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More of a spelling thing than an actual definition. The UK/Canadian spelling of glamor is glamour, but glamourous is not the correct spelling, but rather glamorous is considered correct. How odd (and inconsistent).

I was just joking around. I would probably go if I could. I do see there is a competing birthday gig across town (Roy Haynes at the Blue Note). It's tempting but the Friday evening tickets are a bit out of my range.

Watch out -- he's performing with Jason Moran, so the usual crowd will be around soon to tell you how terrible it will be... I'm actually swinging through New York but I'll actually be gone by Sunday evening. There is a small chance I could make the late night set Friday (where Moran will be playing (and murdering ) Monk standards. Of course, there are other things I might do. We'll see how I feel when I get here.

Very nice. I am surprised that The Last Shift was not collected/reprinted, not even in Unselected Poems. I see that there is a big gap in my collection -- nothing between New Selected Poems (1991) which intentionally didn't collect anything from What Work Is to News of the World (2009), so I will have to look into rectifying that. Sadly the public library doesn't have his recent collections, but UT library has a few.

I am back from the Basquiat exhibit at AGO. It was still really crowded. I guess crowds will thin out in another couple of weeks, and I'll go back then. It's basically a no-brainer to try to go if you are a big fan of Basquiat. I wouldn't say I am a fan, but it was interesting. I'd say they have 3 or 4 pieces that are really quite fine, and the rest I can pretty much take or leave. Many of the pieces have an epic scale that give them more presence than if they are just reproduced in a book, for example. I may have already mentioned this, but Toronto also has the Spiegelman exhibit at the AGO, and split between the ROM and MOCCA, the Douglas Coupland exhibit has traveled here from Vancouver. So quite a bit of contemporary art on view.

My copy of Bowen's The House in Paris is in very rough shape (and I probably should have complained to the seller), though no underlining as far as I can tell. I'm about 1/4 through it. As far as I can tell, the structure is fairly similar to Three Days of Rain (the play). Present, then long flash-back to explain the present situation, then back to the Present to wrap things up. It's going ok so far.

Too bad. RIP. I liked quite a lot of his work. Don't believe I ever saw him in person at a reading, though if I did it would have been quite a while ago.

I don't think anyone has mentioned The Triplets of Belleville, which has two or three jazz interludes.

I'm seeing an interesting program where they do a piano piece and then the fully orchestrated piece that followed. The composers are Brahms, Hindemith and Ravel. Emanuel Ax is among the piano players. Looking forward to it -- just wish it wasn't so unbelievably cold out!

Wrapped up Keane's Devoted Ladies. The action moves pretty quickly from London to Ireland, where she was on firmer footing. Not completely convinced by the ending and most of the characters were pretty annoying, but it wasn't a bad little book... I'll be starting Bowen's The House in Paris by the weekend. It's supposedly one of her hardest to get into, so we'll see how it goes. Also some short stories by Kafka and Alice Munro.

I remember those teams. Sad how quite a number of teams from that era had recruiting violations. Still can't quite accept the punishment UMich received. Mostly because I think NCAA credibility is 0 on these issues, so I don't like them singling out individual programs/coaches or pretending that they can somehow award the games to another team. Frankly, that is farcical. This is much on my mind with the recent news about the Jackie Robinson Jr. little league team being punished -- for something that is pretty common among little league teams.

I picked this up for my son a while ago, and I was pretty flabbergasted to see it had been expanded from a trilogy to a quintet. Talk about feeling out of it. Similarly, Ursula LeGuin added three books to her Earthsea Trilogy. I will at some point find time to read them, but I am trying to find the time to read Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy first, since I am not entirely sure he is ready for it.

Too bad. Of all these mega sets, I think Living Stereo #1 and 2 are my favs. I really ought to buckle down and rip them, as I am sure I would play the material a bit more often. Probably the perfect project for these cold Canadian winters...

Wrapped up An Ermine in Czernopol. It was a good read. I'm about 1/4 through Molly Keane's Devoted Ladies. It's definitely a major change in setting from the majority of her novels set in Ireland. This time around she is investigating the literary set in London. It's funny but not quite as funny as she thinks it is. For instance, the main focus is on a lesbian couple but one of them is a bit unhinged and beats the other one. Such overt domestic violence just doesn't sit that well with Noel Coward-type wit, though now that I think about it, Private Lives has some domestic violence played for laughs.

Our economically unequal justice/police system strikes again. First, it is too early to say if charges will be laid for any of the drivers. Second, there are always conflicting reports, as one might imagine, but at least one report has the car in front of him rear-ending the car in front of that driver (the one that died). So if for instance, the car in front stopped short for any number of reasons, and the middle car comes to a screeching halt and indeed rear-ends the first car, then Jenner (who was presumably following too closely as do most LA drivers) does not stop in time and hits that car. It indeed is a terrible accident and one in which he bears responsibility, but I don't see any jury going for vehicular manslaughter. Not only is he a celebrity, but they can all imagine themselves in that position of not being able to stop when a car in front of them comes to a sudden stop.

The way to improve this photo is if they were photographing Beenie Babies, to list them on eBay!

Ok, it looks like it officially the end of RadioShack: http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-radioshack-files-for-bankruptcy-20150205-story.html Some will be converted to Sprint stores (what they aren't already?) at about 1750 of the locations. Here's the money quote: The Fort Worth, Texas company said Thursday that it has filed a motion to proceed with closing the rest of its 4,000 U.S. stores. So essentially a full liquidation. Some more details here: http://fortune.com/2015/02/05/radioshack-bankruptcy-filing/

I'm not a fan of tipping, mostly because it allows business owners to pay less than the minimum wage, but also because in the U.S. at any rate it has spread to all kinds of professions where the link between (observed) service and tipping is weak at best. I find the idea that one needs to tip hotel maids bizarre and really more than a little offensive. I generally won't do it, and I certainly won't each night, which is what more and more (U.S.) etiquette books are preaching. I would definitely prefer a culture where fair (if not necessarily "livable") wages were paid and there was no tipping.

Are we talking about all the Grammys or just the jazz Grammys? How can you say you don't want anything to do with Kenny Barron and Bobby Hutcherson and Rufus Reid and Chick Corea (ok, maybe the Scientology thing is a little creepy)? And I know most of the Board thinks Jason Moran's Fats Waller thing is an abomination. But I've certainly seen worse slates...

I skipped American lit. in high school, and so I never read Catcher in the Rye or To Kill a Mockingbird. (I caught up on most of the other readings.) I do mean to get to Mockingbird one day, and maybe I will read them in the proper order. Ok so now that I read the piece it turns out Go Set the Watchman is written earlier but is actually a sequel. It is about Scout as a young woman. And even Atticus is in the book. That's kind of intriguing, but it will be really curious how it gets reviewed. It's probably one of those books that will be review-proof.

Doesn't look all that bad too me, though certainly a bit traditional or perhaps even stodgy. But I'd listen to most of it.

I'm not that much of a soundtrack album collector, though I have a few. This is awfully tempting, however. I'll have to think about it a it more. Thanks for the tip!

I guess the football gods got tired of letting Seattle win on flukey plays. I actually really hated the end of the Seattle-Green Bay game, since I felt they got lucky three times in a row, and I dislike it when chance plays such a large role in games. And essentially that is at the core of why I am not a sports fan. Most sports fan eat this stuff up. Anyway, it looked like another flukey catch was going to win them the game. And they didn't just run the ball? Totally baffling...

Hmm - that sounds a bit like the set up to Jeremy Gavron's An Acre of Barren Ground.

I liked London Fields quite a bit. Hope to reread it someday. I also thought Amis' Money was good. I wasn't as crazy about Other People. I thought it was borrowing too obviously from A Clockwork Orange.