Is anyone else as worried about these statistics and the logic they may lead to? Leave aside one’s beliefs re: gun law. How could anyone of any persuasion even think they’d be allowed to have a firearm as a carry-on.?! Let alone, loaded! Hello: America may still be the ‘Wild West’ but this is not a horse you are riding it is a pressurized cabin high above the turf. So: disinfectant, zinc, lime and tequila anyone?!
Thought I’d remind folk of this song written, composed and accompanied by me. A bit cheeky, but hey: it is my website so I can do whatever I like! Wow: a long time Billie Eilish. Methinks you were there in the ectoplasm, whatever, there, always even then spurring me onwards:) All a bit ragged, or is that rugged. Never really liked ‘reverb’. But hard to beat a grand piano even in a quiet private feel. A brave moment for me when I forsake acoustic, stick a USB into my lovely digital piano and learn to love again;)
Earthshot Prize awards ceremony (1hour ago-Oct 17, 8pm BST)
Writer Dave Eggers is live (10.15pm EST) sitting on rocks in San Francisco talking. There’s an app tracking ‘talking and rocks’;)
‘Paw’ Gwyneth Paltrow got a ‘drubbing’ in one of Stephen Colbert’s monologues this week. Not that I ….but in fairness, isn’t she being a pinnacle of health and well-being business women like noeveryone other? If you follow the logic Trump should have got 5-star zebra stick-ons, retrospectively, for his business acumen as a 6-year-old: these marbles are worth much more, there are acrobatic ants on them. Deutsche Bank/Trump- match made in zebra heaven. So long as the zebra wasn’t the Plaza Hotel in New York. Time for bed, children. Now for our macro-economics segment with Steve Martin. Uh oh.
Need to work on that material....your head looks rather busy Steve, all those Democratic little creatures up there struggling around to discover the means of production? It's Goop. There you go. Keep 'em laughing. Don't clap too loudly, it's an antiquated financial system.
Steve Martin spotted near rocks somewhere on the Pacific West Coast today (obviously the ‘app’ works Dave Eggers. Kinda ;)
Singing (is he practicing for CEDRIC’s Christmas Spectacular?):
I'm gonna wash that cat right outa my hair,
I'm gonna wash that cat right outa my hair,
I'm gonna wash that cat right outa my hair,
FedEx her on her way
Get the picture?
You know, have no shame in admitting that both James Corden and Stephen Colbert’s late night shows had me LOL’ing this week. Not much does anymore. Bit like Duke Ellington’s Don't Get Around Much Anymore that John Pizzarelli had Don Sebesky arrange in a minor key. Sad. Happy, kinda. Sad. Wish I still had the ‘fire’ in me to sit through 6 hours of subtitled foreign movies every day. Guess nowadays, the news is subtitles enough. Did stay ‘tuned’ for Matías Piñeiro’s Isabella. Helps knowing the Shakespeare and relaxing from subtitling eyes. National Gallery of Art’s new film for free every week that you won’t see anywhere apart from Film Society Lincoln Center, MoMa, Anthology Film Archives, and that ‘nerdy’ friend you don’t mind spending the night with ‘cause, well, everyone else is taken. Re: Colbert’s bookclub, know some much to be true except, take a ‘gander’ at this Covid Tolstoy endeavor. Who ever heard of Russian red wine? Ah, well, that's another story.
Our hearts, surely, are reaching out to all those involved in yesterdays tragic Alec Baldwin movie set accident. The dead cinematographer Halyna Hutchins had a young son. Why do terrible things so often happen to the good, the kind and the talented? Life doesn't get much sadder, does it?
Legendary conductor Bernard Haitink passed peacefully away yesterday. Our music never dies. Never stops talking…
Do some certain passages remind one of a certain Ivor Novello song, or perhaps Sammy Fain?
Just me, I guess? Forever and a day.
Mahler: "laughs and cries at one and the selfsame time".
There is another recently dead person one ought to mention (not that I go scouring the obituaries for content;) and that is songwriter and lyricist Leslie Bricusse, who passed away on Tuesday. Totally agree with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s statement, calling Bricusse "the most underestimated British songwriter of all time". Stop the World - I Want to Get Off and The Roar of the Greasepaint - The Smell of the Crowd that he wrote with Anthony Newley (Barbara Streisand did a wonderful ‘digital’ duet tribute to Newley way before those things really happened). Those shows with Newley so under-known and so so still relevant today.
Another favorite of mine, his lyrics for Two for the Road to Henry Mancini’s music. Then there’s of course Doctor Dolittle and one of its ‘purr-full’ songs Something in Your Smile. So so so much more. For me it’s You and I from Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969) One of the most beautiful and excruciatingly soulful movie experiences ever made. Peter O'Toole at his absolute greatest and tender. The very modest, kinda ‘extraordinary girl next door’ Petula Clark transfixing you with love and honesty from every frame.
If all that whiffs way too ‘soft shoe’ you should smell KITTY’s old shoeboxes! She’s still younger than Doja Cat! Everything old is new again! Who says you can’t enjoy Bricusse and the boudoir? Lloyd-Webber and the lurid?;) Best Mozart criticism ever heard in Madonna’s show Madame X. Finally, we can all fall asleep with hope and a long zizz in our veins rather than pharmaceuticals. Filmed at her Lisbon gig, one of the most underrated cities in the entire world.
“Weavers of despair, let us weave only shrouds – white shrouds for the dreams we never dreamed, black shrouds for the days when we die, grey shrouds for the gestures we only dreamed of, imperial purple shrouds for our futile feelings.”
2,245 people in New York City died of an opioid overdose during the COVID-19 pandemic between March 2020 and March 2021, according to provisional data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This was up nearly 40% from the previous year, according to CDC provisional data.
And now, gentle creatures and the rest of you rabble out there;), want to dedicate this song to all the cats that didn’t quite make it onto that broomstick for Halloween. Tail too big, too small, meow a little weak, whiskers and fur too…Or simply: the good witch has run out of ‘dosh’! And it has to be an Equity broomstick. Your time will come. Don’t give up. I’m sure Stephen Schwartz is somewhere out there in the pale moonlight listening;) Thought of ‘cleaning up’ this recording’ but after Covid, well, why bother. Why change the ‘hairs’. Was the improv it was and will always be for all its faults. Leave all that to Doja Cat’s ‘wizards’.
Someday, maybe, dancing off her tired paws, someone will raise a trash can lid and put on a show. OH!
Recorded on an old Nokia camera phone and a bit out of tune upright Young Chang.
