Trump Signs Bill Reopening Government for 3 Weeks in Surprise Retreat From Wall

"President Trump agreed on Friday to reopen the federal government for three weeks while negotiations continued over how to secure the nation’s southwestern border, backing down after a monthlong standoff failed to force Democrats to give him billions of dollars for his long-promised wall. The president’s concession paved the way for the House and the Senate to both pass a stopgap spending bill by voice vote. Mr. Trump signed it on Friday night, restoring normal operations at a series of federal agencies until Feb. 15 and opening the way to paying the 800,000 federal workers who have been furloughed or forced to work without pay for 35 days. The plan includes none of the money for the wall that Mr. Trump had demanded and was essentially the same approach that he rejected at the end of December and that Democrats have advocated since, meaning he won nothing concrete during the impasse. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: For a President Consumed With Winning, a Stinging Defeat
NY Times: Opinion - Trump’s Shutdown Was a Cruel Joke
NY Times: Government Shutdown Timeline: See How the Effects Are Piling Up - Read more.
NY Times: National Emergency Powers and Trump’s Border Wall, Explained
NY Times: A Typical Federal Worker Has Missed $5,000 in Pay From the Shutdown So Far

Elite Soccer’s Culture of Graft

Cristiano Ronaldo's slap on the wrist for Spanish tax fraud belies the scale of the problem.
"On Tuesday Cristiano Ronaldo, smiling and bedizened in a black coat and diamond earrings, arrived at court in Madrid, Spain, to receive a $21.6 million fine for tax fraud. It is roughly what the Portuguese star, worth around $450 million, makes each quarter. And while the 33-year-old—who’s also currently under investigation for an alleged rape in Las Vegas—may be a particularly distasteful example, it’s just the tip of the international tax-evasion iceberg in modern soccer, which thanks to whistleblowers and investigative journalism is now slowly being revealed. Ronaldo, a five-time FIFA world player of the year who last summer moved from Real Madrid to Italian giant Juventus, has become a human billboard since bursting onto the global stage as a teenager with Manchester United. He owns businesses in footwear, fragrances, gyms, a creative agency, hotels and underwear. He endorses watches, shampoo, online gambling–even steelworks. ..."
New Republic

Paper marbling

Endpapers of a 1735 book made in France
Wikipedia - "Paper marbling is a method of aqueous surface design, which can produce patterns similar to smooth marble or other kinds of stone. The patterns are the result of color floated on either plain water or a viscous solution known as size, and then carefully transferred to an absorbent surface, such as paper or fabric. Through several centuries, people have applied marbled materials to a variety of surfaces. It is often employed as a writing surface for calligraphy, and especially book covers and endpapers in bookbinding and stationery. Part of its appeal is that each print is a unique monotype. There are several methods for making marbled papers. A shallow tray is filled with water, and various kinds of ink or paint colors are carefully applied to the surface with an ink brush. Various additives or surfactant chemicals are used to help float the colors. ..."
Wikipedia
The Unsung Delight of a Well-Designed Endpaper
Decorated Book Papers: a Beginner’s Guide
Guardian - Hold the front pages: meet the endpaper enthusiasts

Paper marbling from a book bound in England around 1830

Strike up the band: Mariachis win the cup

"The Albuquerque Isotopes are having themselves quite a Winter Meetings. Sunday, the Triple-A Colorado Rockies affiliate recieved the James H. Johnson President's Award for 'most complete franchise.' The following morning, they became the inaugural winners of Minor League Baseball's Copa de la Diversión event series. Copa de la Diversión, an initiative designed to engage with Hispanic fans, features Minor League teams adopting Spanish-language identities. The Isotopes, one of 33 teams to participate in 2018, played four games as the Mariachis de Nuevo México. Minor League Baseball's Latinx Advisory Committee voted the Mariachis as the top identity, based on criteria such as attendance, marketing dollars invested, revenue gains and relevant community partnerships. Albuquerque emerged triumphant over a quartet of fellow semi-finalists: Monarcas de Eugene (Eugene Emeralds), Cucuys de San Bernardino (Inland Empire 66ers of San Bernardino), Cielo Azul de Oklahoma City (Oklahoma City Dodgers) and the Flying Chanclas de San Antonio (San Antonio Missions). ..."
MILB
Forbes: Minor League Baseball To Have 'Copa De La Diversión' In Effort To Reach Latino Communities
SI: Ranking The Best Team Names From MiLB's Copa de la Diversión
W - List of Minor League Baseball leagues and teams

Ambrose Akinmusire - A Rift in Decorum: Live at the Village Vanguard (2017)

"An expansive two-disc concert album, Ambrose Akinmusire's 2017 effort, A Rift in Decorum: Live at the Village Vanguard, is a sophisticated production on par with his previous studio recordings. Rather than returning to those familiar surroundings for his fourth album, Akinmusire instead brought his quartet to the Vanguard along with a set of newly penned original compositions. It's a purposeful choice that resonates with the long history of albums recorded at the storied Greenwich Village institution, most notably John Coltrane's classic, and at the time divisive, 1962 contribution, 'Live' at the Village Vanguard.  ... Joining Akinmusire are his longtime bandmates pianist Sam Harris, bassist Harish Raghavan, and drummer Justin Brown. Together, they make a distinctly mutative style of jazz that straddles the line between avant-garde classical impressionism, soulful post-bop, and atonal free jazz, sometimes within the same song. ..."
allmusic (Audio)
W - A Rift in Decorum: Live at the Village Vanguard
Soundcloud
YouTube: A Rift In Decorum: Live At The Village Vanguard 16 videos

John McPhee: Seven Ways of Looking at a Writer

"... John Angus McPhee was born in Princeton, New Jersey, on March 8, 1931, to Dr. Harry McPhee, a physician for the Princeton University athletic department, and his wife Mary. As a boy, McPhee enjoyed sports and the outdoors, but by the time he entered Princeton University, writing had become his main passion. His career in journalism began at Time, but in the early sixties he moved over to The New Yorker, where he has continued to write for over half a century. The sixties were a decade of upheaval and progress, and one of the many areas where that revolutionary spirit reared its head was in the art of nonfiction. In previous decades, nonfiction—particularly if written for periodicals—had been seen mostly as ephemeral reportage. It was for catching up on world events, local matters, and human interest, usually read over a morning cup of coffee, stained with those wet, brown rings. ..."
LitHub

2017 September: The Mind of John McPhee

Marshall - Reginald Hudlin (2017)

Wikipedia - "Marshall is a 2017 American biographical legal drama film directed by Reginald Hudlin and written by Michael and Jacob Koskoff. It stars Chadwick Boseman as Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court Justice, and focuses on one of the first cases of his career, the State of Connecticut v. Joseph Spell. It also stars Josh Gad, Kate Hudson, Dan Stevens, Sterling K. Brown, and James Cromwell. ... In 1940, Thurgood Marshall is an NAACP lawyer traveling the country defending people of color who are wrongly accused of crimes because of racial prejudice. Upon his return to his New York office, he is sent to Bridgeport, Connecticut, to defend Joseph Spell, a chauffeur accused of rape by his white employer, Eleanor Strubing, in a case that has gripped the newspapers. In Bridgeport, insurance lawyer Sam Friedman is assigned by his brother to get Marshall admitted to the local bar, against his will. At the hearing, Judge Foster, a friend of the father of prosecutor Lorin Willis, agrees to admit Marshall, but forbids Marshall from speaking during the trial, forcing Friedman to be Spell's lead counsel. Marshall must guide Friedman through notes, such as when he advises Friedman to allow a woman of Southern white descent into the jury because of her assertive and questioning personality. ..."
Wikipedia
Smithsonian: The True Story Behind “Marshall”
Roger Ebert
amazon
YouTube: MARSHALL | Trailer 1

Édouard Manet - Interior at Arcachon (1871)

"Manet painted this domestic scene while staying in a seaside town in southwestern France. He never exhibited it, perhaps because its subject was deeply personal. The artist had recently reunited with his family after serving in the National Guard, defending Paris during the Franco-Prussian war. His wife looks up from her writing to enjoy the view, while her son holds what appears to be a cigarette, seemingly lost in thought. The loose, sketchy technique gives the painting an intimate, informal quality."
The Clark

2015 April: Van Gogh, Manet, and Matisse: The Art of the Flower, 2016 April: Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse

Pharoah Sanders - Africa (1987)

"As Kevin Whitehead's liner notes to this release reflect, Sanders 'pays explicit tribute to his late mentor John Coltrane -- as this set's Coltrane-oriented sound makes unashamedly clear.' Actually, Coltrane penned only one of the eight tunes, while Sanders wrote six, but the spirit of the master looms heavily throughout. Sanders displays an uncanny resemblance to Trane's unique way of over-blowing and his special ability to get inside a ballad. Pianist John Hicks is in perfect form and contributes mightily to the success of the session. Most will probably prefer the original Coltrane to Sanders' imitations, but Africa is nonetheless a joyous and worthy tribute to one of the giants of jazz. This album marked somewhat of a backtrack for the saxophonist, as he had frequently become identified with much more traditional playing."
allmusic (Audio)
Pharoah Sanders & Idris Muhammad (Audio)
W - Africa
Discogs (Video)
amazon, iTubes
YouTube: Africa [Full Album] 57:43

2015 December: Maleem Mahmoud Ghania With Pharaoh Sanders - The Trance Of Seven Colors (1994), 2016 January: Ptah, The El Daoud - Alice Coltrane & Pharoah Sanders (1970), 2016 November: Tauhid (1967), 2017 May: The Pharoah Sanders Story: In the Beginning 1963-1964, 2017 November: Let Us Now Praise Pharoah Sanders, Master of Sax, 2018 February: Anthology: You've Got to Have Freedom - Pharoah Sanders (2005), 2018 February: James Blood Ulmer & Pharoah Sanders - Live 2003, 2018 May: How Pharoah Sanders Brought Jazz to Its Spiritual Peak with His Impulse! Albums

This Bowery theater gave performers “the hook”

"When a city policeman turned U.S. congressman named Henry Clay Miner opened Miner’s Bowery Theatre in 1878, this small venue between Broome and Delancey Streets showcased a type of entertainment known as variety shows. 'Actors came on the stage to sing, dance, and do acrobatic acts and then unite to burlesque some current musical show,' wrote the New York Times in 1929. Even for the Bowery—legendary at the time for its raucous bars, theaters, flophouses, and music halls—Miner’s drew huge merciless crowds. Customers cheered, jeered, and stomped their feet in approval as each act did their number. ..."
Ephemeral New York
Henry C. Miner and the Origins of “The Hook”
NY Times: MINER'S BOWERY WAS A LANDMARK (Aug. 1929)

Orientalism’s Equestrian Eye

Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix, “Horses Coming Out of the Sea,” 1860
"'Orientalism' was a term first used several centuries ago to describe scholarship and art by 'Westerners'—shorthand for Europeans and North Americans—who sought to depict largely Islamic cultures of North Africa and Asia. Some 40 years ago, it came under criticism for cultural bias. Despite these changes in attitudes, one subject in Orientalist art has remained universally admired: the region’s horses. The 19th-century European and American artists who specialized in scenes of North Africa, the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula were as enamored of the equines of those lands as were the inhabitants. The first collectors of Orientalist horse paintings were those among the affluent of Europe and America who hungered to see expressions of heroic values. ... The Arab masters of these equine marvels were accorded a similarly romanticized respect. ..."
AramcoWorld

Georges Washington, “The Falconers,” date unknown

2018 April: Orientalism - Edward W. Said (1978)

How to Read a Protest: The Art of Organizing and Resistance - L. A. Kauffman (2018)

"Displaced from the National Mall by a partial government shutdown and facing the likelihood of harsh weather, the third Women's March on Washington, D.C., may well draw an even smaller turnout than the presidential inauguration did two years ago. On the other hand, the first march, that same weekend, remains a difficult act to follow. L. A. Kauffman's recent book How to Read a Protest: The Art of Organizing and Resistance (University of California Press) contains a table called 'Marching Everywhere: The Largest Coordinated Protests in U.S. History,' with data on eight of them from the past 50 years. The National Women's March of January 2017 sets the record, with at least 4.2 million participants in more than 650 cities. That is more than twice the number of participants, in more than three times as many cities, as the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam in October 1969. ..."
Reading Mobilization
Guardian - Dear resistance: marching is not enough - LA Kauffman
amazon
vimeo: How To Read a Protest: The Art of Organizing and Resistance

Women protest against the Trump administration’s separation of children from immigrant parents, in the Hart Senate office building in Washington.

Patti Smith’s Talismanic Photos from Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera’s Home and Beyond

“Patti at William Burroughs’s Grave,” Lawrence, Kansas, 2013
"In 2012, Patti Smith travelled to Mexico City to speak and perform at La Casa Azul, the former home of the artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. While visiting the property, which now serves as a museum, Smith took several black-and-white Polaroid photographs of objects she encountered: a pair of crutches that belonged to Kahlo; her worn corset; a white coverlet with crocheted trim, dangling from a wooden bed frame. Those images are part of a new exhibit of Smith’s photographs, titled 'Wing,' which is now on display at the Diego Rivera Gallery, at the San Francisco Art Institute, adjacent to Rivera’s 1931 mural 'The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City.' ..."
New Yorker

Obsolete Systems - Laurie Spiegel (2001)

"Software developer and technology pioneer Laurie Spiegel has worked with many of the first synthesizer and computer music systems. This CD culls some of her best works written for Obsolete Systems: Don Buchla's machines, the Apple II computer, the McLeyvier computer-controlled synthesizer, and the GROOVE Hybrid System. These pieces were created between 1970 and 1983, at a time when technology evolved quickly and even the standards in analog sound and digital information treatments changed constantly. The music varies in style from delicate modal synthesizer pieces to acousmatic works. ... Some may find similarities between her music and the works of Larry Fast and Tangerine Dream at the same time -- even though they worked quite differently. The album's highlight is the final track, the 15-minute Voices Within: A Requiem, previously released on a 1982 Capriccio LP. Obtained through classic tape techniques and delay effects, it achieves a dense shroud of sustained tones. The musical element equals the historical relevance of this collection."
allmusic (Audio)
Discogs
YouTube: Obsolete Systems 1:01:00

2011 May: Laurie Spiegel, 2012 November: Laurie Spiegel - The Expanding Universe, 2014 February: The Interstellar Contract, 2015 September: Resident Visitor: Laurie Spiegel's Machine Music, 2015 October: Laurie Spiegel: Grassroots Technologist, 2016 June: Meet Four Women Who Pioneered Electronic Music: Daphne Oram, Laurie Spiegel, Éliane Radigue & Pauline Oliveros, 2017 January: Resident Visitor: Laurie Spiegel's Machine Music, 2017 July: Space, Energy & Light: Experimental Electronic And Acoustic Soundscapes 1961-88, 2017 July: Watch Aura Satz’s short film about Laurie Spiegel

Your Guide to January’s Supermoon Total Lunar Eclipse

This composite image of the total lunar eclipse on September 28, 2015, captured the Moon during totality. Earth's umbra at the Moon's distance spans about 9,000 kilometers or ~2.6 lunar diameters.
"A full 62 luxurious minutes of totality. That's what we can expect on the night of January 20–21 when the Full Wolf Moon does a slow dance through Earth's umbra (the innermost region of the shadow). The last total lunar eclipse over the Americas took place in the wee hours of January 31, 2018. This one will be more user-friendly for Western Hemisphere observers as it happens during evening hours. If you're adept at comparing full Moon sizes, examine the Moon during the eclipse. Does it appear larger than normal? In fact it is! Perigee, when the Moon is closest to the Earth, occurs only about 14 hours after maximum eclipse. That makes this a supermoon, defined as a full Moon that comes within 90% of its closest approach to Earth. ..."
Sky & Telescope
***NY Times: How to Watch the Lunar Eclipse and Supermoon on Sunday Night

January's total lunar eclipse is observable from North and South America, Europe, Northwest Africa, and the Arctic. It will be primarily an evening event for the Americas and a morning one for Europe and Africa. The next total lunar eclipse for North America occurs on May 26, 2021 — that's  a lengthy wait!

Revolutions On Air: An Introduction

"New York City between 1980 and 1988 was a crucible of musical styles: hip hop (then brand new) melting together with boogie and electro, disco and funk dancing elegantly towards their doom, New Wave and punk making way for the first strains of house music and freestyle. Nowhere was the intertwining of these threads more obvious than on the radio, where a handful of DJs – themselves producers and remixers in their own right – were creating a conversation between the underground sounds of the clubs and the streets and the mainstream. ..."
Red Bull Music Academy Daily (Video)
YouTube: Trailer: Revolutions On Air
YouTube: Revolutions On Air: The Golden Era of New York Radio 1980 - 1988 17:07

Steady State - Alex Roldan

"The machine does most of the work. It chugs along, lights blinking a telegraph of the underlying rhythm, knobs erect and at precise angles, tones rendered as held bits atmosphere, fraying as they go, the full effect a sort of aged glisten. ... This video is Alex Roldan at play with his modular synthesizer, and it dates from late November of last year (earlier videos from him include drum covers of songs by Boards of Canada and Aphex Twin). Since then there have been another four modular ones from Roldan. Subscribe to his channel to encourage further endeavors.
This is the latest video I’ve added to my YouTube playlist of recommended live performances of ambient music. Video originally posted to Rodan’s YouTube channel. More from Rodan, who is based in Washington, D.C., at iamanalog.bandcamp.com."
disquiet (Video)

The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France, 1885 to World War I - Roger Shattuck (1958)

"It isn't often that a scholarly study of avant-garde literature and the arts running to some 400 pages acquires the status of a literary classic, but that has been the happy fate of a delightful book called, The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France, 1885 to World War I, whose author -- the American writer and translator Roger Shattuck -- died on Dec. 8 at the age of 82. Amazingly, The Banquet Years, published in 1968, remains in print to this very day, and both its sly humor and its brilliant combination of anecdote and analysis are as fresh, as amusing and as essential to our understanding of the modern era as the day it was published. So are the deft portraits of the book's principal subjects -- Alfred Jarry, Henri Rousseau, Erik Satie and Guillaume Apollinaire -- a quartet of gifted misfits and oddball talents whose accomplishments, though scarcely noticed by the reigning eminences of French cultural life, offered a preview of the modernism that would in many respects give the arts of the 20th century their special character. ..."
WSJ: Remembering 'The Banquet Years' By Hilton Kramer
New Republic - Half Tame
Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Years (1) -- La belle époque (The Good Old Days)
[PDF] The Banquet Years
amazon

Jean Beraud, The Boulevard Montmartre and the Theatre des Varietes (c1886)

Industrial music

Throbbing Gristle
Wikipedia - "Industrial music is a genre of experimental music which draws on harsh, transgressive or provocative sounds and themes. AllMusic defines industrial music as the 'most abrasive and aggressive fusion of rock and electronic music'; 'initially a blend of avant-garde electronics experiments (tape music, musique concrète, white noise, synthesizers, sequencers, etc.) and punk provocation'. The term was coined in the mid-1970s with the founding of Industrial Records by members of Throbbing Gristle and Monte Cazazza. While the genre name originated with Throbbing Gristle's emergence in the United Kingdom, concentrations of artists and labels vital to the genre also emerged in Chicago. ... The precursors that influenced the development of the genre included acts such as electronic music group Kraftwerk, experimental rock acts such as Pink Floyd and Frank Zappa, psychedelic rock artists such as Jimi Hendrix, and composers such as John Cage. Musicians also cite writers such as William S. Burroughs, and philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche as influences. ..."
Wikipedia
20 of the most iconic songs in industrial music (Audio)
Assimilate: A Critical History of Industrial Music
The 10 Best Industrial Albums To Own On Vinyl
all music: Industrial
amazon: Assimilate: A Critical History of Industrial Music

Einsturzende Neubauten

How the Slice Joint Made Pizza the Perfect New York City Food

Getting pizza and hanging about on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village. Aug. 2, 1963.
"Pizza can be a great divider in New York. In fact, one of the easiest ways to get into argument (without end) is to name a 'best pizza in the city.' But at the same time, pizza — specifically the reheated, foldable, portable slice — is one of the city’s great uniters. There is no culinary experience that New Yorkers share more widely and more unanimously than the slice joint. Like catching a sunset over the skyline or stepping in an icy curbside puddle, the slice joint has, since its beginnings more than 50 years ago, become common currency. The price has changed over the decades, but the scene and staging remain much the same. ... 'Three dollars,' the pizza man says briskly, after he has placed the requested slice into a decked oven. Out come the hot, bubbling triangles of cheese and sauce on thin, pliable crust. Once their slices are ready, the diners — if so formal a word even applies — grab a place at the counter in the window or push out the door, slice in hand, on to wherever the evening may take them. This is the 'New York style.' ..."
NY Times

A kosher pizza shop on 13th Avenue in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn. Feb. 21, 1971.

2014 June: Pizza, 2014 October: Viva La Pizza! The Art of the Pizza Box (NYC), 2016 July: Q&A: Antoinette Balzano and Cookie Cimineri of Totonno’s, 2017 September: The Pizza Show, 2017 November: A Priceless Pizzeria in Brooklyn, 2018 December: State of the Slice, Part 2: The 27 Pizza Spots That Define New York Slice Culture

Mahmoud Fadl / Ali Hassan Kuban - Egypt Noir: Nubian Soul Treasures (2018)

"Nubia is ancient, the place where Egypt meets Africa. For all intents and purposes it's gone, wiped out years ago by the Aswan Dam, but it lives on in the musicians who moved to Egypt. It's almost some of the most fertile Egyptian music at weddings and in clubs, as this exhilarating compilation shows. The late Ali Hassan Kuban was the godfather of it all, the king of the Cairo wedding music scene, but those who've come later are just as vital, like percussionist Mahmoud Fadl, who keeps traditions alive and brings in innovations, and Salma. But they're simply the best-known names here. Every track is glorious and shows a different facet of Nubian music, some modern, some quite traditional. It's funky, but never American. Yet the pentatonic scale makes it sound perfectly normal, even familiar to Western ears. Nubia is definitely ready for its close-up."
allmusic (Audio)
Discogs
amazon, iTunes
Juno Download (Audio)
YouTube: Sayed Khalifa - Samra Oya, Ali Hassan Kuban - Bettitogor Agil

After Defeat on Brexit Plan, Theresa May Faces No-Confidence Vote

"LONDON — After suffering the worst parliamentary defeat in modern times over her plans for leaving the European Union, Britain’s prime minister, Theresa May, endured another day of turmoil on Wednesday, when she is to face a vote of no confidence in her battered government. On Tuesday Mrs. May lost by a crushing margin, 432 to 202, when Parliament voted on her plan for European Union withdrawal, or Brexit, as the clock ticks toward March 29 when Britain is scheduled to leave. Lawmakers spent much of Wednesday debating whether Mrs. May’s government should continue in power before voting at around 7 p.m. on a motion that could, in theory, lead to a general election. ..."
NY Times (Video)
NY Times: May’s Brexit Deal Failed. What Happens Now?
Open Culture (Video)
***NY Times: Britain Races Toward a Cliff. Time to Slow Down.
*NY Times: Hold a Second Brexit Referendum, *NY Times: Britain Needs a Miracle

Against Completism: On Sylvia Plath’s New Short Story

Sylvia Plath in April 1954, as a student at Smith College
"When I heard that a previously unpublished Sylvia Plath short story would appear in January 2019, I requested an electronic galley and then let the file sit unopened in my inbox for several weeks. I felt apprehensive, even frightened of it. I love Plath’s poetry, but what if I didn’t like this story? I read The Bell Jar so long ago, when I was fourteen or so, that I couldn’t remember anything about it. But I read The Catcher in the Rye at around the same time, and I remember that book clearly. Had I only meant to read The Bell Jar, and never finished it? Oh God, I thought, what if none of Plath’s fiction is good? I decided to read The Bell Jar again before addressing the new old short story. The first, striking sentence—already suffused with death—gave me hope: 'It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.'' ..."
The Paris Review
W - The Bell Jar
Guardian - The 100 best novels: No 85 – The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1966)
[PDF] The Bell Jar
amazon: The Bell Jar


2008 February: Sylvia Plath, 2011 May: "Daddy" (Video), 2017 July: Ariel (1965), 2018 April: The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume I: 1940-1956

Television Learned the Wrong Lessons From The Sopranos

"The elderly Uncle Junior is in his armchair, facing down a disloyal male relation. In the next episode, Junior will get his hand stuck in the garbage disposal for six hours, but for now he has the dignity of a retired king, which is what he is. He holds up one hand, and says: 'I’m in no shape for disharmony.' After mainlining the entire Sopranos oeuvre this last week, Junior’s seated pronouncement is the moment that has stayed with me. Not the first time we see Tony take joy in strangling a man, not the violent death that takes Adriana away, not even the time Paulie Walnuts gets lost in the woods. No, I’m obsessed with the easy, elegant way in which The Sopranos’ patriarchs wield their power. With a word, peace is made or broken. Today is the twentieth anniversary of the show’s first air date, and everybody is re-watching the series credited with inventing prestige television. ..."
New Republic
Esquire: 15 Moments That Made 'The Sopranos' The Greatest Show Of All Time (Video)
Guardian - The Sopranos at 20: how the hit show changed the gangster genre
NY Times - ‘The Sopranos’ 20th Anniversary: Here’s Your Complete Guide to Rewatching It

2011 June: The Sopranos, 2012 March: The Family Hour: An Oral History of The Sopranos, 2013 June: James Gandolfini, 2015 April: David Chase Reveals the Philosophical Meaning of The Soprano’s Final Scene, 2018 September: Spaccanapoli - Vesuvio (As featured in The Sopranos)

Struggle for Pleasure - Soft Verdict (1983)

"The fourth release by Belgian post-minimalist composer Wim Mertens, 1983's Struggle for Pleasure, is a brief EP's worth of, as the composer puts it, 'petite musique de chambre.' It sounds a bit stuffy, but it's indicative of Mertens' talent that one of these six tracks, the hauntingly beautiful piano instrumental 'Close Cover,' actually became a hit on the continent when it was released as a single. Although 'Close Cover' is the clear highlight of Struggle for Pleasure, the other five tracks are beautifully arranged pieces of modern chamber music. Although Mertens is clearly heavily influenced by American minimalist composers -- the title track and "Gentleman of Leisure" are unalloyed Philip Glass homages -- he brings his own brilliant compositional sense and a genuine gift for unexpected arrangements to these pieces. ... Like all of Mertens' early releases, Struggle for Pleasure was originally released under the group name Soft Verdict and reissued under Mertens' own name in the late '80s."
allmusic (Audio)
Discogs (Video)
Clone (Audio)
amazon
YouTube: Struggle For Pleasure (Live). Close Cover [live], Gentleman Of Leisure

Parliament of 1327

Assassination of Yvain de Galles at the siege of the castle of Mortagne-sur-Gironde – from Jean de Wavrin’s ‘Chronique d’Angleterre’
Wikipedia - "The Parliament of 1327, which sat at the Palace of Westminster between 7 January and 9 March 1327, was instrumental in the transfer of the English crown from King Edward II to his son, Edward III. Edward II had become increasingly unpopular with the English nobility, predominantly because of the excessive influence of unpopular court favourites, the patronage he devoted to them, and his perceived ill-treatment of the nobility. By 1325, even his wife, Queen Isabella, despised him. Towards the end of the year, she took the young Edward to her native France, where she joined and probably entered into a relationship with the powerful and wealthy nobleman Roger Mortimer, whom her husband had exiled. The following year, they invaded England to depose Edward II. Almost immediately, the King's resistance was beset by betrayal, and he eventually abandoned London and fled west, probably to raise an army in Wales or Ireland. He was soon captured and imprisoned.
Isabella and Mortimer summoned a parliament to confer legitimacy on their regime. ..."Wikipedia
amazon: The Origins of the English Parliament, 924-1327

Mortimer and Isabella's invasion route in 1326, Their landing and attack is in green; the King's retreat westward is in blue.

The Fleeting Magic of the F.A. Cup

Accrington Stanley hosted Ispwich Town in one of dozens of third-round F.A. Cup matches played over the weekend.
"ACCRINGTON, England — Andy Holt is standing at the door to the bar, watching the celebrations unfold. On the field, Accrington Stanley’s players are in the middle of an impromptu lap of honor, pumping their fists and beaming broad smiles. John Coleman, their manager, is conducting the crowd’s chanting, soaking in their adulation. Holt, the club’s owner, does not seek to join them, to bask in their reflected glory. But still, as fans start to leave, a steady stream heads toward him, hands outstretched, wanting to offer their congratulations, or share their glee. He greets each one like an old friend. ... On one level, that is what the F.A. Cup means to a club like Accrington Stanley, and to a chairman like Holt. Though Coleman’s team is now thriving in League One — English soccer’s third tier — it is doing so on a fourth-tier budget. ..."
NY Times

Watford won at Woking in the third round. To many fans, the chance to glimpse a Premier League opponent up close is still the best part of the third round.

Why 1984 Isn't Banned in China

"Last winter, after the Chinese Communist Party announced the abolition of presidential term limits, Beijing temporarily moved to censor social-media references to George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984. The government’s concern was that activists would use these titles to charge, in not-so-subtle code, that China was moving in a decidedly authoritarian direction. But censors did not bother to ban the sale of these texts either in bookstores or online. It was—and remains—as easy to buy 1984 and Animal Farm in Shenzhen or Shanghai as it is in London or Los Angeles. The different treatment of these texts and their titles helps illuminate the complicated reality of censorship in China. It’s less comprehensive, less boot-on-the-face—as Orwell might have put it—and quirkier than many Westerners imagine. ..."
The Atlantic

2011 July: Spanish Civil War - 75 Year, 18 July, 2011 August: Down and Out in Paris and London, 2012 March: 1984 (For the Love of Big Brother), 2012 June: "The Spanish Earth", Written and Narrated by Ernest Hemingway, 2013 January: The Real George Orwell, 2015 August: Songs of the Spanish Civil War, 2016 September: Homage to Catalonia (1938)

The Leopard - Luchino Visconti (1963)

"Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s novel The Leopard had a hard time finding a publisher but was well-known by the time Luchino Visconti began working on his film of the same name. The book appeared in Italy in 1958 and was subsequently translated into many languages—a German version can be seen lying around in Visconti’s section of the four-part film Boccaccio ’70, released in 1962 (the other episodes were directed by Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, and Mario Monicelli). ... Both novel and film are ironic, elegiac, stately, and dedicated to a lux­urious mourning of a lost past. But the loss and the past are different in each case, and the film is a good deal more political—more political than the novel and more political than it may look at first sight. The most magnificent moments in the book involve a movement that Visconti does not make, and that a film, perhaps, cannot make persuasively: the flash-forward in time, the long look at the future beyond the story currently being told. ..."
Criterion - Remembrance of Things Past: The Leopard
Fashion Institute of Technology (Video)
Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard and Those Who Are Not Rich in A Country of Arrangements
Cannes winner The Leopard is a gloriously uneventful period piece
W - The Leopard
amazon
YouTube: The Leopard (1963) ORIGINAL TRAILER

Amped up

Aleksey Podat
"The Ukrainian music scene is undeniably in the middle of a boom, with interest in local musicians experiencing an unexpected rise. A bonafide artistic movement has appeared, bringing with it promising emerging producers, DJs and promoters. Tight, a Russian/English-language online magazine, was born out of Ukraine’s local scene earlier this year and has quickly become a destination for discovering home-grown music and reading playful Q&As with international names. Here, its co-founders, Maya Baklanova and Tanya Voytko and picks ten musicians who are carrying forward and rapidly transforming electronic music in Ukraine. ..."
The Calvert Journal (Audio/Video)

Seben Heaven: The Roots of Soukous

"Kanda Bongo Man’s 1987 hit 'Sai' is an assault of joyful energy from the opening note through to the last: Diblo Dibala’s lead guitar rings clearly above Guadeloupean drummer Ti Jean’s pounding kit, while Pablo Lubadika Porthos’ slick bass lines and Lokassa Ya Mbongo’s expert rhythmic twang provide a solid springboard. As the music takes off, Kanda shouts “kwassa kwassa” and the band shifts into high gear. This powerful studio production is archetypical Parisian soukous, recorded with a studio ensemble of household names – all stars in their own right – and aimed directly at the clubs. But what is this rapid-fire, guitar-driven music that swept Europe in the ’80s? Where did it come from, and where did it go? ..."
Red Bull Music Academy Daily (Video)