Yeah, it’s summertime, all right, and the living is easy, but Anne Applebaum wants to rain all over your parade. It’s August, after all, and you know what happened in August! World War I! Forget the sunblock, dude, and strap on a gas mask! In her latest, greatest effusion, billed as “Beach Worrying” at Slate,…
Author: Alan Vanneman
New at Bright Lights—Fred Astaire in Royal Wedding
My latest n’ greatest, pretty much, at Bright Lights Film Journal is a review of one of my favorite Fred Astaire films, Royal Wedding. The presence of Jane Powell, plus the music of Burton Lane and Alan Jay Lerner, helped blast Fred out of his late forties rut. The review is here, and the whole…
Wynton Marsalis, Live at the House of Tribes—“Green Chimneys,” Parts 1 & 2
“Green Chimneys,” one of Thelonious Monk’s less well-known tunes, is named for a private school in Manhattan, attended by children of the tragically hip.
Random responses to random idiots
Mary Jane: “Why would Doc Oc want to attack Wolverine?” Oh, Mary Jane, do you believe that supervillains display only a motivated malignity? In any case, Spiderman, correct for once, provides an adequate answer: “ ’cause Logan cut one of his tentacles.” After all, if someone cut one of your tentacles, how would you like…
Yes, we know who your father is. It’s you we don’t like.
Proving that it’s probably not a good idea to grow up in Cambridge, Mass., Henry Louis “Skip” Gates’ daughter Elizabeth writes the following: As our family rounded the corner to the White House library and I first caught sight of Sergeant Crowley’s lovely 14-year old daughter—who was wearing an appropriately heavy and charmingly untrained amount…
Anita O’Day in Tokyo, 1963—“Traveling Light” and “The Old Feeling”
Good President, Bad President
I think it was right of President Obama to say the police acted “stupidly” for arresting Henry Gates for yelling at a policeman (Jacob Sullum at Reason magazine gives a nice rundown on the reasons why here). But, as Conor Friedersdorf, writing at Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish points out here, the Gates case dwindles almost…
The Atlantic—not so innocent
In one of my by-now almost numberless rants against Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth ( probably this one), I claimed that cozy, off-the-record dinners hosted by Atlantic publisher David Bradley had no price tag attached. Well, I was totally wrong. As this story in TPM Muckraker, and this one in Slate, demonstrate, Bradley has been…
Bailin’ Palin
In a recent poll of influential DC blogs, Literature R Us came in dead last. No one of any consequence reads this blog. So if you thought you were a person of consequence, well, you just got some bad news. Nonetheless, I’m going to give you my opinion of why Sarah Palin bailed. Because she’s…
Pimp my charmingly unpretentious Chevy Chase bungalow
According to a reliable source—and I do have them—Katy Weymouth does not own a mansion. Furthermore, in a recent memo Katy has asked for a “review” of “recent events” at the Wash Post—most notably, one presumes, her recent offer to rent out herself, her house, and her paper to the highest bidder. It’s a good…