Dear Diary: Oops

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Oops. I came home from an evening at the theatre determined to scribble a few notes about the play that we saw, Accent on Youth, at MTC — starring the fantastic David Hyde Pierce. Whilst taking little rests from that exercise, I checked in at Facebook, &c &c. Is there anybody at Facebook older than I am? If so, I don’t want to know it — that would be even more depressing. In any case, I forgot all about my dear diary.

Considering last night’s 3 AM lights-out, I was up fairly early (9:20). I can’t tell you what I did this morning, so let’s call it fractal. I had a fractal morning. Fractal is how I always feel after a few hours with Google Reader. Eventually, I had lunch, and then I wrote drafts for two Portico pages — the minimum.

And then the fun began, except I’m being ironic; the attempt to print three checks via Intuit reminded me that the desktop computer does not like to print checks — although it will print reports. Also two of the ink cartridges had to be replaced — or so the machine told me; how’m I supposed to know for certain? The whole printer/running  back and forth the length of the apartment business lasted for just about an hour. I did not have a tantrum, because I didn’t have time for a tantrum. I wanted to clear up the paperasse, and I succeeded. It worked out well, actually. Ordinarily, when I’ve had a productive day, I wish I could just stay home and be even more productive. The printer nonsense made going out seem a godsend.

When we came home, I saw that someone was waiting for me to confirm a Facebook friendship. I did so at once, and then I gave Kathleen five guesses at who it was. “You’ll never guess” got narrowed down in ways that I can no longer recapture. I wish I could, because Kathleen guessed right the first time.

It’s raining, it’s pouring, and this old man wants to snore.

Daily Office: Thursday

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¶ Matins: Zachary Wolfe believes (or, at least, hopes) that the future does not look good for a third Bloomberg term. But perhaps Mr Wolfe was writing before the ruckus broke out in Albany.

¶ Lauds: Errol Morris’s remarkable series, Bamboozling Ourselves, looks into art forgeries and other deceptions — although “looks” is putting it mildly.(Master link list here.)

¶ Prime: John Lanchester’s lengthy but extremely entertaining  essay on the banking bailout, “It’s Finished,” has been generating lots of buzz, at least at sites that I visit. Someone wrote somewhere that it ends “unhappily,” but I don’t agree.

¶ Tierce: Toward the end of John Eligon’s account of Astor butler Christopher Ely’s testimony, my heart went into a clutch. The most horrific thing about this trial so far is the damage that it has been done to the reputation of attorney Henry Christensen.

¶ Sext: It’s possible that Matt Blind has been in the bookstore biz too long. He wants to fire all the customers. Find out where you fit in his taxonomy (via kottke.org)

¶ Nones: Michael Sheen meets the Queen. The real one.

¶ Vespers: At The Morning News, Man in  Boston Robert Birnbaum rounds up some good books about Cuba. Sadly, he omits Tomorrow They Will Kiss.

¶ Compline: The Obamas and the Arts: a new model for the United States.

¶ Bon weekend à tous!

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Dear Diary: Slow

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This will be brief. I have spent the day slowly, laboriously, and deliberately. The feeling that little was accomplished must yield (if only it would) to the realization that I worked all day, every minute of it, really; and, anyway, tomorrow’s Daily Office required a lot of reading. Writing the Daily Office takes no time at all, once I’ve decided on the links. Deciding on the links involves reading what’s at the other end of them.

Take a story that I decided not to write about: Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s stay — very temporary, as it turned out — of the Chrysler bankruptcy case. I decided not to write about it because there was really nothing to write about. If the Court decided to hear the appeal from those Indiana people, then there would be something to say, although perhaps not by me. But Justice Ginsburg’s stay was an automatic sort of thing, pro forma.

The difficulty is that I read the story before deciding not to write about it. Of course I read it! It was the sort of story that one really ought to read. The sale of Chrysler to Fiat may not be the most wonderful bankruptcy outcome ever, but its happening quickly is of the essence, and the opposition, however principled, was wrong-headed (as, indeed, principled gestures too often are). I read the story in my capacity as a member of the general public, and also in my capacity as chief cook and bottle-washer here at The Daily Blague. I read a lot of stories that way every day. It’s the Big Noise of 2009: All of a sudden I’m a Walter Burns wannabe.

In the evening, just for fun and larks, I fought another skirmish in the video chat wars. Don’t. Ask. The upshot was a jolly conversation via Skype that lasted as long as my friend and I wanted it to do. On the right machine, too.

Something to look forward to: David Hyde Pierce, in Accent on Youth. We’ve got tickets for tomorrow night. I plan to be easily entertained.

Daily Office: Wednesday

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¶ Matins: Will George Dangerfield’s 1935 classic, The Strange Death of Liberal England (one of the few history books that everybody ought to read, if only because everybody who has read it seems to love it) be echoed by a book called something like The Strange Death of Labour England? David Runciman foretells.

¶ Lauds: Scott Cantrell wonders if piano competitions ought to take place behind screens (as orchestral auditions are); he doesn’t think that a blind pianist would have won this year’s Van Cliburn International Piano Competition had the jury been blind.

¶ Prime: Andrew Price notes the gender gap in unemployment, at GOOD.

¶ Tierce: After Mily de Gernier’s testimony, prosecutors will have to rethink the top count in their indictment of Anthony Marshall. That’s the one that describes Mr Marshall’s sale of the late philanthropist’s Childe Hassam as “grand larceny.”

¶ Sext: Choire Sicha: Which gender is superior, and why this means holding women to higher standards.

¶ Nones: Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoë has awarded the Dalai Lama honorary Parisian citizenship. Not an act of state, stutters President Sarkozy!

¶ Vespers: Stephen Elliott interviews Dave Eggers, at The Rumpus. Once Mr Eggers’s forthcoming book (Zeitoun) has been dealt with, the conversation turns, very interestingly, to print and poor kids.

¶ Compline: Alex Krupp shows how the Industrial Revolution’s grudge against human nature leads to intellectual impoverishment — via Benjamin Spock! “How intellectual pollution has crippled American children,” at Sensemaking.

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¶ Lord Chesterfield can’t be charged with having invented “cool,” but his passionate dispassion and his anxious dislike of enthusiasm have a modern note. To his son, in Italy at the time:

… do not become a Virtuoso of small wares. Form a taste of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, if you please, by a careful examination of the works of the best ancient and modern artists; those are liberal arts, and a real taste and knowledge of them become a man of fashion very well. But beyond certain bounds, the Man of Taste ends, and the frivolous Virtuoso begins.

¶ Moby-Dick: Chapters 94 and 95. No, we are not there yet, not nearly.

Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affection, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say, — Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come, let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.

What repels me about this passage is the bedecking of frankly carnal pleasure in the high-flying abstractions of Scripture.

¶ In Don Quixote, our hero descends into the Cave of Montesinos, where he encounters the heroes of old legends, enchanted by Merlin. Sancho is distressed by his master’s account.

“Holy God!” shouted Sancho. “Is it possible that there are in the world enchanters and enchantments so strong that they have turned my master’s good sense into foolishness and madness? Oh, Señor, Señor, for God’s sake think about what you are doing, and take back your honor, and don’t believe this nonsense that has reduced and lessened your good sense!”

“Since you love me, Sancho, you speak in this fashion,” said Don Quixote, “and since you have little experience in the things of this world, all things that are in any way difficult seem impossible to you; but in the course of time, as I have already said, I shall recount to you some of what I have seen down there, which will make you believe what I have recounted here, whose truth admits neither argument nor dispute.”

Cognitive dissonance erupts when Cervantes describes the enchanted body of Durandarte stretched out on a marble selpuchre: I start hearing Titurel’s sonorous voice calling from his crypt, in Parsifal.

¶ Squillions takes us to Las Vegas, where Noël Coward was contracted to entertain in 1955. As a man of the theatre, Coward appreciated the place for what it was.

In the classier casinos beams of light shoot down from baroque ceilings on the masses of earnest morons flinging their money down the drain. The sound is fascinating, a steady hum of conversation against a background of rhumba music and the noise of the fruit machines, the clink of silver dollars, quarters and nickels, and the subdued shouts of the croupiers. There are lots of pretty women about but I think, on the whole, sex takes a comparatively back seat. Every instinct and desire is concentrated on money. I expected that this would exasperate me but oddly enough it didn’t. The whole fantasia in on such a colossal scale that it is almost stimulating. … The gangsters who run the place are all urbane and charming. I had a feeling that if I opened a rival casino I would be battered to death with the utmost efficiency, but if I remained on my own ground as a most highly paid entertainer, I could trust them all the way.

How much I would love this book if it only contained nothing but the letters of Noël Coward!

Dear Diary: Quiet

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The day was, necessarily, a quiet one. Staying up last night and sitting outside during the storm — rather more wine than usual was consumed. This morning, I couldn’t face the prospect of paying bills in the afternoon. But I knew how much worse I’d feel if I went with Plan B, which was to watch Ne le dis à personne (Tell No One) in the blue room, while usefully engaged in the folding of (two) T-shirts. I saved the video for after the bills.

Watching movies in the blue room is a new possibility — well, a recently restored one. When we moved into this apartment in 1983, the television was in the blue room, along with the dining table and the pull-out couch. the blue room was our dining-room/guest-room combo. And our first VCR. Yikes. I don’t remember when the small TV was removed from the breakfront bookshelf behind my desk. We went without cable reception for a few years in the late Nineties, but had it hooked back up in 2000, in order to watch the debates. I still want to cry, just thinking about those debates.

But in 2000, we watched television in the living room, on a TET LCD unit that could double as a computer monitor. It was always my plan to upgrade the living room, someday, to an orthodox flat screen, and to use the TET in the blue room, in both of its capacities. Watching movies in the blue room would be good if I wanted to watch something late at night, or if Kathleen were home sick, because the speakers in the living room are right on the other side of a thin wall from the bed’s headboard, and even moderate volumes of sound carry through.

The “upgrade someday” occurred in February, but it took until this past weekend to connect the TET to a DVD player and to reconnect the Tannoy speakers to the amplifier. Time was when not a year went by without my engaging in a major stereo rewiring project, or at least adding some vital new piece of equipment, such as the Sony Minidisc player that I had such hopes for (until flash memory pulled a pfffft! on that). In the past year, I’ve given a great deal of this equipment away, and there is still a tower of it in the living room, only three components of which are actually in use. I put off hooking up the blue room DVD player in part because I wasn’t sure that I’d remember how to do it.

And you would have thought that I’d never hooked up sound equipment before, given the huffing, puffing, and cursing that filled the blue room with blue streaks in the latter part of Saturday afternoon. I had stopped in at Radio Shack a few days earlier to buy cables and wires and stuff that I already had, squirreled away somewhere in the apartment, but was too lazy to look for. In the event, I used none of it; everything that I ended up needing came out of a drawer in a closet.

The DVD player that I was hooking up was the first one that I bought, way back when; made by Toshiba, it had a single tray but could hold two DVDs. Now, why, you ask, would anyone want a two-disc capability? Because I got more for my money, obviously. I didn’t care that it was unnecessary. I didn’t really know that it was unnecessary. More was always better.

Everthing was hooked up and working — wow! — when I ran into a slight snag. It didn’t surprise me that I hadn’t held onto the Toshiba’s remote-control, but it was deeply vexing to discover that, without it, there was no way to advance the disc beyond the Play/Scene Selection/Setup menu. Such frills did not exist when DVDs were introduced. The first ones played just like CDs: you dropped one onto the tray and closed it, and the feature started up without ado. But that was then, ha ha.

Astonishingly, I Gave Up. Quietly and without even the suggestion of a tirade, I Let Go.

I moved the furniture back into place, gathered up unneeded cables and debris, such as twisties and cellophane wrapping, and even ran the vacuum over the carpet. It seemed clear that I would have to buy a new DVD player, but it could be hooked up painlessly, without moving anything. I did not need to watch DVDs in the blue room — not right now. I could let it go. Like a recovered paralytic, I marveled at my ability to get on with my life even though every attempt to move hotel Rwanda beyond a head shot of Don Cheadle failed. At the same time, I suffered phantom-limb syndrome: where was my tantrum? Why wasn’t I tearing down 86th Street to buy a new player right now, instead of waiting to clean up and cool off?

It was while I was calmly drying off after a shower that I was rewarded. Abandoning the struggle to make something happen liberated my brain, which remembered something: at a time when I had a number of Sony components, I was frequently irritated when clicking the remote for one unit would set them all playing at once. This recollection came at the end of several thoughts. The second was that I would not run down the street to P C Richard or to Best Buy to by a new DVD player after all, but would wait for an all-region player to be delivered by Amazon (I have a lot of French movies that haven’t been released in North America). The Toshiba all-region player in the bedroom, after wall, was/is a dandy machine … and this is where my Sony memory kicked in.

Sure enough, the “Enter” button on the all-region’s remote control, which I bought about three years ago, got Hotel Rwanda to play on our prehistoric machine. I turned it right off, and felt extraordinarily pleased with myself.

Ne le dis à personne played without a hitch.

Daily Office: Tuesday

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¶ Matins: From The Infrastructurist, a list of 36 ways in which streetcars trump buses. Despite some internal ambiguities — streetcars are both cool (#6) and nostalgic (#12) — and a bit of padding (#20), the list will make you wish that we were already there.

¶ Lauds: FROG schools may be as unlikely as fairy-tale princes, but these pre-fab classrooms do look good. Especially considering the nightmarish alternative…

¶ Prime: David Carr goes to two very different media parties, and his report makes me think of the last chapters of Proust, but run backwards.

¶ Tierce: Collateral damage from the Marshall trial: trusts and estates lawyer Henry Christensen’s nomination for membership at the Century Association has been tabled, pending the conclusion of the trial.

¶ Sext: Forget three meals a day. Americans consume a fourth: all day snacking. In other news, Choire Sicha sees Hangover, reviews audience.

¶ Nones: A cheering story at the Guardian, appended to an item noting that global arms spending has reached $1.47 trillian: “America a weapons supermarket for terrorists, inquiry finds.”

¶ Vespers: Alain de botton asks a good question: why don’t more writers write about work? Considering, you know, the importance of jobs and stuff. (via The Rumpus)

¶ Compline: At the Chronicle of Higher Education — the right place to begin asking — Joseph Marr Cronin and Howard E Horton wonder if undergraduate degrees are the new bubble. (via Arts Journal)

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Housekeeping Note: Tweet!

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Last week’s Blidgets, meet this week’s Tweets. Thanks to Steve Laico, of Searchlight Consulting, for both developments, which make The Daily Blague’s sidebars truly dynamic. That’s to say that they change because other things change.

Ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s implementation that matters — and, without Steve, you wouldn’t be reading my great ideas, and deciding that, well, maybe, they’re not that great. With all due &c.

In any case, I offer the ideas in the Aviary to anyone who wants to run with them. Don’t think I’m being generous; if you can’t copyright a recipe, you can’t protect a naked little undeveloped idea, either. But perhaps someone else can.

Dear Diary: Madeleines

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It was a good day, even though I woke up late and took a while to get started. The first thing that I did when I sat down at my desk was to put together a playlist for the day. I didn’t try to make it perfect; I aimed, rather, for a list that would lend itself to improvement — to substitution, really. Instead of Karl Böhm’s late Mozart, how about Karajan’s. Instead of Locatelli’s Opus 1 (a new addition to the collection), maybe some more Sammartini, if and when I can find it. And what would happen if I stuck Ein Heldenleben where Romeo & Juliet is now?

As for the end of the day, I spent it in the kitchen. It has been ages since I spent an evening in the kitchen. I used to, all the time; but that was before The Daily Blague was a twinkle in my eye. My kitchen is no longer a hobby; it’s a utility. Just as I have a plan for paying the bills every month, so I need a kitchen management system that, while not interesting in itself, is easily operated. It consists, for the most part, in taking down the contents of half of two cabinet shelves and checking out the stuff on the top shelf of the refrigerator door — the shelf that’s held up with duct tape. (The refrigerator is not three years old, but that’s modern plastic for you. Kathleen promises me a superdeluxe, freezer-at-the-bottom refrigerator, but I don’t hold her to it; I’m managing all right as it is.)

When I was through with my dinner (spaghetti alla carbonara — my default kitchen dinner), I decided to make a batch of madeleines. I do love to bake, and madeleines have been a specialty of mine ever since my mother brought back two madeleine tins from a trip to Paris in the early Seventies. (Of course I had begged her to do so.) In those days, the Proustian experience was a strictly literary, and not at all culinary, phenomenon. Also, there was no Pam: you had to butter and flour the grooved molds one by one, and it was a royal chienne.

The interesting thing, I find, is that even the modern Silpat, allegedly nonstick, madeleine molds require Pam. So I don’t much use the full-sized molds that I’ve collected. When I make a batch of madeleines ordinaires, I use the those tins from Paris to make two dozen regular madeleines, and two Silpat forms to make about three dozen mini-madeleines. I keep the big ones, and send the minis to the office with Kathleen.

Baking these shell-shaped treats — they’re neither cakes nor cookies, but something in between — used to be an affectation, I’ll admit. But, by now, I’ve been making them rather longer than anybody of my age, and probably as often as anybody on earth who isn’t either paid to make them or slightly mad. At an early age, baking madeleines became something that I do. Connecting them with Proust has lapsed into an afterthought. But I do wonder what his grandmother at Illiers would have thought of mine.  Woiuld she have detested the drop of lemon oil that, after wild experiment and variation, has become my only lasting interpolation to the recipe? It doesn’t much matter, because Kathleen adores it.

Daily Office: Monday

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¶ Matins: At Snarkmarket, Robin rightly complains about the routine misanthropy of the “Earth is Hiring” Campaign.

¶ Lauds: Citing financial concerns, blah, blah, blah: no Gehry stadium for Atlantic Yards. Quelle surprise!

¶ Prime: Roger Lowenstein calls for democratizing corporate boards, and begins his plea with a parable that will help you see what’s wrong with the way we manage now.

¶ Tierce: We take this break from the Marshall trial to bring you some truly great photographs from a Flickr photostream that is — amazingly — official. For annotations, turn to my source, The Awl.

¶ Sext: Golly, clothes do make the man. Presumably, Thomas J Watson, one of the key figures behind the screen that you’re reading, did not wear a three-piece suit on his yacht, the Palawan (there were seven!). But it’s hard to imagine him without a tie.

¶ Nones: Who cares how the European Parliament elections turned out, given that the turnout was the lowest ever.

¶ Vespers: Alexander Chee observes that identity publishing (gay fiction, Asian fiction) has degenerated into a triage tool that perpetuates clichéd story lines.

¶ Compline: At The Rumpus, Claire Caplan considers the social costs of innumeracy. I wish that she had gone further.  

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Weekend Update (Sunday Edition): Upgrade

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We had a perfect weekend, but I am not thinking about that now. What I am thinking about is the WordPress updgrade that was installed over the weekend. That it should be as difficult to decipher as the latest Microsoft Word in, say, 1991 is not surprising. But it insults me by remembering nothing. No autofills, no recollections of image folders. I have to click through or type from scratch quite as though I had never been here before.

When we went out to sit on the balcony at about one, Kathleen proposed going to Mass at St Thomas More at 5:45, and my joining her afterward for a walk up to the Conservatory Gardens, where we might photograph roses in the dusk. That sounded appealing but unlikely. If we are going to do something on a Sunday afternoon, we must do it early, before we’ve settled into domestic pastimes. Sunday is always a rather anxious day for me, because it’s a holiday, and without the benefit of a schedule I’m pretty sure that I will waste the day. I did not, in fact, waste the day — except insofar as I worried abut dooing so more or less constantly, and that was certainly a waste. As for Mass and photography, Kathleen went to 7:30 at St Iggy’s, and I took my camera on its tripod down to Carl Schurz.

I had meant to leave when she did, but I couldn’t — because I couldn’t find my camera. Where was it? I blamed the WordPress upgrade. And why not? In fact, however, I had “misplaced’ the camera by leaving it screwed on to the tripod. Since the tripod spent the day standing in the blue room, where, coming and going, I never failed to notice it, you’d think &c. But there was a cognitive thing going on. The last time I used a tripod, as I said the other day, the camera that I screwed onto it was a Canon AE-1. My Nikon Coolpix, which is just a three-dimensional credit card, simply didn’t “read” as a camera.

I set out for the park, and it began to rain. Correction: it began to sprinkle: the water dots remained discrete on the sidewalk. The day had  been gloriously sunny and clear; but at some point toward five or six, I looked up from the novel that I was reading because the light had dimmed. The first clouds were crossing the sun, and erasing shadows of building on other buildings. These shadows are almost as material as the brick façades that they fall upon, and it is startling to watch them melt away so utterly that it is hard to believe that they ever existed. Then the sun flashes them back, in chiseled high definition.  

The novel that I am reading has not yet been published. I found a galley on the M86 bus — this is a very literary town! The principal draw of reading a galley does not (trust me!) consist in reading a book ahead of the general public. It’s a matter rather of not having to wait to read a book until long after all of one’s literary friends have read it (or have had the chance to do so). The delight of reading a galley lies, however, in the typos.

“Another thing that kills me,” she said with deceptive clamness…

Not a typo. If you knew the character who “commits” this solecism, you’d see how just it is. Deceptive clamness is so — her. My task now is to work the mistake into an appealing witticism that I can try out on the author when I ask her to sign my copy of the novel. When it’s published.

Nano Note: Patience

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My favorite Gilbert & Sullivan Gilbert & Sullivan is now, officially, Patience. I have listened to it at least four times this spring, and loved it more each time. There’s a chorus toward the end of the first act that I’ve become very fond of, which is saying something, because Patience was the first G&S that I saw at the Jan Hus Playhouse forty years ago, and many, many of its numbers have been favorites for years. But this build-up finale chorus somehow escaped me until now. Here’s the line that I adore:

And never, oh never, our hearts will range
     From that old, old love again!

And then there’s Mary Sansom’s laugh (on the D’Oyly Carte CD) at the end of the reprise of “Twenty Love-Sick Maidens We.” It’s the most beautiful laugh that I have ever heard on a recording — a true silberklang. I burst into tears every time I hear it, just for the joy.

I’ve been devoting my Saturday afternoons to Gilbert & Sullivans, three at a pop, since the weekend after Easter (18-19 April). It’s late in the day to have figured out how to conduct the aural correlative of spring cleaning, but then everything about my lfie these days is of the better-late-than-never sort. I thought I might be at risk of finding Sullivan’s music a trifle outstayed this afternoon; after all, none of the great opera composers has ever occupied my house-tidying Saturdays on a remotely similar scale, even allowing for Ring cycles. But I had a merry time, listening to the line-up of Pinafore (which you’d think I’d know, but I don’t), Utopia, Ltd (’twas my misfortune to be at Bronxville High at the wrong time), and then, once again, Patience.

People often think that the subject of Patience‘s satire  is Oscar Wilde, but Wilde was hardly on the scene in 1881 (Except, as I just found out, to the extent that Richard D’Oyly Carte put him on it, as a publicist!). In fact, Reginald Bunthorne is a take-off on James McNeil Whistler, who, unlike Wilde, liked girls. (I doubt very much that Gilbert would have touched Oscar Wilde, in any sense of the word.) An important distinction, all in all. I mean, you wouldn’t have heard Wilde confessing to a catamite, “Well, between you and me, I don’t like poetry.” In any case, you wouldn’t have believed him.

Weekend Open Thread: Books/Art

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Last Week at Portico: A few weeks ago, I began writing up my responses to the weekly short stories in The New Yorker, and publishing them at here. It didn’t take long for me to recognize that the pieces belong at Portico, but I couldn’t find the time to alter the one or two menus and to create the navigation page that would be indispensable to getting from here to there.  Meanwhile, I let a couple of stories go by without writing them up. If nothing else, working this vein of guilt kept complacency at bay.

On Wednesday, I think it was, I took The New Yorker to lunch and sat in the restaurant until I was finished with Jonathan Franzen’s “Good Neighbors”. (I laughed out loud quite often, but they’re used to that, where I have lunch on Wednesdays). I couldn’t wait to get home and start writing.

Until, that is, I started writing, yesterday morning. The story struck me as so rich and satisfying and classic that I was covered in inadequacy. The first draft was spastic. I took the the now-unusual step of printing it out and marking it up with a pencil. Then I revised it at the computer. This morning, I revised it again. If short fiction in The New Yorker regularly cost this much time and effort, I’d have to abandon the feature.  

Also difficult to write about was Kazuo Ishiguro’s new collection of short stories (written at one go), Nocturnes. The surface of each story eddies uncertainly, like the East River between tides, and seems to conceal a secret or a puzzle. After much nail biting, I concluded that the secret is that the stories are as would-be glamorous as the characters in them. Which is not much of a secret; but then would-be glamour doesn’t amount to much, either. As stories (not puzzles), the tales in Nocturnes are hard to put down.

Up, in contrast, was extremely easy to write up. The new Pixar movie made a direct and unambiguous connection with me. I wish that I had had grandchildren sitting next to me. 

And finally, this week’s Book Review review.

Weekend Update (Friday Edition): Out All Day

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As planned, Ms NOLA came up to Yorkville when her office closed for summer hours at one. M le Neveu, who was to come as well, was feeling under the weather, so he stayed in bed. It was a good day for staying in bed here in New York, and we wanted the late graduate student to be in a good shape for dinner. He is here for the weekend, and Kathleen and I took advantage of his presence in town to insist on a celebration at BLT Steak. What with her acquisition of a book, and his graduation from Columbia, there were ample grounds for congratulation. He is a genuine PhD now, and she an equally genuine editor in New York publishing. Both of them worked very hard to pass these milestones, and Kathleen and I are hugely proud of them.

So Ms NOLA and I had lunch by ourselves, at Tokubei, the Japanese pub across the street that is now open for lunch. Then we packed up enough Spode Blue Italian to serve six people. Once upon a time, I had twenty place settings of the pattern; it was our everyday china in the country. Kathleen kept saying that she didn’t like it very much, but I would always answer that, because it has been in continuous production since the year after Jane Austen died (or thereabouts), replacements are never a problem — unlike every other pattern in our pantry. Ten years after selling the country house, however, all that Blue Italian has turned into something of a white elephant. I was going to take a stack of it to Housing Works, but Ms NOLA expressed an interest, so we stashed stacks of plates and bowls in plastic grocery bags and stashed the plastic bags in sturdy LL Bean totes and (most important) grabbed a taxi to Hamilton Heights.

It was my plan to take a look round and then head home. But the weather outside was frightful, and it was much more agreeable to sit in Ms NOLA’s flat and talk about Aquinas and Kant with my nephew (who, in English, is really my cousin). Because our dinner reservation was for 6:30, I looked at my watch at 4:20 and decided just to hang until it was time to head for Park and 57th.

It has been a very long time since I just passed the time of day, as the saying goes, at home, much less at someone else’s house. Given the company, I found the experience most enjoyable, and my friends, who don’t get to spend enough time together these days, were most gracious about sharing themselves with me.

Just before lunch, I told Ms NOLA that I’d discovered a site that gives pronunciations for the tricky names of certain New Yorkers, and I’d learned that Nicholas Lemann, New Yorker contributor and dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, pronounces his name to sound like a well-known citrus fruit. Ms NOLA nodded her head with slightly melancholy smile, looking on the bright side of my catching up, once again, with the rest of the class.

Dear Diary: Screw That

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Another day of work — but as the clock ticked toward six, I could tell that I was running out of steam. So, what with one thing and another on the calendar, I ran out to the movies, just around the corner, to see Rudo y Cursi. This film unites director Carlos Cuarón with the two co-stars of his Y Tu Mamá También. This time, Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna play half-brothers from the sticks who are lured into playing for opposing futbol teams. It’s such a great movie that even the soccer is great. Veruschka — or even Vanessa Redgrave herself — is not more present in Antonioni’s great Blow-Up that the two stars are here. Rudo y Cursi is also very funny. The actors seem to be competing (in a nice parallel to the story) to see who can create the more ridiculous brother.

When I came back from the movie, I was refreshed and ready to edit and publish three pages for Portico. By the light of midnight oil, I’m working on a fourth. But it’s about Jonathan Franzen’s story in The New Yorker this week, and if there’s one thing about Jonathan Franzen and me that you ought to know about it, it’s that my appreciations of his work seem to run to 5% of his word count. Many of the pages that I’ve written about whole books are shorter than my piece on “Good Neighbors”; it’s almost certainly to be longer by the time I publish it.

Thanks to a link at The Awl by Choire Sicha, I discovered a new blog today, Songs About Buildings And Food, and not only that: but a writer more thrillingly long-winded than I am. May the spirit of Maeve Brennan bring delight to the mind of Justin Wolfe (or is it Henry?) In fact, I’m going to have to leave you now, because the blog’s latest entry begins with a reference to “Good Neighbors.” Prudence dictates that I finish my own appreciation before reading anyone else’s, but, en un mot, screw that.

Daily Office: Thursday

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¶ Matins: Read the terrorist prototype composite storyline and then give us a call if it describes anybody you know. (via The Morning News)

¶ Lauds: While I agree with Anne Midgette and Jackie Fuchs about the Teen Spirit of grand opera, I’m afraid that they’re overlooking one important detail about teen life. 

¶ Prime: James Surowiecki takes a look at the Argentinian coin shortage (who knew?) and makes a connection with financial problems in the United States: it’s what puts the “con” in “economy.” 

¶ Tierce: Tony Marshall’s defense strategy continues to bewilder me. Unless, that is, a case is being built (without the defendant’s knowledge, to be sure) to cut Charlene loose.

¶ Sext: I couldn’t make up my mind about this story, until I mooted it by saying: Improv Everywhere got the right couple.

¶ Nones: In a very sensible first step toward restoring sanity after the Cold War (yes! it’s really over!), the Organization of American States voted today to re-admit Cuba.

¶ Vespers: For maximum effect, you must read Elizabeth Benedict’s review of Christopher Buckley’s Losing Mom and Pup all the way to the end:  The Not So Discreet Charm of the Haute Goyim.

¶ Compline: Although I have no idea of the provenance of this YouTube clip of retired Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong (incontournable!), I can vouch that it is indeed the bishop. Although this saint of liberal Christendom never mentions Augustine’s name, he drives stakes through core Augustinian inventions.

¶ Bon weekend à tous!

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Dear Diary: Cold

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When I got back from lunchtime errands, I was hot and steaming. An hour later, having cleaned up and changed, I was freezing out on the balcony. It’s the usual seasonal disorder: because the weather is nice again, you’re determined to spend some time outdoors; only, now the weather isn’t so nice — in fact, it’s dismal. Raining and about 60º. On top of that, the grey glare made it very hard to read the laptop screen. But I did write finish a page that I’ve  been working on for weeks. When I came in, I began another.

Oops! Suddenly, it was too late to scramble over to Thomas Meglioranza’s recital at Mannes. Tom hasn’t sung in the city for a while, and I need a fix. I am heartily sorry. But this has been a week for staying at home and getting things done; having no plans to join anyone for the recital, it was easy to get lost in my work. Nevertheless, I am heartily sorry.

So far, the day has been nicely productive. The Daily Office didn’t eat up the hours, as it did on Monday and almost did yesterday (some canonicals are much easier to fill than others — I don’t yet know why). I took care of a long list of irregular housekeeping chores. For example: cable reception. The wrong button had evidently been pressed on one of the remotes. I figured out which one. Just to test the fix, I tuned into TV5. There was a broadcast of le tennis from Roland Garros. I almost sat down to watch Roger Federer play somebody, not because of a sudden interest in tennis but because I could actually understand the sportscasters.

Right now, I’m in the middle of Labelmania, having as much fun as a six year-old, typing in the names of movies (font: Gills Sans MT) and then pressing Ctrl-P. Whir, whine: voilà.

Just for the record: the building restored landscaping, this morning, to the long planters that stretch along the 86th Street sidewalk. Not the big one between the street and the driveway — that has to wait, one of the doormen told me, for the new canopy, which will actually stretch across the driveway, making a real porte-cochère. Nobody seems to know when the construction will be finished and the driveway re-opened, but the plantings are a welcome sight. I wonder if the Google Street View truck has already been by — I hope not.

Daily Office: Wednesday

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¶ Matins: Robert B Reich: manufacturing is a thing of the past. Everywhere. “Blame new knowledge.”

¶ Lauds: Joanne McNeil writes about seeing movies alone — and her fondness for watching a video first thing on a weekend morning — slightly before the first thing, actually (5 AM!)

¶ Prime: Chris Lehmann explains why the bankruptcy of General Motors is almost as great for wingnut pundits as the UAW’s 17.5% stake.

¶ Tierce: “Well, do you want ALL of my money?” snapped an exasperated Brooke Astor,

[a]fter years of pressure from son Anthony Marshall for more, more – and even more – of her millions

¶ Sext: “World’s Most Pointless Machine.” (No, it’s not a motorcycle.) I want one! (via reddit)

¶ Nones: The answer to the question: Gordon Brown is an Aspie. And Barack Obama is not. “The Prince of Wales is to attend the 65th anniversary celebrations of D-Day after the intervention of President Barack Obama, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.”

¶ Vespers: At the new-ish WSJ blog, Speakeasy, Lee Siegel writes cogently about film criticism — about criticism in general.

¶ Compline: Much as I love the infographics at GOOD, I’m not sure that “Conglomerate for Good” is one. I’d call it a very pretty list.

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Dear Diary: Triste

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In the current issue of Granta, Jhumpa Lahiri interviews Mavis Gallant. I’ve been reading Ms Gallant’s stories off and on ever since they began reappearing in NYRB editions — to the third of which Ms Lahiri will write the introduction. Along with a lot of interesting personal matter, the interview touches on three of Ms Gallant’s works (so to speak): an early novel, a lengthy short story from the Seventies, “The Remission,” and the four “Carette” short stories. I read “The Remission” this afternoon. It was rich, haunting, and extremely well done, but the reading experience was also fairly lowering.

I had hoped to be far more productive today. Last night at about this time, I was reading Gillian Tett’s Fool’s Gold, luxuriating in the sheer peace and quiet of reading, and thinking of an early night. But when Kathleen came home, at around midnight, she said that she needed to write a brief email to someone. I ought to have nodded and retired to the blue room. Instead, I sat in the bedroom while she tried to dispatch the note from the netbook, a machine with which she was unfamiliar. I’d recommended that she use the newest computer in the house because it was up and running. But it turned out that Kathleen’s idea of a “brief email” is highly relative. The note involved a lot of cutting and pasting (murder on a strange touch pad) and multiple addressees drawn from various documents. Beset by visions of a very late night, with Kathleen growing less and less capable as she grew more tired, I panicked and got upset.

Computers are about the only thing that Kathleen and I squabble about. We approach the machines in very different ways, but what really marks us apart is Kathleen’s comfort level with setbacks and technological snafus. I have no comfort level with these matters, and I’m inclined to think that tolerating them is the slippery slope to Idiocracy.

So we were up for an extra hour. An extra hour at least. And then I had to read — and raid the icebox — just to calm down.

In the afternoon, I planned to do a bit of writing, and I did do a bit of writing — just a page. I wrote up Up. I was going to do a little housework and then write some more, but Kathleen had some prescriptions to pick up at the drugstore, so (not least to atone for my sharpness last night) I offered to run the errand for her. The prescriptions weren’t ready; I was told to come back in an hour. That is when I read “The Remission.” After picking up the filled prescriptions, I went to the Food Emporium and bought a few things, so that I’d have a choice between burgers on a baguette or a Caesar salad for dinner. By the time the shopping was delivered, it was too late (and my brain was too scrambled) to start writing, so I took on a project that I expected to be daunting. It wasn’t.

The ongoing project is to create labels for the paper sleeves in which I now store DVDs. I bought the dual-feed Dymo label printer a few weeks ago. It was installed immediately, but along with a lot of other stuff, so that I didn’t remember how to operate the thing. There turned out to be nothing to it. I plugged it in and got right to work.

Being me, I did not begin by lugging one of the drawers of discs to the table and beginning at the beginning (with All About Eve). Oh, no. I made labels for DVDs that came to mind. Casablanca; Unforgiven; Merci, Docteur Rey. And wouldn’t you know it? Four of the titles that “came to mind”— three starring Cary Grant, as it happened — weren’t in the drawer at all (as I found when I finally did drag it out), but in original, special-edition cases that I had decided to keep. In the end, I pasted the labels for The Awful Truth, Holiday, The Philadelphia Story, and The Lady Eve on empty sleeves and tucked them in front of All About Eve. This is how I keep my life simple.

(I’d still be printing labels, but I saw that I was about to run out of blanks. I’ll have to run up to Staples tomorrow for more.)

For dinner, I broiled three mini burgers — on offer at Gristede’s last week; I’d never seen them before — and then melted chunks of blue cheese over bacon bits on top of them. The burgers were spatula’d onto a halved demi-baguette, slathered with mustard and mayonnaise. I cut the baguette on either side of the burger in the middle, making three pieces. The result was even better than I’d hoped it would be. The crust of the baguette closed down around the burgers like a clamshell, while the interior soaked up all the juices. Imagine: a medium-rare burger that didn’t drip! Speaking of Barbara Stanwyck, the DVD that’s playing in the kitchen whenever I’m in there for more than five minutes is Ball of Fire. Drum boogie!

It’s not yet midnight, and/but Kathleen is home. She is absolutely finished working for the day, and if she turns on her computer at all, it will be to loiter at eBay.

Daily Office: Tuesday

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¶ Matins: At Infrastructurist, a top-ten count-down of the nation’s road-building contractors. These organizations can be counted upon to thwart rail initiatives — unless, that is, their crystal balls advise them to make tracks.

¶ Lauds: Yesterday, we noted Holland Cotter’s demand for history lessons. Today, Philip Kennicott complains about the fall-off in shock. What’s a museum to do?

¶ Prime: Now that the TimeWarner/AOL breakup is official, we challenge anyone to find a sound reason for the merger nine years ago.

¶ Tierce: In his fourth day of testimony, Henry Christensen tells us just why Tony was after his mother’s money.

¶ Sext: Tom Scocca is rapidly becoming my favorite curmudgeon. Like curmudgeons everywhere, he has a special gimlet stare for the idea of “progress.”

¶ Nones: Having been a less-than-fastidious reader of The Economist of late, I missed the début of Banyan, the newspaper’s Asian columnist. (There, I’m honest.) This week’s piece about the (improbable?) survival of the Communist Party in China is excellent.

¶ Vespers: Jason Kottke lifts a very appealing idea from the introduction to The Black Swan: the concept of the “antilibrary,” made up of the books that one owns but hasn’t read.

¶ Compline: When will finance (and its ancillaries) be reformed by women who insist — as they’ve done in the field of obstetrics — on livable hours?

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