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Roma blogging: martedi — pranza
We were actually looking for Da Baffetto, which turns out not to open for lunch. Instead, we headed into Cul de Sac, an enoteca near Piazza Navona. Started with some black olives (again) and some great shaved smoked tuna. Might mistake it for ham if you saw it on the plate. Delicious! Then I had…
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Intermezzo
How’s this for a trifecta: Thursday night: dinner in Rome Friday night: dinner in Paris Saturday night: dinner in New York I have finally lived up to my Jet-Set moniker.
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Roma blogging: giovedi. Ciao, Roma!
Again craving something simple and hearty, a pizza perhaps, we acted on a tip from the distinguished Romaphiles, PL & PM, and headed back to Piazza Navona to Da Francesco. No pizza at lunch (a conspiracy to not fire up the ovens during the day?), so spaghetti for both of us. Cacio e pepe for…
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Paris blogging: vendredi encore
Back in the city of lights again. This time, decided to be good citizens and took the RER into town. The problem isn’t so much with the RER as lugging the bags up an down the stairs of the metro. And when we got to Gare Montparnasse, decided it was a bit far and took…
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Little Stephen
Stephen Colbert was already well on the way to eclipsing his mentor, Jon Stewart, as the master of fake-but-real news. His performance last night at the White House correspondent’s dinner put him over the top. His routine was scathingly funny, all the more so to everyone watching on C-Span since the audience in the room…
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To the editors of the New Yorker
I write reluctantly, and yet with, I feel, an historico-moral imperative to set the record on some key facts. In the first place, my father never visited Kansas with Truman Capote. Indeed, he never set foot in the sunflower state–on this point, there is no doubt. In fact, my father had the curious and somewhat…
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Let’s Get Fooled Again!
As we blithely stumble toward a nuclear confrontation with Iran, two more favorite Bush lies were put to rest this week. The first is the absurd notion that “everything’s just great” in Iraq, only Katie Couric and her co-horts in the “Main-Stream-Media” won’t report it. The second is the oft-quoted Bush lie that he “listens”…
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Paris: Les Grèves
This just in from our Paris correspondents, K et R: Even buildings and tourist attractions are going on strike!
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It’s all a popularity contest
The graph above (click to embiggen) charts the varying popularity levels of three names chosen at random, since 1880. There’s also a popular 4th name thrown in as a control. Care to guess what it is? You can have more fun here. And, if you want to be completely freaked out, go here and look…
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Two Coyote Stories
Hal died Thursday night, his captors not really sure why. Nor is anyone sure where he came from, or how he got to Central Park in the first place. Would it have been possible to let a coyote live in Central Park, roaming around forever wild, or the ramble? Howling at night? Could he have…
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A Living Legend
Back in 98 and 99 when we had the studio at 1650 Broadway going, we worked on a wide variety of recording, engineering, and writing projects. Some of those were klunkers, which we were doing just to get established, but one or two were sheer gold. The best example of the latter category was the…
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More good things from Austria
“I never knew the old Vienna before the war, with its Strauss music, its glamour and easy charm.” So begins The Third Man (ranking high on my ten great films list), in which the city itself fills out the ensemble cast. It occurs to me just now that in the course of the film, we…
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Ignorance and certainty
Quote from Charles Darwin: “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.” Quote from Bertrand Rusell: “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.” Rings true? Then you may be interested in this study: Unskilled and Unaware of It:…
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Two neo-noirs from unlikely sources
When you think of directors Harold Ramis and David Cronenberg, film noir is not the first genre that pops into your head. Cronenberg likes to blow things up good, real good. And come to think of it, so does Ramis. Well, at least that would apply to the Stay-Puft marshmallow man. But both directors turned…
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Stonewalled again, or Erin go brouhaha
This year’s award for embarrassing public behavior at the St. Paddy’s day parade goes to none other than parade chairman, John Dunleavy. I’m not sure how many green pints he had downed before offering this explanation of why an Irish lesbian & gay organization is always denied permission to march in the parade: “If an…
Categories: etcTags: New York -
Demics Rule!
The Cedar Lounge–every city, big or small, must have had its own CBGB’s in the late ’70s and early ’80s. This was London, Ontario’s punk rock incubator. It was already closed down, and a legend, by the time I got anywhere near old enough to go to a bar or a rock club. And of…
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Lars von Trier
Dogville is the kind of film which leaves you completely bowled over, in that “wow…” state. Especially the “…” part. When Lars von Trier engages you, you feel it, viscerally, of course, but you are also left with many things to ponder. A heated coffee-shop philosophy chat that ends with chairs being smashed over heads.…
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The L-train word
Hopped on the L train last night and wound up at Pete’s Candy Store. We’re still trying to figure out the whole Williamsburg thing–like where everything is and why you have to go to the back of the room to order a sandwich, or get funny looks if you ask if the red cab is…
Categories: MusicTags: New York -
Clickradio back in the news
How does that song go, “Do you remember rock-and-roll-Clickradio?” Maybe not quite. Clickradio may have died young, but the fight over the beautiful corpse it left behind continues. The New York Post (ick) reports that a trial opened April 5th in Manhattan Supreme Court to settle whether the company was scuttled to allow a group…
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A request from Bay Street
Phil writes, “Hey Ches, greetings. Hope all is fabulous in your world. Just was dropping in on the Cyberkrunk world as I am inclined to do and thought “I wonders what Ches is listening to these days?”. Then I thoughts, ” If I’m wondering this, then chances are others are wondering the same.” Perhaps an…
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Heart of Gold
Neil Young, Jonathan Demme. What’s not to like? Anyone seen it yet?
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Critical listening
Headphones are something of a necessary evil. For listening to playback, nothing beats good bi-amped nearfield monitors in a near-anechoic chamber. I look back fondly on the nights I used to spend in UTEMS listening to my work on a pair of Genelec 1030a nearfields. Genelec stopped making the 1030a last year–something kind of sad…
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Is Bert Evil?
Atrios thinks so. We report, you decide.
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When the levee breaks
Interesting video about who thought what leading up to Katrina.
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Dubya, Dubai and the 1993 WTC bombing
You would hardly notice it for lack of coverage, but thirteen years ago today was one of the most important days in the history of New York. On February 26, 1993, Ramzi Yousef set off a bomb in the parking garage of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Yousef’s goal was to bring…
Categories: etcTags: Politics
