Twin study

In Dorothy Baker's 1962 novel Cassandra at the Wedding, the bride is Cassandra's identical twin sister Judith. Cassandra, a brilliant but troubled young woman, is none too pleased to be "losing" her other (better?) half, even if the groom is a damn-near-perfect doctor. As we get to know Cassandra, who narrates the first and third sections of this wonderful story (Judith gets the middle), it seems possible that she might steer the plot toward gentle farce (mistaken identity anyone?), or toward something a good bit darker. It's not giving much away to say that humor and pathos are kept in exquisite balance right up to the end. The dialogue is believable and crisp, the writing both musical and erudite. I was especially taken with the simple moments of intimacy– Cassandra brushing the sand from her twin's bare foot after a swim; Judith squeezing closer to Jack in the front seat of the car, despite the summer heat; a bedside touch. The handful of characters are vividly drawn, and none more so than Cassandra herself. One of the best novels I've read in years.

Good reminder from Nicholas Kristof

This Has Been the Best Year Ever.

Yosemite in December

What can you say?

Filet-O-Fish Fail

Have I mentioned that I love the Filet-O-Fish? They generally taste just as good wherever you get one, from Martell to Tokyo. However, flavor is only part of the full aesthetic experience, and occasionally the visual falls flat. Take this example from the Mickey D's in Los Banos, where we stopped for a bite on the way to Yosemite this week. The closeup below shows some serious issues with the bun, including center collapse, creasing, and suspicious pimples running along the left side. The slab of cheese– difficult to see here– was poorly placed. The flavor? Most excellent, as expected.

Java Shop, Fort MacLeod

"Inside, frying is a kind of weather, a Florida

for flies, the doughnuts afflicted,

the coffee malicious.

Tiny friendless salads make you weep."

                                              – Karen Solie                          

On theory

"Tomorrow she will perform a theory
so dense it straightens her hair."
                    – Karen Solie, "Days Inn"

Your FSA/OWI Photo of the Day

Aboard a trap fishing boat, the fish freezer and the fish buyer. Fish freezers deliver most of their whiting to the Middle West and West. Squid is used for bait, sold at a dollar a barrel. Trap fishermen who manages to earn between eight hundred and one thousand dollars a year considers himself royally successful. Provincetown, Massachusetts
Edwin Rosskam, 1937.

Old School

Spectral, a fine trio of out-there improvisers, is a throwback of sorts to the abstract collective improvisation that evolved from free jazz after the 1960s. It's not clear whether there is (or ever was) much of an audience for this sort of thing, so I was pleased when a "crowd" of 30 or so fans and the merely curious turned out for last night's free performance in Palo Alto, put on by Earthwise Productions. I was equally pleased when a few folks skulked out at the end of the 20-minute first piece. They were, presumably, in the "curious" category, and had not signed up for this noise. That's OK: there's a place for music that pushes people outside their comfort zone, and props to them for giving it a polite listen.

Spectral consists of Larry Ochs and Dave Rempis on saxes and Darren Johnston on trumpet; last night they were joined by Madalyn Merkey and Tim Perkis on electronics. The music is all texture and soundscape: evolving patterns and configurations of tones and spaces echoing around the room– no tunes, no beats. Without a bass, and Rempis having left his bari at home, the sound palate was treble-heavy, with bell-like overtones from the three brass horns joining Perkis's preference for ringing distortions.

Merkey and Perkis sat stage left and stage right, tapping at laptops and twiddling knobs. Between the two of them, they made a pretty good humpback whale– Merkey providing pops, clicks, and whistles, Perkis adding bellows and fuzzed cries and moans. But their whale was usually swimming somewhere pretty far off in the ocean, and the horns took center stage.

Rempis on alto and Ochs on tenor and soprano are both masters of the genre, combining rich tone with bursting, angular runs and odd effects. To my ear, Ochs ran a little warmer and Rempis a little more aggressive last night. Johnston, meanwhile, has a more gentle sound, often playing in the airy style of Bill Dixon. Standing center stage, he stooped down frequently to switch out one of the four or five mutes at his feet. Johnston is a master with the plunger, and showed off just about every sound his horn can make, always in the right place at the right time, always sensitive to the ensemble's direction.

Much of what I like best about the jazz being made right now is the incorporation of rhythms from Latin, African, and hip-hop traditions, often mobilized in subtle and novel ways by the great new generation of drummers like Eric Harland and Henry Cole. What I'm much less fond of is the tendency toward highly structured compositions that offer much less space for extended improvisation, spontaneity, or looseness. There can be a bloodlessness to it. Spectral is unabashed in its commitment to a now older, less user-friendly mode of jazz-making, not without structure, but open to any sound an instrument can make and ready to let loose and see where things go. It ain't got that swing, and you'll never hum along. So is it jazz after all? As Philip Levine put it, call it music.

This is something that happens

Thanks, Bay Nature! Kinda gross, but with regard to biblical plagues of this kind, I like young Stanley's attitude (see below).

Two cheers for algorithms

Machine decision-making biases are easier to fix than human decision-making biases, or so argues Sendhil Mullainathan, offering a nice personal anecdote: "It is much easier to fix a camera that does not register dark skin than to fix a photographer who fails to see dark skinned people."

Magnolia

I couldn't leave Chet Baker's annoying voice hanging up there too long, could I? So here's a remedy: Lisa W.

Beautiful, but I can't say it's a cheerful song, given the subject matter...

Courtesy of Chet Baker...

... a healthy reminder that– Armstrong, Charles, Fitzgerald, and Sinatra notwithstanding– some singers in the 1950s really sucked. Case in point: Chet Baker.

Merry Christmas!

Duke style...