“One juror ‘did not want his 16-year-old daughter, who plays soccer, to have to compete against steroid users.’
“When I think of a nation of teenaged girls, ‘roided up to the gills, kicking soccer balls at superhuman velocity, I know the Bonds prosecution was worth every last penny.”
“Had a couple of drinks last night with an air traffic controller. Very nice guy. I had never been in a tower before. Cool.”
“The REAL reason for the Civil War was Lincoln’s failure to produce a birth certificate.”
“Part I of Atlas Shrugged trilogy in theaters today. It’s like Lord of the Rings if Frodo just sold the ring to Cash4Gold.”
Free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch apps for a short time:
But this review of a new biography of Wallis Simpson — Behind Closed Doors by Hugo Vickers — certainly tells a different story than The King’s Speech.
Julia Sweeney on frogs and stuff.
N exactly SFW, but LOL funny.
April 15th is the birthday of Emma Thompson and of Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson. The actresses are 52 and 21.
Emma Thompson has been nominated four times for an acting Oscar, winning best actress in a leading role for Howards End. She also won the screen adaptation Oscar for Sense and Sensibility. She’s delightful as Nanny McPhee.
Emma Watson is known primarily for just one character so far in her acting career, that of Hermione Granger.
Bessie Smith was born on this date in 1894.
Bessie Smith earned the title of “Empress of the Blues” by virtue of her forceful vocal delivery and command of the genre. Her singing displayed a soulfully phrased, boldly delivered and nearly definitive grasp of the blues. In addition, she was an all-around entertainer who danced, acted and performed comedy routines with her touring company. She was the highest-paid black performer of her day and arguably reached a level of success greater than that of any African-American entertainer before her.
. . .Some of her better-known sides from the Twenties include “Backwater Blues,” “Taint Nobody’s Bizness If I Do,” “St. Louis Blues” (recorded with Louis Armstrong), and “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.” The Depression dealt her career a blow, but Smith changed with the times by adapting a more up-to-date look and revised repertoire that incorporated Tin Pan Alley tunes like “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” On the verge of the Swing Era, Smith died from injuries sustained in an automobile accident outside Clarksdale, Mississippi, in September 1937. She left behind a rich, influential legacy of 160 recordings cut between 1923 and 1933. Some of the great vocal divas who owe a debt to Smith include Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin. In Joplin’s own words of tribute, “She showed me the air and taught me how to fill it.”
And this from a review of The Essential Bessie Smith.
. . . Bessie could sing it all, from the lowdown moan of “St. Louis Blues” and “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” to her torch treatment of the jazz standard “After You’ve Gone” to the downright salaciousness of “Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl.” Covering a time span from her first recordings in 1923 to her final session in 1933, this is the perfect entry-level set to go with. Utilizing the latest in remastering technology, these recordings have never sounded quite this clear and full, and the selection — collecting her best-known sides and collaborations with jazz giants like Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, and Benny Goodman — is first-rate. If you’ve never experienced the genius of Bessie Smith, pick this one up and prepare yourself to be devastated.
There are no lyrics today that surpass “Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl” for sexual imagery.
And, there is no more important recording in American musical history than Smith and Armstrong’s “St. Louis Blues.”
In listening to the earliest recordings, keep in mind there were no microphones until 1925. The artists sang or played and the sound was recorded acoustically, i.e., without electrical amplification.
And Thomas Hart Benton was born on this date in 1889.
Named after his great-uncle, Missouri’s first senator, Thomas Hart Benton was born on 15 April 1889 in Neosho, Missouri, an Ozark town of 2,000 people. … In 1935 they moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where Benton directed the Art Institute until 1941, and where he contiued to live for the rest of his life. Albert Barnes, the Philadelphia collector, purchased some of his paintings, which raised the level of public success for the artist. Benton published his autobiography, An Artist in America, in 1937. He completed several murals in the midwest and on the east coast. Shortly before Harry Truman’s death in December 1972, Benton finished a portrait of the former President. Thomas Hart Benton died on 19 January 1975 in Kansas City, the day he completed a large mural for the Country Music Foundation of Nashville.
Click on the painting to see larger version.
“Death, taxes and childbirth! There’s never any convenient time for any of them.”
Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell.
And, as noted yesterday, this year you can procrastinate your taxes until Monday evening.
Or click here to access IRS Form 4868, Application for Automatic Extension of Time to File U.S. Individual Income Tax Return. You may apply for the extension electronically.
At The Quill Sisters, Sassy and her mom exchange lessons.
And the mothers continue their writing spree at Dinner without Crayons. Tanya had “a harmonious, delicious, lovely meal with nary a crayon in sight,” Erinn wants better captions on TV and Jill learns that good photos come from having a good camera.
“The past month has been a booze-fueled haze for the nation’s toddlers at chain restaurants. After a Michigan child received a cup full of alcoholic margarita mix instead of apple juice at an Applebee’s, a Florida Olive Garden filled a toddler’s cup with sangria instead of orange juice. The child was checked out at a local hospital and was unharmed.”
Allen Barra takes a look at the Barry Bonds outcome.
Worth a click if only for the headline, which is a best line of the day.
“Taxpayers will have until Monday, April 18 to file their 2010 tax returns and pay any tax due because Emancipation Day, a holiday observed in the District of Columbia, falls this year on Friday, April 15. By law, District of Columbia holidays impact tax deadlines in the same way that federal holidays do; therefore, all taxpayers will have three extra days to file this year.”
In addition to Matt Taibbi’s The Real Housewives of Wall Street —
The Straight Dope, a fascinating interview of The Wire‘s David Simon by Bill Moyers. I could have done a week of best lines from this piece alone.
And the sad, strange tale of Boston Corbett, The Man Who Shot the Man Who Shot Lincoln.
And the great barge sank.
And the Okies fled.
And the great emancipater
took a bullet in the head.
In the head…
Took a bullet in the back of the head.
It was not December.
And it was not in May.
Was 14th of April.
That is ruination day.
That’s the day…
The day that is ruination day.
— Gillian Welch, “Ruination Day Part 2”
Lincoln assassinated, the Titanic hit the iceberg, Black Sunday on the Great Plains.
April 14th.
“It’s really took time to read all contents in this blog, but I feel it worth to read this. All comments are very useful to me.You must be very interested in this article. It will kill me if I worite a blog long as this.”
Two million, 151 thousand words. You bet “it’s really took time.”
And I expect it will kill me, too.
Read this article by Matt Taibbi.
It made me sick.
Take this week’s New Yorker news quiz.
I don’t know. I missed a couple. Maybe more. Some. Let’s just call it some. I missed some.
“Fans can judge [Bonds’s] accomplishments however they want, but they did happen, and they are as historically valid as the 714 homers Babe Ruth hit without ever facing an African-American pitcher.”
“There’s no group more distractible than 12- to 14-year-old middle school boys.”
D.A. John E. Freund III, disappointed by a federal court ruling approving the wearing of “I [heart] Boobies” bracelets by two middle school girls in support of Breast Cancer Awareness. The girls had been suspended.
“Language at risk of dying out – the last two speakers aren’t talking.”
There are just two people left who can speak it fluently – but they refuse to talk to each other. Manuel Segovia, 75, and Isidro Velazquez, 69, live 500 metres apart in the village of Ayapa in the tropical lowlands of the southern state of Tabasco. It is not clear whether there is a long-buried argument behind their mutual avoidance, but people who know them say they have never really enjoyed each other’s company.
“But it should be recognized that [the President’s] plan is a rather conservative one, significantly to the right of the Rivlin-Domenici plan.”
Bob Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities quoted by Paul Krugman.
Significantly to the right of the Domenici plan. Egad!
[Posted from my iPad]
Who is that Democrat giving the speech and what did he do with Obama?
“My own personal view on this is not so much that Tea Partiers are racists, but more that they’re tremendous pussies. They have no problem puffing out their chests and screaming bloody murder about Mexicans or single black Moms taking their tax money for emergency room care or school lunches. But when John and Christy Mack rob them to buy mansions on the Upper East side, you suddenly can’t find a Tea Partier within a thousand miles — can’t find one with the Hubble space telescope. For all their bluster and aggressiveness, billionaires make them go weak in the knees. Which makes it very hard to take them seriously.”
Japan is just in the beginning of the long term recovery effort from the earthquake that struck off northeastern Japan on March 11. The crisis alert level from the damage to the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant has now been raised to the highest level of impact, the same as the Chernobyl Russia incident 25 years ago. Searchers continue to look for the dead, displaced Japanese live in shelters, protests continue over use of nuclear power, Japan’s economic engine may be disrupted, the massive cleanup of debris is just underway, aftershocks are feared and many continue to mourn those who were lost. The photos collected here are from one month to the day of the quake and beyond. — Lloyd Young (36 photos total)
Worth a look. Devastating and sad, but appealing on some levels, too.