The Sparkle of Your China
Dear readers,
If you should happen to glance at some of the reader comments on this infrequently posted blog, you'll notice mostly adverts. Disregard these! Do not patronize these people!
I'm not going to block the comments (yet) because I like the occasional one that I get from a real reader.
That business aside, did anyone see Neil Young on Conan O'Brien all last week? The songs were okay, maybe I'll get the record when it's used. Obviously that record is about Neil confronting his mortality. I think I liked the last night best when the songs were more orchestrated and there was a gospel choir. Plus Emmylou Harris. What a pal, what a team player Emmylou is! Oh yeah, and on Thursday night, Neil did "The Needle and the Damage Done," but the VCR cut it off halfway. I guess every junkie's just a setting sun.
The best part was watching Neil give good panel with Conan. Conan told a funny story about how Neil went into his dressing room and retuned all his guitars to D Modal—the "Cinnamon Girl" tuning, apparently. Anyway, it sure is nice to get NBC again (after about two years of not being able to get it when the affiliate shifted to San Jose. Finally, they strengthened the signal) for the best late night entertainment talk show on TV.
Also, Saturday is Neil's sixtieth birthday. Unbelievable. Thanks Simpsons and Ameoba calendars!
Hoops fans, I'm back on the Warriors bandwagon. Actually, I never abandoned it, I was just walking alongside as it's travelled the rutted road of NBA ignominy lo these past ten or eleven years. Anyway, if Baron Davis can stay healthy...
Readingwise, lately I've been on a big Joan Didion kick. I read her latest, "A Year of Magical Thinking," also just re-read "The White Album." "Magical Thinking," besides being a heartbreaking document about a woman losing her husband while her daughter is gravely ill (she died after the manuscript was finished) is kind of a restatement and refraction of Didion's previous non fiction work. Fragments of the earlier essays recur throughout "Magical." I need to reread it, but I think it's partly about the way that a writer's mind mines the themes of its past work (or, I guess you could say, mines its mind)to examine unspeakable pain. Not a very original observation, I'm sure. More bluntly, it's an admission that Didion's husband, John Gregory Dunne, had told her that he was dying and she didn't listen.
As far as the alphabetical project goes, I'm in the middle of Billie Holiday (so to speak). I own most of the thirties stuff. I love those small combo recordings she made with Lester Young and Teddy Wilson. Perfect music. I've never investigated her fragile late fifties recordings. I really ought to.
My current bus reading is PG Wodehouse's "Leave it To Psmith." (The "P" is silent. "As in 'pshrimp," Psmith says to one character). One of the funniest and best written that I've read by PGW.
If you should happen to glance at some of the reader comments on this infrequently posted blog, you'll notice mostly adverts. Disregard these! Do not patronize these people!
I'm not going to block the comments (yet) because I like the occasional one that I get from a real reader.
That business aside, did anyone see Neil Young on Conan O'Brien all last week? The songs were okay, maybe I'll get the record when it's used. Obviously that record is about Neil confronting his mortality. I think I liked the last night best when the songs were more orchestrated and there was a gospel choir. Plus Emmylou Harris. What a pal, what a team player Emmylou is! Oh yeah, and on Thursday night, Neil did "The Needle and the Damage Done," but the VCR cut it off halfway. I guess every junkie's just a setting sun.
The best part was watching Neil give good panel with Conan. Conan told a funny story about how Neil went into his dressing room and retuned all his guitars to D Modal—the "Cinnamon Girl" tuning, apparently. Anyway, it sure is nice to get NBC again (after about two years of not being able to get it when the affiliate shifted to San Jose. Finally, they strengthened the signal) for the best late night entertainment talk show on TV.
Also, Saturday is Neil's sixtieth birthday. Unbelievable. Thanks Simpsons and Ameoba calendars!
Hoops fans, I'm back on the Warriors bandwagon. Actually, I never abandoned it, I was just walking alongside as it's travelled the rutted road of NBA ignominy lo these past ten or eleven years. Anyway, if Baron Davis can stay healthy...
Readingwise, lately I've been on a big Joan Didion kick. I read her latest, "A Year of Magical Thinking," also just re-read "The White Album." "Magical Thinking," besides being a heartbreaking document about a woman losing her husband while her daughter is gravely ill (she died after the manuscript was finished) is kind of a restatement and refraction of Didion's previous non fiction work. Fragments of the earlier essays recur throughout "Magical." I need to reread it, but I think it's partly about the way that a writer's mind mines the themes of its past work (or, I guess you could say, mines its mind)to examine unspeakable pain. Not a very original observation, I'm sure. More bluntly, it's an admission that Didion's husband, John Gregory Dunne, had told her that he was dying and she didn't listen.
As far as the alphabetical project goes, I'm in the middle of Billie Holiday (so to speak). I own most of the thirties stuff. I love those small combo recordings she made with Lester Young and Teddy Wilson. Perfect music. I've never investigated her fragile late fifties recordings. I really ought to.
My current bus reading is PG Wodehouse's "Leave it To Psmith." (The "P" is silent. "As in 'pshrimp," Psmith says to one character). One of the funniest and best written that I've read by PGW.
posted by ken at 1:36 PM
