Well, it’s a conundrum. For his first experiment he came up with an elegant concept: He stopped people on the street and asked them to sing, entirely from memory, one of their favorite hit songs. The results were astonishingly accurate. Most people could hit the tempo of the original song within a four-percent margin of …
I have never read a single book by Jane Haddam, and she’s written some 23 mystery novels including the Gregor Demarkian series, but I’m gonna seek them out. Why? Read some of the essays she’s got posted on her website. If you’re politically-minded, read the one called Why I Don’t Vote Republican and the three …
Talking about news that Saddam Hussein may be executed within days, Josh Marshall says: The Iraq War has been many things, but for its prime promoters and cheerleaders and now-dwindling body of defenders, the war and all its ideological and literary trappings have always been an exercise in moral-historical dress-up for a crew of folks …
Sometimes I just poke around to see what’s being discussed in the “Talk” sections of the marvelous tool that is Library Thing. I was doing that after lunch today and found reviews (125 reviews of a book! Most books have 1-5, max!) of The Time Traveler’s Wife. After reading many of the reviews (click the …
I got a T-Shirt I really really like.
It was a long life and an honorable one. Ford, himself a replacement for a VP who resigned in disgrace, became President after Richard Nixon resigned in August 1974. He pardoned Nixon, an act for which he was vilified, but which in retrospect may have been the right thing to do. He was a good …
The first time I ever saw James Brown was in a theater as I watched Jan & Dean play the T.A.M.I. show in 1965. To be honest, I didn’t know what to make of him (he sang Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag). The follow-up single was I Got You (I Feel Good), which I …
Lest one read the previous entry and think Christmas was all about me, we got Mom The Assassin’s Gate, Hubris, and Imperial Life in the Emerald City, as well as Bette Midler’s tribute album to Rosemary Clooney, Tony Bennett’s Duets album, and Rod Stewart’s Great American Songbook, Volume 2. The remaining members of the family …
Oh my. My mother decided I needed more books, which is like saying the ocean needs more salt. I received all three of Robert Caro’s prize-winning biographies of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power, Means of Ascent, and Master of the Senate. If that weren’t enough, my sister got me Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of …
Last I knew there were 41,000 tickets sold to the game this afternoon. I can see the stadium from my kitchen window, and that’s as close as I’m gonna get to it. I will be wrapping presents on the table with the game on the tube (ESPN, 8:00pm EST, 3:00pm local). At the moment, though, …