Nearly twenty-five years since the publication of the final Far Side panel, Gary Larson is back, baby. Well…sort of. The man himself explains.
The true story behind the worst video game of all time.
Aquarium Drunkard‘s “unranked list of albums that caught, and kept, our attention in 2019.” Bonus: their top 100 records of the decade.
Um…
For the person on your Christmas list who has everything—and I do mean everything—may I suggest a kit for whittling your own izakaya-grade chopsticks?
It’s that wonderful time of year, when, well…pretty much anyone with an opinion is more than willing to tell you what to think about the musical, literary, and filmic output of the last twelve months.
I’d offer up my own end-of-year recommendations for books and music, but (1) I’m lazy and (2) nobody really cares what I think. So instead I’ll point you to the inimitable Ted Gioia and his Best Online Essays of 2019, along with his 100 Best Recordings of 2019. That should tide you over for a while.
While we’re at it, Gioia’s Music: A Subversive History is getting all kinds of attention. I haven’t purchased it yet myself, mostly because I’m waiting to see if someone is (ahem) thoughtful enough to wrap it up and put it under the tree for me. Or, if it’s easier, pick it up at Auntie’s and drop it off at the office. You know, in case you’re wondering what to get me this year.
WNYC, a public radio station in New York, has cancelled “New Sounds,” a show that’s been running for 37 years. In fact, pretty much all of its music programming will be gone by the end of the year. It should come as no surprise to anyone that, in these terrible times, news/talk is a more popular format than music.
BUT.
That’s not why I’m drawing your attention to this story. No, that would be because of a particularly cringe-inducing phrase. According to the New York Times, WYNC made the announcement to employees via an email, which said that the station will “sunset the NEW SOUNDS brand.” I’d throw up a series of barfing emojis here, but I’m an adult.
“Sunset the NEW SOUNDS brand” isn’t just equivocation. It’s a big steaming pile of bullshit. WYNC management determined that its audience wants less music and more news and talk; the station cancelled its music programming. Period. End of story. “New Sounds” isn’t a brand; it is (or rather was) a radio show. And the use of “sunset” as a verb? Come on.
I wish this were an isolated incident, but, alas, I see this stuff more and more every day: a complete hostility toward speaking in plain English. It’s like every marketing communications degree now requires a semester of Prevarication 101.
“Prefer the specific to the general, the definite to the vague, the concrete to the abstract.” That’s how Strunk & White put it in The Elements of Style. And it’s as important in office communications as it is in writing. Give it a try some time. You’ll find that your words will be far more effective when you’re not trying so hard to be creative.
Remember how, way back in July, I told you about the upcoming launch of a WSU-bred apple 22 years in the making—but that, really, the post was less about the apple itself than it was an excuse for me to take a dig at marketing hyperbole?
Well, last weekend, I had the opportunity to actually taste one. And I’ll just say this about that: While I take a pretty dim view of our ability to perfect anything on this Earth, the Cosmic Crisp™ is quite possibly mankind’s crowning achievement.
Hyperbole, schmyperbole. I paid $10 for four apples, and I’ll do it again.
Citing “the ignorance and laziness present in modern times,” John Richards, 96, has closed the Apostrophe Protection Society. “Fewer organisations and individuals,” says Richards, “are now caring about the correct use of the apostrophe in the English Language.”
Well… yeah. Nobody cares about the serial comma, either. Or the proper use of the phrase “begs the question.” Or that the past participle of drag is dragged, not drug.
When we started this business nearly 32 years ago, we never would have guessed that today we’d be working on such diverse project types. One in particular is videos, which range from 15-, 30-, and 60-second TV spots to long-form presentations and instructional films to documentaries and fully animated stories. At last count, our YouTube channel featured more than 70 of them.
Our services typically include creative development, script writing, planning and logistics, art direction, voiceover and music selection, and editing – always in collaboration with very talented production houses, animators, musicians, and, of course, our clients. These projects are some of the most creatively challenging and the most rewarding, which is why we finally added a separate work category just for videos.
According to the Pacific Northwest Region of the Forest Service (or the person responsible for the agency’s Twitter feed, anyway), a tom turkey’s wattle changes color depending on the mood he’s in. If he’s scared, it’s blue; if he’s feeling randy, it turns bright red.
Reminds me of when I was a kid. Raised as I was on Peanuts and comic books and Saturday morning cartoons, I was convinced—up until an embarrassingly late age—that the irises of my eyes turned into hearts whenever I spied an attractive girl.
Never said I was a particularly smart kid.
John Simon, the critic who served as a model for my own foray into music criticism so many years ago, died yesterday at 94. Through his regular column in National Review, Simon introduced me to Jaroslav Hašek, Vladimir Nabokov, Robert Lowell, and so much more. For that I am eternally grateful.
Alas, with the death of Simon goes the death of criticism, it would seem, as evidenced by this steaming pile, published just last week: “As wildfires rage in Australia, a record-breaking hurricane season draws to a close, and meteorologists predict that this year will go down as the second-hottest in recorded history, it’s clear that Ford v Ferrari is the wrong movie for 2019.” Or this, published a few days earlier: “[Ford v Ferrari is] a beautifully shot film that will be enjoyable for modern car buyers and enthusiasts alike—engines rev, tires squeal, stopwatches click. But what I saw is a devastating picture of the lack of diversity that permeated the industry in the 1960s.”
This, folks, is apparently what passes for criticism these days. Artistic achievement, skilled craftsmanship, commercial success…none of this matters if you’re not sufficiently woke.
Mr. Simon, you’re already missed.
“I would love to know who tried it first,” writes Lee Child about opium. “I would love to know who tried anything first. Who first dug up a strange root or random tuber and thought, hey, you know what—maybe I should cook this and eat it? In particular, I would love to know how many died trying.”
Reminds me of that Calvin and Hobbes strip where Calvin wonders why we drink cow’s milk. “Who was the guy,” he asks Hobbes as he moves his fists up and down in a milking gesture, “who first looked at a cow and said, ‘I think I’ll drink whatever comes out of these things when I squeeze ’em!’?”
Sure, it’s funny—I laughed out loud when I first read it—but it’s also kind of sobering when you realize that much of what we know today is the result of millennia of trial and error. “Our species,” continues Child, “seems to be restless and curious to a degree that seems almost unhinged.”
Read the rest of Child’s article—which is really about etymology—over at The Times Literary Supplement.
Learned another word the other day—on Twitter, no less—and it’s glorious: Shambolic.
My first thought was that it was a rather clumsy way of coining an adjectival form of Shambhala. But that hardly seems necessary, and the context didn’t exactly support this conclusion anyway:
Our mainstream institutions are either in the process of being hollowed out from within by identity politics, or they have already been devoured to the core and only shambolic husks remain.
So I hied myself over to the nearest dictionary and looked it up. Turns out it’s a British colloquialism dating only to the late 20th century; a portmanteau of shamble—the “scene of disorder or devastation; a muddle, a mess” definition—and, perhaps, symbolic. The new word means “chaotic, disorderly; inept, mismanaged.”
There are times when I positively love the English language.
Mind if I make a couple of year-end music recommendations? You know, just in case you need to scratch that Christmas shopping itch.
Kankyō Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980–90 is one of my favorite releases from 2019, and would make a very thoughtful gift for That Special Someone™ in your life.
If that’s not your bag, try the “rich, fundamentally life-affirming experience” of Pyroclasts from Sunn O))). Better yet, pair it up with Life Metal, which also came out this year.
Okay, one more: It took me some effort to find this glorious Tangerine Dream box set, but the Phaedra out-takes alone made it totally worth it.
Next up: T-shirts that say “I spent nearly half a million dollars on an advertising campaign and all I got was this lousy headline.” The fact that someone thought it necessary to trademark it is particularly precious.
I’m naturally disposed toward thinking the worst of governmental agencies, so my first reaction was to blame the client. But I was once a copywriter at an ad agency, where the creative process is typically dominated by art directors. And, not to put too fine a point on it, they’re…not great with words.
Either way, everyone knows about South Dakota’s meth problem now – though I’m not sure this is the sort of attention they were looking for.
Just noticed that the last couple of days are pretty significant, pop culture-wise.
Okay, so maybe “significant” is a bit of an overstatement. But still: Shirlee points out that Tuesday marked the 49th anniversary of the infamous KATU whale explosion. You know, that time when the Oregon State Highway Department thought it would be a good idea to use half a ton of dynamite to dispose of a rotting whale corpse.
KATU’s Paul Linnman was at the scene reporting and recording when the blubber went “boom.” The camera stopped rolling immediately after the blast, but Linnman recalls making his way out of the area as huge chunks of blubber fell everywhere.
Also in 1970, The Odd Couple debuted on ABC—and yesterday, it turns out, was Odd Couple Day.
On November 13, Felix Unger was asked to remove himself from his place of residence. That request came from his wife.
It’s a big week. Celebrate accordingly.
No matter what else is conspiring against me—stupid deadlines, unrealistic expectations, idiotic drivers on the way to work—I count it a good day when I learn something new. And since I’m not all that smart, pretty much every day is a good day.
This morning I came across a new word in the Library of America’s anthology The Peanuts Papers. It’s from the late Umberto Eco’s essay “On Krazy Kat and Peanuts“:
Charlie Brown has been called the most sensitive child ever to appear in a comic strip, a figure capable of Shakespearean shifts of mood; and Schultz’s pencil succeeds in rendering these variations with an economy of means that has something miraculous about it. The text, almost always courtly (these children rarely lapse into slang or commit anacoluthon), is enhanced by drawings able to portray, in each character, the subtlest psychological nuance. Thus the daily tragedy of Charlie Brown is drawn, in our eyes, with exemplary incisiveness.
Anacoluthon. an-uh-kuh-LOO-thon. She’s a beaut, ain’t she?
The search for the elusive author of the 1971 cult classic novel The Dice Man.
Posted here without comment: “An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the Salt Lake Tribune has a full-time jazz reporter. It in fact has two reporters who cover Utah Jazz, the local basketball team. This has now been corrected.”
“Once the starving had eaten human flesh, they no longer considered it a crime.” Douglas Smith on the 1921 Soviet famine—and the largest humanitarian operation in history.
Stereophile profiles Manfred Eicher, founder and sole proprietor of my favorite label, ECM records:
Eicher has supervised every single one of ECM’s albums—more than 1600 of them—signing the musicians, sometimes creating the band, ordering (sometimes suggesting) the tracks, almost always manning the sessions in person, even approving (in many cases, designing) the distinctive, minimalist covers—all while remaining an independent company.