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Another Fein Mess
AF Stone's Monthly
December 2016
11-9 Met at 4:00 at Gelson's with club members Dawson and Heller.
11-10
* Contacted 4 days earlier by a PR firm to helm and design a rock & roll history bus tour for foreign attendees of a weeklong energy-drink convention, I constructed a route for - like the Minnow - a two-hour tour. I asked public speaker pal Skip Heller for help, then quickly turned the narration, and remuneration, over to him.
We rehearsed a run starting at the convention hotel in Koreatown, up to the Hollywood Forever cemetery (only for at look a the puzzlingly-placed statue of Johnny Ramone, who is not interred there,) then up to Sunset, up VIne past the Capitol Tower, back to Sunset for a stop at the well-chosen (Skip's) Guitar Center, with its Guitar Handprints walk and rest rooms, then zoomed west to the Roxy, the tour's final stop.
It was hot, we were atop a double-decker bus in the sun, but it was great fun, and the visitors, I was told, enjoyed it.
* Later, a screening with friends of a new movie featuring a chorusless-line of rock critics left us speechless. This is not your Yale swim team, but an insight into the minds and mugs behind all those reviews you cherish. (Spoiler: the good old days of rock reviewing are over.)
11-12 Aware that Tom Kenny & The Hi-Seas were appearing at Barclay's, a bar in South Pasadena, I couldn't gather the strength to go out this night.
Too much to do at home. But what?
Decided to go to a chic clothier and get a shirt. Luckily JC Penneys was open till 9 at the Glendale Galleria. Fun on a Saturday night!
But Glendale was closer to South Pas than Hollywood was, so I figured, what the heck. Called South Pasadenan Richard Fannan, who said he'd meet me there.
Good choice all around.
Walked in, and the place was full, no seats, but I spied Gene Sculatti and his friend Richard in a booth, and they seated me and Richard the 2nd. Kismet!
The show was wonderful, Tom crawling over booths and tables, big band led by Andy Paley, girl singers, guest singers. Too great!
(My new motto: When in doubt - GO OUT.)
11-13 Lunch at Canter's, again, with New York songwriter-actor Paul Hampton. He's on the cusp of a new breakthrough with a children's show.
Leaving Canter's at 4:30, in the LA winter chill (low 60s', breeze), I skipped the entry fee - it closes at 5:00 - at the Fairfax High School back-lot swap meet on Fairfax and eyeballed the local merch for the first time in a decade.
Feeling, apparently, the loss of my 1929 Underwood typewriter (given to daughter Jessie) I spied this clean, beautiful Corona portable of some vintage (like everything) and forked over $65 happily.
Later in the afternoon, a cruise with site-builder Fodel to see the Hollywood Blues Destroyers at the downtown Redwood Bar. A fine time, as always. Also on hand, author and screenplayist Phoeff Sutton.
11-14 Lunch with rare (but well-done!) visitor Mark Leviton. He came over to scope out my new apartment, then we hied over to the 101 Cafe, as is my wont.
11-17 A visit from the appliance-repairman. (Not a gay movie plot.) Covered elsewhere in this ish.
11-20 People running helter-skelter in the streets like in the final shots of 'Invaders From Mars,' pointing to the sky. Rain, rare here.
11-24 A wonderful Thanksgiving meal and gathering with distant relatives. (They live in Moorpark, far away but in LA!)
11-25 Turkey again with friends Kathe & David, at their hilly house. My second load of take-home turkey.
11-26 Rain again! What is this, Alaska?
11-27 At 3 pm, thought I'd get out of the house (apartment), gave Skip a ride to an appliance store. En route I learned that this was the day of the Hollywood Christmas parade down Hollywood Blvd.
Once at the store, I cracked the whip yelling "Hurry!" with the knowledge that within an hour all roads in all directions would be jammed or shut from parade attendees and blocked streets. Worked out fine, got back to my warren alright and stayed in.
1-28 I took my ebay-bought iPod 80 to a Mac repair shop to find out whether I was responsible for not being able to load music into it, or it. Turns out it was a bum iPod, which the tolerant jungenvolk assayed for nothing. ("Just this once," not adding "you befuddled old 20th century person.")
11-29 Met with the breakfast crew, all three of us. (Music-maker Asrshag Chookoorian was on tour, the old music industry guy Jay Lowy was seeing more doctors.)
Once this bunch was numerous, I the interloper -- Gold, Levine, and Ross from Gold Star Studio, Hal Blaine, drop-ins galore. As people moved and died off, we newcomers are left, along with studio designer Dave Gold.
Paying the check at Uncle Bernie's, the oldies station played "Rock Around With Ollie Vee" with such crisp clarity that I did a mini-swoon, suddenly picturing those Texans making music for fun, never dreaming it would span the world.
When I mentioned it to Dave, he said "Joe said that they chose the band name because there was a cricket in the studio."
I re-swooned: Joe B. Mauldin, bassist of the Crickets, was a sound engineer at Gold Star in the '60s. "A very good engineer, and good guy." By the time I met Dave, Joe had moved to Nashville.
What a swell life-adjacent life I lead.
12-1 Spent much of the daylight with San Francisco friend Joel Selvin. Went to 101 Cafe for breakfast, then out to the Iliad book store in North Hollywood, where he grabbed a lovin' handful of detective paperbacks on my store credit (hardly offsetting breakfast, his treat), and I bought a John D. MacDonald paperback.
8 pm, I was puzzled, not scared when, after turning left from northbound Cahuenga under the bridge beneath the freeway that leads to the Hollywood Bowl, a cop car flashed me to pull over.
I had expired license plate tags. From May. How could I let that slide? Off to AAA tomorrow. (Why mention fear, or lack of it? Because daily I commit about a dozen ticketable driving offenses).
The Media, The Election, The Schreyers
I am no savant, couldn't have seen this election outcome, but in hindsight I do.
The media is an elite country club which represents college-educated seemingly ruling-class principles, such as that liberal attitudes are best for everyone.
I belong in this elite domain, but never for a minute think it is national. Lesbian cheerleading, and other Prog concepts are signposts of 'progressive' agenda that are not reflected in the main body of America
The average woman, apolitical and striving to simply improve her lot, shrugged off Trump's loutishness with a practical 'Guys are like that.' They see tarted-up women flock around him seeking favor and think "hussies."
They regarded his ass-grabbing as normal if rude behavior, from what they know of men. Men with the upper hand get what they want.
But the women in the media confer only among themselves. Ordinary women's concerns are never addressed by the loud ones in the bubble.
I am a prog guy, and do not endorse any regressive characteristics described above. But I know where I am.
Hippie capitalism
I used to get a kick out of the reformed-hippie property owners I knew who raised rents the day/minute it was allowed.
I was reminded of this when I went to a store that looks like a pinball machine in one of Hollywood's light-tony 'hoods. A friend of mine had read from his new book there, and I picked up a copy.
Inside the front cover was a lavish handwritten inscription by the author, praising the store owner. I took it to the cashier.
Paid for the book. She said "Too bad you weren't here Sunday. He was signing books."
Then I made my mistake. I flipped open the book to reveal the inscription. The clerk blanched. "Oh dear, you can't have THIS copy."
Actually, I can, I said. I just bought it.
"Oh, no, no, this copy belongs to the owner."
Doesn't everything in the store belong to the owner?
"Well, this particular copy is HIS."
No, it's mine. I bought it. She called a manager.
"Oh dear, you can't buy this."
I already have, I said, but I was losing steam.
You see, I knew, slightly, the owner, and wanted to show it to him and exchange it another day, but here I couldn't pursue my rights to the death because it wouldn't be seemly. I took another copy.
Real stores defer to the customer. Hippie stores answer to a higher calling.
A visit from the repairman
There's a shiny new single-piece LG washer-dryer in a closet in my new apartment. When I washed three shirts, the dryer seemed to take four hours to dry them, so I inquired of the condo-owner, and she said to call the appliance repair company; she has a service contract.
Great, I said, then found out it required a $65 fee. "So what, I'm rich" I said, using the euphemism for nonconfrontational.
I like this apartment, and have but a year lease.
The tall young (30s) Russian guy was a talker, and walked me through the washing process, concluding "The unit is on the wall socket, at 110 volts. Standard dryers take 220. THAT'S why your three shirts were still damp after four hours."
So, it NEVER will dry stuff thoroughly?
"That's about it" he said. Lucky for me, and all Angelenos, this is a desert climate and things dry fast on hangers.
As he was tatting up the bill, I said "Now I'm gonna tell you something you don't know. In the '90s I had many cheap VCRs, and they were constantly breaking. One of them was a Goldstar. And do you know what company made those crummy VCRs?"
"LG," he said. "Lucky Goldstar."
I was astonished. How did he know that?
"In Russia I had several of them, too. You had to buy the Korean ones, the Sonys were out of reach."
He was slim handsome guy. I wondered if his house-calls include "tips" from lonesome housewives, but I didn't ask;
I already envied him his Lucky Goldstar knowledge.
Watching TV
The movie "Giant" is really chock full-o, well, Rock Hudson, Sal Mineo, James Dean, Earl Holliman. When Rock demands the restaurant-owner serve the Mexican family, he really is 'out of line' like the owner-sergeant says. Hudson/Rink puffs up and says his name, meaning he's a big landowner, asserting thereby that he should do what he says - in legally-segregated Texas. We're sorry for the Chicano family, but truly, Rock was flexing his family power like a brahmin bully.
You know you've gained weight when leaning over the laptop you press the space bar.
My friend from 'Cheers' said that the phone book in the bar was a Brooklyn one from the '60s, and had phone numbers of all kinds of people who became famous.
Why do the MxxxxxFxxxxxs of TCM harangue us with movie-director made wine sales? How about Henry Gallo-made films? This was the last bastion of non-commercial tv. Time to disconnect. I watch only it and the local news, anyway. In the '80s Springsteen had a song about having 47 channels and nothing to watch. It was true, then, and way worse now.
Also, they now adorn their INFO pages with opportunities to purchase the film you're watching, while forgetting to indicate the year of the film. Typing costs a fortune, I guess.
Business
The Burbank public library has run a sale twice yearly for old books, mostly donations. It was a wonderful bazaar. As I don't NEED any books, but that's never stopped me from buying, I wait till the final weekend when it's $3 a grocery bag. However, this time as I was filling up, one of the women told me it was the last sale. "We're going to open a book store" she said. Unguardedly I nearly shouted, "WHAT?" My horror brought out her sympathy as she told me that's the way the other branches work. "Don't you understand?" I responded in near-delirium, "This is FUN. People come out of their warrens and mix with others, seeking books, seeking bargains." She sympathized with the plunge of my crest, but I doubt I have much pull there.
Isn't it great that automobile gas cap sizes are standardized now? Once if you left it atop the pump, you'd have to look it up at the auto parts store and hope they had your size, like a shoe store.
If the toilet paper roll slides side to side in the holder, thank the industry for shrinking the width, not the price, over the years. No American industry would silently short customers, would they? It's market driven - so few Americans are fat now.
My Backed-Up Pages
I have been perusing the nearly 4000 typed pages of single-space thoughts and doings that I wrote between 1974 and 2004. It is familiar, with forgotten details. My dance-card was quite full in my 30's. Characters are disguised, the worst character a son of a bitch. Arf.
In my old musing -- 30 years ago, only 20 years after high school -- I reminisced about my first 'romantic' arrangement, when every Thursday for the first 5 months of 1963 I cut school with my girlfriend Sue and we 'played house' at her home.
I have always looked back with amazement at my stamina in those times, "finishing" three times in 4.5 hours.
Now, viewing my fresher 1987 recollections, I learned it was five times.
All 16-year olds should be blessed with this opportunity. Housewives would volunteer, the experience would benefit both .
New Yawk, New YAWK
Communications media are centered in NY, and less so LA. Chicago used to be the second largest American city, but now it's third.
Growing up in Chicago, we were hammered by the damning tag 'the second city.'
What in the hell kind of goddam stupid town trumpets a title like that? OK for a theater group, actors are depressed, but the local tv and news outlets blared it like it was something good.
If it was indeed created by a Chicagoan - this I doubt, the term is so suppressive - then I suppose it was defining after all.
Noticed in my 'memoirs' above that I'd seen "Funny Girl" in New York. 1964? How did I do that, or know to do it? A year out of high school so I wouldn't be with my parents. I remember now that it was a matinee, with Streisand, and that I had a seat literally behind a thick balcony pole. But it wasn't sold out, so I scooted down the row.
+++++++++++++
These Are The Times of LA
9-18 Half page: college students don't like tuition hike. With photo. The news is ...
9-19 Of course Kevin James makes non-highbrow movies, so why have arch snob Meredith Blake write about his latest? Arrogance like using him to bemoan "white male protagonists" on tv and snide asides about his "critically-reviled but commercially successful films" make me want to see more of him and less of her. "A kind of show that can't be bothered to take out the trash" is as strained a metaphor as I've seen lately ...
9-23 THREE reporters submit vital news about a possible fracas on a private plane inhabited by Brad Pitt et famile. Why in LOS ANGELES news? Were they flying over the city? ...
9-26 Sarah D. Wire's piece about a ballot initiative cites her meetings with a solon at a Starbucks, twice. Is the brand name supposed to tell us anything? Times past it would have been "a coffee shop." Did money change hands for this plug? ...
9-28 A half page WORLD story discusses participants at a Moscow summit, but only one was "a stately 7-footer in a bespoke suit and crocodile-leather shoes." Why did writer Mansur Mirovalev omit other participants' garb? ...
10-4 Three reporters as one declared a shooting "the latest national touchstone in an ongoing debate" about policing. Where is that debate, again? I have things that burn me, too, like nervy reporters who consider their insular obsessions to be the national pulse ...
10-5 Ben Stiller had a prostatectomy, after a cancer diagnosis. News newcomer Libby Hill salutes him for coming forward. This is a well-known treatment. It's good that she wants people to know about the process, but it's been bannered big since last century ...
10-7 Rock festivals always cost money, and now they cost, relatively, more. Randy Lewis or Lorraine Ali bemoan the high price for tickets to that big desert concert. The music still is as egalitarian; way-back you paid for concerts, lest you were a fence-jumper. So the rates are higher - but the acts were never back-to-back like this bonanza. People find money, for operations and opportunities, comrades ...
10-10 Clinton's loss infuriates both writer Barbara Demick and readers. To the moaners it is a judgment against all women -- corollarily, of course, a triumph for all men. (What flapdoodle: THINK when you write.) She was a stumbling, weighted, uninspiring person to the degree that liberals cast throwaway votes just to not endorse her. ANY woman is not good. The right one could have won and surely wil ...
Stephen Zeitchik salutes Michael Moore for his prophetic forboding about the election. He writes that Moore's warnings prompted "Chicken Little" ridicule. Not entirely - Zeitchik describes only what media people thought. That they have no special clues is not news ...
10-15 Gail Holland lionizes a Venice man whose "haute bohemian" lifestyle is financed by, among other things, naming an Abercrombie & Fitch line ("Hollister"), and shares his concern about the wrong kind of people impinging on the high-"alt' lifestyle there. The travails of the exclusive elite ...
That "Sir Paul" (journalists thrill to this exaltation) show at a tiny club in Pioneertown was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a very few fans. The newspaper scribe and photographer's presence cheated two left outside ...
NO DATE ON PAGE - San Diego LGBT gathering honoring the Transgender Day Of Awareness celebrated by ejecting a female-nee-male policewoman who came in uniform, claiming 'discomfort.' The hypocrisy was titanic, but the San Diego item got small play ...
10-17 "Victims of truck plunge are mourned" seems obvious. Ignored or assailed might be news ...
10-18 Many people hurling accusations prompted the LAT to give Lorraine Ali front-page placement to vent about "rape culture." If true, it's terrible, the same as if it turns out to be false. Recall the witches in Salem ...
10-27 Editorial page, Alexandra Brodsky ledes the second graph with "feminist warriors like my colleagues at" some legal outfit. To the barricades, comrades ...
10-28 Gadzooks. The subhed on a sports section story correctly places the adjective 'only'. That a certain baseball player "can be used only as a pinch-hitter" is tantamount to revolutionary. The norm, wrong, today, would be "can only be used." How did this slip through? ...
10-30 Chris Megerian - no gender given - on the Clinton press plane brays about how they were the first person to notice some pertinent election news online, and shared it with Clinton's people. Such grandstanding is undignified ...
10-31 Nearly a full half-page color photo of Kim Kardashian stares plaintively on the front of Calendar, the "culture" section. The news is she hasn't said anything. (No room on the front news page for this bombshell?) ...
11-1 Funny to see a photo of a bicyclist in a bike lane in an article about traffic management. Where'd they find a bike rider? Hire one? I've driven countless streets constricted by bike lanes and never seen a cyclist. Maybe it's certain times of day ...
11-2 It is a law that any issue concerning women quote "Los Angeles lawyer Gloria Allred"? It could be read as a dearth of other qualified solons ...
11-4 Randy Lewis refers to an "infamous" comment made by a jazz drummer. Infamy is titanic, President Roosevelt used it to describe the attack on Pearl Harbor ...
I don't know what to laugh about more - the naivete of a girl who came to school dressed as a Nazi for Halloween, or the school for rushing kids into Sensitivity Training. If you knew nothing about Nazis, you might like the uniforms. As a kid, I thought they were sharp ...
Half page on two cops killed in Des Moines, Iowa. Our editor sure knows our interests ...
Every time there's an article about a bank, the Times runs a picture of a bank or a money machine, today's a Wells Fargo. Iit fills space that they'd have to pay a writer ...
NO DATE ON PAGE Sports foghorn Bill Plaschke grunts that he's tired of hearing about the Cubs (before their Series victory). I never read him before, but I'm tired of him already. Naysaying columns are amusing to few, the writer's personal circle. Tell me something good. (And a finger to the eye of the Times editor who decided a color picture was needed to decorate this diatribe, showing a Cubs pitcher who had been suspended for a domestic violence conviction. Fuck politics) ...
11-6 The Harvard soccer team was punished for writing privately about the sex appeal of a female soccer team. Must be something new. Who ever heard men dish women - or vice versa? ...
The bold "Art galleries not welcome" hed (strangely at odds with the paper's normal slant) cites "activists" who "speak out." Why not NIMBYs who commit crimes ? Cindy Chang semi-salutes property-damage as expression ...
Two crits crow about their standards. "I have to confess" opens one. Movies matter, not you ..
11-9 Infantile headline about murders in Azusa: "I heard a boom boom." Did victims have a "boo boo"? ...
11-11 The half-page-plus given to Leonard Cohen's obit reflects his appeal to aesthetes, not acts familiar to hoi polloi. Bobby Vee sold millions, got three inches in November ...
11-12 I like lite. sometimes. Veronica Rocha opens her story about a family's grief by saying a father "can't wrap his head around" his daughter's shooting by police. Inappropriately casual ...
11-13 Paris: Sting does a show at site, one year after Paris attacks. Bravery? Importance? Slow news day here? ...
Sickening, really sick, Business section photo of news network execs making fists to demonstrate their toughness - in cutting costs. Man-whores? Guy on left is known for his "brash style." Sickening negative preening ...
11-14 Conor Friedersdorf backed up his opinion page tenet that non-Californians have long been uninterested in avocados with this; "Growing up, I thought that they were disgusting" an East Coast acquaintance in her early 30's recalled." Proof enough ...
Meredith Blake's big front page Calendar repeat of a contention that Seth Meyers' "roast" of Trump at a dinner was a big factor in Trump becoming a candidate makes me think "publicist" ...
Front page California section sub-hed on Hailey Branson-Potts and Ruben Vives article asserts that "a professor" finds outrage over Trump election "surprising." He's surprised? Find someone smarter ...
Leon Russell obit lede by Todd Martens, "Leon Russell, easily recognizable for his long white mane," should have been run past an editor. The guy's made great music, leading with the hair distracts ...
NO DATE ON PAGE - The idiot who defaced Donald Trump's star on Hollywood Blvd pleads not guilty to the crime he was photographed committing. Hailey Bronson-Potts acts scored the scoop learning that his vandalism expressed "his disdain for the president-elect" ...
11-15 Another in a seeming endless series of revisits to recent mayhems, a pickup from the Orlando Sentinel reveals that the May mulyi-murderer did not answer the phone when police called him during and after the shootings. Thanks, we needed that. No more now, OK? ...
11-16 Some movie will get "lion's share" of box-office this weekend. While it's an animal movie, the hed propounds the mistake that the lion's share is the biggest piece. It is hazy, because a lion gets as much as it wants, sometimes little, sometimes all ...
11-19 Michele Raynoso's half-page reminiscence about dating in "L.A. Affairs" was cute. She 'confessed' that she tried match-.com and had a horrific date with a man who claimed to be 51, a little above her target, but showed up as 57, and, as the date progressed she wondered if he was 75. His inappropriateness ended the date early, discouraging her on the date site, but she made another try - and found a swell guy! What I wondered was whether a man tried that service and encountered a woman who claimed 31 but remembered the Beatles arrival, had crows-feet and well-topped the weight she promised would be accepted equally as amusing ...
11-20 Why "a" young Jerry Seinfeld, James Rosen? Are there several? Effete ...
11-23 A local rock journalist's obit with large color photo fills a half page, while thea obit below, for a wide-ranging record industry veteran whose most successful association was with million-selling critic-derided John Denver, comprised only 2/3 of the remaining half-page. I was friendly with this rock journo, a character, but think the size of crit sendoffs should reflect their actual appeal, not just ours. We're so few ...
11-25 Sole writer Corina Knoll reports that a judge facing contentious charges asked "a Times reporter" to leave his premises. You bein' coy, Corny? ...
11-26 The entire city of San Francisco, Peter H. King's article says, will "survive" Trump's election. Grit those teeth, special place ...
Carol J. Williams wrote that Castro, just dead, had "trademark fatigues and scruffy beard," and was both "bellicose and swashbuckling," overlooking or unaware of the parade of citizens he led to the firing squad. In time, his command "lost its lustre." The SoCal view, with fashion ...
11-27 Big pic of the late Castro with a snappy "El Comandante" and a story of the "outpouring of grief" in Cuba. Not from gays and other undesirables crushed by his dictate ...
New York, New YAWK Times
9-7 I think the Brit word 'bollocks' is proper here. Sridhar Pappu, sex undenoted, writes that a guy who made a Hillary poster was bombarded online by crude comments. "Fellow white males" dislike her, the artist and the article writer concluded. They, then, were sexist! Not that they dislike her stance or philosophy - ergo, people who didn't vote for Trump hate men. What oversimplified piffle ...
9-8 Tech-preener Farhad Monjoo notes problems in a new Apple appliance, then backpats "there are signs that my critique" is shared by others. Give yourself a hand ...
9-11 No contemporary journo can speak of or to Jerry Lewis without condescension: it's the law. Ruth Laferla OPENS her "At Home With" piece observing that he, who spoke too much for her taste, is "patently disinclined to put a stopper on his often unaltered musings." What a bitch. Don't take the goddam assignment if you're so superior. She waits till nearly the end before sneering about a photo of him surrounded by his "motley assortment of knickknacks." Next time send someone interested in the subject, not themselves ...
9-15 Sam Roberts obit for a jilted cretin who set fire to a nightclub and killed 87 people in 1990 compares the crime to the unsimilar greed-based Triangle Shirtwaist fire. Apples and elephants ...
9-17 "A collector's mission" for Black art belongs on the Business page. People who buy art are investors, no matter their noble cover ...
"With his grey hair and the top few buttons of his shirt undone, Jann S. Wenner looked" - like anyone else, right? In Ben Sisario and Sydney Ember's view it bespoke a lion of commerce ...
9-18 James Poniewozic quotes himself rehashing "manxiety," a ginchy word (neolojism?) he'd invented. Self-love IS the purest love ...
9-21 Ken Johnson: "People say we're in the middle of a second Civil Rights movement, and we are." If you say so, Ken ...
9-29 Sydney Ember cites Clinton supporters calling "in droves." Shouldn't that cliche be deep-sixed? Have you ever seen a drove ... walking?
10-15 The NYT Brahmins send a reporter to Columbus, Ohio, to feel the pulse of regular people. Throw a dart, proles are alike ...
10-24 Cutline on business venture prediction quotes "one media research analyst." One? This is slim. There's no fewer than one ...
10-25 "Another Accuser Comes Forward" is the hed. What weight have allegations? I say the same of all allegations, but I went to J-school ...
10-28 Is it time yet to retire "bad boy" on the hed, and "ultimate rock music provocateur" regarding Iggy Pop? Over and over ...
10-29 Who cares that "Mr. Wenner wore an open-collared striped shirt and an olive green sportcoat" to a deposition. Maybe Hawes Spencer misunderstood the term "deposition suit"...
11-2 Surprised to see the cliche "Breaks Her Silence" in the sometimes Grey Old Lady. Cliche repeated on jump ...
Neil Genzlinger, assigned to review a cat documentary, leads with precious info about his cat, named Hermione. What we all need ...
11-3 Business section, Ben Sisario asserts that high price paid for Prince music catalog will result in an upsurge in recording of those songs because the buyers want to recoup their money at a profit. Large Prince concert photo adorns this Biz section obviousitation ...
11-5 Video footage of a police shooting "became a stirring symbol of the national debate" about such shootings. National in what sense? Reporters today throw around mass-movement claims without substantiation. Two reporters emailing on two coasts? Quantification is no longer needed when the emotional side of injustice hets up ...
11-8 Ruben Vives AND Veronica Rocha's combined bafflement as to why a man allegedly killed a mother and daughter 'just feet from their Long Beach home" leads to the deduction that Vives/Rocha would find the double murder less vexing if it took place elsewhere ...
11-13 A half page by Roslyn Sulcas reports that a London auction of David Bowie possessions "generates a buzz." And we all thought it would go unnoticed in today's celebrity-averse culture ...
11-14 Dave Itzikoff covers the inevitable SNL response to the election. "Even as Mr. (host David) Chapelle spoke, Mr. Trump has been planning his transition." This is news to who? ...
11-16 "The whole world has been asking itself 'How is the art market going to do'" report Robin Progrebin AND Scott Reyburn, with straight faces, regarding the flow of money from non-artists to other non-artists ...
11-17 Sarah Lyall says the award to Dylan "dismayed traditionalists." All? Or is there a 'stodgy' list? ...
11-20 A famous movie director's daughter - now in a film! - reminisces about her anorexia for a half page, with four color photos. How was she picked over others for "The First Time" feature? Bum's luck? ...
A famous director/screenwriter's son and a movie/fashion designer have lunch and talk - and a NYT crew came to West Hollywood for this "Film/Fashion Vortex." Isn't a vortex water swirling down a sink? ...
11-22 Maybe Trump really is good for business. Michael Corkery notes that a surge in bank stocks following his election has "more than restored" Wells Fargo's losses from their vile and criminal top-to-bottom creation of phantom accounts a little while ago. "Let us prey" ...
11-24 Thursday Styles' bannered lookback at "The Best Party Ever." I thought that referred to my 1979 party in the "Eating Raoul" apartment to celebrate my 1959 Philco Predicta's arrival, but in fact it was some guy named Trebay honking about some catered affair he went to 50 years ago ...
11-25 James B. Stewart's piece about nothing - JK Rowling's wealth is unknown - generated a quote from another uninformant, "Any estimate of Ms. Rowling's fortune is at best informed speculation, and most previous attempts I've seen don't seem very informed." How does he know even that? Space-filler ...
Fill space! Chris Buckley and Adam Wu's piece about fish shortage in Peking (I'm trad, Dad) invokes this insight: "Yes, I love eating freshwater fish like catfish and carp," Zhu Lanrong, a 73-year-old retiree, said after she had finished washing her hands in an empty fish tank at a supermarket in southeast Beijing." Get the picture? ...
11-26 Contention surrounding the status of a woman's Brooklyn brownstone apartment includes reporter James Barron's note that it was the site of "a warmhearted" 1994 film "that critics praised for its pleasant focus on a lost place and time." I thought including a movie review in news articles was exclusive to the LATimes ...
11-28 A display of Elton John's photos - by other people - is heralded by Farah Nayeri. I show "stuff I bought" only to my friends..
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