Full Belly

Glorious organic artichokes from Full Belly Farm, braised with shallots in sauvignon blanc and a squeeze of lemon. Not bad.

$4 million for Ohio State football coach

Congrats to Coach Urban, but so what? Santa Clara U. just offered me $6.5 million per year to teach micro, plus a bonus of $50,000 for every student who can correctly identify the deadweight loss triangle in a sales-tax diagram.

Ruth Stone, RIP

I have been reading her latest collection of new and selected poems, What Love Comes To, and just today learned of her death at 96. "New readers discovered a poet of varied and uncommon gifts, fierce and funny, by turns elegiac, scathing, lyric and colloquial." Yup. You can buy the book from Copper Canyon Press (link to left).

Paul Motian, RIP

I have been listening to jazz since I was a kid, and of course the music has changed a lot during that time, but nothing has undergone more change than jazz drumming: the techniques, the styles, and the role of percussion in the ensemble. Nobody was more responsible for these changes than Paul Motian, who has died at age 80. The NY Times obit quotes one of his many fine collaborators, Greg Osby: “He was an economist: every note and phrase and utterance counted. There was nothing disposable.” Well, that's a nice compliment to any economist!

The uses of enchantment

We watched My Neighbor Totoro again at about midnight on Thanksgiving... a contender for the most beautiful movie ever made. Maybe drinking wine for the preceding 9 hours straight had something to do with my assessment, but the first time I saw it with the kiddos I was stone cold sober, and I had the same reaction. Coincidentally, this showed up at Boing Boing today.

The Party of Lincoln

Whaddya think, Abe?

The Notorious George Eliot

I read Middlemarch some years ago and loved it. I was not listening to gangsta rap back then, so I did not think to compare George Eliot's style with Biggie's. Then again, who would? Ta-Nehisi Coates, of course, and damned if he doesn't pull it off.

Can Music Be Perfect? Vol. 4

Are you known to rock a microphone? Not like this you ain't.