"You did it all with such grace and class and cool that you made the hardest job in the world look like a walk in this beautiful park."

Said Michelle Obama, as "Mr. Obama looked down and wiped away tears."

She's quoted in "Presidents Line Up for Obama’s Long-Awaited Center in Chicago/Thursday’s opening drew four former presidents, as well as Bruce Springsteen, Bono and Jennifer Hudson. Chicago has seen years of planning and legal fights" (NYT).

Biden was there too, bearing with unbearable sorrow:

"Ebony & Ivory wastes your time, knows it's wasting your time, knows that you know it’s wasting your time, and loves that you know."

"Make no mistake: it has extremely niche appeal. But having watched this film, I think I can safely say I’m in that niche."

Writes Samantha McLaren, quoted at Rotten Tomatoes.

And here's the original song that asked the question, "Oh Lord, why don't we [live together in perfect harmony]?"

"'If this is what being canceled is like, I love it,' the 48-year-old said in response to a standing ovation...."

"'Fuck Twitter. Fuck NBC News, ABC News, all these stupid ass networks. I’m not talking to them. I’m talking to you. This is real life.'"

 
From "Dave Chappelle Gets Standing Ovation Amid Netflix Special Controversy: 'If This Is What Being Canceled Is, I Love It'/After being called out for transphobic jokes in 'The Closer,' the comedian performed at the Hollywood Bowl in front of Brad Pitt, Tiffany Haddish and Stevie Wonder and dismissed the outcry: 'F*** Twitter. This is real life'" (Hollywood Reporter).

That quotes this, from his Netflix special, The Closer: " I don’t hate gay people I respect the shit out of you. Not all of you... I’m not that fond of these newer gays — too sensitive, too brittle. I miss the old-school gays … the Stonewall gays. They didn’t take shit from anybody...."

To be "brittle" is to be "Hard but liable to break easily." That's the definition from the OED, which gives this example from 2005, from the Globe & Mail (Toronto): " A ‘promatorium’ is a building where the dead body of your loved one will be frozen, submerged in liquid nitrogen until brittle and then shattered."

I thought that was a joke at the expense of people who think freezing the body after death may lead to some future resurrection — "cryonics." But it's actually a method for intentionally turning a dead body into a powder.

In any case, as a living person, you don't want to be brittle. You may think it's good to be hard, but you're vulnerable to shattering. 

ADDED: Stevie Wonder spoke out: “What we need to cancel is hate. What we need to cancel is fear because we have to have love, and we should never cancel that. I want us to cancel the idea of feeling that we don’t want anyone to laugh because if we don’t laugh, we cry. And I don’t believe that was God’s intention — ever.”

"Starting with the Moog and adding other synthesizers and a collection of modules, some of them designed by Mr. Cecil, they created a massive semicircular piece of equipment..."

"... that took up a small room and weighed a ton. It could be programmed to create a vast array of original sounds and to modify and process the sounds of conventional musical instruments.... Mr. Cecil lived in an apartment above the studio so that he would be available to fix anything that might go wrong, day or night. 'I get a ring on the bell,' Mr. Cecil told Red Bull Music Academy in 2014. 'I look out; there’s my friend Ronnie and a guy who turns out to be Stevie Wonder in a green pistachio jumpsuit and what looks like my album under his arm. Ronnie says, "Hey, Malcolm, got somebody here who wants to see TONTO."' What started as a demonstration of TONTO for Mr. Wonder turned out to be a weekend-long recording experiment. Seventeen songs were recorded, and a collaboration was born. Over the next three years, TONTO became a significant sonic element of Mr. Wonder’s music on the albums 'Music of My Mind' and 'Talking Book,' both released in 1972, and their follow-ups, 'Innervisions' (1973) and 'Fulfillingness’ First Finale' (1974)."

From "Malcolm Cecil, Synthesizer Pioneer, Is Dead at 84/His massive machine, known as TONTO, helped transform the music in Stevie Wonder’s mind into classic albums like 'Innervisions'" (NYT).

"I don’t want to see my children’s, children’s children have to say 'Oh please like me, please respect me, please know that I am important, please value me.' What is that?"

Said Stevie Wonder, explaining why he is moving — permanently — to Ghana (CNN).

"From the South Bronx to East New York, a new generation of graffiti writers has emerged... [L]ike early taggers who grew up in a city beset by crime, grime and empty coffers..."

"... today’s generation is dealing with its own intense fears over the devastating effects of the coronavirus on communities and the economy. 'Does art dictate the times or do the times dictate art?' said John Matos, 58, a graffiti writer known as Crash who started out in the 1970s. 'Before now, the streets were sanitized, with pieces that were cool and nice, and done with permission. Now, we’re back to the roots.'... . By 1989, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority had declared victory over graffiti.... And while graffiti never disappeared completely, in recent weeks it has become ever more visible citywide. The increase in graffiti is for many residents an unwelcome sign of the recent economic upheaval.... 'It all begins and ends with angst,' said Mr. Matos, 58, the son of an evangelical preacher who grew up in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the Bronx. 'Teenage angst is always going to be provoked. I always equate graffiti with music, like the way Stevie Wonder wrote political songs. What’s going on in the streets is a response to things.'"

From "Graffiti Is Back in Virus-Worn New York/The city’s coronavirus lockdown and subsequent rise in unemployment have created the perfect conditions for a new generation of graffiti writers" (NYT).

I lived in NYC in the 1970s and early 80s and remember the graffiti everywhere, completely covering all the subway trains, inside and out, obscuring all the windows. Here's a photograph I took back then, around 1980:



I remember just taking that sort of thing in stride. That was New York City. It had to be. Teenage angst? Like the way Stevie Wonder wrote political songs? I think of a Stevie Wonder lyric: "Living just enough for the city." Amazing that it changed. Tragic to let it devolve once again into chaos.

Here's the highest-rated comment at the NYT:

It will be romanticized, imbued with deep meaning and credited as youthful expression of our troubled times. But don’t be fooled. If you lived through it during the 80s you know how it degrades the urban environment for most residents and visitors save a few who view themselves as above such bourgeois notions as respect for public spaces and those who use and enjoy them. Don’t get me wrong, some of it is pretty good; brilliant, in fact. Most of it, however, is just vandalism and void of talent or meaningful messaging. In the current superheated political environment, the “debate” about graffiti will only add to the current culture wars, and not for the benefit of Democrats. 

I remember when it was his 13th birthday and he was playing "Fingertips" on "American Bandstand."

But Stevie Wonder turned 70 yesterday. My son John has a long post with lots of commentary and clips. Excerpt:

His string of 5 albums from 1972 to 1976 is probably one of the greatest things that's ever happened in music history.... He's one of those artists where you have to listen to the full albums from start to finish... Of all the dozens and dozens of songs on those albums, there isn't a single dud, and there are many buried treasures....

[H]e's had a ubiquitous influence on the last 50 years of music — so many artists like Prince, Alicia Keys, Justin Timberlake, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, etc. It's hard to imagine what pop music would sound like without him. The combination of songwriting and performing is astounding... [A]n effusive, impassioned joy flows out of him more naturally than from almost anyone else.

There are so many great Stevie Wonder recordings but the first one that comes to mind when I try to think of my favorite is "You Haven't Done Nothing" — We are sick and tired of hearing your song/Telling how you are gonna change right from wrong/'Cause if you really want to hear our views/You haven't done nothing.

ADDED: I remember when Stevie had to show Bob Dylan how to sing like Bob Dylan:

Visions of 2020.

I see that John Kerry, the father of the now terminated Iran deal, is thinking of running for President. I should only be so lucky - although the field that is currently assembling looks really good - FOR ME!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2018

ADDED: I'm just checking over Trump's Twitter feed for the last week, and I don't think he took any of the bait that was thrown out from the days of McCain memorializing. Since Trump was banned from the funeral, he couldn't be criticized for failing to attend, but there was such an intense desire to attack him, and he wasn't doing anything at McCain.

So many shots were taken at him, presumably with the expectation that he'd tweet something that could be denounced as awful. Oh! The unforgivable disrespect, they could have cried.

Trump is so often portrayed as impulsively tweeting and so narcissistic that he just can't help himself. His Twitter feed from the last week shows that's not really true. And believing it's true can lead to missteps... like, perhaps, using a funeral as a platform for making political attacks.

AND: I wonder what kind of funeral events we'll see when John Kerry dies. We're treating Senators now the way we've treated Presidents? Not all Senators, of course, but some. McCain, at least. So... Senator + military hero + major party presidential nominee. That's Kerry, isn't it (depending on how you fiddle with military heroism, but he served in Vietnam and there was the heroism of opposition to the war)? It's certainly Bob Dole. And then why not Al Gore too? And you can't give all them the full McCain and not extend equal solemnities to Hillary Clinton, despite the lack of military service.

How are we going to do this? It can't be that what matters is the proximity to the next election and the usefulness of the casket as a soapbox. If McCain is to be regarded as unique — excluding Kerry, et al, from the full-scale theater of national mourning — then there must be some other reason for his uniqueness — that he was not retired from the Senate at the point of death? that he was a prisoner of war? that he was tortured? that he was bi-partisan?

RELATED: The eulogy given by Rev. Jasper Williams Jr. at Aretha Franklin's funeral offended her family:

Singer Stevie Wonder yelled out “black lives matter” after the pastor said, “No, black lives do not matter” during his eulogy. Williams had minimized the Black Lives Matter movement because of black-on-black crime. “Black lives must not matter until black people start respecting black lives and stop killing ourselves.” He also said “there are not fathers in the home no more” and said that a black woman cannot raise a black boy to be a man. Some people suggested that was disrespectful of Aretha Franklin, a single mother of four boys. His eulogy “caught the entire family off guard,” Vaughn Franklin said. The family had not discussed what Williams would say in advance, he said. “It has been very, very distasteful,” he said.

Stevie Wonder taunts you about your inability to read Braille.

Displaying the Grammy results before announcing a winner:

"I don't know if David realizes this, but you have the magical mike... this microphone can make me be Little Stevie Wonder again."

Last night on Letterman (via Jaltcoh):



Half a century ago:

"Brad Paisley is not a racist."

"He’s not an 'accidental' one (whatever that means) or even an on-purpose one. The man just wants peace and racial harmony, and he’s collaborated with LL Cool on a new song, 'Accidental Racist,' to bring about the post-racial utopia he dreams of. And he’s achieved it, in a way — people of all races are joining hands and coming together as one to mock the song’s colossal wrongheadedness."

Oh? It's like "Ebony and Ivory" all over again.

ADDED: I haven't read all the criticisms of "Accidental Racism," but I have now listened to the song, and the LL Cool J part is the worst, especially the line: "If you forget my gold chains... I’ll forget the iron chains...."

Q: What did Obama do last night?

A: He honored Burt Bacharach and Hal David at a White House concert featuring Sheryl Crow, Diana Krall, Lyle Lovett, Stevie Wonder, Arturo Sandoval, and Mike Myers.

"Above all, [Bacharach and David] stayed true to themselves. And with an unmistakable authenticity, they captured the emotions of our daily lives – the good times, the bad times, and everything in between,” the president said. “They have lived their lives on their own terms, and they’ve taught Americans of all ages to embrace their individual stories, even as we move forward together."

The good times, the bad times... an allusion to the Bacharach song "That's What Friends Are For," which was famously used for an AIDS benefit. Here's the video, featuring, among others Stevie Wonder.

"[T]he worst pop song designed to reflect a profound moral conscience. I.e. the smuggest, most pretentious pop song in history."

Andrew Sullivan sets up a poll for what he (a bit inaptly) calls the "Shut Up and Sing" award. You can't really shut up and sing. He's just looking for bad lyrics of a particular sort.

I only know 4 of the 10 songs on his list, and they don't really bother me. I mean, it's fun to knock Sting, but other than that, who cares what Madonna was actually saying in "American Life"? And if Stevie Wonder wants to sing with Paul McCartney about racial harmony using a piano keyboard metaphor, that's too sweet to get upset about. As for "Okie From Muskogee," that song has aged fabulously well. I was around in the 1960s when we hippies loved hating Merle Haggard for the things he said in that song, but it's nuts to take it the way we did back then:

"Okie From Muskogee," 1969's apparent political statement, was actually written as an abjectly humorous character portrait. Haggard called the song a "documentation of the uneducated that lived in America at the time."... "I wrote it when I recently got out of the joint. I knew what it was like to lose my freedom, and I was getting really mad at these protesters. They didn't know anything more about the war in Vietnam than I did. I thought how my dad, who was from Oklahoma, would have felt. I felt I knew how those boys fighting in Vietnam felt."

That text is from Wikipedia. "Abjectly humorous character portrait"? Somebody doesn't know the meaning of "abjectly." But I'm inclined to say that Andrew Sullivan is abjectly humorless... at least when it comes to marijuana....

"We don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee..."



Smug? Pretentious? Absurd!

You know what deserves to win the award Sullivan defines. It's damned obvious and it's not on the list. Imagine all the peeepull....

Really, this award is no fun if you take shots at lightweights like The Partridge Family and the New Kids on the Block — as Sullivan does. Get the guys who've been taken seriously, like Bob Dylan. ("He that gets hurt will be he who has stalled...") Pick a worthy target or... as they say... shut up.

"It was an unbeLIEVable motorcade. I mean there were 3 Rolls Royces — FIVE Rolls Royces in it. 3 Escalades."

Yes. I'm watching the Michael Jackson Memorial. Isn't everybody?

12:15 CT: ABC takes us to the "service." Smokey Robinson is stumbling through reading condolences from Diana Ross, Nelson Mandela, etc. Now, nothing's happening, and the ABC newsfolk decide maybe that wasn't the service already beginning. So let's question Martin Bashir, the documentary filmmaker whose work led to Michael's arrest. Yeah, great to see you, Bashir. You're certainly welcome on this occasion. Bashir rambles, and Charlie Gibson interrupts with the assertion that Michael Jackson "probably had the singular greatest influence on the music business over the last 25 years as anyone." "Singular greatest influence"? Shouldn't that be "single greatest influence"? And if he was the single greatest influence, what do the words "as anyone" mean at the end of that sentence? Can't anybody talk anymore?

[I'll update this some more later, with a DVR assist. I can't sit in front of the TV all afternoon.]

UPDATE: It's 9 p.m. now, and I've fast-forwarded through the show, pausing occasionally. I listened to a bit of Brooke Shields talking about going out on dates with Michael when the 2 of them were teens. I listened to a bit of singing by Stevie Wonder and Jennifer Hudson and much of the "We Are the World" extravaganza. And I cried when the young daughter paid her tribute and broke down. Exploitative? I can't say it's not, but still....

"I love you Barack Obama!" exclaims Stevie Wonder...

... in the middle of a cool medley on "American Idol." He also exclaims: "I love you 'American Idol!'" What song was that? Need to Google some words. Something about taking a pill that would make us sisters and brothers? I find this Popular Science "Geek Musician" interview:

I have this song that I wrote which is called All About the Love Again… And it says:

What if someone made a soda that caused everyone to love each other.
Ummm, oh yeah, sounds good, so good to me
And if just a tiny pill would make us see that we're all truly sisters and brothers
Ummm, oh yeah that sounds so nice to me

POPSCI: Is there anything you would ask president Obama to make a priority?

WONDER: You know, obviously there are so many things going on in the world and so many people coming at him about everything, because they think that it can all happen just like that.

So I'm just taking a low profile…And at the right time, I will give him the information that I have to share and introduce him to the people who reaching out to make a better condition for those who are physically challenged--whether they are blind, deaf or paraplegic or quadriplegic or whatever that might be.

The White House — the YouTube site.

Created today. There's a nice crisp video of the inauguration address, including the botched oath. And there's this haphazard montage from the Lincoln Memorial concert:

Is living in the city bad for your brain?

Some science-y crap:

Just being in an urban environment, they have found, impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is less able to hold things in memory, and suffers from reduced self-control. While it's long been recognized that city life is exhausting -- that's why Picasso left Paris -- this new research suggests that cities actually dull our thinking, sometimes dramatically so.

"The mind is a limited machine,"says Marc Berman, a psychologist at the University of Michigan and lead author of a new study that measured the cognitive deficits caused by a short urban walk. "And we're beginning to understand the different ways that a city can exceed those limitations."...

Consider everything your brain has to keep track of as you walk down a busy thoroughfare like Newbury Street. There are the crowded sidewalks full of distracted pedestrians who have to be avoided; the hazardous crosswalks that require the brain to monitor the flow of traffic. (The brain is a wary machine, always looking out for potential threats.) There's the confusing urban grid, which forces people to think continually about where they're going and how to get there.

The reason such seemingly trivial mental tasks leave us depleted is that they exploit one of the crucial weak spots of the brain. A city is so overstuffed with stimuli that we need to constantly redirect our attention so that we aren't distracted by irrelevant things, like a flashing neon sign or the cellphone conversation of a nearby passenger on the bus. This sort of controlled perception -- we are telling the mind what to pay attention to -- takes energy and effort. The mind is like a powerful supercomputer, but the act of paying attention consumes much of its processing power....

But the density of city life doesn't just make it harder to focus: It also interferes with our self-control. In that stroll down Newbury, the brain is also assaulted with temptations -- caramel lattes, iPods, discounted cashmere sweaters, and high-heeled shoes. Resisting these temptations requires us to flex the prefrontal cortex, a nub of brain just behind the eyes. Unfortunately, this is the same brain area that's responsible for directed attention, which means that it's already been depleted from walking around the city.

But what is life for, if not to walk around a complicated city, receiving and responding to the stimulation? Do you have something better to do? If you leave the city, you won't be living in a beautiful mansion, with a beautiful garden and a sun-filled studio where you're painting Picassos. Will you?

Is the brain in the city impaired or is it just used? Now, it's true, our brains evolved in a non-urban environment. But does that mean these brains of ours are hurt whenever we use them for things they didn't evolve by doing? You'd have to also say that our brains are hurt by reading, by climate-controlled interiors, by the knowledge of the news of what's happening in other countries, by YouTube....



Let it be a good city!

"Paterson in a Blind Rage over "SNL' Skit."

That's the headline to the NY Post article that begins "Gov. Paterson didn't see the humor in a 'Saturday Night Live' bit that mocked his blindness." Yeah, he shouldn't criticize it if he didn't see it.

Video of the 2 Paterson sketches at the link. Chris Danielsen, spokesman for the National Federation of the Blind, is quoted saying:

"We have 70 percent unemployment - and it's not because we can't work. Obviously, the governor of New York is blind, and he's doing the job. Whenever you have a portrayal that calls the basic capacity of [blind people] into question, that's a potential problem."

Danielsen claims "SNL" has a long history of mocking the blind - going back to Eddie Murphy's Stevie Wonder impression and, more recently, a "Weekend Update" one-liner that hybrid cars are dangerous to blind people because they can't hear the engine.

Now, wait, there really were news stories, plenty of them, that reported that hybrid cars were dangerous to blind people. Like this one. Notice anything? It quotes Christopher S. Danielsen, a spokesman for the National Federation of the Blind. It looks as though "SNL" may have read his organization's press release... and it got a laugh.

Maybe Danielsen needs to get a sense of humor...

... like Stevie Wonder, seen here standing right next to Eddie Murphy as Eddie imitates him.

And open the door for Mr. Muckle!

A sentence about French President Nicolas Sarkozy and American presidential candidate Barack Obama.

I'm not sure whether I'm bothered more by the form or the substance of this sentence. It's from a NYT article by Michael Kimmelman headlined "A Lowbrow in High Office Ruffles France," and it follows the line "'Sarko l’Américain' is another common insult."

The French, though, may soon have to think up a fresh one if (and you can almost hear Mitterrand starting to turn in his grave) the United States elects a president who delivers speeches like the one Senator Barack Obama gave on race while this country has its first modern leader not to have graduated from the country’s upper-crust schools, a head of state who on a recent visit to the Vatican arrived late, with an exceptionally crude French stand-up comic named Jean-Marie Bigard in tow.

There's a lot going on there, including imaginary prognostication by a French corpse and the assurance that someone we've never heard of is not just crude but "exceptionally crude." Is he?



But let's think about the way Barack Obama is shoehorned into that crowded sentence. I get the feeling that the NYT would like to excite its readers with the thrill of an erudite American President who would require the French to look upon us with admiration. The reference to Obama's race speech is supposed to cue us to think about Obama as someone who is the opposite of lowbrow, even though a speech about social psychology is not about taste in music, art, and literature.

Is there any evidence that Obama has highbrow tastes? I just read his memoir and I remember no references to lofty aesthetic interests. In the music category, there was a mention of Stevie Wonder. I don't remember anything about art or any difficult works of literature. He does say he watched a lot of TV when he lived with his grandfather.

But, okay, let's assume the race speech is exquisitely crafted and that delivering it is the equivalent of showing deep appreciation for high art. Does it help Obama that the NYT is enthusing over the prospect of one-upping the French in lofty attitude? This isn't the week when we're swooning over his well-honed rhetoric. It's the week when were worried about his professorial musings that the common people weren't supposed to hear. It's scarcely the time when Obama needs to be promoted as highbrow and Frenchy.

Dolly Parton mentors the "American Idol" crowd.

Are you watching? It's on now.

ADDED: Dolly is very sweet and incredibly likable, but don't be fooled. She's just walking through this. We see her listening to the contestant play a song once and doing nothing more than applauding and hugging afterwards. Then, in a separate clip she says a few — scripted, I think — words of gentle praise. That is, she never actually mentored the contestant. She never listened critically, never gave any real advice or worked with the singer at all. As an "AI" mentor — and I only mean as an "AI" mentor — Dolly comes nowhere near Barry Manilow. Here's what I wrote about Barry on "AI" in 2006:

I just want to say how much I like Barry Manilow. Not his music, which isn't to my taste, but him as a person. Unlike Stevie Wonder and various other guests, he did not do the show to get the kids to sing his songs, and he took his role as a music teacher seriously. He really analyzed each performance and came up with concrete help and never seemed to be at all about self-promotion. I know you could say that this nice-guy thing is just his gimmick, but if it is, it works well, and maybe more people ought to try it.

Lulu and Peter Noone followed the Manilow model last year, so it's disappointing to see Dolly Parton slough it off like this. That she's a bigger star than Manilow, Lulu, or Noone is no excuse. If she chooses to do the show to leverage her popularity, she should play the game.

AND: I'll put tonight's performances in this order: David Archuleta, Carly Smithson, Michael Johns, David Cook, Jason Castro, Kristy Lee Cook, Ramiele Malubay, Syesha Mercado. Now, I think Ramiele will be the one going home, because she sang such a nondescript song, and Syesha got to do "I Will Always Love You," which everyone knows and which gives a singer a lot of opportunity to show off — even if there is also the problem that, note for note, we will compare her performance to the famously brilliant Whitney Houston recording and think over and over again that she's falling short — way short. Syesha will get a lot of votes for singing that song, much as I hated it. But I don't even like hearing Whitney do it. I find it annoying. It's even annoying when Dolly sings it.

OOPS: I left Brooke White out of my ranking! Put her between David Cook and Jason Castro. Oh, now I'm thinking I got the whole thing wrong. Whatever....