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FATHER-SON? - the late Russian president Boris Yeltsin and our favorite(?) GOP spouse Marcus Bachmann.
.... and so it goes.
For now? Why not 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 - the most successful UK art exhibit held outside London in recent memory is Vermeer's Women: Secrets and Silence - and will close at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England this coming Sunday, January 15th.
IT's UNPLEASANT to see that not only French president Nicolas Sarkozy tried to lay claim to the heritage of Joan of Arc on her 600th birthday - but also the xenophobic National Front leader Marine Le Pen.
MONDAY's CHILD is Willow the Cat - an English kitteh who went missing four years ago but was located (20 miles away) due to her microchip.
AN EXPEDITION is attempting to be the first to reach the South Pole by the use of a specially-made .... bicycle.
MUSIC NOTES - to mark the first anniversary of the July 22nd massacre of 69 people by right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik on the island of Utøya in Norway, Bruce Springsteen has been asked by local officials to perform (as it would be an open date on a planned European tour which would be in Norway around that date).
SEPARATED at BIRTH - Spanish actress Lina Sands .............
.............. and Angelina Jolie the film star and activist.
SADNESS to learn that the 93 year-old journalist Mike Wallace is (according to his son) "in a facility in Connecticut. Physically, he's okay. Mentally, he's not".
ART NOTES - a look at Canadian prairie life 1930-1955 entitled Settlement and the Last Best West is at the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton to January 29th.
TV NOTES - a quarter of a century after his only previous appearance on the small screen, Dustin Hoffman is set to appear in a new HBO drama - and The Guardian is delighted that he is not the only septuagenarian in the series.
TUESDAY's CHILD is George the Cat - a Canadian kitteh who went missing for three months after getting loose at Edmonton International Airport, but has now been reunited with his family.
YUK for today - UK scientists have found large numbers of a new crab species on the Southern Ocean floor that they have dubbed The Hoff - because its hairy chest calls to mind David Hasselhoff.
IT'S LONG BELIEVED the Spanish poet and dramatist Federico García Lorca was murdered by Franco's forces during the Spanish Civil War. Now, seventy-five years later, a historical researcher believes he knows where the remains of the Granada poet may lie: and wants to carry out a new search for Lorca's grave.
MOTHER-DAUGHTER? - the late child actress Edith Fellows ("Jane Eyre", "Pennies from Heaven") ....
.............. and Kathy Griffin the stand-up comic.
WOTTA SURPRISE that the man who in 2003 stabbed to death Sweden's foreign minister Anna Lindh - for which he is serving a life sentence - recently stabbed a fellow inmate in prison.
ART NOTES - three centuries of French painting in an exhibit entitled Old Masters to Monet are at the D'Amour Museum of Fine Arts in Springfield, Massachusetts to April 29th.
GET WELL to the Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi - who released his autobiography just last year - after being diagnosed with early-stage lymphoma, but which is only expected to slightly affect the band's reunion album and tour.
WEDNESDAY's CHILD is Fendi the Cat - whom the Animal Rescue League of Boston, Massachusetts brought down safely (after 16 hours) from a 50-foot tree.
ONE HUNDRED and TEN YEARS after he was executed by a firing squad on charges of killing 12 unarmed Boer prisoners, the Australian government said yesterday it would ask Britain to re-open the case of Harry 'Breaker' Morant - a bush poet-turned-soldier - to consider a posthumous pardon, as descendants believe he (and two other men) did not receive a fair trial.
SPORTING NOTES - one reason why there are many more US-born players in the NHL today is that the talent pool has expanded past the traditional 3-M's (Minnesota, Michigan and Massachusetts) for grooming hockey players.
ART NOTES - an exhibit exploring Japanese woodblock prints and their influence on Western art entitled Beyond Ukiyo-e is at the Cummer Museum of Art in Jacksonville, Florida through August 9th.
BUSINESS NOTES - the legacy of Germany's famous art and design school Bauhaus has been under threat for five decades from a retailer that took the title and trademark in 1960.
HISTORY NOTES - the US city of Boston is to host the fourth international ceremony commemorating the 1.5 million Irish people who died (or emigrated) during the Great Famine between 1845-1851.
THURSDAY's CHILD is Waylon the Cat - a Florida kitteh who disappeared six months ago but was located more than 2,000 miles from home in Littleton, Colorado due to his microchip.
SPORTING NOTES - given that the Rose Bowl game is held in Pasadena, the answer to the trivia question What was the last bowl game held in Los Angeles? was the 1961 Mercy Bowl - played as benefit to honor the Cal Poly football team which was killed in a plane crash.
FIFTY YEARS after he last appeared on Broadway, the 80-year-old William Shatner will appear in a one-man-show entitled "Shatner's World: We Just Live In It."
SEPARATED at BIRTH - TV star Keith Olbermann and film character Mrs. Doubtfire (as portrayed by Robin Williams).
EDUCATION NOTES - after a five-hour meeting, Chile's education ministry says it will reconsider a change in the wording in its primary school textbooks - after its conservative government wanted to replace the word 'dictatorship' with 'military regime' in the textbooks of primary school students when referring to the brutal 17-year rule of right-wing Gen. Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).
FRIDAY's CHILD is Foxy the Cat - a toilet-trained California kitteh who is now up for adoption.
......and finally, for a song of the week ............... later this month would have been the 65th birthday of Warren Zevon - who was fated not to live to the age of Social Security. Yet he left behind a body of work combining satire and rock music not usually associated with the Southern California sound of his era, with personal touches in his subject matter .... and all the while battling personal problems.
Born in Chicago (to a family with a father who was a professional gambler) meant the family moved often, though his formative years were spent in Arizona and California. He studied classical piano (sometimes at the home of Igor Stravinsky) before his parents divorced when he was age 16, after which he set out for New York (in the Corvette his father won in a poker game) in an unsuccessful bid to become a folksinger in 1963. Returning to California, he found work as a session musician and advertising jingle composer, before recording a 1969 album Wanted Dead or Alive - that went nowhere (before being re-released many years later).
He began honing his craft as a songwriter: with The Turtles recording two of his tunes, and while performing as a pianist for the Everly Brothers before their break-up (and with them each separately afterwards). Then in 1974 he went across the Atlantic to a sabbatical in Spain, performing at an Irish bar near Barcelona owned by a former mercenary David Lindell, who co-wrote a song with Zevon.
Refreshed, he returned to LA in 1975 and moved-in with a then-unknown Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham. Finally, Jackson Browne arranged a recording contract for him in 1976. The result was the eponymous album Warren Zevon - which not only sold well but garnered much critical praise. Linda Ronstadt went on to record several of its tunes and she had a hit with Poor Poor Pitiful Me that reached #31 on the charts.
Then Zevon followed-up with his career best-selling 1978 album Excitable Boy - which included not only Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner - the song he co-wrote while in Spain with David Lindell - but also Lawyers, Guns & Money as well as his only Top 40 hit - the wry Werewolves of London - which Zevon first began composing with the Everly Brothers. (Sadly, the Chinese restaurant mentioned in the song's first stanza has closed within the past few years).
It was at this point that alcoholism began to intervene, as he didn't react well to the stardom that he had acquired. 1980's Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School was dedicated to the detective novelist Ross MacDonald and featured the song "Jeannie Needs a Shooter" (co-written with Bruce Springsteen) as well as an ode to "Bill Lee" the baseball pitcher - and he had a live album the following year that seemed to solidify his comeback.
His 1982 album The Envoy resulted in Zevon receiving a nice letter (on State Department stationery) from then-Middle East envoy Philip Habib (to whom the title track was dedicated). But the album garnered mediocre reviews and sales: and Warren Zevon found he was being dropped by Asylum Records while reading Rolling Stone, thereupon lapsing into more alcoholism, a divorce, obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression.
He made a comeback in 1987 with Sentimental Hygiene - which is my favorite album of his - and featured backing from members of R.E.M. as well as garnering his best reviews in years. Over the next several years he recorded several modest-selling albums (including Learning to Flinch which was an all-acoustic live album) and one of his songs became the title track for a film: Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead from 1995. Then came another stretch of dealing with personal problems - and his lifelong phobia of doctors kept him from seeking attention unless truly necessary.
The year 2000 saw the release of Life'll Kill Ya - a look at growing old and the spectre of death (yet including the brighter Steve Winwood song Back In The High Life Again on acoustic guitar). But at the 2002 Edmonton Folk Festival in Canada, he felt a cough and shortness of breath, and was eventually diagnosed with mesothelmia - an inoperable form of lung cancer - and was only given several months to live. Though exacerbated by smoking (which Zevon did for many years) mesothelioma is caused by exposure to asbestos: and it turns out his father had a carpet store in Chicago where Warren (as a child) would play in the attic where there was plenty of asbestos in the insulation.
Warren Zevon chose not to pursue treatments that might incapacitate him and chose instead to record a final album The Wind with many guest performers. And it had not a gloomy theme (which, interestingly, he had done three years before with "Life'll Kill Ya") but instead mostly a range of his normal output - save a version of Bob Dylan's Knockin' On Heaven's Door - that was released in August of 2003, nearly a year to the day when he was diagnosed with his condition. The album eventually reached #12 in the Billboard charts and garnered the only two Grammys of his career.
Warren Zevon died in September, 2003 (at the age of 56) and so he was fortunate not only to see the release of this final album - but also the birth of his twin grandsons. In 2007, his widow released a biography/oral history about him (with interviews of his many friends) and there is a compilation album that many critics believe captures his style. It's interesting to wonder how he might have celebrated his 65th birthday later this month ... but just as interesting to look at the 56 years he did spend with us.
Of all of his work: it's one from his 1987 comeback album "Sentimental Hygiene" that is my favorite. Reconsider Me has been covered by Stevie Nicks and Steve Earle most notably. And below you can listen to it.
If you're all alone
And you need someone
Call me up
And I'll come running
Reconsider me
Reconsider me
If it's still the past
That makes you doubt
Darling, that was then
And this is now
Reconsider me
Reconsider me
And I'll never make you sad again
'Cause I swear that I've changed since then
And I promise that I'll never make you cry
Let's let bygones be forgotten
Reconsider me
Reconsider me
