LATEST ADDITIONS

Harry Patch, the last survivor of Passchendaele, did something 500,000 of his mates didn't: He survived the three months of carnage. He's the last WWI Tommy.

On the eve of the release of <I>The Simpsons</I> movie, Ian Jones explains when and why the TV show began to suck (he says it was in season 9, 1997). Will the movie reflect the glory of the first eight seasons or will it disappoint? The trailers have not embiggened my enthusiasm.

It was a fascinating place&mdash;but it was <I>his</I>. Other than comic books, a Hitchcock film is the only place where it makes sense for a wrongfully accused man to have to catch the real villian. Yet, the plots were never the point, were they?

Some music really does suck&mdash;um, create a differential affect gap.

David Murray has a new jazz album out. A decade or two ago, this wouldn’t be worth a shrug (though it would be worth a trip to Tower); he came out with two or three jazz albums every month. Those of us lucky to live in New York could also go see him lead his big band at the Knitting Factory every Monday night and see him play in a half-dozen other bands, as leader or sideman, at clubs all over the city. Then, in the mid-‘90s, he fell in love with a French woman, moved to Paris, broadened his musical palette (playing with Guadaloupean drummers, for instance)—all to nourishing effect, but the few times each year when he returned to New York and hooked up with a jazz quartet or octet again, it was a nearly always a spine-tingling experience (yes, a clich, but it really was).