Record Mart Reopens!
I've been telling you—I've been telling <i>everyone</i>, actually—that old-style New York City salsa is making a major comeback. Major.
LATEST ADDITIONS
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Covers From Beyond the Id
Back when I worked at the lower Broadway Tower Records, those crazy cut-ups in the Classical Annex culled the stupidest, most cheesecakey covers from the used bins and covered a wall-of-shame in the count-out room with them.
Martin Puryear in Perspective
I'm a huge fan of Martin Puryear's sculpture, having discovered it at a 1987 Hirschhorn retrospective. So I've been <I>meaning</I> to catch up with his current exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Arthur C. Danto's <A HREF="http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071231/danto">appreciation</a> in <I>The Nation</I> serves not only as a stimulus to hie me hence forthwith, but also as a meditation on MOMA's second-floor atrium.
Thanks, I Needed That
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Complaint Choirs
One of my very favorite television shows is <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/sunday/main3445.shtml"><i>Sunday Morning</i></a> on CBS. I look forward to it all week long, and when I wake on Sunday mornings, it's the first thing that comes to mind. I usually wake with just enough time to brew a pot of coffee and get comfortable in front of the television.
The best of 2007 (and more!)
Today in <I>Slate</I> (which, as some of you know, is where I do most of my writing, mainly on national-security politics), I lay out—as I have in each of the last five Decembers—my <A HREF= "http://www.slate.com/id/2180205/"> picks</A> for the 10 best jazz albums of the year. Here are the best of 2007:
Arghh Matey
Helen A. S. Popkin has written a fine <A HREF="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22251370/">opinion piece</A> on the new, phenomenally wrong-headed Congressional Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act (PRO-IP Act), which among other things (such as absurd penalties) includes a spanking new enforcement agency called WHIPER (White House Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative).
Perfect Score
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Embiggening Lincoln
Andrew Ferguson has written a <A HREF="http://www.neh.gov/news/humanities/2007-11/Interview.html">highway history</A> of Abraham Lincoln. Among other observations, he points out that the man who "waged one of the most savage wars in our history" was definitely <I>not</I> non-judgmental.
How to Say Love in "Click"
<A HREF="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/boyinthemoon">Walker Brown</A> was born 11 years ago with "an impossibly rare and random genetic mutation—cardio-facio-cutaneous syndrome, a technical name for a mash of symptoms. He is globally delayed and can't speak, so I never know what's wrong. No one does."