"As a kid, I was part of a youth theater repertory... this intense acting coach came to class, and after I performed a scene she told me with this terrible sneer..."

"... that all I’d ever be was funny and charming. It took me until I was 35 to realize that: (1) I wasn’t that charming; (2) I was also a whole lot more than charming; and (3) it takes an especially miserable adult to tell a child what he can and cannot be."

Says "Grant Ginder Read One Novel 7 Times While Writing His Own/James Salter’s 'Light Years' had a big influence on 'So Old, So Young,' his new book about college friends drifting in and out of one another’s lives" (NYT).

I liked his answer to the old question "You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?"

I’m supposed to say Jane Austen, Sophocles and a Finnish novelist no one’s heard of, but actually the literary dinner party I want to attend already happened. It’s the one mentioned in a recent Times article where Joan Didion refused to give Nora Ephron her recipe for Mexican Chicken. I’d die to see that.

The double exaltation of Bud Powell.

I don't think I knew the name Bud Powell until last week, when I heard Bob Dylan's new song, "Murder Most Foul," which names the brilliant jazz pianist in the second-to-last line:

Play "Love Me Or Leave Me" by the great Bud Powell
Play "The Blood-stained Banner," play "Murder Most Foul"

Last night, I was reading — and getting close to the end of — Woody Allen's autobiography, and I came across this:

I never thought having biological children was doing them any favor, bringing kids into this world. Sophocles said to never have been born may be the greatest boon of all. Of course I’m not sure he would’ve said that if he ever heard Bud Powell play “Polka Dots and Moonbeams.” Soon-Yi and I chose adoption to try and make life better for a couple of orphans already marooned on this orbiting psychiatric ward....

And then on the last page of the book, summing up, he says "If I could trade my talent for any other person’s, living or dead, who would it be? No contest—Bud Powell."

Here's "Polka Dots and Moonbeams":



If you're wondering what the lyrics are, Frank Sinatra will sing them for you, here.

A country dance was being held in a garden
I felt a bump and heard an "Oh, beg your pardon"
Suddenly I saw polka dots and moonbeams
All around a pug-nosed dream...