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The nexus between politics and entertainment ... has seldom been closer ...
OLDER-YOUNGER BROTHERS? - NBC's chief on-air legal analyst Dan Abrams and film star Jake Gyllenhaal.
Yes, the walls are starting to close in ... but before they do: stop in for a look at news items outside the headlines, in the arts and sciences; foreign news that generates little notice in the US media and ....well, just plain whimsy.....
ART NOTES - an exhibit entitled Andy Warhol: Myths is at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky through October 31st.
TUESDAY's CHILD is an old friend, who was the subject of this article in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine from 2007 entitled A Day in the Life of Oscar the Cat - about a kitteh at a nursing home's dementia unit, with the uncanny ability to detect which patient is near death by curling up to them and purring.
Now, when the story came out you got the usual "Keep that cat away from me" jokes ... but according to everyone associated with the hospice, Oscar served as an "early warning system" for the staff to alert the patient's family, so they could arrive and pay their last respects. Here was one example when a family arrived after being told that Oscar had curled up next to a 'Mrs. K':
When a grandson asked why the cat was there, his mother explained: 'He is here to help Grandma get to heaven.' The patient died half an hour later.
Well, after the doctor who wrote that NEJM article published a book on the subject ..... it now appears that the story of Oscar the Cat .. Goes Hollywood ....
Variety reports that screenwriters Stephen Lindsey and Luis Ugaz have adapted Dr David Dosa's bestselling memoir Making Rounds With Oscar - "The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat" for the big screen. The plot will chart the life-and-death dramas at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island, where the off-screen Oscar is still in residence.
CONGRATULATIONS to Sylvain 'Gunther Love' Quimene - the Frenchman has won the annual Air Guitar World Championships for the second time in a row.
AS WE HOPE for the best in the rescue of the trapped miners in Chile, the BBC outlines 'six steps to survival' in the interim.
SEPARATED at BIRTH - Canadian actor James Doohan from Star Trek and labor leader/politician Lech Walesa from Poland.
A RECENT CARTOON by Tom Tomorrow deals with the omnipresent issue of conservative outrage.
ART NOTES - works by Tom Marioni are at the Hammer Museum (on the UCLA campus) through October 3rd.
BOOK NOTES - the Nobel Prize for Literature winner Seamus Heaney has released "Human Chain" - his 12th collection of new poems.
FASHION NOTES - the designer Jade Jagger - Mick's only child with Bianca - is asked for 'Five Things I Know about Style'.
QUOTE for today: After observing most of his players shave their heads, St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa says he likes their new styles ..... because they're so ugly, he won't have to worry about his players staying out late.
WEDNESDAY's CHILD is Snooky the Cat - the subject of a 2004 children's book .....
....who was cited as the reason for a denial of a trademark to Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi, one of the stars of the TV show "Jersey Shore".
A TALE of TWO NATIONS - one unexpected result from the peaceful separation of Czechoslovakia years ago: is that the Czech Republic has more lenient laws on narcotics use than Slovakia.
DIRECT DESCENDANTS? - Langley Collyer - one of two brothers infamous for living (and dying) as recluses in New York City - and Ron Jeremy the porn star.
CIVIC NOTES - last week, municipal officials in Berlin, Germany revealed the finalists in a landscape design competition to decide the future of the historic, yet now out-of-service Tempelhof Airport (the staging area for the 1948 Berlin Airlift of 1948-49).
ART NOTES - a photography exhibit by John Gossage is at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. through January 17, 2011.
LEST YOU THINK that this only happens in the USA: a pregnancy crisis center in Toronto, Canada put on a scare show for an undercover reporter seeking help.
THURSDAY's CHILD is Lilou the Cat - a grey tiger who hitched a ride via train into Pearse Street station in Dublin, Ireland. After checking security cameras to see where he boarded, he was reunited with his family - and Irish Rail gave Lilou his own rail card 'for future journeys'.
BRITISH ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES part #27 - the decision by the new Conservative government to abolish Britain's Audit Commission - an NGO given the responsibility to audit local public services across the UK - is unsurprisingly expected to benefit large CPA firms which have donated large sums of money to .... the Conservative Party.
From the HISTORY FILES - this Time Magazine 1973 story recalls an ad that I saw in Rolling Stone (and elsewhere) at the time ....
ECONOMIC NOTES - the LA Times essayist Michael Hiltzik notes that major corporations "are sitting on a record hoard of cash, but they're not using it to hire workers or pay existing ones better wages". The estimable Harold Meyerson explains why in this as well as this essay.
BRITISH ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES part #28 - many British artists are dismayed that their works have been chosen to hang in the offices of Conservative Party officials.
SPORTING NOTES - first it was the Boise State team with its blue (artificial turf) football field - now, not to be outdone is Eastern Washington University whose new turf football field is colored ...... ummmm ...
TRAVEL NOTES - the national railways of France & Germany are battling for supremacy of European high-speed rail.
FILM NOTES - the British director life: Stephen Merchant - who has worked with Ricky Gervais - lists 'The Apartment' (with Jack Lemmon and Shirley McLaine) as 'The Film That Changed my Life'.
......and finally, for a song of the week ............... at first, I thought he might be limited to humorous, whimsical songs, but upon further listening I found the jazz pianist Dave Frishberg to have a full palette of musical offerings. While I think that the All-Music Guide's Scott Yanow may overstate by referring to him as "arguably the best living lyricist" - he does have a way with words, and a more complete background than I imagined.
Born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1933, he developed an appreciation for boogie-woogie piano and joined the house band at St. Paul's Flame Club, where big-name stars performed. After graduating from the University of Minnesota with a journalism degree, Frishberg spent two years in the Air Force (via ROTC) before moving to New York in 1957.
In order to gain a union card, he worked briefly for a radio station. One of his early solo piano gigs was working at a gay club (where a then-unknown Tiny Tim was among the performers). But he spent much of the next ten years as an sideman to major stars: Carmen McRae, Gene Krupa, Ben Webster, plus a stint in the Al Cohn-Zoot Sims band (with Jimmy Rushing on vocals each weekend).
It was a chance solo album he recorded in 1970 called Oklahoma Toad that helped him find his own (singing) voice. With the first of his quirky tunes Van Lingle Mungo - simply reciting that and other old-time baseball players' names - he found some success and (after going through a painful divorce) decided to leave New York for Los Angeles two years later.
He had various success: Among his first offers was to write "Dodger Blue" for the hometown baseball team. He placed his talents for awhile writing for television; scoring a Mary Tyler Moore TV special. Another show he wrote for was the ABC Schoolhouse Rock! program, with I'm Just a Bill explaining the legislative process to kids.
Dave Frishberg cites Frank Loesser (of "Guys and Dolls" fame) as an important influence as a composer. with Loesser's "Baby, it's Cold Outside" along with Willie Nelson's "Crazy" as songs he wishes he had wrote.
But he slowly began to build-up a solo career and - after signing with Concord Records - began with a 1975 instrumental album and each subsequent album saw him performing fewer standards and more of his own compositions throughout the 1970's through the 1990's.
And those songs .... My Attorney Bernie tells how Bernie helps him navigate the business world's waters, "I'm Hip" speaks for itself, plus "Let's Eat Home", Another Song about Paris plus "Can't Take You Nowhere", I Want To Be A Sideman - and my favorite, Blizzard of Lies - in which he asked his friends to recite all of the standard lies they heard. Some of what they (and he) found were:
It's just a standard form.
Strictly by the book.
What's fair is fair.
I'll be right there.
I am not a crook.
Perhaps the song of his that has been most covered by other performers is his 1962 tune Peel Me a Grape - which was uttered by Mae West from the film "I'm No Angel" from 1933. It has been covered by performers diverse as Dusty Springfield, Nancy Wilson, Rosemary Clooney, Vanessa Williams and very prominently by Diana Krall.
Since 1986, Dave Frishberg has lived in Portland, Oregon and at age 77 still performs and records. As the critic Stephen Holden once wrote, "Few contemporary writers have produced as many songs that have been embraced by nightclub cognoscenti".
Almost nothing of him performing is available on free video; one exception is his performing Van Lingle Mungo - the song consisting of the names of old-time baseball players to the strains of a catchy tune - below:
In 1994, Dave Frishberg wrote My Country Used to Be - whose lyrics at the time lamented how the USA no longer manufactured anything: "now we buy overseas". But following 9-11, he re-wrote the lyrics to reflect the feelings that all of us felt at its exploitation (fair-use extract below). And below you can hear the Manhattan cabaret singer Cynthia Crane perform the updated version:
Once I pledged allegiance to the flag
of the good old USA
And to the values for which it stood:
The home, the family, the neighborhood
'Cause while it lasted: well, it sure felt good
Now I pledge allegiance under God
to the mighty corporations
To the airport search
to the secret police
To the wiretaps
to the war on peace
Once we were hailed and cheered
Honored, world-revered
Now we're despised and feared
Alone against the world
My country used to be
Land of opportunity
Second to none
No need to shout out loud
"We're number one!"
I hope my children live to see
A land like my country used to be.
