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herd it / heard it
The pay-off to an elaborate set-up tale, giving a pun on a familiar expression (in this case a song title). From Vince the Sign Guy: Vince Rozmiarek of Indian Hills CO and (from his Facebook page) “his...
View ArticleTurkish marches
It’s the time of the year when I re-connect with Ellen Sulkis James, an old friend, going back to the early 1960s, when we were both on the staff of the Reading Eagle newspaper in Reading PA, an old...
View ArticleAnnals of cultural exchange: Turkish Austrian Turkish music
A Facebook comment by Michael Covarrubias (in Turkey) on yesterday’s posting “Turkish marches” (about the Mozart Rondo alla turca and the Beethoven “Turkish March” from The Ruins of Athens): Your...
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down there
That’s down there ‘male genitals, junk’, in this Facebook ad (hat tip to Victor Steinbok) for the Dollar Shave Club’s razor starter set — the razor handle, razor blades, and three accompanying...
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Aura Lee in the morning
Today’s morning music, playing (on the Apple Music that’s beamed into my bedroom during the night) when I arose at 3:40 am: from Anonymous 4’s 1865: Songs of Hope and Home from the American Civil War,...
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The Long Hello
(Warning: after the McPhail, there will be some tasteless jokes, including two sexual ones) By Will McPhail, a delightful Ascent of Man (in this case, a self-possessed young woman) cartoon in the...
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Original Rockers
“Original Rockers”: Wayno’s title for yesterday’s Wayno / Piraro Bizarro; the published title “AC/BC” is a pun on the name AC/DC (for the rock band), cavemen being from a great many years BCE (#1) Lead...
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Never-ending rock & roll
Today’s Wayno / Piraro Bizarro is a Sisyphus cartoon — the Greek mythological king (punished by having to endlessly roll a rock uphill) made into in a cartoon meme (many examples listed on the Page on...
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A matter of scale
From “Barry Blitt’s Sketchbook” on the Air Mail site on 9/23: The players here: Blitt is the (politically engaged) New Yorker cover artist (who is, among other things, a whiz at caricature); Jann...
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Green grow the pickles, O
This remarkable photo left me dumbstruck yesterday when Monica Macaulay passed it along on Facebook, having gotten it from the Art Deco FB group on 10/10: The Pickle Sisters, a vaudeville group from...
View ArticleAnti-Ode to Liszt
Gripings and grumblings on the Liszt piano transcription of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, specifically the final (4th) movement of this work, with its choral centerpiece, the Ode to Joy. Which Apple Music...
View ArticleLisztomania enters the 21st century
As a follow-up to my posting yesterday, “Anti-Ode to Liszt” (slamming his piano transcription of the Ode to Joy section of Beethoven’s 9th symphony), an amazing New Yorker piece by Alex Ross, in print...
View ArticleDitto ditto my song
A serenade on my Apple Music in the dark night of 10/13, Danny Kaye singing Gilbert & Sullivan patter songs, with warmth rather than the sharp edges of the D’Oyly Carte patter specialists; at my 2...
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On the plot of Die Zauberflöte
(Side material for a posting in preparation about Julie Taymor’s Metropolitan Opera production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte) Opera plots are notoriously packed with preposterous and incomprehensible...
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Der Vogelfänger bin ich ja
Or, in rhyming colloquial English: I’m Papageno, that’s my name, And catching birds, well, that’s my game! Nathan Gunn as Papageno, clutching his magic bells And he more or less literally animates the...
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The 2024 Arnold Zwicky Award
From the Linguistic Society of America’s Secretariat this morning: Arnold Zwicky Award: This award, given for the first time in 2021 [as the 2022 AZ Award], is intended to recognize the contributions...
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Cum All Ye Faithful
(About a gay porn flick, with naked hunky models displaying their bodies, but no actual genitals on display or descriptions of man-on-man sex, just some vulgar slang and reference to ejaculation....
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The Evolution of the Upright Bass
The title of a Sara Lautman cartoon in the New Yorker issue of 10/27/23: (#1) The instrument emerges from the primordial ooze, climbs onto land, and ascends, eventually to stand upright at the pinnacle...
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A high-theatrical digital collagist
That’s Hector de Gregorio, whose fantasist digital collage Love of Hermes came past me on Pinterest recently: (#1) The male figure’s face is (a version of) de Gregorio’s own; the composition is packed...
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Rehab return day
It’s a foggy day in Palo Alto town, on the anniversary of my return home from a Palo Alto rehab center on 12/5/20, after having given up drinking several weeks before, a decision that impelled me into...
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