More usage pedantry: the "rein" vs. "reign" syndrome.

This from today's Wall Street Journal:

The high court dismissed the Philip Morris appeal without issuing an opinion, ending the third appeal the company had secured before the Supreme Court in its fight to reign in an award by an Oregon jury.

"Awright, class," as my ninth grade science teacher, Papi Castro, used to say in his mellifluous Bronx accent, "get dis, and geddit good": a "rein" is a leather strap used to control a horse's movement, and to "rein in" means to check or control something; to "reign" (the "g" is pronounced like that in "gnu") is to possess sovereign power, as a monarch. So, when Philip Morris petitioned the Supreme Court to limit a jury award, it sought to rein, not reign, it in.

I've often seen "reign" used where its homonym, "rein", is intended. This is likely because, in one sense, the words are near synonyms. Used as a verb, "rein" means to control; to "reign" is also to exercise control. One expression in which "reign" shows up frequently is "to give [or allow] free reign [sic]." In this instance, "rein" and "reign" mean almost opposite things, since a rider who gives "free rein" is allowing the horse to proceed at its own chosen speed rather than exercising control, while a monarch with "free reign" would, I suppose, have absolute power. So, it's "free rein" not "free reign". Geddit?

Update: twif offers the following: "claude, this is what happens when you replace copy editors with word's spell check function." An astute observation, indeed. Still, it helps to have writers who know the meanings of the words they use.

P.S. for twif: the kid looks great.

Lawyers, whips, and money.

Who knew mortgage fraud could be sexy?

Pierre Bonnard, "Late Interiors", at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

About a month ago I had an appointment on the Upper East Side; afterward, I had some spare time and decided to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I first wandered through the Egyptian collections and the American Wing, then thought I would go to the other side of the building, to the modern collection, and, as I had my last time at the Met, sit on the bench facing Jackson Pollock's Autumn Rhythm (Number 30), and zone out for a while. On my way, though, I saw a sign pointing toward a special exhibit of works by Pierre Bonnard, The Late Interiors. Bonnard is an artist to whose works I've had limited exposure, and he was cited as an influence by Mark Crawford, so I decided to check it out. I was astounded. I didn't have as much time to enjoy it as I would have liked, so I went back several days ago for a more leisurely viewing. Below are images of some of the paintings that I found most interesting, taken from the Met's website, along with my comments.

Pierre Bonnard (French, 1867–1947)
Work Table, 1926/1937
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon (2006.128.12)
Image courtesy of the Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington. © 2009 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. www.metmuseum.org

Work Table exemplifies several characteristics of Bonnard's art. The composition is elaborate: note the contrast between the rectangularity of the table and of the objects on it with the concentric circles of the carpet. There are ambiguities about scale and perspective: check the lengths of the table's legs, and how its surface appears to curve upward--or is the rear of the table, in fact, raised like an easel? Subjects that would likely command more attention in other paintings--in this instance, a dog, cat and kitten--are put near the margin. Although it can't be seen in this image, the artist's signature is at the upper left corner of a sketchbook on the table.


Pierre Bonnard (French, 1867–1947)
Before Dinner, 1924
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Robert Lehman Collection, 1975 (1975.1.156)
© 2009 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. www.metmuseum.org

Before Dinner has a formal composition, with the carefully set table and the woman (the cook?) standing behind, hands clasped, facing forward; however, the formality is broken by the image of Bonnard's wife, Marthe, seated at the left, also with clasped hands, but turned away from the table and the other woman. Note the splash of white at the upper right (reflection off a silver platter?) and the white of Marthe's boots at the lower left. Revisiting a Bonnard painting often results in seeing previously unobserved details: during the time I spent looking at this painting in the gallery, I didn't notice the small dog emerging from behind Marthe's chair.


Pierre Bonnard (French, 1867–1947)
Flowers on the Mantelpiece at Le Cannet, 1927
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon
© MBA Lyon/Photo Alain Basset. © 2009 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. www.metmuseum.org

Bonnard takes a typical still life subject in Flowers on the Mantelpiece at Le Cannet and transcends it by placing Marthe, half-seen, at the right. The flowers have a wilder aspect than in most floral paintings: note how the stalks of some extend far from the bowl and central mass of blossoms, drooping and then curving upwards.


Pierre Bonnard (French, 1867–1947)
The White Interior, 1932
Musée de Grenoble
Photography © Musée de Grenoble. © 2009 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. www.metmuseum.org

In The White Interior, Bonnard exhibits many variations on whiteness: the table, the wall, the door (bisected into two shades), and the radiator (which appeared less bluish in the gallery than in this image). All of this contrasts to the boldness of the bright, burnt sienna colored chair. This painting displays an extreme example of Bonnard's frequent marginalization of human and animal figures. Note the hunched figure of Marthe by the corner of the table, painted in muted tones, and the calico cat she is feeding, next to the red teapot near the center bottom of the canvas.


Pierre Bonnard (French, 1867–1947)
Self Portrait, ca. 1938–40
Collection Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. Purchased 1972
© 2009 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. www.metmuseum.org

In this Self Portrait the artist is standing in front of a mirror above a shelf with toiletries. His skin appears quite dark (Riviera sun?) in contrast to the wall behind, which is awash in light. His expression bespeaks concentration: he appears to be using his right hand to unscrew a cap from something (bottle? toothpaste tube?) he's holding in his left. The features of the right hand are clearly delineated, while those of the left are indistinct (this is not so evident in the image above as in the gallery). This painting contrasts with another, "Portrait of the Artist in the Bathroom Mirror", that is also in this exhibit, and which was painted from the same point of view several years later. In the latter, he is without glasses, which emphasizes the deep blue of his eyes, and shirtless, showing a contrast between his tanned face and pale chest. His expression is melancholy. Perhaps something can be made of the superimposition of the artist's image, in both paintings, on a cruciform background. More likely, though, that's just the way it was.


Pierre Bonnard (French, 1867–1947)
Young Women in the Garden (Renée Monchaty and Marthe Bonnard), ca. 1921–23, reworked 1945–6
Private collection
Photography © Robert Lorenzson. © 2009 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. www.metmuseum.org

The dominant compositional theme in Young Women in the
Garden (Renée Monchaty and Marthe Bonnard) is of overlapping or superimposed circles or semicircles: Renée's blonde hair, the flower in her hair, the blue-green (it appeared much more green in the gallery) chair back, the table, with its blue and red striped cloth, and the platters on the table with round fruit on them. Note the bright yellow border around the table (dry grass? leaves?) that partially frames Renée. Again, Marthe is put in the margin, and rendered in muted tones.

There is a melodramatic story connected with this last painting. Renée was Bonnard's mistress for a time during the 1920s. After Marthe discovered the affair, Renée committed suicide. This painting was started in the '20s, but reworked and completed some twenty years later, after Marthe's death.

"Pierre Bonnard: Late Interiors" will remain at the Met through April 19.

Update: Another take on "Late Interiors", by Carol Gillott of Paris Breakfasts, is here. Her post includes an image of Bonnard engaged in his unusual painting technique, as well as of several of his sketches and sketchbooks that are displayed in the Met exhibit.

Das Rheingold (not the beer).

As I mentioned in my immediately previous post, yesterday my wife and I attended a panel discussion at the Metropolitan Opera on Wagner's Ring cycle. The panelists were: James Levine, the Met's Music Director; Otto Schenck, who is in charge of the Met's forthcoming production of Das Rheingold, the opening opera of the cycle, and two singers (whose names I failed to write and who are not on the abbreviated cast list on the Met's site) who play Rhine maidens. Levine and Schenck both stressed the importance of the maidens in setting the scene and motivating the action that gets the plot going.

The YouTube video above shows vignettes from the Royal Danish Opera's famous Ring, known as the "Copenhagen Ring", and begins with the Rhine maidens from Rheingold.

Update: Reader Martha (hmmm...who might that be?) comments that the Rhine maidens in the Copenhagen Ring are very different from those in the Met's production of Rheingold. I shall have to see.

From The Met to The Met: a walk across Central Park to the West Side

This afternoon I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (a.k.a. "The Met"), located on the east side of Central Park in the lower 80s, to have a second view of Pierre Bonnard: The Late Interiors, on which I plan to do a post here soon. Afterward, I was to meet my wife at the Metropolitan Opera House (a.k.a. "The Met") for a panel discussion on Wagner's Ring cycle. Since I had enough time, and the weather was pleasant though nippy, I decided to walk from The Met to The Met, which involved a diagonal crossing of Central Park.

About halfway across the Park, I was approaching the Bethesda Fountain. The descending sun reflecting off a cloud mass made this an almost Turner-esque scene.

Closer to the Fountain, I could see the great old apartment buildings along Central Park West. The building with the twin Gothic spires is the Beresford; the one near the left edge of the photo with the two blocky art deco towers is the San Remo.

Looking back, I caught this view of the Boathouse.

Having passed the Fountain, I looked back to capture this view. Note the elongated tree shadows, cast by the late afternoon sun, curving across the sloping lawn.

The still leafless trees afforded a clear view of the buildings on Central Park South.

On the West Side, I was struck by this row of late nineteenth century brownstones on 69th Street, and their contrast with the high rise buildings beyond. Note also the "bishop's crook" streetlamp pole at the right of the photo.

Here's the newly rebuilt Alice Tully Hall and Julliard classrooms, at the corner of 68th and Broadway.

At last I reach The [other] Met, and am greeted by Marc Chagall's angel.

"A Waalworth of a skyerscape..."

...of most eyeful hoyth entowerly, erigenating from next to nothing and celescalating the himals and all, hierarchitectitiptitoploftical, with a burning bush abab off its baubletop and with larrons o'toolers clittering up and tombles a'buckets clottering down.

--James Joyce, Finnegan's Wake

The Woolworth Building, Cass Gilbert's 1913 masterpiece, seen from the Manhattan ramp of the Brooklyn Bridge as storm clouds gather on the morning of March 20th.

Holding out for a hero? In New York City, you needn't wait long.

Over the years, we've had many a hero cop and hero firefighter (indeed, in tabloid-ese these terms seem inextricably linked--well, almost inextricably). Then, two weeks ago, we discovered a hero deputy mayor. Now, today, we find that we have (fresh from his having received encouraging words from the U.S. Justice Department) a hero Mayor.

It must be something in the water.

Happy birthday to moi.

Partner-in-crime John Loscalzo posted a link to the 1980s band Altered Images doing a very non-trad "Happy Birthday" on my Facebook page. I like the song, the band, and the red hats so much I decided to post it here.

BTW the big day is tomorrow, so don't come rushing over with bottles of bubbly just yet.

On second thought, come rushing over with bottles of bubbly whenever you feel like it.

Update: Thomas Paine, resident of one of the lovely islands north of Seattle, sez:

Probably won't be able to make it to NYC for your birthday, but perhaps that is a good excuse to open a bottle of bubbly here in your honor.

Actually, any excuse for opening the sparkly stuff is a good excuse...

Agreed, Tom. Also, your comment brings to mind a story I heard a few years ago. An Englishman who worked for a company there was sent to New York to be its commercial representative for the U.S. One day he was on the phone with his supervisor in London, and mentioned that a customer in Seattle had complained of a problem. The supervisor said, "Why don't you get in your car and nip over there tomorrow?"

Remembrance of St. Patrick's Days past.

From Dermot McEvoy's Our Lady of Greenwich Village:

He wished that St. Patrick's Day would just disappear. Forever. He was growing more depressed as he looked down toward the beer pumps and saw a cute little college girl with red hair and freckles on her nose raise her mug of green beer in toast.

"God bless the Irish!" she said in a voice that told O'Rourke she would have her next beer on July 4th.

O'Rourke was no longer depressed. He was mad. "Fuck the Irish," O'Rourke said.

The bar suddenly grew silent. It was as if O'Rourke only wanted to think it, but the words jumped out of his brain and dashed out of his mouth before he could stop them. O'Rourke then realized that Clarence Black was standing beside him, the only black face in a joint full of bombed harps.
...

"Hey," said the big Irish kid from halfway down the bar, "what's your name, boy?"

It didn't register with O'Rourke. It did with Black, who reached inside his jacket to instinctively feel his revolver. It also registered with Big Zeus, the bartender, who snapped up the bridge of the bar and prepared for a preemptive strike. Then O'Rourke realized what "boy" he was talking to. Clarence Black just stared.

O'Rourke broke the silence. "Wolfe Tone O'Rourke. What's yours, fuck face?" There was more silence. Fordham Joe had just realized he had broken a very important bar law--don't cause trouble on foreign turf. The two Irishmen stared at each other.

"Wolfe Tone O'Rourke," the cute, little red-haired girl said as she finally broke the deafening pause. "I guess we can't top that. God bless you, Wolfe Tone O'Rourke."

O'Rourke nodded. "Zeus, buy these nice people a drink." The crowd began to hum again. "Sorry, Clarence, I forgot you were here."

"That's all right, Tone. I would have whipped that fat sucker senseless." He meant it. He leaned over and whispered in Tone O'Rourke's ear, "Fuck the Irish."

O'Rourke smiled. "I owe you one, Clarence."

The story above is based on an incident that occurred in the Lion's Head years ago. There's a reason bartenders call St. Pat's "amateur night."

Michael Simmons previews the next Bob Dylan album.

Michael has listened to several tracks of an as yet untitled Dylan album reportedly scheduled for late April release, and has written a piece for Mojo about it. I'm encouraged by this observation, in connection with the song "Shake Shake Mama":

Some artists retreat to servile reasonableness and bourgeois banality as they get older. Not Bob. He got Las Vegas out of his system at Budokan.

Michael's comment about the "hideous New Age cliché" Dylan skewers in "It's All Good" made me think of the wedding scene from Little Murders.

3.19 update: It's called Together Through Life, it's due out on April 28, and it has a very sexy cover photo.

Saks Fifth Avenue responds to the economic crisis.

There! This oughta do something about that declining marginal propensity to consume.

In the immortal words of Sy Britchky, "Makes your mouth parch, doesn't it?"

The banality of Bernie Madoff.

I didn't want him to say he was sorry. I wanted him to stand in front of the judge and say "I did it because I hate the human race", or "America", or "capitalism", or "my father", or whatever. Instead, it seems that it started, as do so many very bad things, not with lust to destroy, but with longing to please. Today's AP story quotes him:

"While I never promised a specific rate of return to any client, I felt compelled to satisfy my clients' expectations, at any cost," he said.

Somehow, in my view, the motive should fit the crime, and spectacular crimes should have spectacular motives.

3.13 update: The aptly named Gabe Pressman has this to say about the man he calls the "aptly named" Madoff. Pressman wonders, "Are MBA candidates taught to follow an ethical and moral framework in their careers?" If the MBA program I all but completed fifteen years ago is typical, the answer is "Yes." The problem isn't, in my opinion, a failure to teach ethics in MBA or other higher education programs. By then it's way too late to have much effect.

Cross-currents on the Brooklyn Bridge

This morning, on the return leg of my Brooklyn Bridge walk, I encountered this group heading from Brooklyn towards Manhattan. As I passed them, a man handed me a leaflet explaining that they are members of the Nipponzan Myohoji Buddhist Order, walking from Leverett, Massachusetts to Washington, D.C. to advocate "Abolition of Nuclear Weapons; Renunciation of War; Conversion from War to Peace Economy." Admirable goals, all.

Also on the Bridge this morning, going in the opposite direction, were groups of people, many decked out in colorful Tibetan dress, some waving Tibetan flags, and some wearing headbands that said "Free Tibet". When I got back to the Brooklyn side, I found them massing in Cadman Plaza Park for a demonstration.


I wondered if the Tibetans and their fellow Buddhists from Leverett had greeted each other as they passed on the Bridge. I'm sure the Tibetans want to get their freedom by peaceful means. Given the stark parameters of their situation, their only non-suicidal option may be moral suasion. But, in some circumstances, might it be necessary to choose between the ideals of peace and freedom? In the back of my mind, I was hearing the words of Patrick Henry.

Postscript to apostrophe abuse: the Grammar Gods strike!

Did two blatant violations doom this store? There are lots of others yet unpunished; still, it's a start.

Adolph Hofner: Czech Texan Western Swing

Adolph Hofner (1916-2000) was, along with Bob Wills, Milton Brown, and others, one of the principal exponents of Western Swing, a highly syncretic style of music that evolved in Texas during the 1930s. I first heard him and his group, the Texans, doing "Gulf Coast Special", on OKeh Western Swing (highly recommended if you can find a copy) back in the 1980s. I later acquired a copy of South Texas Swing, which includes examples of Hofner's work with various groups, ranging from 1936 to the early '50s. Among the cuts is Hofner's classic version of "Cotton-Eyed Joe", along with the Mexican-influenced "Maria Elena", and such typical Western Swing fare as "Better Quit it Now", "Dirty Dog", and "Joe Turner Blues", which reflect in varying degrees the country, jazz, blues, and Hawaiian influences on that style of music. What surprised me on this album were the cuts, such as Star Kovarna, Na Marjanse, and Strashidlo, that are adaptations of Czech folk songs Hofner no doubt learned from his parents and other Czech immigrants in his hometown of Moulton, Texas, and are sung in Czech. An excellent biography of Hofner is on this website.

Adrienne Young

My friend Barbara Cahn introduced me to the music of Adrienne Young by lending me a copy of Adrienne's CD The Art of Virtue. Here she is, doing the title song of that album:



Thanks to motnovak for the clip.

Here she covers the Grateful Dead's "Brokedown Palace":



Video courtesy of wsmfp.

S-AB loses a friend: Robert Guskind, 1958-2009

Robert "Bob" Guskind (photo by Hugh Crawford), whose sudden and untimely death yesterday has stunned the Brooklyn blogging community, was one of my first acquaintances in the world of on-line journalism. His blog, Gowanus Lounge (unfortunately not now available on-line, though I understand friends of Bob's are working on restoring it) covered the Brooklyn scene extensively, focusing on issues of land use and development but also ranging into other topics. Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn has provided a transcript of Bob's first post on Gowanus Lounge. Update: Gowanus Lounge is on line again (though it's getting so many hits now that you may have trouble connecting).

I first met Bob at the 2007 Brooklyn Blogfest, when S-AB was just over a year old. After we met, he began to link to S-AB in his "Brooklinks" postings, which proved very helpful in getting new visitors to my blog.

Fellow blogger Miss Heather, of New York Shitty, was with Bob this past Sunday, when they met a woman with a compelling story to tell, which Bob recorded here:



Update: Here are reminiscences by Bob's former colleagues at Curbed.

Some good news, for a change.

Good, at least for those of us living in The Big Apple, or those planning to visit here.

Update: Alas, news on the NYC crime front isn't entirely positive.

David Lind Band, "Bay Ridge Avenue"

Bay Ridge is a neighborhood in the southwestern corner of Brooklyn, occupying a peninsula that forms the westernmost part of Long Island. On its western side, it faces The Narrows, the strait that separates it from Staten Island and through which almost all ship traffic in and out of the port of New York and New Jersey must pass. Maritime buff that I am, on pleasant days I sometimes take the "R" subway train to its final stop in Bay Ridge, then walk to the promenade that borders The Narrows to watch and photograph ships passing by and sailing under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.

Like Brooklyn as a whole, Bay Ridge is ethnically and economically diverse, though unlike some other parts of the Borough it doesn't have either extreme wealth or poverty. Parts of it are densely built up, while others look suburban, with substantial detached single or two family houses on small lots. Probably its most enduring popular culture reference is its having been the locale, along with neighboring Bensonhurst, for Saturday Night Fever, the 1977 movie starring John Travolta that spread and epitomized the disco craze.

The David Lind Band's song, "Bay Ridge Avenue" ("69th Street" and "Bay Ridge Avenue" are alternative names for the same thoroughfare), and its accompanying animated video, at the top of this post, brilliantly capture the neighborhood's enchanting middle-class-but-funky character.

Lets stop abusing apostrophe's.

I've long wondered about this sign, which I walk by two or three times almost every day. Do the St. Francis Terriers bring their suits here for cleaning? This neighborhood is called Brooklyn Heights: does the sign intend to signify that the store belongs to the community? But, then, shouldn't it be "Heights' Cleaners"?

There are two bad things you can do respecting the apostrophe (and I've done them both in the caption of this post). One is to fail to put one where it is needed; the other is to use one where it isn't appropriate. The first seems to me to be less of a problem these days (except, perhaps, in Birmingham and Wakefield). Apostrophes are required on two occasions. First, they are used to take the place of omitted letters and spaces in contractions. For example, the apostrophe in "let's" (which I wrongly omitted in the caption) replaces the space and letter "u" in "let us". This is one of those rare rules of English to which I know of no exception. If anyone knows of a contraction that doesn't take an apostrophe, I'd be glad to hear from you.

(It's always hazardous to say that any rule of English has no exception. There's an anecdote about the late Sidney Morgenbesser, who taught philosophy at Columbia University for many years, that illustrates this point. A proponent of logical positivism was giving a talk at Columbia in which he asserted that an interesting property of English is that, while a double negative is always properly construed as a positive, there is no instance in which a double positive is considered a negative. Morgenbesser interrupted, in a world-weary voice, with "Yeah, yeah.")

The other instance in which an apostrophe is required is where the possessive form of a noun is formed by adding "'s" after the root form of the noun. This doesn't apply to possessive pronouns, such as hers, his (actually, I suppose, a contraction of "hims"--perhaps this is my exception to the contraction rule), its (thereby avoiding confusion with the contraction form), theirs, and yours. Note that there is no distinction between the possessive forms of nouns and contractions involving those nouns, e.g. "The refrigerator's door is open" and "The refrigerator's not working", or "Tom's car is red" and "Tom's a good fellow."

Where I've seen lots and lots of abuse lately is in the insertion of apostrophes where they are not appropriate; i.e. in the plurals of nouns where the plural is formed by adding "s" to the noun root (this is the second example in my caption). Today, in an even-Homer-nods moment, award-winning Brooklyn Paper editor Gersh Kuntzman, in his Brooklyn Angle column about the controversy over whether Park Slope Food Co-Op might boycott Israeli products, wrote (with his usual becoming modesty):

Last week, I became the lone journalist (in the nation, it appeared) who reported the emmes, to use the Yiddish word for truth, that the famously liberal, member’s-only supermarket on Union Street was NOT — I repeat, not — considering a ban on Israeli-made or -grown products.

Now, I will cut Gersh a bit of slack here: the term "members only" does have a possessive cast to it. Nevertheless, the word "members" here is clearly used as a plural, not as a possessive. Moreover, if it were a possessive, it would be a plural possessive, in which case the proper form would be "members' only", not "member's".

Why is there so much of a problem with the misuse of apostrophes in plurals? My theory is that it started with the spread of acronyms and all-caps abbreviations, the first of which to come into common usage was probably "TV". Somehow, it seemed more natural to write "We have two TV's" than "two TVs", even though the apostrophe doesn't indicate a possessive or substitute for any missing letters or spaces. Perhaps it just felt barbarous to shove that poor little lower case "s" right up against that big capital "V". A similar problem arose in connection with plurals of numerical terms, e.g. "During the 1920's, jazz became widely popular." I believe there are some style mavens who think this is correct; that it's just wrong to allow a letter to rub against a number without the imposition of an apostrophe as a bundling board. I say, "Fie upon them!" Plurals of acronyms or abbreviations (TVs, CDs, HMOs, etc.) and numerical terms (1920s, 1040s, and so on) don't need apostrophes. Possessives of these terms are a different story.

So endeth the lesson. Go, and sin no more. If you want to go the extra mile, join The Apostrophe Protection Society.

3.1 update: Talk about Homer nodding! In his New York Times op-ed column today, Frank Rich wrote:

Now [Obama] can move on and let his childish adversaries fight among themselves, with Rush Limbaugh as the arbitrating babysitter. (Last week he gave Jindal a thumb's up.)

I could imagine Tom Friedman making a mistake like that, but Frank?

3.4 update: Friend and faithful S-AB reader Ellen reminds me of another grammatical pet peeve: the loss of the possessive in sentences like, "I appreciate your being on the show", which today usually gets reduced to "...you being on the show." She also points out that "thumb's" in the Frank Rich column may have been a copy editor's or proofreader's error that Frank never got a chance to correct.

Twif, I heart your truly unique comment.

Final update: the sign has been changed.

Woo-hah! Mets win spring training opener.

Spring training began today, so let's give John Fogerty and Keith Urban a listen:



I'm not one of those who buys into the "spring training records are meaningless" theory. Certainly there's no perfect correlation between a team's Grapefruit or Cactus League record and its subsequent regular season outcome, but by my reckoning a team that does very well in the spring is more likely to do well in the games that count than one that does poorly. So it's a relief to me to see the Mets win their spring opener by the decisive score of 9-3, even though it was over the Orioles, a team that's had little success of late. What is especially gratifying is to see Luis Castillo and Ryan Church, two players who had injury problems last season, getting seven RBIs (four and three, respectively) between them.

I blinked when I saw that Sean Green had to leave early after splitting a fingernail in his pitching hand. He's back? Wasn't he an outfielder? Oh, yeah, that was Shawn Green.

2.26 update: The Amazins' pre-season juggernaut advances as they trounce the Marlins, 9-0, in a game highlighted by Reyes' grand slam while hitting in the three-spot. As always with the Mets, though, there's something to worry about: this time it's Johan Santana's elbow "discomfort".

2.27 update: The juggernaut is halted as the Mets lose to the Cards 9-8, although the headline writer on the Mets' site puts a smiley face on it by emphasizing that newly signed potential fifth starter Livian Hernandez pitched two scoreless innings. Earlier in the day, the Mets managed to squeak by Team Italy (Mike Piazza is their hitting coach!) 5-4. Johan Santana's first start has been postponed again because, Jerry Manuel says, he's being "extra, extra, extra" careful. Uh-huh.

Jindal's lame response.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal was tapped to respond to President Obama's speech last night. Even though I was groggy from having stuffed myself with jambalaya, red wine and king cake at the Grace Church Mardi Gras dinner earlier in the evening, I managed to stay awake to watch him. I was curious to see this much hyped possible 2012 presidential aspirant, and hoped he might, in taking on what would likely be a thankless task, at least have something interesting to say. Alas, it was not to be.

He began (an edited* text of his speech is here) by acknowledging that it was "a great moment in the history of our Republic" when "our first African-American President stepped forward to address the state of our union." He then quickly drew a parallel between Obama's Kenyan father and his own Indian immigrant parents, and quoted his father, who "had seen extreme poverty" in India, as saying, while surveying the goods on sale at a supermarket, "Americans can do anything." This became the oft-repeated catchphrase of his speech. Unfortunately, it happens not to be true. There are many things Americans can't do: defeat a popular insurgency in Southeast Asia, consistently realize annual ten per cent returns on invested assets, pronounce French correctly, and so on.

The catchphrase then quickly got qualified to: "Americans can do anything, but their government can hardly do anything right." To illustrate why "those of us who lived through Hurricane Katrina...have our doubts" about government's ability to "rescue us from the economic storms raging all around us", he offered this anecdote:

During Katrina, I visited Sheriff Harry Lee, a Democrat and a good friend of mine. When I walked into his makeshift office I’d never seen him so angry. He was yelling into the phone: “Well, I’m the Sheriff and if you don’t like it you can come and arrest me!” I asked him: “Sheriff, what’s got you so mad?” He told me that he had put out a call for volunteers to come with their boats to rescue people who were trapped on their rooftops by the floodwaters. The boats were all lined up ready to go - when some bureaucrat showed up and told them they couldn’t go out on the water unless they had proof of insurance and registration. I told him, “Sheriff, that’s ridiculous.” And before I knew it, he was yelling into the phone: “Congressman Jindal is here, and he says you can come and arrest him too!” Harry just told the boaters to ignore the bureaucrats and start rescuing people.

If this was meant to show that government can't respond effectively to a crisis, it falls on its face. Sure, the "bureaucrat" who wasn't going to let the rescue boats sail was an agent of government (whether federal, state or local Jindal didn't say), but so were Sheriff Lee and Jindal himself. So, the rescue effort wasn't thwarted by government, after all, and may never have been organized in the first place had it not been for the Sheriff. Petty, rule-obsessed "bureaucrats" are not unique to government. There are plenty of them in the private sector as well:



Jindal later recited a laundry list of what he considered objectionable or unnecessary programs for which funds are appropriated in the recently enacted stimulus legislation. One of these, which he especially stressed with obvious distaste, was "volcano monitoring." Perhaps he would like to discuss this topic with his GOP colleague and possible 2012 rival, Governor Palin.

Update: Paul Krugman had this to say on his blog. (Thanks to Rob Lenihan for the link.)

3.1 update: It seems Jindal's story about being with Sheriff Lee "[d]uring Katrina" and at the time the rescue boats were sent out is a fabrication. (Thanks to Michael Simmons--see comments to this post--for the tip.)
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*The State website says this is a "full text"; however, it contains many ellipses and doesn't include the list of programs funded by the stimulus legislation to which Governor Jindal voiced objections in his speech.

Beausoleil with Michael Doucet: "Zydeco Gris Gris".

Today's the day to highlight this song (thanks to letstalkaboutstuff for making the clip). Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Bunning's wild pitch.

U.S. Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY), in his earlier career was a good enough pitcher (3.27 career ERA) to be elected to the Hall of Fame. On Saturday, however, he put one in the dirt by predicting, in a speech in his home state, that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would die with in nine months. He later made the appropriate apologetic noises just as Justice Ginsburg returned to her duties on the Supreme Court.

Bunning is up for re-election in 2010, and his likely opponent is Kentucky's Lieutenant Governor, Daniel Mongiardo, who Bunning narrowly defeated in 2004 after a campaign in which Bunning said Mongiardo looked like Saddam Hussein's son. Bunning apologized for this, too.

I'm not watching the Oscars.

It's not out of pique; more just disinterest. I hardly ever watch first-run movies anymore; not because there aren't any I want to see, but just because I rarely manage to get myself to a cinema. Part of it is the "I can always wait for the DVD" syndrome. So, I've managed so far not to see Doubt, Rachel Getting Married, Slumdog Millionaire, or Tropic Thunder, all of which I want to see, and all of which are Oscar nominees. I did see Last Chance Harvey, which I liked, but which is nominated for nothing. After some arm-twisting, I agreed to see Mamma Mia with my wife and one of her girlfriends, but we arrived so late we could only get seats in the front row. After a minute or so, I began to develop a painful crick in the back of my neck, and excused myself. So, I'm amused to see Dave White, live blogging the ceremony for MSNBC, referring to MM as "torture porn".

Wait! MSNBC has a "scoop" that an old (preceding Sigourney Weaver) crush of mine , Melissa Leo, may cop Best Actress because the judges can't decide between Meryl Streep and Kate Winslet (who put on such a stunning performance at the Golden Globes). Is it worth staying up? Nah. I'll find out in the morning.

Update: Changed my mind. I'm up this late, so I might as well turn on the TV and do my own live blog. Just saw Danny Boyle finish his speech accepting best director for Slumdog. Now it's the moment of truth for best leading actress. Winslet gets it, and is getting all weepy, again. Oh, well; it seems that the Leo flutter was based on a few remarks by Academy voters overheard by MSNBC's Courtney Hazlett.

Second update: Sean Penn gets best actor for Milk, and begins his acceptance with "You commie, homo-loving sons of guns." I was rooting for Frank Langella, who I saw onstage last year in A Man For All Seasons. I'm adding Frost/Nixon to my must-see list, along with Milk.

Final update: Slumdog gets best picture. No surprise here, I guess. So to bed.

Now, for you MoPar fans.

Here, thanks to sloanbarri, is Chrysler's answer (their restructuring plan was also filed Tuesday) to the previous post, as sung by Jan and Dean.

Yeah, I know: what's a New York City dwelling, global warming hating, bleeding-heart liberal like me doing reminiscing about the gas-guzzling, non-catalytic convertered, irresponsibly driven muscle cars of yore?

No good answer.

Pontiac lives?

This morning's New York Times, reporting on the General Motors survival plan due to be released today, said that the company would reduce its automotive product lines to four: Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC, and Buick. Even though I've never owned a Pontiac, that announcement took me aback and made this song my earworm for the day (thanks to A2Grapevine):


In an update posted on line after the release of G.M.'s plan, the Times now notes that the plan says Pontiac "will have a much smaller role, if any, in G.M.'s future... ." The actual text of the Plan, to which the Times gives a link, says (on page 15) that Pontiac "will be a highly focused niche brand." It will be interesting to see what "niche" G.M. sees Pontiac as filling: the Solstice niche; the Torrent niche?

Alas, Saturn looks like a goner, unless someone buys it.

2.20 update: Today's Times has a front page piece on Pontiac's decline, noting that G.M.'s past efforts to cut costs by standardizing vehicle types across divisions made Pontiac products less appealing to the performance buffs who were the marque's ardent loyalists.

The Times article also mentions the source of the initials "GTO": the Ferrari Gran Turismo Omologato.

2.23 update: Gotta love Catnapping's comment on having owned a 1966 Pontiac LeMans with a '65 GTO engine:

God, I loved that car. I liked the lines of the later models better, but there was nothing like punching the accelerator, and jumping from 25 to 70 in the blink of an eye. Better 'an sex - hell, it WAS sex.

Fifteen albums.

Another Facebook wheeze, which I've reposted here for non-Facebookers. The instructions were to list fifteen record albums (LPs or CDs) "that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life. Dug into your soul. Music that brought you to life when you heard it. Royally affected you, kicked you in the wazzo[o], literally socked you in the gut, is what I mean."

Mine are in roughly chronological order, beginning at about age nine. Before that, most of the music I can remember was from my parents’ collection of 78 RPM singles, which included lots of Spike Jones, e.g. “Cocktails for Two”, “William Tell Overture”, “My Old Flame” (with a delicious faux-Peter Lorre voice), and “In Dreams I Kiss Your Hand, Madame” (done perfectly straight until the last line: “In dreams I kiss your hand, Madame, ‘cause I can’t STA-A-A-ND your breath!”); Guy Mitchell (“Christopher Columbus”, “Sparrow in the Tree Top”); and Rosie Clooney (“Shrimp Boats is a-Comin’”).

Here goes:

1. “Classical Music for People Who Hate Classical Music”, Boston Pops Orchestra, Arthur Fiedler conducting. My parents probably got this thinking it would inspire me. Boy, were they right. For years, all my most grandiose fantasies played out in my head to the accompaniment of Verdi’s “Grand March” from Aida.

2. “The King and I”, original Broadway cast, Gertrude Lawrence, Yul Brynner, et al. Lots of great Rogers & Hammerstein songs. The Gilbert and Sullivan-esque “Shall I Tell You What I Think of You?” was an inspiration in dealing with school bullies.

3. Enoch Light and the Light Brigade, “Persuasive Percussion”. When I was about fourteen, I had a brief but intense craze for Command Records’ “Percussion” series, of which this is the only one the title of which I recall with certainty. Basically, this was very bouncy, Latin-flavored jazz with lots of things that snapped, hissed, crackled, popped, and banged. About ten years ago, this stuff was resurrected as “ultra lounge music”.

4. The Limeliters, “Sing Out!” The Kingston Trio’s “Tom Dooley” and “MTA” were my introduction on radio to the folk music craze of the late ‘50s and ‘60s, but this was my first folk album.

5. Beethoven, “Archduke” Trio; Pablo Casals, Mieczyslaw Horszowski, and Sandor Vegh. Achingly lovely.

6. The Ventures, “Surfing”. This guitar-bass-drum instrumental group, originally from Tacoma, Washington, predated the surf craze with their 1960 hit “Walk, Don’t Run”. Having relocated to L.A., they cashed in on mid-sixties surf mania with this album, a mixture of very able covers of surf guitar classics like the Chan-Tays’ “Pipeline” and original material. This was the soundtrack for many late evenings in my dorm room during my first year of college.

7. Flatt & Scruggs, “Foggy Mountain Banjo”. My first bluegrass album; the beginning of a long affair.

8. Paul Butterfield Blues Band, “The Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw”. This album was my first taste of Chicago style electric blues.

9. The Byrds, “Sweetheart of the Rodeo”. My introduction to Gram Parsons’ “Cosmic American Music”; unfortunately, this drove my second year law school roommate to distraction.

10. Neil Young and Crazy Horse, “Everybody Knows This is Nowhere”. I’ve fantasized about singing “Cowgirl in the Sand” to every woman who has ever spurned me.

11. Fairport Convention (see also here), “Unhalfbricking”. I first heard “Percy’s Song”, an obscure Dylan piece that Fairport did in the manner of Anglican chant, wafting from a friend’s dorm room during my third year of law school. Because I was captivated by the style and by Sandy Denny's voice, I got the album, and began my long romance with this group and with British folk rock.

12. “The Harder They Come” soundtrack, Jimmy Cliff et al. My go-to when I’m feeling down.

13. Marshall Chapman, “Marshall Chapman”. It’s a tough decision between this, her eponymous third album, and “Jaded Virgin”, her second (and my first to own). “Rock and Roll Clothes” and “Runnin’ Out in the Night” tip the scales, as it were.

14. The Bothy Band (see also here), “Bothy Band 1975”. I’d never heard of them when I picked this from the record bin in an Irish crafts store in Greenwich Village in 1977. Took it home, and was blown away by the virtuosity of the instrumentals and the voices of Triona Ni Dhomhnaill and her brother, now sadly deceased, Micheal O’Dhomhnaill.

15. John Coltrane, “Giant Steps”. Listening to this at a friend’s place brought me to a long overdue appreciation of modern jazz.

Happy Darwin/Lincoln Day.

Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. To mark the occasion, The New York Times has provided a video of a singing Darwin impersonator. The talented chap who does this is Richard Milner, a historian of science and Darwin specialist who was a boyhood buddy of the late Stephen Jay Gould. Today's Times has an excellent Op-Ed column on Darwin by Olivia Judson. (If you're not already registered for the Times on-line, you'll be asked to register before you can read the column. It takes only a minute, and it's free.)

Darwin was born on the same day as Abraham Lincoln: February 12, 1809.

Zagat's the way it goes.

Last week's New York Times "Dining Out" section featured an article by Frank Bruni with the headline "Restaurants Stop Playing Hard to Get." It begins with the question: "Has a restaurant hugged you lately?" Mr. Bruni bets it has. The reason, of course: the recession.

This strummed a mystic chord of memory going back 35 years, when I had just returned to New York from a two-year Army stint, and bought a copy of Jim Quinn's Word of Mouth: A completely new kind of guide to New York City restaurants--1973 edition, which I keep, despite ninety percent of the restaurants it reviews no longer being in business and its considering a $25 dinner "expensive", simply because it's great fun to read. Perhaps one of the "completely new" aspects of Quinn's book was its willingness to trash the competition. Of Gael Greene's Bite, a contemporaneous restaurant guide, he observed that the author is "a textbook case of social-climbing masochism."* In support of this, he quoted her:

During the arid recession-spooked summer of 1970 there were a few shocking breakdowns in the town's haute conspiracy of snobbisme...Soon some of the town's snob restaurants were a blinding glare of empty white tablecloths. For certain New Yorkers, being wanted is the cruelest blow. We want to go where we are not wanted...the fact that we are not wanted is the surest sign that we are storming a retreat worth wanting.**

Quinn took Greene at her word concerning La Cote Basque, then one of New York's best French restaurants, which he said Greene described as "a snob's idea of a fun restaurant" where "[c]lass lines [are] rigidly drawn."

Forewarned by Gael, I and my dinner companions have dressed to make trouble. I am in a cotton velour suit that looks like it was made of 200 gerbil skins, all stitched together sideways and brushed in the opposite direction. My long-time roomy and a poet of anthology rank are both glittering, braless, in ankle-length dresses that make you gasp when they walk. We are up for stalking out if we get the least bit of shit. We get the best table I have got in an expensive restaurant.

When it came to the most important task of the restaurant reviewer, describing the food, Quinn could deliver. Consider this account of filet mignon at Lutece, once New York's most celebrated French restaurant, and the only place to get an "A" grade from Quinn, who marked on a severe curve:

Filet mignon de boeuf en croute Lutece...is a big piece of tender, tasty filet, delivered rare, but charred dark outside, wrapped in good (if not spectacular) pastry and slathered with an extraordinarily good perigourdine sauce--one of the few in Manhattan that actually tasted of truffles. It comes accompanied by a generous serving of mixed vegetables that seem steamed and sauteed rather than boiled and include oddities like genuine flageolets as well as carrots, celery, and tiny peas.

In describing bad food, Quinn could be quite vivid, as in this conclusion to his review of a steak restaurant near Times Square:

Now dig in. Your grease has cooled enough to give the illusion you're eating vaseline; the steak has been tenderized so thoroughly that it has all the texture and taste of an expensive kid glove--after someone wearing it changed and drained a dirty crankcase. The potato is awash in neatsfoot oil; your garlic bun is slowly expanding, like a dry sponge dropped in a rendering vat. And as a special bonus you won't need to add any salt: the chef sweats on the meat.***

Quinn wasn't the only exponent of the restaurant-review-as-art. Seymour Britchky, an occasional Lion's Head visitor, whose stated qualification for the job was that he "ate three meals a day," wrote a monthly newsletter and compiled an annual anthology, under the title The Restaurants of New York, that lasted from 1976 through 1991. I used to have copies of several of the anthologies; unfortunately, somewhere along the way, they got lost in the shuffle. Like Quinn, Sy could be devastating. In a review of a famous Broadway theater area eatery, he wrote:

Sardi's most famous dish is its cannelloni, cat food wrapped in noodle and welded to the steel ashtray in which it was reheated under its glutinous pink sauce. Makes your mouth parch, doesn't it?

(Quoted in Richard Corliss, "That Old Feeling: Three Reasons to Love New York", Time, July 31, 2004.)

Then came Tim and Nina Zagat, with a splendid idea: let's put together a restaurant guide that's both compact and comprehensive, covering just about any respectable or semi-respectable dining spot in the City in a format that can easily fit a jacket pocket or small handbag. Moreover, let's make it democratic: instead of relying on one or two people's possibly unusual tastes, let's allow anyone who wants to rate a restaurant send us their numerical grade (on a scale of one to 25) for food, service, and decor, then average these. In addition to grades, the reviewers can send us pithy comments, the best of which we'll include in the one sentence "reviews" of each place.

When the Zagat guide first became available, I was delighted. It put lots of information at my fingertips, and I could carry it around in my attache case. Still, I had my Britchky available for more enlightening discussion of a place's qualities, or lack thereof, or sometimes just for the sheer pleasure I took in his prose. The trouble is, Zagat became, as they say, a category killer. When Sy stopped putting out his annual Restaurants of New York in 1991 (he died in 2004), no one tried to carry on his tradition (Quinn's Word of Mouth was, for whatever reason--unfortunately, in my view--a one-off). In an age of short attention spans, three page, discursive, idiosyncratic reviews were out. Of Henry's End, my favorite Brooklyn Heights eatery, Zagat tells us its street and web addresses and phone number, that it scored 24 out of 25 for food, 15 for decor, and 23 for service, and that

"[a]dventurous" types who "love wild game" tout this "quirky" Brooklyn Heights New American where "unique", "savory" meats are paired with an "extensive wine list"; "cozy closet"-size quarters are trumped by "value" pricing and an "exceptional proprietor."

As Mr. P. Pig says, "Th-th-th-that's all, folks." I can't gainsay anything about the ratings (although I might move the service rating up a notch) or the "review," so far as it goes. Henry's End does feature a wild game menu in the fall, and some unusual meats throughout the year. The wine list is "extensive", though not encyclopedic; more importantly, I've found the wines on it unfailingly good. Quarters are tight, but the noise level has become manageable, thanks to acoustic tiles now obscuring a gorgeous tin ceiling (so a few points off for decor; Cafe des Artistes this ain't). Prices are reasonable, by New York standards. Mark, the proprietor, is nothing if not "exceptional": he is--how you say?--a mensch.

But this one sentence write-up is, to begin with, seriously misleading in that it invites the reader to think this is exclusively a "wild game" place. The menu has plenty of beef, veal, pork, chicken, seafood, and pasta dishes. Moreover, it gives no flavor of the food, beyond calling the meats "savory". If I were reviewing Henry's End, I'd make special mention of the soft-shell crabs, available in season, and note that, of the three preparations offered, my favorite is with "Moroccan butter," a sauce with an earthiness and richness that, to my taste, perfectly melds with the delicate sweetness of the crabmeat.

Are there worthy successors to Britchky and Quinn today? There are some encouraging prospects. To begin with, there's the man quoted at the beginning of this post, Frank Bruni, whose reviews can be found in the Times on paper and online, but as yet not in book form. Mr. Bruni's reviews are, however, collected in a Times blog called Diner's Journal. I've just recently begun to explore the realm of food blogs. I surveyed wine blogs first; having found three favorites here (also discusses food), here (also discusses ardent spirits), and here (also discusses love). As for blogs that review restaurants, apart from Diner's Journal I've found (without extensive searching) one, Vittles Vamp, written by a fellow Heights resident I haven't yet met, that strikes me as quite good. The Vamp discusses recipes and ingredients as well as reviewing restaurants, and she seems a promising talent at the latter.

If you know of any other really good websites or blogs that review restaurants, particularly in the New York area, please let me know.

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*Social masochism evidently wasn't Ms. Greene's only kind. Her 1978 novel Blue Skies, No Candy, described by Chris Haines in Salon as one third of the Holy Trinity--the others being Erica Jong's Fear of Flying and Judith Krantz's Scruples--of the genre called the "shopping and fucking novel," included this (perhaps slightly paraphrased from memory) description: "His sweat was sharp and tangy; his asshole tasted like apple cider." This was quoted in Spy with the observation, "Ms. Greene is the food editor of New York Magazine."

**During that very "recession-spooked summer" I left my bar exam cram course lecture at Town Hall one evening about eight and walked east through midtown until I found myself in front of La Grenouille, then and now a grand French restaurant. Being hungry and feeling flush, I went in and was promptly ushered to a small table, ordered a beer while I studied the menu, and another to accompany my dinner, received polite and attentive service, and left with my wallet less than $30 (in 1970 dollars, but still a bargain) lighter, tax and tip included.

***I don't identify this place because this review was written at least 35 years ago, and the last time I looked (about two years ago), it was still in business. I've never eaten there, and therefore have no view on the quality of its food which may, for all I know, have improved dramatically since Quinn's visit.