was growing up. And either they will be labeled as mere imitators of the legends of the past, shameful sellouts who try to merge jazz with hip-hop, rap or some other populist genre, or (most likely) soul-less innovators in esoteric, anti-populist free jazz.

I think everyone knew this day was coming soon, but what a shame. CBC obit: http://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/terry-pratchett-best-selling-fantasy-author-dead-at-66-1.2992120 Guardian obit: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/12/terry-pratchett-author-of-the-discworld-series-dies-aged-66 I've read a large number of the Discworld books, though I probably missed out on the last 4 or 5. I will try to correct that, sooner rather than later.

I see an awful lot of wishful thinking and outright denialism in the comments to the article. It reminds me of the folks that talk about gigs in New York being full of young people, when that is an absolute outlier compared to the rest of the country. Obviously it is great that New York remains this outlier, but it is irrelevant for most people.

Well, the jury has spoken and found Thicke and Pharrell Williams guilty of plagiarism: http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/music/2015/03/10/pharrell-robin-thicke-owe-marvin-gaye-heirs-73-million-for-blurred-lines.html I find this pretty disappointing and one more indication that jury trials are an increasingly lousy way of settling lawsuits or anything frankly.

Not trying to argue that Excel is great math software, but if you poke it (or nearly any other software) there will be something that was programmed differently from the way a math professor would do it. In this case it has to do with exponentiation. I found this an interesting (if long) exchange on the issue: http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/69058.html Basically, I would still argue that you ought to start throwing brackets around once you get past 3 or 4 terms and operations.

Every year it seems that this order of operations stuff crops up. The odd thing is that it turns out at least some software is not programmed with the proper order of operations (or it might lose track after 4 or 5 operations). I find it is an important reminder that you really ought to use brackets to ensure the program is doing what you intend it to do.

Hey, Mac users. Welcome to the club (of getting unwanted bloatware): http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/06/technology/security/java-mac-ask-com/index.html Granted it isn't that hard to turn this off and opt out, but this is just a sign of things to come, I suspect.