Category Archives: Main Page
PRESENTS
I don’t open presents before Christmas Day. Since I’d be on the road then this year, I just took a few presents to open in whatever motel I’d be staying at when the day rolled around (you can see them here) — the rest I left at home to open when I got back. It would still be Christmas, of course, which doesn’t end until Twelfth Night, 5 January.
The haul was rich.
Mary and Paul sent me two choice Criterion titles:
Adrienne and Bill sent me this terrific Robert Crumb art book — for adult intellectuals only:
J. B. sent me a CD of new tracks he’s been recording over the past year in Nashville — they might be available on iTunes before too long and if so I’ll let everybody know, because they are magnificent:
My sister Anna sent me a gift basket of treats from North Carolina — which are mostly eaten and so can’t be photographed:
My sister Libba sent me a supply of smoked salmon and tuna, which her family makes in Upstate New York — the best in the world:
Jack White sent me a complimentary LP from his label Third Man Records, as a beau geste because a larger set of LPs I’d ordered was delayed:
My cup runneth over — thanks to all!
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MIRACLE
I just cleaned a disc from the soundtrack to The Bells Of St. Mary’s and spun it with the new 78 cartridge and stylus I ordered from Japan. It played perfectly — a few pops and clicks which I expect a more thorough cleaning will mostly eliminate.
These 78s are more than 68 years old. They’re made of one-third shellac and two-thirds finely pulverized rock, with a bit of cotton fiber added for tensile strength. Their surfaces are super-hard but the discs will snap in two like flatbread if bent even slightly.
The fact that they’ve survived in this condition between 1946 and today really is a kind of miracle.
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SELFIE
1900
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NEW YEAR’S DAY DINNER
Jae and I decided to have the traditional Southern good luck dinner for New Year’s Day — collard greens, black-eyed peas and cornbread. The greens supposedly represent cash, the folding kind, the peas coins, and the cornbread gold. Quite apart from that it’s a damned good meal, as basic as you can get but as likely to be eaten by princes as by paupers down in Dixie.
It certainly took me back to my childhood.
Jae did all the work. He steamed the greens until they were tender then sauteed them in olive oil with garlic, shallots and lemon juice, adding a dollop of butter to the skillet at the end. They were perfect and we ate them so quickly and completely that they couldn’t make the group portrait above.
He boiled the black-eyed peas in vegetable stock with garlic and shallots, and he made a superb cornbread round in my cast-iron skillet in the oven.
I’m starting to feel lucky already.
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A PICTURE FROM THE ROAD
. . . by Jae Song.
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MOM GOES SHOPPING
. . . on New Year’s Day and buys only sweets.
Well, why not?
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A NEW YEAR
A splendid New Year’s Eve . . .
A hearty meal of ramen on a very cold night, washed down with a pitcher of Sapporo on draft. Back home for wine and then vodka and grapefruit juice. Some excellent Chandon rosé Champagne on the terrace where we had a fine view of the fireworks along The Strip, whose aftermath was lovely.
A bit of caviar to celebrate the start of the the new year properly, then up all night talking with Jae about art. In the wee hours we concluded, with drunken certainty, that when people who make things call themselves artists, it’s usually because the things they make are not quite as good as they ought to be or could be, and the people who’ve made them want a pass for this because of “who they are” rather “what they do”.
We’ll have none of that in 2015!
[Photos by Jae Song]
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AULD LANG SYNE
REMEMBER
I’m old, so I can say this with authority — one smile, one kiss, one hand warmly held can leave an imprint on a whole lifetime, like a watermark on a sheet of paper. In the end it won’t matter what’s written on the paper, scribbled records of ecstasy or despair — the watermark will endure as a faint reminder of what’s eternal.
IT MUST BE CHRISTMAS
It’s still Christmas, folks — will be until Twelfth Night, January 5th. In case you’re sick of it already, here’s a melancholy Christmas song just for you.
AN AMY CREHORE FOR TODAY
Bathers’ Club — brand new. See it and other work on her web site here:
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AN LP COVER FOR TODAY
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GOEBBELS
David Irving is a brilliant and indefatigable researcher into the history of WWII. He has mastered the surviving German archives as no other investigator has and he has had a knack for getting surviving German military and political figures to talk to him. He probably knows more about the German war effort, and in greater detail, than any historian alive.
He also seems to have a screw loose — revealed in a vague sympathy with Naziism and a disposition to anti-Semitism, often conveyed more by innuendo than by direct expressions of opinion — and this wobbly screw drives people crazy, which is understandable. It should certainly make us question his historical conclusions, if not his facts, which always seem to be in impeccable order.
Irving delights in pointing out that there is no documentary evidence that Hitler ordered or even knew about the Final Solution set in motion by his minions. It violates common sense to think that Hitler didn’t order or approve the actions of his subordinates in a project of such scale, the surviving documentary record notwithstanding — so why does Irving make such a fuss over the missing “evidence”? To suggest that Hitler wasn’t the monster every reasonable persons knows he was? That seems to be his aim.
It’s this sort of thing that has branded Irving a scoundrel — but scoundrel or not, he must be read, read with a degree of skepticism, of course, but read. You simply won’t find the information he has to offer anywhere else.
His massive biography of Joseph Goebbels, withdrawn from publication in the U. S. due to a campaign of invective against its author, is now back in print in England and can be had from Irving’s web site here.
I can understand not wanting to support Irving personally by buying his books. On the other hand, if you want to know all that can be known about Goebbels’s life, you will need to place this volume on your reading list, if not on your open shelves.
RAMEN!!!!!!!!!!!
My friend Jae was walking around my neighborhood today and noticed a new restaurant close to my home. He suggested we try it tonight. It’s housed in a cool-looking stand-alone building in the parking lot of a strip mall — the interior is small, warm and inviting, with subdued lighting, a bar and a big communal table in the center surrounded by booths.
When we showed up around 7pm there was already a crowd waiting for tables, which seemed like a good sign. It was. The place has Sapporo on draft and the food is exceptional, easily the best ramen I’ve ever tasted, and reasonably priced, too. It’s open seven days a week until 3am.
What a find.