The national news ended, and before I knew what was happening, the entertainment "news" program EXTRA! came on. Suddenly former Saved by the Bell "star" Mario Lopez started recounting his "coverage" of the Golden Globe Awards on Sunday night....meeting the celebs on the red carpet as they entered the auditorium...
and THEN his getting to "interview"every one of the winners.
My god, I thought, what kind of humiliation do they inflict upon the losers!?
12 January 2009
I guess it depends on what the meaning of "fiction" is
As reported in Insider Higher Ed (1/12/09):
The reading of fiction is on the rise. A study to be released today by the National Endowment for the Arts reports that for the first time since the NEA started analyzing this type of data in 1982, the proportion of adults reporting that they read at least one novel, short story, poem or play in the last year increased over the previous survey, The New York Times reported. In 2008, the proportion reporting that they had read a work of fiction was 50.2 percent.
I'll be gladdened officially, if the following aren't being counted as "fiction" (even if they, in fact, are fiction):
most governmental reports,
some recent holocaust love stories,
not a few memoirs,
many newspaper stories,
and
almost all football coaches' press conferences
The reading of fiction is on the rise. A study to be released today by the National Endowment for the Arts reports that for the first time since the NEA started analyzing this type of data in 1982, the proportion of adults reporting that they read at least one novel, short story, poem or play in the last year increased over the previous survey, The New York Times reported. In 2008, the proportion reporting that they had read a work of fiction was 50.2 percent.
I'll be gladdened officially, if the following aren't being counted as "fiction" (even if they, in fact, are fiction):
most governmental reports,
some recent holocaust love stories,
not a few memoirs,
many newspaper stories,
and
almost all football coaches' press conferences
11 January 2009
Earlier Bono on Sinatra (1994)
Frank never did like Rock and Roll. And he's not crazy about guys wearing earrings either. But he doesn't hold it against me And anyway, the feeling is not mutual.
Rock and Roll people love Frank Sinatra because Frank has got what we want: swagger and attitude; he's big on attitude. Serious attitude, bad attitude. Frank's the Chairman of the bad. Rock and Roll plays at being tough but this guy, well, he's the boss. The boss of bosses. The man. The big bang of pop. I'm not gonna mess with him, are you?
Who's this guy that every city in America wants to claim as their own? This painter who lives in the desert, this first-rate, first-take actor. This singer who makes other men poets. Boxing clever with every word. Talking like America Tough, straight-up, in headlines. Comin' through with the big stick, the aside, the quiet compliment. Good cop, bad cop, all in the same breath. You know his story 'cause it's your story. Frank walks like America -- cock-sure.
It's 1945, and the U.S. Cavalry are trying to get their asses out of Europe, but they never really do. They're part of another kind of invasion AFR -- American Forces Radio (sic). Broadcasting a music that'll curl the stiff upper-lip of England and the rest of the world. Paving the way for Duke Ellington, the big band, Tommy Dorsey And right out in front -- Frank Sinatra. His voice as tight as a fist. Opening at the end of a bar. Not on the beat, over it, playing with it, splitting it like a jazz man, like Miles Davis. Turning on the right phrase and the right song. Which is where he lives, where he lets go, where he reveals himself .His songs are his home and he lets you in/ But you know that to sing like that you've gotta have lost a couple of fights. To know tenderness and romance you've gotta have had your heart broken.
People say that Frank hasn't talked to the press, they wanna know how he is, what's on his mind. But you know Sinatra's out there more nights than most punk bands. Selling his story through the songs. Telling and articulate in the choice of those songs. Private thoughts on a public address system. Generous.
This is the conundrum of Frank Sinatra: Left and right brain hardly talking. Boxer and painter, actor and singer, lover and father, bandman and loner. Troubleshooter and troublemaker. The champ who would rather show you his scars than his medals. He may be putty in Barbara's hands. But I'm not gonna mess with him, are you?
Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready to welcome a man heavier than the Empire State, more connected than the Twin Towers, as recognizable as the Statue of Liberty, and living proof that God is a Catholic!
Will you welcome the King of New York City, Francis Albert Sinatra!
Rock and Roll people love Frank Sinatra because Frank has got what we want: swagger and attitude; he's big on attitude. Serious attitude, bad attitude. Frank's the Chairman of the bad. Rock and Roll plays at being tough but this guy, well, he's the boss. The boss of bosses. The man. The big bang of pop. I'm not gonna mess with him, are you?
Who's this guy that every city in America wants to claim as their own? This painter who lives in the desert, this first-rate, first-take actor. This singer who makes other men poets. Boxing clever with every word. Talking like America Tough, straight-up, in headlines. Comin' through with the big stick, the aside, the quiet compliment. Good cop, bad cop, all in the same breath. You know his story 'cause it's your story. Frank walks like America -- cock-sure.
It's 1945, and the U.S. Cavalry are trying to get their asses out of Europe, but they never really do. They're part of another kind of invasion AFR -- American Forces Radio (sic). Broadcasting a music that'll curl the stiff upper-lip of England and the rest of the world. Paving the way for Duke Ellington, the big band, Tommy Dorsey And right out in front -- Frank Sinatra. His voice as tight as a fist. Opening at the end of a bar. Not on the beat, over it, playing with it, splitting it like a jazz man, like Miles Davis. Turning on the right phrase and the right song. Which is where he lives, where he lets go, where he reveals himself .His songs are his home and he lets you in/ But you know that to sing like that you've gotta have lost a couple of fights. To know tenderness and romance you've gotta have had your heart broken.
People say that Frank hasn't talked to the press, they wanna know how he is, what's on his mind. But you know Sinatra's out there more nights than most punk bands. Selling his story through the songs. Telling and articulate in the choice of those songs. Private thoughts on a public address system. Generous.
This is the conundrum of Frank Sinatra: Left and right brain hardly talking. Boxer and painter, actor and singer, lover and father, bandman and loner. Troubleshooter and troublemaker. The champ who would rather show you his scars than his medals. He may be putty in Barbara's hands. But I'm not gonna mess with him, are you?
Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready to welcome a man heavier than the Empire State, more connected than the Twin Towers, as recognizable as the Statue of Liberty, and living proof that God is a Catholic!
Will you welcome the King of New York City, Francis Albert Sinatra!
(Not Sonny) Bono on Sinatra
U2's Bono on Sinatra in today's NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/opinion/11bono.html
More about this later!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/opinion/11bono.html
More about this later!
10 January 2009
Happy Birthday, Frank, Jr.!
Frank Sinatra, Jr. is 65 today.
To celebrate, check out his 2006 That Face cd, with a very nice version of a great Cahn and Van Heusen song "Walking Happy."
I'm fairly certain that, if Frank, Jr. had any other name, he'd be far better respected than he is. An excellent musician, great bandleader, and a fine singer, he is in an entirely different class than a Harry Connick, Jr. or a Michael Buble. If you really listen, you'll understand that.
His problem, however, has always been twofold:
1) He sounds, thanks to genetics, more like Frank than is beneficial to anyone because you can also clearly tell he's not his father. Before you hold this fact against him, of course, remember that NO ONE is another Sinatra (and certainly not the aforementioned Connick or Buble).
2) From the beginning of his career in the early 60s, he's been rabidly anti-rock-music. (And I don't mean just anti-heavy-metal, or anti-rap, or anti-grunge...I'm talking anti-Beatles.) Given his generation, even if he prefers a Rodgers and Hammerstein to a Lennon and McCartney, there's no need to continually condemn it. That ship has sailed, and, by refusing to accept it, his campaign to keep the Great American Songbook alive and well is, in some ways, discredited...especially since plenty of more contemporary artists have acknowledged, indeed EMBRACED, Sinatra as a seminal influence, musical and otherwise.
Anyway, Franklin Wayne Sinatra (not really a junior at all)...Happy Birthday!
To celebrate, check out his 2006 That Face cd, with a very nice version of a great Cahn and Van Heusen song "Walking Happy."
I'm fairly certain that, if Frank, Jr. had any other name, he'd be far better respected than he is. An excellent musician, great bandleader, and a fine singer, he is in an entirely different class than a Harry Connick, Jr. or a Michael Buble. If you really listen, you'll understand that.
His problem, however, has always been twofold:
1) He sounds, thanks to genetics, more like Frank than is beneficial to anyone because you can also clearly tell he's not his father. Before you hold this fact against him, of course, remember that NO ONE is another Sinatra (and certainly not the aforementioned Connick or Buble).
2) From the beginning of his career in the early 60s, he's been rabidly anti-rock-music. (And I don't mean just anti-heavy-metal, or anti-rap, or anti-grunge...I'm talking anti-Beatles.) Given his generation, even if he prefers a Rodgers and Hammerstein to a Lennon and McCartney, there's no need to continually condemn it. That ship has sailed, and, by refusing to accept it, his campaign to keep the Great American Songbook alive and well is, in some ways, discredited...especially since plenty of more contemporary artists have acknowledged, indeed EMBRACED, Sinatra as a seminal influence, musical and otherwise.
Anyway, Franklin Wayne Sinatra (not really a junior at all)...Happy Birthday!
09 January 2009
When updating songs become necessary...and what won't happen
Ah, what to do when politics interferes with popular music!
The lyrics of "Let's Get Away from It All," written in 1941, originally went:
We'll travel 'round from town to town;
We'll visit every state.
I'll repeat
"I love you sweet"
in all the forty-eight!
Later on, with the addition of Alaska and Hawaii, the lyric, as recorded byDella Reese, for example, evolved into:
We'll travel round from town to town
We'll visit every state
I'll repeat
"I think you're nifty"
In every state
(and I think they're fifty)!
I guess I need to find a recording of it from the brief post-Alaska, pre-Hawaii period...
How would that have gone?
We'll travel round from town to town
We'll visit every state
I'll repeat
"You are divine/sweeter than wine/one-of-a-kind/really quite fine/a Shakespearean line"
In all the forty-nine!
Which leads me to this bold prediction:
Puerto Rico will never become a state, but not because of any legitimate political reason to exclude it. It will simply be because 50 seems complete. Though they'll never admit it: No one will ever really want 51, 52, or 53... states.
So unless there are 25 more territories out there to make a nice round 75 states, there'll never be more than 50.
It ain't politics, folks; it's aesthetics.
The lyrics of "Let's Get Away from It All," written in 1941, originally went:
We'll travel 'round from town to town;
We'll visit every state.
I'll repeat
"I love you sweet"
in all the forty-eight!
Later on, with the addition of Alaska and Hawaii, the lyric, as recorded byDella Reese, for example, evolved into:
We'll travel round from town to town
We'll visit every state
I'll repeat
"I think you're nifty"
In every state
(and I think they're fifty)!
I guess I need to find a recording of it from the brief post-Alaska, pre-Hawaii period...
How would that have gone?
We'll travel round from town to town
We'll visit every state
I'll repeat
"You are divine/sweeter than wine/one-of-a-kind/really quite fine/a Shakespearean line"
In all the forty-nine!
Which leads me to this bold prediction:
Puerto Rico will never become a state, but not because of any legitimate political reason to exclude it. It will simply be because 50 seems complete. Though they'll never admit it: No one will ever really want 51, 52, or 53... states.
So unless there are 25 more territories out there to make a nice round 75 states, there'll never be more than 50.
It ain't politics, folks; it's aesthetics.
08 January 2009
Call me at the "Ivory Tower"
In my last post, I ventured to guess that the percentage of our population who think that too many of the books we assign in high school and college are irrelevant to their lives has risen meteorically since some 38% agreed with that statement in 1993.
I also sighed.
Here's my current take:
Way too much of current curricula in all disciplines (especially on the university level) has fallen prey to the relevance argument:
"If it's not relevant to our everyday lives, if we can't use it in a job immediately upon graduation, if it's not listed among the qualifications in a job listing, if it doesn't talk directly to my experience as a _________, then why bother?
"Nobody of importance in the real world," they continue, "is ever going to ask me to scan a line of Milton's Paradise Lost, or solve a quadratic equation, or describe the importance of Impressionism in the history of painting, or talk about the Gilded Age, or..."
This attitude is now being abetted by a push from all those who argue that more and more and more learning needs to "engage the community," to help solve the problems of society, to get students out of the ivory tower. "The world has problems," they crack, "but higher ed has disciplines."
The problem with this approach is that educated people solve problems. And people are not truly educated, in the fullest sense, if all they've ever learned is how to do is "this, that, or the other" practical application. And application without perspective -- without discipline -- is busy work.
Believe me, I want (and, indeed, need) Joe the Plumber to know how to install and fix my pipes. But, unless he's spent some time pondering the problem of evil in a philosophy class or learned a little macroeconomics, or read a poem in another language, or heard at some point that "plumbing" comes from the Latin word for "lead," or taken a Chem or Bio or Physics class, I can't imagine he'll remedy any of the larger societal problems that lack as clear-cut and concrete solutions as my septic tank.
I also realize that, just because students have taken philosophy, Chinese, or Chemistry, it does not mean they will be able to solve the big problems that face us. BUT it's a really good bet that, if they never addressed the perennial questions of what is art, evil, humanity, and hydrogen; if they've never been tested in the intellectual rigors of a discipline, they'll be hard-pressed to have the vision necessary for what faces us in the 21st Century.
Training needs to be "relevant" and timely. Education is best when it's timeless.
A more practical concern, of course, is that, if public universities are now being charged with solving society's problems, doesn't that turn them into just another state agency, no different than Family Services, the Department of Corrections, or Transportation?
I sure hope not.
Is a university just another service organization?
I sure hope not.
Will funding (and promotions, etc.) be linked to its success in curing (or at least alleviating) hunger, homelessness, unplanned pregnancy, and illiteracy in its local community?
I sure hope not.
We must actively embrace the ivory tower/real world dichotomy -- NOT run away from it. We can then help students think as broadly and as deeply as possible, so that, when they do venture out into the real world, they have a firm grasp of human history, thought, and accomplishment, which, as educated people, they can then apply to both their own lives and the lives of those around them.
I also sighed.
Here's my current take:
Way too much of current curricula in all disciplines (especially on the university level) has fallen prey to the relevance argument:
"If it's not relevant to our everyday lives, if we can't use it in a job immediately upon graduation, if it's not listed among the qualifications in a job listing, if it doesn't talk directly to my experience as a _________, then why bother?
"Nobody of importance in the real world," they continue, "is ever going to ask me to scan a line of Milton's Paradise Lost, or solve a quadratic equation, or describe the importance of Impressionism in the history of painting, or talk about the Gilded Age, or..."
This attitude is now being abetted by a push from all those who argue that more and more and more learning needs to "engage the community," to help solve the problems of society, to get students out of the ivory tower. "The world has problems," they crack, "but higher ed has disciplines."
The problem with this approach is that educated people solve problems. And people are not truly educated, in the fullest sense, if all they've ever learned is how to do is "this, that, or the other" practical application. And application without perspective -- without discipline -- is busy work.
Believe me, I want (and, indeed, need) Joe the Plumber to know how to install and fix my pipes. But, unless he's spent some time pondering the problem of evil in a philosophy class or learned a little macroeconomics, or read a poem in another language, or heard at some point that "plumbing" comes from the Latin word for "lead," or taken a Chem or Bio or Physics class, I can't imagine he'll remedy any of the larger societal problems that lack as clear-cut and concrete solutions as my septic tank.
I also realize that, just because students have taken philosophy, Chinese, or Chemistry, it does not mean they will be able to solve the big problems that face us. BUT it's a really good bet that, if they never addressed the perennial questions of what is art, evil, humanity, and hydrogen; if they've never been tested in the intellectual rigors of a discipline, they'll be hard-pressed to have the vision necessary for what faces us in the 21st Century.
Training needs to be "relevant" and timely. Education is best when it's timeless.
A more practical concern, of course, is that, if public universities are now being charged with solving society's problems, doesn't that turn them into just another state agency, no different than Family Services, the Department of Corrections, or Transportation?
I sure hope not.
Is a university just another service organization?
I sure hope not.
Will funding (and promotions, etc.) be linked to its success in curing (or at least alleviating) hunger, homelessness, unplanned pregnancy, and illiteracy in its local community?
I sure hope not.
We must actively embrace the ivory tower/real world dichotomy -- NOT run away from it. We can then help students think as broadly and as deeply as possible, so that, when they do venture out into the real world, they have a firm grasp of human history, thought, and accomplishment, which, as educated people, they can then apply to both their own lives and the lives of those around them.
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