Half-century old reel-to-reel tapes stored in an East Coast basement recently surfaced, and they held three lost Allan Sherman parodies. I was tempted to say they are legendary, but they are too obscure for that. Nobody knew of them, and so no legends could be promulgated.
Two of the songs parody tunes from Porgy and Bess. They [...]
The Basement Tapes — Allan Sherman version
On Sitting Down To Read The New York Review of Books Once Again
O golden-tongued Know-It-Alls of serene learning!
Fair plumed Applebaum! Queen of baleful histories!
Breathe deep-thinking on my reveries,
Speak up Daniel Mendelsohn, it’s page turning:
Table for two! for once again the fierce communing,
Between Brooklyn and Manhattan
Must I wade through; once more tattlin’
On myself and my television tuning.
Chief Editor! and ye titans of sitzfleish,
Begetters of my unleaped eternal dream,
I [...]
Two moods: rants, or regrets about earlier rants
That’s how I put it in this podcast interview about Seymour Krim with Dan Friedman at the Forward newspaper.
And we talk about Krim from a Jewish angle, naturally.
You can lose your mind, when cousins — are two of a kind
That little jingle from the Patty Duke show dates me, but I found it irresistible after reading how researchers determined that Jews around the world are virtually cousins and genetically more like each other than they are like their non-Jewish neighbors. Jews thousands of miles apart share genetic markers commonly seen among distant relatives, such [...]
continue reading >>After I read Chabon’s chosen people article I was still hungry
The major real estate devoted to Michael Chabon’s “chosen people” piece in the New York Times reminded me that, like myself, many Jews stumble into Jews. As historian Michael Meyer said, for today’s Jews being Jewish is only a part of their total identity. But Jews are often more aware of this aspect of themselves than any [...]
continue reading >>Yes, the blacks and the Jews, but cool this time
Head Butler is a great source for learning about great stuff and when I checked it today these lines about blues musician Junior Wells and his record, Hoodoo Man Blues, jumped off the screen and into my brain’s Seymour Krim arena,
If they sound as if they’re in a club, that’s deliberate; this is pure Chicago [...]
Review of American Radical, documentary about Norman Finkelstein
I reviewed American Radical for the Forward here .
He’s a figure that gets people heated, and for good reason.
Great high school newspapers
Big web guy and mensch Dave Winer wins my heart by being a Queens kid who never let his love for New York die, despite decades in the Bay Area (the un-New York).
A few days ago he posted about his high school newspaper, Bronx Science’s Daily Planet, and the photo (left) on the cover set [...]
Late thoughts on Greenberg and Jews (plus Bellow, Krim)
Maybe I wasn’t being fair to the movie when I finally saw it yesterday. I didn’t want to see it, was almost afraid of seeing it. And I hated it.
I’ve put in a lot of time thinking about Greenberg-type characters — from Bellow’s Tommy Wilhelm in Seize the Day to self-declared failure Nicolas Slonimsky to [...]
David Brooks adds a page to Jewish literature of patriotism
David Brooks yesterday found a way to proclaim his love for America that in its heartbreak and longing adds a page to an American Jewish literature of patriotism.
The news hook for his New York Times op-ed column was the healthcare reform bill and the Democrats. But he soon got emotional, and it wasn’t the bill’s [...]
