Do you know who Steve Cropper is?

He’s 63 today. According to the All Music Guide, Steve Cropper is:

Probably the best-known soul guitarist in the world, Cropper came to prominence in the early ’60s, first with the Mar-Keys (“Last Night”), then as a founding member of Booker T. & the MG’s. A major figure in the Southern soul movement of the ’60s, Cropper made his mark not only as a player and arranger (most notably on classic sides by Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, and Wilson Pickett) but as a songwriter as well, co-writing the classic “In the Midnight Hour.”

And Green Onions is the single greatest rock instrumental ever, period (Booker T. Jones, organ; Steve Cropper, guitar; Lewis Steinberg, bass; Al Jackson, drums). MG’s, by the way, stands for Memphis Group, not the car.

Our National Eating Disorder

From Sunday’s New York Times Magazine:

Asked what comes to mind upon hearing the phrase ”chocolate cake,” Americans were more apt to say ”guilt,” while the French said ”celebration”; ”heavy cream” elicited ”unhealthy” from Americans, ”whipped” from the French. The researchers found that Americans worry more about food and derive less pleasure from eating than people in any other nation they surveyed.

Compared with the French, we’re much more likely to choose foods for reasons of health, and yet the French, more apt to choose on the basis of pleasure, are the healthier (and thinner) people. How can this possibly be? Rozin suggests that our problem begins with thinking of the situation as paradoxical. The French experience with food is only a paradox if you assume, as Americans do, that certain kinds of foods are poisons. ”Look at fat,” Rozin points out. ”Americans treat the stuff as if it was mercury.” That doesn’t, of course, stop us from guiltily gorging on the stuff. …

Perhaps because we take a more ”scientific” (i.e., reductionist) view of food, Americans automatically assume there must be some chemical component that explains the difference between the French and American experiences: it’s something in the red wine, perhaps, or the olive oil that’s making them healthier. But how we eat, and even how we feel about eating, may in the end be just as important as what we eat. The French eat all sorts of ”unhealthy” foods, but they do it according to a strict and stable set of rules: they eat small portions and don’t go back for seconds; they don’t snack; they seldom eat alone, and communal meals are long, leisurely affairs. A well-developed culture of eating, such as you find in France or Italy, mediates the eater’s relationship to food, moderating consumption even as it prolongs and deepens the pleasure of eating.

TV-B-Gone

A handy new remote —

Altman’s key-chain fob was a TV-B-Gone, a new universal remote that turns off almost any television. The device, which looks like an automobile remote, has just one button. When activated, it spends over a minute flashing out 209 different codes to turn off televisions, the most popular brands first.

For Altman, founder of Silicon Valley data-storage maker 3ware, the TV-B-Gone is all about freeing people from the attention-sapping hold of omnipresent television programming. The device is also providing hours of entertainment for its inventor.

Source: Wired News

This thing would pay for itself in every noisy restaurant and airport lounge.

Time to talk

Alessandra Stanley discusses Jon Stewart’s appearance on Crossfire in today’s New York Times.

“They said I wasn’t being funny,” the star of “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” said, rolling his eyes expressively. “And I said to them: ‘I know that. But tomorrow I will go back to being funny,” Mr. Stewart said, adding that their show would still be bad, although he used a more vulgar expression.

And that is why his surprise attack on the hosts of CNN’s “Crossfire” was so satisfying last Friday. Exchanging his usual goofy teasing for withering contempt, he told Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson that they were partisan hacks and that their pro-wrestling approach to political discourse was “hurting America.”

The Curse

With true grit the Red Sox have come from down 3-0 in games to take the Yankees to Game 7. It has never before been done in baseball.

So now, whatever the outcome tonight, can we quit yappin’ about The Curse?

It’s the birthday

… of Mickey Mantle. The Mick was born in 1931. He died in 1995.

… of William Christopher. Father Francis Mulcahy is 72.

… of Jerry Orbach. Detective Briscoe is 69. We miss you Jerry.

… of Calvin Cordozar Broadus. Snoop Dogg is 33.

Tucker Carlson was out of his league

Jon Stewart played soccer for William and Mary. According to the folklore, once during a game, as he was bringing the ball down the field, an opposing player on the sideline yelled, “Your nose is huge.”

Without missing a step, Stewart yelled, “You should see my dick.”

Mary, never a lamb

Jill, official oldest daughter of NewMexiKen, attended high school with Mary Cheney, though Jill played softball and Mary played field hockey. Mary once had a dispute in chemistry class with an obnoxious substitute teacher who had made some disparaging comments about females. He finally told Mary that the reason she was so mouthy must be that she did not have a strong father figure at home. Mary, unknown to him, was the daughter of the then Secretary of Defense. She strode out of class and within about five minutes the principal returned to escort the substitute from the classroom.

Even then the Cheneys knew how to quiet their critics, though in chemistry class at least, Mary seemed willing to stand up for her values.

[Actually NewMexiKen believes Ms. Cheney is standing up for what’s important to her. Her father is important to her. And that’s all right with me.]

It’s the birthday

… of Robert Reed, born on this date in 1932. A fine actor but one who will always be remembered best as the dad on The Brady Bunch. Reed’s best TV role was as Kenneth Preston, son in the excellent early 1960s father-son lawyer drama The Defenders. His father was played by E. G. Marshall. Reed died in 1992.

… of Winston Hubert McIntosh, born on this date in 1944. A founding member of The Wailers, Peter Tosh also was an international solo star and songwriter. He was shot and killed along with five others by a friend during an argument on September 11, 1987.

National Book Award Finalists

Nonfiction

  • Kevin Boyle, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age (Holt)
  • David Hackett Fischer, Washington’s Crossing (Oxford Univ.)
  • Jennifer Gonnerman, Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett (Farrar)
  • Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (Norton)
  • The 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States – Authorized Edition (Norton)

Fiction

  • Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Madeleine Is Sleeping (Harcourt)
  • Christine Schutt, Florida (TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern Univ.)
  • Joan Silber, Ideas of Heaven: A Ring of Stories (Norton)
  • Lily Tuck, The News from Paraguay (HarperCollins)
  • Kate Walbert, Our Kind: A Novel in Stories (Scribner)

The winners will be announced November 17.

Here kitty, kitty

From the Arizona Daily Star:

Automated cameras have filmed at least two jaguars creeping across Southern Arizona since late August, offering fresh evidence that the endangered cats at least visit here from Mexico.

Jaguar.jpgThe jaguars’ full bodies and unmistakable spotted coats are visible in all four of the nighttime shots, taken near the border, south of Tucson, in oak woodlands. It’s still unclear if the secretive species is residing permanently in the United States.

Commonly associated with the tropics, jaguars were regularly shot by hunters in the American Southwest in the 20th century. Biologists say a colony of 70 to 100 jaguars persists about 135 miles south of Douglas.

French, what French?

On October 19, 1781, British General Charles Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, giving up almost 8000 men and any chance of winning the Revolutionary War. Cornwallis had marched his army into the Virginia port town earlier that summer expecting to meet British ships sent from New York. The ships never arrived.

In early October, some 17,000 American and French troops led by Generals George Washington and Jean-Baptiste Rochambeau surrounded British-occupied Yorktown. Off the coast, French Admiral François de Grasse strategically positioned his naval fleet to control access to the town via the Chesapeake Bay and the York River.

The Franco-American siege exhausted the British army’s supplies of food and ammunition. With no hope for escape, Cornwallis agreed to the terms of Washington’s Articles of Capitulation, signing the document at Moore House on October 19. Hours after the surrender, the general’s defeated troops marched out of Yorktown to the tune “The World Turned Upside Down.”

Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown effectively ended the Revolutionary War. Lacking the financial resources to raise a new army, the British government appealed to the Americans for peace. Almost two years later, on September 3, 1783, the signing of the Treaty of Paris brought the war to an end.

[Source: Library of Congress]

Class. Class. CLAAASS!

So George is doing yet another photo op at an elementary school, and this one’s been going pretty well, so he offers to take questions. A little boy raises his hand.

“Okay, you,” says George, smiling. “What’s your name?”

“Billy.”

“Billy. And what’s your question?”

“I have three questions,” Billy says. “First, why did you go to war without UN approval? Second, why are you president when Gore got more votes? Third, where’s Osama bin Laden?”

George is taken aback. “Uh, those are really hard questions,” he says.

Just then the bell rings. “Whoops, time for recess!” George says. “Guess I’ll have to answer your questions when recess is over.”

After recess, when the kids have settled back down again, George says “Okay, who’s got a question?”

A little kid raises his hand, and George calls on him.

“What’s your name?” George asks.

“Steve.”

“Okay, Steve. What’s your question?”

“I have five questions,” Steve says. “First, why did you go to war without UN approval? Second, why are you president when Gore got more votes? Third, where’s Osama bin Laden? Fourth, why did the bell for recess ring twenty minutes early? And fifth, what happened to Billy?”

[Stolen unabashedly from Making Light.]

More baseball

Only two three teams down 3-0 have ever managed to force even a Game Six — the 1998 Braves and 1999 Mets, each of whom forced a sixth game in the NLCS — and now the 2004 Red Sox, who have forced a sixth game in the ALCS.