If you had asked me, six months ago, to come up with a name for right-wing K Street cowboy/honcho Ed Rogers, I might have chosen “Smarmy McSmarmface”, or something, well, equally smarmy. But today I think I’d have to go with “Sad Little Man”, which isn’t really a name but does capture the fact that…
Author: Alan Vanneman
Jeff Bezos, with a penis on his pocket, and lookin’ mighty like an asshole
I’ve previously descanted on the tendency of billionaires to develop a fondness for large, penis-shaped objects. Well, we can, obviously, add Jeff Bezos to that list. Jeff, with his shaved head n’ shades lookin’ seriously Walter White, is shown posin’ with a rocket (reusable, of course) that’s part of his space transportation company “Blue Origin”….
Bloomberg scribes Kevin Cirilli, Sahil Kapur, Anna Edgerton, Erik Wasson, Ben Brody, Shannon Pettypiece, and Colleen Murphy: so not the sharpest knives in the drawer
Perhaps I shouldn’t be making this a case of collective responsibility, but all of these people have their names on an article over at Bloomberg, “Trump Rethinks State-Local Tax Issue Over Middle-Class Concerns”. Guys (and gals): you have to think something before you rethink it. Okay, maybe they didn’t write that headline, but they did…
Thelonious Monk—“Bemsha Swing” et al.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zUulKnCTf0 Have I linked to this before? Well, so what? I’ve decided to do a run on “Bemsha Swing”, co-written by Thelonious with drummer Denzil Best, so why not start off with The Man? Monk is joined by Charlie Rouse, tenor, John Ore, bass, and Frankie Dunlop, drums, playing “Nutty”, “Bemsha Swing”, “Epistrophy”, “Crepuscule With…
Duria Antiquior or A More Ancient Dorset
The above wonderful lithograph is by Georg Scharf, based on a watercolor painted by English geologist Henry De la Beche in 1830, based in turn largely on fossils discovered by Mary Anning, the self-taught paleontologist whom I read about at age nine, as previously discussed in yesterday’s brief post regarding Christopher Colombus. “Duria Antiquior” is…
The Columbus Myth Myth
I’m too lazy to link to any of the many articles commenting on the culture wars swirling around Mr. European Hegemonist himself, Christopher Columbus. But I would like to complain, a little, about the myth of the Columbus myth. We are taught that we were taught that Christopher Columbus was a great and good man…
The Coming Republican Crack Up? Fumin’ Donors and Fumin’ Members!
There seems to be an amusing level of, you know, stress breaking out among both Republican money bags and Republican Congress folk as Republican “ideas” collide with, you know, reality. Over at Politico, Alex Isenstadt and Gabriel Debenedetti report that “Angry GOP donors close their wallets”, while the Washington Examiner’s David M. Drucker tells us…
The boring Mr. Hefner. The second of a two-part series on the memorable departed
When Hugh Hefner died, I honestly assumed that the reaction of many people would be “He was still alive?” Well, I was wrong. In fact, ole’ Hef’s death served as the springboard for an astonishing amount of tongue-clucking from a wide variety of double-dome bigwigs, including Ross Douthat and David French. Mr. Cotton Tail, it…
Emanuele Arciuli–Elliott Carter’s “Night Fantasies”
Last week I posted a video of Spanish pianist Ricardo Descalzo playing “Eine Kleine Mitternacht Musik”, a nine-part suite/“rumination” by George Crumb on Thelonious Monk’s “Round Midnight”, one of 21 “variations” commissioned by Italian pianist Emanuele Arciuli. There are videos of Arciuli himself playing Crumb’s suite, but the sound wasn’t very good and I couldn’t…
Who influenced our culture more, Hugh Hefner or Anne Jeffreys? The first of a two-part series on the memorable departed
Well, I guess it’s Hef, although I always wondered why people took someone so artificial and synthetic seriously, but I’m going to lead with Anne, shown above with co-star and husband Robert Sterling. I knew Anne and Bob entirely through Topper, as George and Marion Kerby, spirits who haunted the eponymous “Cosmo Topper” (Leo G….