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Smart girl. Anyway, I saw some mini-blockbuster shows. One on Mark Rothko at the Portland Museum of Art (kind of disappointing to be honest since it was so focused on his early career) and Gauguin at the Seattle Art Museum (well laid out but a little light on the most famous paintings). There is a nice exhibit at the moment at the Vancouver Art Gallery called Collecting Matisse, which is about the collection put together by the Cone Sisters (and apparently mostly donated to the Baltimore Museum of Art). These two women had been able to buy up quite a number of works from Parisian painters, and in particular struck up a relationship with Matisse and bought 500 or so of his works. They are even immortalized by Gertrude Stein in a piece called "Two Women." Obviously, part of the interest is the fact that (esp. at that time) so few women were art collectors. I thought that some of the Matisse paintings they picked up were quite good (thought they didn't anything like 500 Matisse items on display), and I particularly liked a photo display of 20 or so versions of this painting of a reclining woman (unfortunately this sequence isn't in the catalogue or I would have snatched it up (I might get the catalogue anyway). Edit: I just found a webpage that covers this, though it doesn't look like I can link to the images themselves: Matisse in progress Of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion. This (unbelievably long) screed comes from someone who apparently thinks the VAG can do no right (ever): counter-point

So I saw Get the Blessing at the Vancouver Jazz Fest. They were quite good. However, this is the second venue at the Jazz Fest that I really disliked to the point I won't go back. Get the Blessing is very much in the jazz-rock vein, like Led Bib, and they had the show at a regular rock club, not a jazz club. Almost no seating (and the upstairs which did have some extra seating was closed off). It was super dark, even before the show began, and during the show, crazy spotlights kept moving around and shining in my eyes. There was even a disco ball (though they didn't lower it). Maybe I'm just not having much luck, but I am so unimpressed with the way they've organized this festival. I also wasn't thrilled that they decided Get the Blessing needed an opening act, like a real rock group. I guess it was some local guitar-oriented group. Their music didn't do anything for me, though they had some chops. But they decided that their approach required them to crank the speakers past 11 to 12. A lot of tender jazz fans put their fingers in their ears for the whole set. I was sitting round the corner, out of direct line of the speakers, but I could still feel the waves of sound going through my body. Frankly, this level of sound is uncalled for and it just made them come across as dicks in my book. It took me a while to recover my equilibrium, but I did enjoy Get the Blessing when they finally took the stage. They generally kept their songs short - 3-4 minutes mostly. The last few songs of the set they stretched out a bit more. The line-up is tenor sax, trumpet (both of whom occasionally used looping effects but not all the time), electric bass and drums. Note: they do not actually dress up with bags on their head or whatever as in the videos. They were good. Still, I wish they had started at 9 without an opening act and in a real jazz club. I would have enjoyed the evening a lot more.

Ok, my copy finally showed up. I am digging the alternative version of Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes. Basically, it strips out the horns (and the Ladysmith chorus at the front, though they come in at the end, which in a way works well since it is so surprising -- well, in the alternate universe where this version was the released one). Perhaps most different is that Paul adds this weird vocal flourish (like "Toleo-day") throughout the song. I think the official release is a bit better, but it's really interesting to hear this version. I'm a bit annoyed that there seems to be a bit of damage to the DVD, though it might clean up. (The package was shrink-wrapped but this DVD sure looks used.) This is a case where I feel justified in ripping since the resulting version will probably play better than the original. If I had bought this in town, I would definitely be returning it, but I'm not going to ship it back across the Atlantic. However, the CD itself is fine (and does look new). The You Can Call Me Al video is as lame as ever. I don't recall ever seeing the Diamonds video on MTV, though I suppose I probably did. The SNL performance of Diamonds looks quite good and Paul sounds great. I actually had a chance to see Paul Simon play Chicago just a year or two ago in a smallish club, and now I am kicking myself that I didn't go. Ah well.

Came across this the other day at Amazon: Orango Apparently, this unfinished work fits between Shostakovich's The Bolt and his 4th Symphony. Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted the work with a staging by Peter Sellars. Sounds like a pretty wild time: Orango review

I'm not entirely sure where I fall here. No question that talent and good coaching will typically overcome "will" alone. Yet strong enough will power will cause a good player to work hard and become an elite one (probably). However, I do wonder how evenly mental toughness is spread through the elite teams. I would imagine on the top teams, there are one or two players with intense will-power/heart/what have you and the rest of the team are along for the ride. Mediocre teams don't have anyone with that drive. Anyone looking at the Bulls for instance senses that Boozer, in particular, is just along for the ride. And he is far from the worst if you look across the NBA. Anyway, by the time you get to the Finals, then there should be several players on each side that want it just as badly, and thus Cuban's conditions apply.

That sounds almost the same as the early show in Vancouver: Capra Black, Peacemaker, Priestess and Sweet Rita Suite. I left in the middle of Sweet Rita Suite, so I don't know what came next. I want to start by saying what absolute troupers David and the gang were. I imagine he'll come on and explain the story. But from what I gather, their plane landed quite late, they got lost on the way to the venue to do the sound check. They then went to the hotel to change. And someone pulled the fire alarm, so they had no choice but to walk down 21 stories to get to the club!!! And indeed, the show started 30 minutes late. I know my performance would be affected by that... That doesn't change the fact I had a pretty lousy time. Mostly because I hated the venue and will not go back (bad sight lines, not great sound (for me anyway) and absolutely no food to order, only drinks). And while it is understandable given what they went through, the band wasn't tight and was having a lot of trouble getting the energy levels up. I liked Priestess the most but was ready to go by the time Craig broke out the flute on Sweet Rita Suite. Maybe next year (if they play in a different venue).

That's pretty cool. Anyway, absolutely true. That was why I thought I would take a flyer here. I'll get Pete the details over the weekend. There were a few from Local that I thought were quite good, but only one that I was going to go out of my way to track down. Maybe if I thought there was a chance for a couple of the others, I'd see about including them as well. I still wish there was a better way to deal with these works (and I really wish the copyright hadn't been extended on orphan works), but that's a different discussion for another day.

I know we've kicked this around on some of the copyright threads, but this has come up in a more tangible way for me. I am pulling together a poetry anthology and would like to include a poem from a completely obscure anthology called Local, published in 1977 by a small outfit in Brooklyn called Zonepress. They certainly seem defunct (nothing out since about 1979). I've done some preliminary searches for the editor (Jay Heller) and the author of the piece and keep coming up blank. If I were Google (or if I were doing a blog-based anthology), I'd probably just throw it up there until someone told me to take it down. That doesn't seem to fly in the print-based world. I suspect I will put it in there with a note to the publishing house that if the rights just become impossible to secure, then it will have to be pulled. Are there actual solutions to these problems of orphan works where the rights holders simply cannot be traced? My impression is that under US law, the answer is no. Which I think is crazy, by the way. Anyway thoughts or suggestions welcome.

That's a pretty insanely low price. I have much of the repetoire already (though by different artists -- with exception of Tokyo String Quartet doing Beethoven quartets) but there are certainly quite a number of composers that would be new to me (Kuhnau, Sammartini, Stamitz, Tartini, Pergolesi), so it seems worth the 18 or so pounds to ship it cross the pond. It just arrived. I cannot believe how fast it made it here. Another bonus was I didn't have to deal with any customs charges and what have you. I guess the only time I've really been hit was with the Toscanini box, though I suspect I would if I have a Mosaic box sent up this way... It is a very nice looking box, though it is a bit odd that there is a spacer inside, since the box was designed to fit 45 or so CDs.

I'm not trying to be overly confrontational either, and I have a ticket for the show tomorrow and in fact am looking forward to it a lot. But I really don't think it's cool to jump down someone's throat when they depart from conventional wisdom and/or the Up with People line. I thought we all looked down on the Millenials and their need for constant self-affirmation and inability to handle criticism. We can't handle even second-hand criticism?

Seriously, no one gets to post a negative review anymore? Or is it just because David posts here? I'm just waiting for the response, well, if it's so easy, why don't you get up on stage... Most bands have one shot to win over an audience. Is it his fault he came on a bad night? When the band may have been tired... For the record, I'm not going to let one negative review keep me from going to see the Cookers, but if I don't enjoy the show, I'm going to post about it.

Most people still expect to judge players by what they see on the court. (They say similar things about Scalabrine's hidden value (not so much about him being ferocious). To which I respond, it sure seems hidden to me.) Be that as it may, even if JH gets a ring (as it seems pretty likely he will), it won't change the general view of the Fab 5 as flashy underachievers.

It wouldn't change mine (and I'm a UM alum). As you say, he contributed essentially nothing to this series. He's basically just along for the ride.

They (and especially their lawyers) may have felt it was so explosive that it would have jeapordized the trial. Can you imagine how much more flak they would have taken if they aired it, and this was at the heart of a successful appeal? And frankly how much more trial by media do we need?

I keep hearing this -- that the source is mp3. I just wonder how definitive this really is, esp. when there wasn't a clear source (as JSngry says). If it was a needle-drop, why on earth would they convert it to mp3? And even beyond this, there is a world of difference between a 192, 256 and 320 bit rate mp3s. I'd definitely need to know more before I dismiss these sets completely out of hand (not that I am presuming at all that they are quality products, I'd just like to know more).

Well, the primary excuse is that it would taint the deliberations and preclude Sandusky from a fair trial. It could then be aired later. Granted, the US is very different from the UK and Europe in terms of what can be published prior to a trial. (In at least some countries, notably Germany, privacy laws might preclude much from being published after the trial -- I don't hold much truck with Germany's privacy laws, but that's a different topic.) Given that the interview is out there floating around, if Sandusky takes the stand, one would certainly hope that the prosecutor would ask him to explain those quotes, so they do become part of the trial record. As it is now, they might be considered hearsay (in a legal sense).

Molloy is possibly my favorite novel, and relatively accessible, then they get progressively more difficult. IIRC, The Unnameable may be one long paragraph. Sounds a bit like Garcia Marquez's Autumn of the Patriach. Starts out fairly simple, but by the end, an entire chapter is made up of a single sentence! Actually I did like this quite a bit and do hope to reread one of these days...

I think I read Portrait (the first time) and Dubliners at the "right time" in life, i.e. as a precocious teenager. At that time, I was more willing to dig in a bit deeper and work at the novel (as the modernists intended) and that leaves me more willing to go back to those works. In contrast, I have been trying without success to read Nicholas Mosley's Hopeful Monsters. I suspect I would have gotten through it when I was younger, but I just find its modernist leanings/trappings are too much for me now (with my vastly reduced leisure time), and I can't be bothered. It's also very possible the payoff is not as high as for T.S. Eliot or Joyce. Similarly, I wonder how I would react to Djuna Barnes' Nightwood if I read it now (must have read it in college). It's short enough that I could certainly tackle it again. However, I never did get around to reading Anais Nin's Cities of the Interior and the window may have closed on when I would have appreciated that work the most. Again, hard to say... However, I do like Beckett quite a bit and have seen most of his plays (live, not only on those BBC DVDs). Oddly, I have never gotten around to reading his trilogy, but I surely intend to...

Looks like these "cheapos" are coming directly from the manufacturer. Probably over-produced them and are liquidating the box themselves.

Now that might (just possibly) be worth the pixels. Not that I'd ever find out...

Sounds gripping! Now if only someone would buy the film rights... Sorry -- just thinking about how Hollywood is so convinced that there are no new decent ideas out there that it seems like 80% of the films out now are either remakes (of much better movies) or sequels.

I know that one! Actually never ate there, though I did eat at Golden Pancake or something over on Halsted. My go-to late night food in that neighborhood is Late Night Thai, which opens up around 9 pm and then is open until 5 or 6 am! (I'm sure it wasn't open back then, however.)

Closing in on the halfway mark with Headhunter. I like how the pace doesn't flag, even as Findley layers more and more improbable events on top of each other. I don't really know what genre it fits -- perhaps the fantastic writ large. Happened to pick this up at the library: John Barth's The Book of Ten Nights and A Night. It is so absurdly & ridiculously post-modern that I can't find even the semblance of a plot threaded through any of these stories (it's almost all about what name the narrator wants to go by etc. etc. etc.). I might have had more tolerance for this back in the day (and I do think earlier Barth is worth reading), but this is not worth my time. I feel complete antipathy to the book, and it's going right back to the library on my next trip.

I can't find the Slate article to link to it, but the columnist claimed that everyone could be sorted into a chaos Muppet/puppet (Cookie Monster) or an order Muppet/puppet (Bert). Same things play themselves out everywhere (Wiki moderators going around closing down stubs and claiming some articles aren't worth the pixels it takes to put on your screen). One of the built-in asymmetries is that only Order Muppets would even dream of taking on the role of moderator in the first place. The Chaos Muppets (and in this context I am definitely one) don't see the big deal in a few extra socks (or threads) laying around and do get a bit tired of the nagging. I don't expect this dynamic to ever change. I guess it is up to you how personally you take it. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough that neither side is "right" or "wrong"* -- and neither can fully understand the reason the other side is so driven to tidy things up or be slobby. * You can point to forum "rules" to try to win an argument about threads or whatnot, but that isn't really the point that people have vastly different perspectives on such things. And that's why they keep coming back to the surface over and over.

Me too! Heard bits of that BBC version last night, drifting in and out of sleep. Sounded intriguing but I can't imagine I'd be any more successful reading it now - I like a narrative! It's not the easiest thing in the world for sure. In general, I find that the extreme snobbery and exclusiveness of the high modernists hasn't served them well. 'Oh, you mean I have to have a thorough grounding in Greek and Latin literature and even read a bit of Greek in order to understand your work? Pass.' And Joyce is by no means the worst. I keep looking at my copy of Pound's Cantos, saying why did I order this? I will never read through the whole thing. My goal for this year is to skim it once and take it to a bookshop. As it happens, I was reading (probably in the Guardian) that some editors have spent 20 years revamping Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. It's just coming out on Penguin. I even had it in my Amazon basket, and I said to myself -- what are you doing -- you will never in your life finish this book. And I came to my senses just in time.