Eli "Paperboy" Reed at Le Poisson Rouge, August 11, 2010

Three weeks ago, I posted about Eli "Paperboy" Reed and his band, the True Loves, noting that they were to play at Le Poisson Rouge, in Greenwich Village, on August 11, and promising "a full report". I was there, and made the video above of Eli and the True Loves doing "Help". Eli and his excellent band put on an energetic and gut-wrenching show; I now think I know what it was like to be in Cincinnati in the 1960s, catching a show by James Brown and an early version of the Famous Flames.

A visit to the studio of painter George Oommen

This video clip, courtesy of Harvard Magazine, takes us into the studio of painter George Oommen as he demonstrates and explains his technique. I found interesting Oommen's analogy of his method to jazz; long time readers of this blog may recall my attempt to describe a connection between jazz and some modern painting.

Oommen's work includes purely non-representational (a term I prefer to "abstract" because all painting is, of necessity, abstract, as Magritte, somewhat tendentiously, indicated in "The Treachery of Images") paintings, as well as some representational, but very un-naturalistic, landscapes, largely inspired by scenes in his native Kerala state, in southern India. You can see images of Oommen's paintings on his website.

Culture war, New York City style: it's about bikes.

Much has been written and said about the supposed cultural divide between coastal elites and heartland (or flyover country) just plain folks, but, as Alexander Nazaryan describes it in his Daily News piece, there's an internecine version playing out here in Gotham. His analysis of the kerfuffle over a bike lane abutting Prospect Park in Brooklyn, in which our Borough President, Marty Markowitz, sided with the gas guzzlers, is illuminating:

Markowitz, the consummate politician, was playing to his base: the ethnic whites of Jewish, Italian and Irish descent who drive along Prospect Park West to their homes in Sheepshead Bay, Gravesend and Midwood. On Prospect Park West live yuppies who couldn't tell Marty Markowitz from a borscht belt yukster - and couldn't care less. They're the ones doing the biking, the ones with no tangible roots to New York who might finally spend that year in France - where, of course, they will bike from patisserie to boucherie to the wineshop in perfect pastoral bliss.

The Mets are toast, but The Baseball Project is alive and well.

The Baseball Project is the creation of Steve Wynn and Scott McCaughey, two rockers who first met at a club in Seattle and discovered a common passion for the national pastime. They rounded out the group with McCaughey's R.E.M. colleague Peter Buck on bass and Linda Pitmon on drums. The clip above, courtesy of Steve's YouTube channel, shows them on Letterman, doing "Past Time". Once again, a hat tip to Eliot Wagner (follow the link for some great photos he took of the group, with Mike Mills in place of Buck on bass, at Maxwell's in Hoboken) for turning me on to them.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

A bargeload of crushed cars, having passed under the Brooklyn Bridge, heads toward New Jersey.

Trader Joe's beers: cheap and cheaper, but not bad.

In these times, I've become an avid bargain hunter. A sixer of domestic "craft" beer from a store in my neighborhood costs from ten to thirteen dollars, tax included, which works out to roughly two bucks a bottle. So, when I visited Trader Joe's a couple of weeks ago, I checked out their beer offerings. I found that they carry several house brand beers and ales, some at $6.99 a six-pack and others at $7.99 before tax. I decided to try one of the less expensive beers, the "Vienna Style Lager". The Saranac special holiday lager I tried two years ago was also described as "Vienna style", and I liked it a lot.

TJ's offering proved a bargain. It has a rich reddish amber color and a mild, malty aroma with just a hint of hop herbaceousness. The flavor is well balanced between malt and hops, the latter adding a bit of citrus-y zest. This is a go-with-anything beer; nothing about it is attention-grabbing, but it is satisfying. The label says the beer is bottled by Trader Joe's Brewing Co. of San Jose, California, but, according to Beeradvocate, this is a "beer marketing company", so where the beer is brewed is a mystery.

On my next visit to TJ's, I noticed some cans of "Simpler Times" beer offered at a reet-cheap $3.99 a six-pack. It was available in both lager and pilsner versions. "How bad can it be?", I thought, and bought a sixer of lager. This beer proved to be as close as I can imagine to a polar opposite of TJ's Vienna Style Lager. The color is pale yellow-gold. It has a flowery nose, with a slight, earthy malt undertone. The flavor is intensely sweet and fruity, my predominant impression being of ripe plum, with a suggestion of caramel. Would I make this a staple beer? No. It would go well with spicy food, or could be enjoyed by itself (its maker, Minhas Craft Brewery of Monroe, Wisconsin, formerly the Joseph Huber Brewing Company, also makes root beer). I'm not sure if this beer is exclusive to TJ's. In any event, at less than five bucks a sixer, with tax, I'll probably have it again if I'm planning Indian, Mexican, or Szechuan take-out.

I will be trying more beer and ale from TJ's, and report on it from time to time.

Eli "Paperboy" Reed: from Brookline to Brooklyn

"Blue-eyed soul" is a term I first saw used in reference to the Righteous Brothers. As a concept, it may have originated (I'm leaving aside the blackface tradition extending from the Christy Minstrels to Al Jolson) with Sam Phillips in Memphis back in the early 1950s, musing about how he could make a million if he could find a white singer who sounded black. His wish was granted in the form of Elvis Presley, who recorded Bill Monroe's "Blue Moon of Kentucky" as if it were composed by Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, and Crudup's "That's All Right" as if it weren't a white singer's cover. When these first Elvis recordings got some air time on Memphis radio, Peter Guralnick writes in his notes to The Sun Sessions CD, the DJ, Dewey Phillips ( a friend, but apparently not a relative of Sam), interviewed Elvis live on his show in order to ask one question: "Where did you go to high school?" When Elvis answered "Humes", the audience in then segregated Memphis knew he was white.

Since then, many white singers have aspired to achieve what Elvis did in those early recordings; none perhaps so blatantly as Lou Reed. The latest of these shares Lou's surname, if not his style. Eli "Paperboy" Reed, "a Jewish kid from Brookline" (Massachusetts, a close-in suburb of Boston), along with his band, the True Loves, does R&B that evokes sounds from the sixties and seventies (see clip above). This album review suggests, however, that Reed's music is more than a re-creation of old R&B. He spent the better part of two years studying the roots of R&B, first in Mississippi, birthplace of the blues, then in Chicago. The result, according to the review, is a syncretic style that draws on a number of sources, not all of them well known.

Reed is now, like so many critically acclaimed musicians and groups, Brooklyn based.

Eli and the True Loves will be at Le Poisson Rouge, 136 Bleecker Street, this Wednesday evening, August 11. I'll be there and give you a full report.

Christina M. Rau's Brooklyn Bridge video.

As anyone who has followed this blog for some time (and if you have, may Procrastinatus, the god of blogs, shower you with blessings) knows, I walk the Brooklyn Bridge as often as I can, which lately is more days than not. So my curiosity was piqued when I read in her blog that Christina M. Rau, a professor in the English Department at Nassau Community College and the founder of Poets in Nassau, had walked the Bridge and, as she wrote, "at the halfway point, I turned on my FlipCam and got footage of almost everyone crossing." Well, "almost everyone" didn't include me, but it's a great little clip (see above), which Professor Rau appropriately accompanied with the Beastie Boys' "No Sleep Till Brooklyn". You can read about her Bridge adventure on her other blog, Rediscovering Brooklyn: A Local Tour de Force. She also has a post about my neighborhood, Brooklyn Heights, on that same blog here, complete with a peek inside the women's room at Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims.

Untitled (Irish Hunger Memorial)

I'm sitting on a stone from County Armagh,
facing New Jersey,
listening to Van Morrison.
Two young women climb
the curving path, stop,
then talk by the fence.
One walks to the stone to my left.
"Monaghan;" she says, "so, where is Armagh?"
"Here is Armagh!" I say, and stand.
She sees the name, kneels and caresses
the rock.
"It's my home."

It's official.

The Mets suck.

Some seashore music: Lou Reed, Bruce Springsteen, and the Tams.

Lest you think that Eliot Wagner and I only like music that critics hate, here are a couple of songs from Eliot's podcasts by critically acclaimed artists (in one instance, not by the same as on the podcast), both of which refer--appropriately for this time of year--to places by the sea.

I'd forgotten what a great song "Coney Island Baby" is. Clip courtesy of Passthrufire. The song was first released on Lou's album of the same name.

One of Eliot's podcasts includes The Band's version of Bruce Springsteen's "Atlantic City". There's no live video of The Band doing it, but you can get the audio and a still of the album cover for Jericho here. The clip above, courtesy of dylanboby, is of The Boss doing the song in Paris, in 1985. "Atlantic City" was originally released on Nebraska.

Now for some real beach music:

The Tams are probably the quintessential Carolina beach music group. The clip above, courtesy of Low Country Today, catches them, with original member Charles Pope, at The Point, Charleston, South Carolina, in 2008.

Remembering Brooklyn native Barbara Stanwyck

Yesterday was the 103rd anniversary of the birth of Barbara Stanwyck, one of the most versatile, and perhaps influential, actresses of the past century. Born Ruby Catherine Stevens here in Brooklyn, she attended Erasmus Hall High School, and worked for a time at the telephone company before entering showbiz as a chorus girl in 1924. Four years later she went to Hollywood and began a career that lasted for nearly six decades. The film role for which she is perhaps best remembered is that of the villainous Phyllis Dietrichson, playing opposite Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity:



In the 1960s she played Victoria, matriarch of the Barkley clan in the TV western The Big Valley, and twenty years later was Constance "Conny" Colby Patterson in The Colbys. Over the course of her movie career, she was nominated for four Oscars, but never won. She received an honorary Academy Award for "superlative creativity and unique contribution to the art of screen acting" in 1982. She died in 1990.

The Brooklyn roots of Chicago, and some Garden State rock: Smithereens and Southside Johnny

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've discovered in Eliot Wagner someone whose musical tastes are almost eerily similar to mine. One thing I especially like is that we have, from a rock critics' consensus point of view, the same lapses in judgment. Eliot has sent me several CDs of podcasts he's done over the past year or so, and on them I've found, among other things, some mostly critically despised oldies that I nevertheless love. Consider the clip above of the band Chicago doing "Twenty-five or Six to Four" live at Tanglewood in 1970. Chicago is one of those bands, like the Grateful Dead, that critics love to hate. For example, here's my late Bells of Hell drinking companion, Lester Bangs, dishing on their live album Chicago at Carnegie Hall (from Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, the posthumous anthology of Lester's writing edited by Greil Marcus; this review originally was published in Creem, February 1972):

In fact, I've only played [Chicago at Carnegie Hall] once since I got it, and never intend to play any of it again. ... Does it really matter that the songs sound exactly like they do on the studio albums except for being immeasurably more sodden and stuffed with long directionless solos? Or that the brass arrangements sound like Stan Kenton charts played backwards? Or that as technically competent as Chicago may be, there are just too many times when you can hear all the parts better than the whole?

I'm not enthusiastic about some of Chicago's stuff, especially Color My World (my taste in prom belly-rubbers runs more to the likes of My True Story by the Jive Five, or "Hearts of Stone" by Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, about which more below), but I've found "Twenty-five" captivating since I first heard it during my third year of law school. I was surprised to learn that Robert Lamm, Chicago's keyboardist and vocalist, as well as the writer of "Twenty-five", "Saturday in the Park", and several other of their hits, grew up in my neighborhood, Brooklyn Heights, New York, and began his musical training in the Grace Church youth choir, as did balladeer Harry Chapin.

For the next critically despised piece that Eliot and I both like, here's a band from Carteret, New Jersey:


Smithereens Behind the Wall of Sleep by Celtiemama (a commercial comes first).

Sometime in 1986, when my clock radio was tuned to WNEW-FM, then an AOR station, I was awakened by a group I'd never heard of, the Smithereens, doing a song called "Behind the Wall of Sleep", from behind which wall it abruptly transported me. I immediately liked the song, both for its balls-to-the-wall style and for its intriguing lyrical references: for example, to the swinging mod London that was a cynosure of my youth ("hair like Jeannie Shrimpton"), and to a hint of androgyny ("she stood just like Bill Wyman"). Critics complained that the Smithereens sounded too much like the Beatles or the Byrds (not a bad rap, in my view), though to me they sound like neither. They aren't as good as, say, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, but they're good at what they do.

Thinking about the Smithereens led me to think of other Garden State rockers, and to depart from Eliot's play list (though I'm sure he'll approve of what follows). Two great rock acts emerged from the Jersey Shore in the early 1970s: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, and Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes.

"Southside Johnny" Lyon got his nickname from his early love of Chicago blues that he heard on a Newark radio station while growing up in the Jersey Shore town of Neptune. He later became a fan of Memphis style R&B, with its strong rhythmic base and horns accompanying guitars and keyboard. This provided the template for his band, the Asbury Jukes. In their R&B roots and use of horns, they were like the group Chicago; unlike Chicago, they were critically acclaimed but never a great commercial success. This may have been because they were overshadowed by Springsteen. There is not, and never has been, bad blood between Southside and The Boss. They have performed together and, perhaps most significantly, they have shared band members. "Miami Steve" Van Zandt and Max Weinberg have both performed with the Asbury Jukes, as has Patti Scialfa, who became Springsteen's wife. When the Jukes' third album, the 1978 Hearts of Stone, rated by Rolling Stone one of the top 100 albums of the 1970s and 80s (in my opinion it's one of the top ten rock albums of all time, and the only one I've loaded onto my iPod wholesale, as every track is magnificent), failed to sell as well as expected, CBS Records' Epic unit dropped them. Since then, Southside and the Jukes have soldiered on, with many personnel changes in the band. Perhaps the only constants have been saxophonists Stan Harrison and Ed Manion, and trombonist Richie "La Bamba" Rosenberg. Springsteen's and Christina Black's article, "Lyon in Winter", from New Jersey Monthly, December 2007, reviews Southside's career post Hearts of Stone, noting his difficulty finding a new record deal because of his reluctance to do what the labels' A&R people wanted him to do. To free himself from such demands, he's now established his own label, Leroy Records, and has recently released a new album, Pills and Ammo, on that label.

The clip above, courtesy of handsatlanta, shows Southside and the Jukes doing the Springsteen-penned "Talk to Me" (originally released on Hearts of Stone) at Lake Como, New Jersey, as broadcast on the Mike and the Mad Dog Show in 2007. Southside manages to coax a lovely though reluctant harmony vocalist, wearing--God bless her--a pink Mets cap, to join him onstage. One of the Jukes is wearing a Mets jersey. You can see why I love this video. I figured Southside and the Jukes were Mets kind of guys.

Tuli Kupferberg (1923-2010); Harvey Pekar (1939-2010); George Steinbrenner (1930-2010)

My wife, a good Episcopalian who believes in astrology, tarot, and ghosts, also believes that deaths always come in threes. The past several days have seen the deaths of three disparate but, for me, important men.

Tuli Kupferberg

What amazes me most about Tuli? That he became a rock star in his 40s (something I still fantasize about doing in my 60s)? That he was on the countercultural cutting edge through the hipster/beatnik/hippie/punk/grunge/hipster phases? That he could sing about swimming in a river of shit, then do another song the lyrics of which were a Blake poem? He and Ed Sanders named their group the Fugs, with inspiration from Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead. In 1948, Rinehart and Company wouldn't publish a book that contained the word "fuck", and Mailer couldn't write dialogue among American soldiers in the Phillipines in World War Two without using that word liberally, so Mailer compromised with a misspelling. This led to Tallullah Bankhead's saying, upon meeting Mailer, "Oh, so you're the young man who can't spell 'fuck'."

The clip above, courtesy of tulifuli, is described in its accompanying notes as follows:

Some time in the mid or late 1990's, before it's [sic] release on the Fugs Final CD part 1, Tuli performed "Where is My Wandering Jew?" on Coca Crystal's Manhattan public access TV show, "If I Can't Dance You Can Keep Your Revolution." Charming hostess Coca introduces Tuli who introduces the song and explains some of the references. "The Wandering Jew is a figure from medieval Christian folklore whose legend began to spread in Europe in the thirteenth century. The original legend concerns a Jew who taunted Jesus on the way to the Crucifixion and was then cursed to walk the earth until the Second Coming. The exact nature of the wanderer's indiscretion varies in different versions of the tale, as do aspects of his character; sometimes he is said to be a shoemaker or other tradesman, sometimes he is the doorman at Pontius Pilate's estate."(Wikipedia)

Harvey Pekar

Harvey Pekar was a very neurotic guy who lived in Cleveland all his life, dropped out of college because math courses gave him too much anxiety, and, until his retirement at age 62, worked as a file clerk in a Veterans' Administration hospital. In the early 1960s, he became friends with R Crumb, who was then living in Cleveland and working as an illustrator for American Greetings. Crumb had just begun experimenting with drawing comics, and when Pekar gave him ideas for his own strip, Crumb drew them for him. Pekar's strip evolved into American Splendor, which was about the everyday adventures of a file clerk living in Cleveland who looked a lot like Harvey Pekar. His work has been compared to that of Chekov and Dostoyevsky.

George Steinbrenner

Anyone who's read this blog knows that I loathe the New York

Yankees. You might suppose that I also loathed their principal owner, one of two Americans commonly known simply as "The Boss". Actually, my opinion of him was complex. I inherited from my father a visceral dislike of people with "overinflated egos". However, I came to realize that without such people, life would be--let's face it--dull. The societal dough needs the gas given off by leavening to rise.

Years from now, I suspect, Steinbrenner will be remembered less for the seven championships his team won during his incumbency than as the man who destroyed the House that Ruth Built (see photo above). While I was fond of the old Yankee Stadium, if not of the team that made it home, I found some perspective in this piece by New York Times sports columnist William C. Rhoden, who lives near the Stadium, in an apartment allegedly once occupied by Babe Ruth.

Some words of Steinbrenner's that should be remembered (other than "Billy, you're fired!") were uttered thirty seven years ago, when he had just become the Yankees' principal owner. Asked by a journalist if he intended to get involved in the day-to-day management of the team, he said, "I'll stick to building ships."

Update: The American Bar Association Journal notes that, by dying in 2010, Steinbrenner may have saved his heirs about $600 million.

Today's Times has a fond reminiscence of a dashing young Steinbrenner by a high school girlfriend.

Mets avoid sweep.

Yeah, it's kinda like "Unemployment rate stays below 10%." I take my comfort where I can. There are some nice things to say about this game. Santana got run support and a win, bringing his ERA below three. Rodriguez got a three-up, three-down save. Pagan went three for five. There were no errors. Bottom line: the Mets are still in contention (OK, they'd be in contention even if they lost, but they'd be six games behind instead of four, and their ability to beat the present division leader would seem, to say the least, very doubtful).

Funny, but when Reyes was hurt yesterday, I thought the Mets would probably win today. I know memory can be tricky, but it seems they usually win the first game after an injury to a starting player. I suppose it's because everyone else on the team feels the need to play better to make up for the loss. Has anyone done a statistical analysis of this?

Jefferson "Freudian slip" in draft of Declaration of Independence?

Today's AOL News includes a story by Lauren Frayer about a recent discovery concerning the Declaration of Independence, the 234th anniversary of the signing of which we celebrate tomorrow. The news is that chemical and photographic analyses of Thomas Jefferson's (image courtesy of NARA) first draft of the Declaration show that one of the words was changed after it had been written. This may not seem particularly significant; one would expect a first draft to be changed. What makes it interesting is what was deleted and what was substituted for it.

The word Jefferson wrote, then evidently rubbed out by hand while the ink was still wet, was "subjects", and the word substituted for it was "citizens". The difference between these words is, to put it mildly, a big deal. A "subject" is one who is subjected to monarchy. This was the status of British settlers in the American colonies and their descendants before the Revolution. "Citizen" is a word that, in English, dates from the fourteenth century; its first definition in Merriam-Webster is "an inhabitant of a city or town; especially: one entitled to the rights and privileges of a freeman". In medieval England, residents of cities or towns were not subject to feudal obligations, and therefore, although still "subject" to the monarch, otherwise free. By using the term "citizen" in the Declaration, Jefferson and the other signatories intended to signal the colonists' break from "subject" status.

In her article, Frayer notes:

Scholars have speculated as to whether the smudge reveals a Freudian slip by Jefferson, who grew up as a subject of Britain's king, or whether his first draft adopted some of the language from a draft of Virginia's constitution, which uses the words "our fellow subjects."

I doubt it was a Freudian slip, as that term is properly construed; that is, as an expression of a repressed or subconscious wish. I don't think Jefferson, at least by the time he was drafting the Declaration, had any lingering desire to remain a "subject". Applying Occam's Razor, I believe it was simply his repeating words from the draft of the Virginia constitution, of which Jefferson was also, along with James Madison and George Mason, an author.

A happy Fourth to all!

Gina Villalobos, Second Dan, and the Del-Lords: thank you, Eliot Wagner!

Eliot Wagner has a great music blog called Now I've Heard Everything. I had the pleasure of meeting him at last week's Brooklyn Blogfest. Eliot does a periodic (about five or six times a year) podcast, and he gave me a CD of the current edition. When I played it, my initial feeling that Eliot and I are musical soul mates was confirmed. There's not a single cut on it that I don't like, and some that I think are spectacular. There are cuts by artists I've long admired, such as John Hiatt, Graham Parker, Peter Wolf, and Neil Young. What I'm most grateful for, though, is being introduced to some singers and groups of which I had been ignorant.

Californian Gina Villalobos works in the tradition called "alternative country" or "Americana", a genre with roots that extend back into old time country, bluegrass, honky-tonk, blues, rhythm and blues, and rockabilly. Eliot's podcast includes two great cuts of hers: "Why" and "Fooling Around". The clip above is of "What I'd Do", from her 2005 U.K. tour, and courtesy of her ponyvilllalobos channel on YouTube.

Eliot found out about Second Dan while attending a party for bloggers, where he met their lead guitarist. Second Dan is exemplary of the introspective side of the New York indie scene. The cut on Eliot's podcast is "Today", from their new album, Angeline. The clip above is of "Running Out Of Feelings", and is accompanied by an animation that is unsubtly polemical, but nonetheless well done and effective. It's from their seconddan YouTube channel.

I'd heard of the Del-Lords before; they're a band that formed in 1984, founded by Scott Kempner, formerly with the Dictators (and thus a bandmate of my fellow Bells of Hell patron, Handsome Dick Manitoba). They enjoyed their greatest popularity in the late '80s, and broke up in the '90s. They recently re-formed, and have released an EP of new songs, Under Construction, which includes the track on Eliot's podcast, a steady rocker that could fit well in the soundtrack of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, "When the Drugs Kick In" (you can hear it by going to their website). Their style is simple, straight-ahead, loud rock and roll. The clip above shows them covering the Dead Boys' "Sonic Reducer" at Magasinet, Gothenberg, Sweden in 1990, courtesy of bsf006.

If I post this, will I doom the Mets?

All I had to do, it seems, is kvetch about the Mets' dismal performance on the road, for them to go on a tear and win six straight away games. Yes, I know, these were at the expense of two of the three presently worst teams (the Mariners are now half a game worse than the Indians) in the Phony Baseball League (and it raises what for me is an awkward question: Could the DH rule be a Good Thing for the Mets in their current configuration?).

So, once again, I ponder the Schroedinger's cat question: Will my posting this mean that the Mets will collapse in what, to many of their fans, will be the most important "road" series of the season; the one against the despised Bronx Bullies?

I'll start to get the answer this evening. I tremble slightly as I move the cursor to "publish post".

Update: Sam Metsfan, whose blog, Those Mets, I've just had the pleasure to discover, has an altogether better outlook going into this weekend's series.

Second update: Things are off to a good start.

Third update (6.19): Things didn't go so well today, as Pelfrey had difficulties early and lost his duel with Hughes, who had an identical 9-1 record going into the game. Meanwhile, reviewing yesterday's New York Times, I found this interesting piece by Tyler Kepner, in which he compares the 2010 Mets with the 2005 Yankees.

Fourth update (6.20): Yuck. Santana gets tagged with another loss, but this time he gives up four runs. At least we can say the Mets split the season series.

David Markson, 1927-2010: another friend gone.

Some years ago, someone I knew (but I've now forgotten who) wrote an article for GQ magazine about the Lion's Head, the Greenwich Village bar where I spent many a long night's journey into morning, drinking Utica Club from the tap, or, later, bottles of Rolling Rock, and enjoying conversation with as eclectic and interesting a group of characters as one might imagine. (There's a more recent article about the Head, by the late Dennis Duggan, here.) When the GQ piece came out, I called my father in Florida and suggested that he get a copy. A week later, he said, "How come everyone mentioned in this article is either dead or has quit drinking?"

Dave Markson was one of those who quit, but I knew him long before he got the ultimatum from his doctor that, no doubt, added a good number of years to his life, which ended Saturday, at the age of 82. Al Koblin, a former part-owner of the Head, famously described its clientele as "Jewish drunks, Italian intellectuals and Irish lovers." Dave in his drinking days could have been the archetype for the first of these categories. I rarely saw him silly, sloppy drunk. He knew how to pace his drinking so as to sustain his part in the conversation, which he did with aplomb. He liked other writers who shared his weakness, including Dylan Thomas and Malcolm Lowry, whom he discusses in the video clip above (courtesy of thousandrobots). Early in our acquaintance, I told him I was reading Lowry's Under the Volcano. "Congratulations," Dave said, "you're becoming an adult."

When Dave went on the wagon, he avoided the Head for a while. Later, he found that he could come in, drink club soda, and not be tempted. On one of those evenings, I paraphrased one of the epigrams that make up his then just-released novel Reader's Block: "Have you come to this place because you had no life back there at all?" He grinned, and thanked me.

I'll end this with the final words of Reader's Block, which is not a spoiler because, as Mark Twain wrote of Huckleberry Finn, "persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot":

In the end one experiences only one's self.
Said Nietzsche.

Nonlinear. Discontinuous. Collage-like. An assemblage.

Wastebasket.

Why can't the Mets do it on the road?

Last night's debacle in San Diego underscores the Mets' lopsided record this season: 19-9 at home, 8-18 on the road. On May 27, Joe Lapointe's New York Times "Bats" blog post gave the manager's theory:

Manager Jerry Manuel said he was not sure why the team played so poorly on the road but speculated that it might be because they get excited by smaller ballparks away from Citi Field and try to hit home runs.

This squares with my long-held belief that the Mets are a team perennially afflicted with what might be called "wannabe-a-hero" syndrome. This could also explain their frustrating inability to get hits in "clutch" situations.

Sean Forman looked further into the question of home field advantage in general in his "Bats" post later that same day. A statistical study, Forman writes, has shown that having the last at-bat is not what gives the home team the edge. Instead, it's familiarity with the idiosyncracies of the "friendly confines". This advantage is enhanced when a team's home field is in its second through fifth year of use. When a team first uses a new field, the players must learn its peculiarities just as those on visiting teams must, so the advantage is reduced. After the fifth year, visitors have come to learn the territory, which again reduces, though it doesn't negate, the home team's upper hand. Since Citi Field is now in its second year, this could at least partially explain the Mets' superb record at home, but not why they're so dismal away.

6.6 update: The at-home magic is back as the Mets complete a sweep of division rivals the Marlins.

Librarians Discover Their Inner Lady Gaga

Students and faculty of the University of Washington's Information School do a send-up of the pop star. Thanks to Athenasbanquet for the clip, and my wife for spotting it on the archives listserv and forwarding it to me.

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings are a Brooklyn based rhythm and blues group that performs original songs in a style that evokes soul classics of the late 1960s and early '70s, but nevertheless sounds fresh. The clip above, "100 Days, 100 Nights" (courtesy of Daptone Records, the group's private label) is the title song from their album released on October 2, 2007. Their first album, Dap-Dappin' with Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, was released in May of 2002. You can hear the title song of their latest album, I Learned the Hard Way, released in April, on their website.

Goodbye, Dennis Hopper

Another boomer icon is gone. Thanks to the Byrds for the song.

Perfect baseball night.

Mets beat Yanks. Pelfrey(!) gets the win, K-Rod the save. Savor the moment. Rays win, so my old home-town team opens up some division race space over the hated Yanks. Bosox blank Phils, thereby pleasing my wife, and Twif, as well as helping the Mets (assuming they can ever get back into contention, unlikely as that seems).

Update: It couldn't happen again, could it? Well, uh, yeah, it did. The Mets got to Sabathia early, then hung on to win the rubber game of their at-home series with the Yanks, 6-4. Meanwhile, the Red Sox trounced the Phils again, taking two of three from them. The Rays (record to date, 32-12!) pounded the Astros.

All this happy news is clouded by the death at 37 of Jose Lima, a pitcher with an erratic and sometimes brilliant career who was one of the game's most colorful personalities.

Do you curate? If so, you rate.

My Brooklyn Heights Blog colleague, Heather Quinlan, recently posted about a "pop-up-store" to appear in our neighborhood. She wrote that the proprietor "drew upon her own experiences to curate the store", and quoted the proprietor as saying, "So I wanted to bring a really cool curated store to you...." The post drew the following comment thread:

Topham Beauclerk:
The use of the word “curate” as a synonym for wholesale buying is new to me. Phony and pretentious.

the where:
It’s a yuppie/brownstoner way of saying no tube socks which is code for something far more sinister and phobic.

Heather Quinlan:
I’m eating a curated ham sandwich right now.

David on Middagh:
Really? Mine has tube socks.

AEB:
No, I like the word and its use. Now I can say that every morning I curate my cats’ litterbox….

Andrew Porter:
Wasn’t it the Curate in Wells’s “The Time Machine” who went mad? Played by Tim Robbins in the latest film version.
Maybe curate was a typo for cutrate?

AAR:
A nice idea! Why jump all over it because of one word when a shop like this is the sort of thing many bloggers wish would come to Montague Street? Let’s support the entrepeneurial spirit even if the product doesn’t suit everyone.

I was familiar with two meanings of "curate." The first is as a noun, in the sense referred to by Andrew Porter. That is, as a priest in the Church of England who serves as a vicar or, in a larger church, as assistant to a rector. This is confirmed by Merriam-Webster Online. The second is as a transitive verb, meaning to perform the functions of a curator; in other words, to select the items for inclusion in the permanent collection of, or a special exhibit mounted by, a museum, to determine how and where the items are to be displayed, and to provide text and other visual or aural aids to explain or give context to the items. This again was validated by Merriam-Webster (follow the link above and click on the second meaning), which shows the date of first use of "curate" as a verb as 1909. The first use of the noun "curator," however, is shown as 1561. This strongly suggests that "curate" as a verb is a back-formation from the noun "curator." While the definition given by Merriam-Webster for curate as a verb, "to act as curator of," could apply outside the museum context, the examples given there both refer to museums.

So, I would be prepared to agree with Topham Beauclerk that the use of the verb "to curate" other than in its customary context is, if not "phony and pretentious," at least a stretch. But, then, I did a little more web research and came across this New York Times article from last October, which I missed, probably because it was in the "Fashion & Style" section, which I used to ignore but now know is essential reading. According to the author, Alex Williams:

The word “curate,” lofty and once rarely spoken outside exhibition corridors or British parishes, has become a fashionable code word among the aesthetically minded, who seem to paste it onto any activity that involves culling and selecting.

Williams goes on to quote one of my favorite public intellectuals:

For many who adopt the term, or bestow it on others, “it’s an innocent form of self-inflation,” said John H. McWhorter, a linguist and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. “You’re implying that there is some similarity between what you do and what someone with an advanced degree who works at a museum does.”

Williams notes that the "nontradtitional" use of the verb "to curate" (the "traditional" use, as we've seen, having originated in 1909) "took off" after 2000.

Finally, Williams asked a "traditional" curator what she thinks of this expanded definition, and got this response:

“Maybe the use of ‘curate’ to refer to extra-museum activities is just metaphorical, akin to the way we use the word ‘doctor’ as a verb,” Laura Hoptman, a senior curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, wrote in an e-mail message. “If we doctor a script, we are only theoretically operating on it.”

“It doesn’t really bother me,” she said of the trend. “Actually, I’m hoping its popularity will spawn a reality television show — maybe ‘Top Curator’? ”

Update: See Rebecca Goldman's cartoons in "Who Curates the Curators?" from Derangement and Description.

Has the Venter Institute created artificial life?

In a sense, yes, but in my view, mostly no.

Wall Street Journal: Heralding a new era in biology, scientists for the first time have created a synthetic cell, completely controlled by man-made genetic instructions, which can survive and reproduce itself, researchers at the private J. Craig Venter Institute announced Thursday.

"We call it the first synthetic cell," said genomics pioneer Craig Venter, who oversaw the project. "These are very much real cells."

What the Venter Institute scientists did was to create a complete, artificially sequenced genome, insert it into an existing bacterium cell, and thereby cause that cell to transform itself into a different species, which can reproduce itself in the new form. This new form has characteristics that distinguish it from other bacteria of the same species. This is a significant advance in biotechnology, which previously has been limited to splicing segments of genetic code onto existing genomes, thereby changing in some respect the characteristics of the cells with the altered genomes.

The use of existing, living cells as hosts for the artificial genomes means that life has not been created, as it were, from the ground up. It would, I imagine, be possible to do that by synthesizing from inorganic sources the chemicals that make up the body of the cell, assembling an artificial cell body from them, then inserting an artificial genome including nucleotides that themselves have been synthesized. This, I suppose, would be a very difficult project. Someone may do it some day, just to be able to say it could be done. The availability of ready made cell bodies to serve as hosts for artificially sequenced genomes, however, means there is probably no practical reason for such an undertaking.

Sampling Brooklyn Brewery's lineup.

Having previously sampled the Sam Adams and Saranac lines of beer and ale, I've finally gotten around to what I should have written about first: the products of a brewery located not far from where I live, the Brooklyn Brewery. A few months ago, I bought a bottle each of the six Brooklyn brews available at my local market and, over the course of a couple of days, tasted them and made notes. Then I misplaced the notes. Last week, I noticed that Brooklyn Summer Ale (see photo above), which wasn't available when I did my earlier tasting, was back on the shelf. So, I bought a bottle and had it with lunch. This inspired me to do a thorough search, in which I uncovered my notes from the winter. Since I've had the Summer Ale most recently, and summer is approaching, I'll start with it.

Brooklyn Summer Ale: Rich golden color; nose yeasty but with fruit overtones. My first reaction on tasting was that this ale lacks any outstanding qualities; it's pleasant without there being anything memorable about it. The finish has a slightly fat, glycerin-y quality. However, as I tucked into my falafel sandwich from Damascus Bread & Pastry Shop--I get mine with the works: lettuce, tomato, pickle, red cabbage, tahini and hot red sauce--I noticed the ale reacting nicely with the spiciness of the sandwich to produce a sublime tart apple-like flavor. The Brewery's website recommends pairing it with "lightly spicy dishes". That seems good advice but, heck, I'd like to try it with a vindaloo curry.

Brooklyn Lager: The brewery's flagship. Deep orange color, aroma like freshly-made toast, with a hint of banana. Good malt-hop balance, with a suggestion of carrot in the finish. This is a robust beer that goes well with heartier foods like grilled meats, roasted or fried chicken or fried fish. The website describes this as "in the 'Vienna' style"; this description was also applied to Saranac's "Season's Best" issued in 2008, which I liked very much.

Brooklyn Pilsner: Deep golden color shading to amber; herbaceous, hoppy nose. Hop bitterness is predominant, but not too assertive, leading to a pleasant, citrus-y finish. The Pilsner style, a kind of lagered beer that originated in what is now the Czech Republic, is the style of most mass-marketed, and many local stalwart, beers in the U.S. It's versatile: Pilsners go well with most kinds of food, including spicy Asian and Latin American cuisines, and it takes well to chilling, so can be enjoyed alone as a thirst quencher on a hot afternoon.

Brooklyn Pennant Ale '55: Deep amber color; yeasty aroma. On the tongue, it gives a suggestion of apricots, then finishes with a pleasing nutty taste. This is a sentimental favorite of mine. I fell in love with baseball, and with the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers, when I was nine years old and living in Florida. The brew was named in honor of the Brooklyn team's only World Series victory--they lost to the hated Yankees in '56 and moved to L.A. in '57. As I recall, the Brewery was pressured to remove "'55" from the label by the Dodgers organization, which is notoriously zealous in attacking anything it can arguably construe as a trademark infringement. Apparently, the Brewery prevailed. In my view, the Dodgers should be held to have forfeited any claim to anything involving Brooklyn, or the team's history here, when they went west.

Brooklyn Winter Ale: Red-orange color; aroma suggestive of peach blossoms. Slight hint of banana on the tongue and, like the Summer Ale, a slippery, glycerin-y finish. I haven't tried this with food, but suspect that, like the Summer Ale, a bit of spice might improve it. Not a bad brew, just nothing special.

Brooklyn Brown Ale: Reddish brown color; yeasty nose with floral overtones. Sweet start; tart finish, with a coffee-like astringency. This is a very well crafted ale. The website suggests pairing it with beef or cheese. It's good as a stand-alone drink, too.

Brooklyn East India Pale Ale: Amber color; aroma of herbes de Provence with citrus undertones. In the mouth, forward hop bitterness is nicely balanced by malt warmth, leading to a finish like brioche or a croissant. I've long been a big fan of IPAs, loving their intensity of flavor. This one is a fine example of the genre.

Missing from this lineup is the Brooklyner Weisse, which I haven't seen since last year. I'll add a review as soon as I can find some.

All of the above bottled beers and ales are brewed under contract (and, according to the Brewery's website, under the supervision of the Brewery's brewmaster) by F.X. Matt in Utica, New York. Matt also makes the Saranac line of brews. However, according to the Brooklyn Brewery website, there are four bottled brews, none of which I've ever seen, that are made at the Brewery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. These are: "Brooklyn Local 1, Brooklyn Local 2, Brooklyner-Schneider Hopfen-Weisse, and Black Ops." I'll be grateful to anyone who can tell me where to get these. Some of the Brewery's cask brews are made in Williamsburg, too.

A few years ago, while attending a conference on Brooklyn's economic future, I had the pleasure of meeting Brooklyn Brewery's President and co-founder, Steve Hindy. I asked if he could say there would never be a "Brooklyn Light"; he assured me this was not in their plans. I later learned that his wife was the principal of my daughter's middle school.

There are other craft breweries in Brooklyn today, including Kelso and Sixpoint, both of whose brews I have enjoyed on tap at local taverns. I'll be writing more about them later.

Folk fest: Amy Speace, Buskin & Batteau, and a Mother's Day greeting from Christine Lavin

I first heard Amy Speace on a friend's CD about a year ago, and tagged her as a singer to watch. At the time, I couldn't find any videos on-line of her in performance. On Friday, Eliot Wagner posted on OTBKB a link to the video above of Amy doing the ballad "It's Too Late to Call It a Night", as earlier posted on Now I've Heard Everything.

Among the musicians backing Amy on this song are David Buskin and Robert Batteau. Some years ago, I caught them in performance at the late, lamented Bottom Line, and this was part of their set:


As I recall, Buskin & Batteau were on the same bill with Christine Lavin, who is seen here doing a song appropriate for Mother's Day:


Thanks to piddlepuddle for this clip of Christine performing at the Unitarian Center in Ashland, Oregon.

Continuing, sort of, the Mother's Day theme, I'll close by returning to Amy Speace, doing "Double Wide Trailer":


Thanks to bprism for this clip, made at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival in 2008.

Windy

Casements clatter; outside,
trees do legless tarantellas
as molecules schuss the isobar slope.
Gas gives as good as it gets.

¡Viva México!

Bob Sheidler reminds me that I almost let Cinco de Mayo pass unnoticed. Fortunately, he posted on Facebook the above YouTube clip of Los Lonely Boys, accompanied by Carlos Santana, doing a medley of "La Bamba" and "I Don't Wanna Lose Your Love", in honor of the holiday. According to the notes to the clip, this was performed at the 2004 Latin Grammy Awards in Los Angeles. Los Lonely Boys are the Garza brothers: Henry (guitar and lead vocal), Jojo (bass), and Ringo (drums, natch). They hail from San Angelo, Texas. The shout-out, "Erica, we love you!" is for their niece, who was hospitalized at the time of the performance, but recovered from her injury.