My name is Joe, and don’t ask me how many chimpanzees it takes to type out a coherent blog post. I don’t like chimp jokes.
But on that subject, it takes a lot of humans to create a banana martini and only one chimp to set the record straight. Let’s look at the evidence:
Banana Martini
1 oz. Vodka
1 oz. Banana Liqueur
(Garnish with banana)
First, look at the number of stars underneath this recipe. Currently 2 1/2 out of 5. That’s right. Half of humankind thinks this is a good idea, and half doesn’t. Was there ever a more damning indictment of humans?
It’s simple. The recipe calls for a highball glass because any first-year engineering student or unmatriculated monkey can tell you a martini glass won’t hold a banana. (It’s a center-of-gravity thing.) So even if you didn’t know that vodka does not belong in a martini, or even that banana liqueur does not belong in a martini, Mother Nature is telling you that bananas and martinis don’t mix.
If that seems too hard for you, have another beer and think about it some more.
October 31st, 2008
Posted by
Joe the Chimp |
Leisure |
one comment
The gift is an extraordinary one – a body for medical students to carve up and study. A friend of mine (who was a first-year medical student at the time) told me that they develop a close relationship with their cadavers. I suspect that may be true.
Both of my parents gave their bodies to science. I was charged a pick-up fee both times.
Within an hour of their deaths, the medical school was explaining to me that I needed to write a check to cover the cost of transporting the body from the hospital or hospice to the university.
The hospice nurse was appalled. He said he would write a letter. We joked that maybe they take credit cards. Turns out they do.
My mother told me shortly before she died that the school might charge something (something like $150) and that I should pay it from her estate. The charge was $350. I imagined that her last words might have been, “THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS?!”
Being somewhat less selfless than my parents, I’m not sure I want to give my body to science. But if I do, I’m going to insist that it be F.O.B. my death bed.
The university has a massive endowment, lots of benefactors, a well-trained development staff, students paying outrageous tuition, and it ought to be able to find someone willing to underwrite this marginal cost. That would seem so . . . um, diplomatic under the circumstances.
A medical school unwilling to pay $350 for a cadaver has some peculiar priorities.
October 31st, 2008
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Education |
one comment
Sometimes you have to leave academia before you can do the really interesting musicological research. Groucho the parrot is the star of the Birds of the World Show, and I had a second opportunity to interview him — this time on video — at the Texas State Fair. (The podcast from two years ago is here.) Groucho has wowed audiences at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, so finding him in this more casual setting was a real coup.
October 28th, 2008
Posted by
Professor Carol |
Music |
no comments
Is it “just art” when you hang someone in effigy? Leaving aside the question of whether it is art at all, it certainly is not just art. According to the news report:
A Halloween decoration showing a mannequin dressed as vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin hanging by a noose from the roof of a West Hollywood home is drawing giggles from some passers-by and gasps of outrage from others.
Chad Michael Morisette is responsible for the display and says “it should be seen as art, and as within the month of October. It’s Halloween, it’s time to be scary it’s time to be spooky.”
Morisette acknowledges that hanging Obama in effigy would be a very different kind of thing. But hey, it’s October, it’s a Republican, it’s a woman . . .
October 27th, 2008
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Politics, Visual Arts |
no comments
Glenn Reynolds (a/k/a Instapundit) has a column in the New York Times arguing that the vice president’s proper role is as a member of the legislative branch rather than as a team player in the executive branch.
Contrast this with Joe Biden’s formulation of vice-presidential duties:
Vice President Cheney has probably been the most dangerous Vice President we’ve had in American history. He has the idea…he doesn’t realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the Vice President of the United States. That’s the executive. He works in the executive branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that.
And the primary role of the Vice President of the United States of America is to support the President of the United States of America. Give that President his or her best judgment when sought and as the Vice President to preside over the senate only in a time when in fact there is a tie vote. The constitution is explicit, the only authority the Vice President has from a legislative standpoint is to vote only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress. The idea that he’s a part of the legislative branch is a bizarre notion invented by Cheney to aggrandize the power of the unitary executive . . . and look where it’s gotten us.
Article I, of course, deals with the legislative branch, not the executive.
So Biden thinks Dick Cheney improperly meddled in legislative affairs and Reynolds faults him for assuming executive authority. Maybe John Nance Garner had the best grasp of the vice presidency, but as between Biden and Reynolds, Reynolds makes a better case. The constitution gives the vice president only two duties: a present duty to serve as president of the Senate and a contingent one to assume the presidency.
The most important function of a vice president is to serve as a spare president. Using the spare president in the ordinary course of business is as unwise as driving on one’s spare tire. Spares should be kept pristine, for when they are really needed.
* * *
The joke may turn out to be on Mr. Biden, who upbraided Ms. Palin for her reading of the Constitution. Presumably Mr. Biden thinks Barack Obama chose him for the same reason that George W. Bush chose Mr. Cheney, as a way of making up for a lack of experience in foreign affairs. Mr. Bush’s choice led him to rely on Mr. Cheney in ways that were unprecedented — and unconstitutional.
It’s a criticism aimed equally at former Vice President Gore, and Reynolds urges legislation to prohibit the vice president from exercising executive power.
October 27th, 2008
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Law, Politics |
no comments
Yesterday I introduced a friend to G.K. Chesterton, and he introduced me to a particularly fine rum. It was a good transaction for all concerned, but there’s a lot more rum and only one Chesterton.
Just Voting Their Interests. “I’ve wondered, too, why it is that the dead ALL - every one of them - votes a straight Dem ticket. Maybe they’re the only ones with no more estate tax worries?” – RightWingProf
Carmen. I still prefer the boy/girl version, like this one with Julia Migenes:
I Am Bill. Iowahawk does it again with this on Bill Ayers:
I am the everyday forgotten little guy in your neighborhood, the quiet anarcho-syndicalist family man who gets up early and punches the clock at the local state university, writing the manifestos and polemics and grant proposals that keep America humming. I’m just doing my job, and all I ask in return is a little respect. And tenure. And Chicago Citizen of the Year awards. And two graduate assistants to grade exams for Practicum in Imperialist Racist Hegemony 311, because I’m teaching two sections this semester. Also, a sabbatical to Italy next summer would be nice.
October 26th, 2008
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Leisure, Music, Politics |
no comments
I am flattered that an anonymous writer, “Baltimore Arts Supporter,” has taken the time to write at such length about what he perceives as flaws in my post on Le Cabaret de Carmen (“Jumping the Gay Shark”), and numerous flaws in my personal character as well. His comments on the opera deserve a response. He says:
Did you see the production by any chance? Just curious - there is nothing more ignorant, and literally brainless, than forming an opinion with no personal evidence. If you did see it than at least you have that going for you - though I would be surprised you could write this if you actually had been there.
No, I did not see it. As I stated, I wrote about the post at Ionarts and the review by Mary Carole McCauley in the Baltimore Sun. My opinions on those two writings were formed after I actually read them – personally. True, I expressed my doubts about McCauley’s opinion of the opera plot and explained why I had those doubts, but I did not purport to write a review of the opera. Had I been there, I might have commented on what I saw. Instead, I commented on what I read. Mea culpa.
You might be aware that reviews only give one person’s opinion of a work, and without seeing it for yourself you have no idea whether this review accurately reflects the experience, let alone the motivation of the performance or artists creating it. Much like right-wing book-banners that wanted to take the “Grapes of Wrath” out of libraries without ever reading it. Ultimately the opinions of people that form them without enough integrity to actually experience what it is they are critiquing is utterly inconsequential. Such people are lucky if they are forgotten by posterity, for no doubt the other alternative is that they are the laughing stocks of history.
Right-wing book banners! Good grief. Where did that come from? Oh, right, I’m conservative and therefore the writer can paint me as a book banner without any “personal” evidence – or any evidence of any kind. Mr. Baltimore certainly oversteps logic when he suggests that we cannot criticize something without actually experiencing it. Nonsense. Must I get a tattoo and pierce my nose before criticizing body mutilations so fashionable today? Should Mr. Baltimore burn a book or two before venturing to caricature conservatives?
You have many ignorant points in your post. Here are a few:
a) The production never claims to have uncovered a homoerotic side to the narrative. It happily admits to creating it. You should do your homework.
I never said the production claims to have uncovered a homoerotic side to the narrative. I quoted the reviewer saying that Nelson had “discovered” a homoerotic element in Carmen. If the production happily admits that it did not discover a homoerotic element, but rather created one, then the production and I are in agreement.
b) Only an idiot would not consider a man struggling with his sexuality pulled into a love triangle with a transexual in the social climate of the early 20th century not dramatic - it maybe be tasteless, it certainly is not Bizet, but it is definitely dramatically charged. No wind is lacking in those sails.
Mr. Baltimore concedes that this production may be tasteless (and presumably he has seen it). I did not call the production tasteless, but should I apologize for thinking that tastelessness would not dramatically charged? I have not found much drama in tastelessness since I was 9 years old.
c) Michaela not significant? Again idiotic. Portraying the struggle of a woman in love with a man who is not attracted to her is socially relevant and very significant. Again, it isn’t Bizet, and it may not be to narrow-minded conservative afraid-of-change standards, but to say she is insignificant just because her affection is unrequited shows a complete lack of an understanding of the genres you claim to defend. If you don’t understand what makes for dramatically compelling narrative or characterization, you really should find different blog topics. You may not like it, or politically buy it, but you have to be a fool to deny its dramatic potential.
If we discard the ad hominem attacks in the preceding paragraph, we are left with the writer’s contention that Michaela is significant dramatically because she loves a man who is not attracted to her. But Carmen is not concerned with the character development of Michaela. If Don Jose is gay, then the feminine Michaela has no allure. I am at a loss to understand how a love triangle gains “new tension” when one of its sides is removed. A perfectly good opera might be written that portrays the struggle of a woman who is in love with man who is not attracted to her, but that opera would need to follow some plot line other than Carmen. Or are we simply to presume that the conflict is strictly about Don Jose’s own sexuality, whether to be gay or straight? That issue might lend itself to dramatic development, but it is not Carmen, and it is certainly not a love triangle.
d)”One can posit that David’s love for Jonathan was erotic, but if so, it would tend to prove that homosexuality is a curable condition given that David matured into a full-fledged heterosexual.” Perhaps if you can only see the world in black-and-white…for the rest of us that have a clue as to how fluid sexuality is and three-dimensional the world is, all it would tend to prove is that David played for both teams and his sexuality defied the box the right-wing tries to put everything into. Regardless that opera isn’t like Handel’s “Saul”, there is no mention of the rest of the story and the David of that text is very much centered only on Jonathan. Artists mounting a work are only responsible for the text before them, not the history of what happened before or after - the David of this opera is Charpentier’s David, not the David of the people, nor should he have to be.
Nelson didn’t write “David et Jonathas”. If you knew the work, and your writings lead me to believe that you don’t explore the things you comment on, you would know that there is no escaping the homoerotic elements of the librettist’s text. Nelson isn’t claiming it is in the Bible, just that it is in this particular opera. The last thing Jonathan says dying in the arms of David is “despite the harness of my fate, at least I can still tell you that I love you”. Try to escape that with any viability - at the very least you can’t claim that an erotic relationship is a stretch from that text.
I made the point that any account speculating that David was a homosexual would have to contend with the historical record of his heterosexuality. I don’t know what box, right wing or left, that puts me in. I do know, which the writer apparently does not, that the arguments currently advanced by many homosexual advocates depend on establishing homosexuality as an “immutable trait.” Otherwise, homosexuals will not qualify as a suspect class entitled to equal protection under the law. If Mr. Baltimore rejects the notion that homosexuality is an immutable trait, he will find himself allied with many of the “right wingers” he seems to despise.
The writer is entitled to his opinion that an artist is responsible only for the text before him and not the history of what happened before or after, but I think the artistic portrayal of an historical character is more convincing when it does not contradict the historical record. Leaving out the recorded heterosexual side of David while presenting only a speculative homoerotic David hardly lays claim to a more “fluid” or “three-dimensional” viewpoint.
This is EXACTLY why great art and artists from Bach to Beethoven to Shakespeare to Woolfe (the list goes on and on) have also prospered artistically in face and despite of the right-wing. You think you are defending their art and you just don’t get it at all. Poor blind souls.
It is rather anachronistic to apply right- and left-wing concepts to the history of art. Some art has undoubtedly been created in opposition to prevailing power structures and mores, but much great art has been created under the patronage of church or court. Some art has flourished despite attempts to constrain it by political forces decidedly not right wing. Mr. Baltimore ignores far too much history in conceiving it as simply a conflict between noble artists and reactionary right-wingers. We don’t know what Bach would have thought of gay themes in music, but we know he didn’t write any. It is our peculiar fetish today to speculate about whether Bach’s failure to write on gay themes suggests that he was censored by the right wing, homophobic, or just a regular guy – or for scholars to attempt to rehabilitate such artists in modern eyes by projecting onto their work some social significance they never intended.
Your list of possible scenarios is cute, and shows why you aren’t, or at least I hope you aren’t, a director. This production works not because of some gimmick sexual twist, it is so much more than that. It works in ways your scenarios wouldn’t. One can tell when watching it that the plot twist was the product of the cabaret concept, not the impetus. The fact is, though the reviewer got it, most audience members didn’t. And that was fine. The production worked all that much more because, get the twist or not, the concept was engaging and the staging affecting. If you knew Nelson’s work at all you would know that it is many things, many things I’m sure you would neither like nor grasp, but it is absolutely not sophomoric. The ability to craft a nice sentence doesn’t make you qualified as a critic.
No, Mr. Baltimore, you can relax. The theater world is not likely to employ such a conventional fellow as me – you know, thinking that passé boy/girl stuff still speaks to audiences. But you should be worried that the homosexual theme is rapidly becoming as conventional and mind-numbingly predictable as any dramatic fad can be.
Ultimately I will end where I began. This isn’t buffoonery. Buffoonery is commenting on it, drawing a conclusion, without ever having seen it. In fact, buffoonery is being kind.
And we strive very hard at Arts & Ammo to be kind. It’s part of what distinguishes us from the rabble on the left.
October 25th, 2008
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Music, Politics |
2 comments
Reflections on the life of Lillian (1916-2008)
From her children: Kathy, Hank and Ruth
And now, faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. (I Corinthians 13:13)
The Cardinal Virtues – Prudence, Justice, Temperance and Courage – and the Theological Virtues – Faith, Hope and Love – are a rigorous means for assessing a life lived. Mother can stand this test. Whether you knew her as teacher, friend, guide – or for we three lucky ones, Mother – hers was an example to reckon with.
She blazed a trail in the church and in her community, taking unpopular views that were right. Lawrence Bottoms was a frequent overnight guest in our home in the segregated 1950s. They call this Courage.
She had no sympathy for people taking unnecessary risks and didn’t want to hear about Hank’s skydiving or too much about Kathy’s mountain hikes. She knew calamities – the loss of her father at age 3, the Depression – and always sought stability and acted carefully. She was Prudent.
She sought Justice. She took on Mrs. Edmundson in the neighborhood and championed Ruth’s right to miss school for the Beatles’ first U.S. concert tour. Strong discipline was mixed with love. Right and Wrong were real things.
She was private. She understood the sensitive position of being the minister’s wife. She did not suffer fools, but was unfailingly polite. She was the person we went to for advice. She believed in Temperance and self-control.
She rose far above circumstances that conspired to deny her bright intellect a higher education. She determined to get that for herself at PSCE. Her mind knew no boundaries, whether reading on the couch or traveling throughout Europe. Daddy wondered at the stars. She contemplated the sea.
People who knew her called us last week to thank us for her Faith. Rigorous inquiry was an essential part of hers. And so was Hope – for the ultimate good in people, for Life, for History.
But the greatest of these is Love. Measured out every day, without stinting, in strawberry shortcakes, hugs, hand-sewn prom dresses, understanding, laughter, crocheted caps for our babies, wisdom, forbearance, dinner on the table, a look, a smile and the softest hands on Earth.
October 22nd, 2008
Posted by
Kathy |
Reflections |
one comment
Real Conservatism. Mark Steyn
With a few exceptions (such as Vermont), “blue states” mostly turn out to be red states with a couple of big blue cities (Pennsylvania, for example, or even California). Almost by definition, an effective conservative executive - the kind you might want in the White House - can only come from flyover country.
So, when a conservative pundit mocks Wasilla, he’s mocking conservatism as it’s actually lived, as opposed to conservatism as a theoretical fantasy playground for the purposes of cocktail-party banter.
Spread the Wealth Around. Power Line Blog raises as interesting question.
Currently, Barack Obama is outspending John McCain on the airwaves by something like four to one. It seems likely that he will succeed in buying the Presidential election.
But wait! We know that Obama is in favor of “spreading the wealth around” so as to achieve what he thinks is fairness. So presumably Obama will be willing to share his vast resources with the McCain campaign so the playing field will be level for the last weeks of the campaign. That’s only fair, right? What do you say, Barack? And if not, why not?
Packing It All into One Paragraph. Melanie Phillips doesn’t mince words:
I see this financial breakdown, moreover, as being not merely a moral crisis but the monetary expression of the broader degradation of our values – the erosion of duty and responsibility to others in favour of instant gratification, unlimited demands repackaged as ‘rights’ and the loss of self-discipline. And the root cause of that erosion is ‘militant atheism’ which, in junking religion, has destroyed our sense of anything beyond our material selves and the here and now and, through such hyper-individualism, paved the way for the onslaught on bedrock moral values expressed through such things as family breakdown and mass fatherlessness, educational collapse, widespread incivility, unprecedented levels of near psychopathic violent crime, epidemic drunkenness and drug abuse, the repudiation of all authority, the moral inversion of victim culture, the destruction of truth and objectivity and a corresponding rise in credulousness in the face of lies and propaganda — and intimidation and bullying to drive this agenda into public policy.
October 19th, 2008
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Politics |
no comments
I received a request from the NYU Psychology Department to ask readers to participate in a political survey. I have taken the survey. It takes about 10-15 minutes and simply asks you to rate each candidate on certain attributes and positions. The survey is neutral. NYU has made what appears to be a reasonable request that I block comments about the survey because reader comments might have some impact on how others respond.
You can take the survey here.
October 17th, 2008
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Politics |
no comments
