"A writer friend shared with me the bound galley of his latest book-to-be, and I pointed out to him that his passing reference to barbecued chicken ribs at a picnic..."

"... was surely meant to be barbecued chicken wings. Not (entirely) displeased with my catch, he introduced me to his production editor — the person in a publishing house in charge of hiring copy editors and proofreaders.... In my early days, I would sulk in my office with the door closed if I found out that one of my books included a typo. A sentence referring to 'geneology' once sent me into a blue funk for hours.... I’m occasionally asked whether I can make my way through the world without shivering under the constant bombardment of typos.... [O]nce, watching the movie 'My Week With Marilyn,' I elbowed my husband sharply in the ribs over a prescription bottle, visible on a night table for approximately a second and a half, whose label read 'Tunial' instead of 'Tuinal.' 'I think it must hurt sometimes to live in your brain,' my husband has said on occasion, not unkindly. But, as he also notes, in a kind of nursery rhyme mantra, 'Your strengths are your weaknesses, your weaknesses are your strengths.'"

From "My Life in Error/A copy editor recounts his obsession with perfection" by Benjamin Dreyer, the copy chief of Random House (NYT).

I don't want to send Dreyer into a blue funk, but if I were writing an essay that had the line "passing reference to barbecued chicken ribs," I would not also have "elbowed my husband sharply in the ribs." It's a repetition of a distinctive image — ribs — for no recognizable reason. That's a language mistake. Make it your husband's arm. You're in a movie theater. It was more likely his arm that you elbowed anyway, wasn't it? You just liked "ribs," but your feeling of liking it came, I'll bet, from having seen it so recently.

And here's the Wikipedia entry for Tuinal, a Eli Lilly sleeping pill introduced in the late 1940s and now discontinued:

"Throughout most of the ’60s and ’70s, [Brigid Berlin] dragged her Polaroid 360 and a bulky cassette recorder everywhere, though she once said, 'No picture ever mattered, it was the clicking and pulling out that I loved.'"

"Running out of film, she insisted, was worse than running out of speed. Warhol became equally addicted to documentation and, though his pictures became more well known, hers are arguably as revelatory, often the product of double exposures and lighting both flat and vivid, and featuring such friends as Lou Reed, Roy Lichtenstein, Dennis Hopper and Cy Twombly.... Her recordings — there are more than 1,000 hours of tape... — range from the mundane (chatter about her near-constant doctors’ appointments) to the historic (Rauschenberg ranting at the Cedar Tavern). The original cassettes, with Berlin’s typed and handwritten labels affixed to each plastic case, are stored in a black flip-top handled case in her walk-in closet. 'Brigid wanted to melt them down and turn them into a sort of audio John Chamberlain piece.... but I convinced her that was insane.' It was her 1970 recording of the Velvet Underground, scratchy background noises and all, that was remastered into the band’s first live album, 'Live at Max’s Kansas City.'"

From "Brigid Berlin, Andy Warhol’s Most Enduring Friend/Berlin, who died last year, was a great artist in her own right, and her New York apartment, which is being sold, is a window into a bygone era in the city’s history" (NYT). Worth clicking for cool photographs of the idiosyncratic apartment.

Years ago, John Chamberlain was a reference everyone understood. He was a sculptor best known for welding together parts of banged up automobiles. In the 1960s, "modern art" was a hot topic and his name came up a lot. I doubt if younger people know or care about him.

As for "Live at Max’s Kansas City," I've still got my half-century old copy of the thing. How about you? From the 1972 Rolling Stone review: 

"Althouse captures the exact moment the light pierces the center of the dome — the sign ushering in the season of Brumalia?"

Said Ingachuck'stoothlessARM in the comments to last night's open thread, which had my photograph of a view across Lake Mendota that showed the Wisconsin state capitol building at daybreak. 

There's a moment at this time of year when the sun aligns with windows on either side of the dome and it looks, from the distance, as if there's a blazing fire inside. It's just a tiny dot in the photograph, and I was glad to see it noticed. 

The commenter cites Brumalia:

Brumalia (Latin: Brumalia [bruːˈmaːlɪ.a], "winter festivals") was an ancient Roman, winter solstice festival honouring Saturn/Cronus and Ceres/Demeter, and Bacchus in some cases. By the Byzantine era, celebrations commenced on 24 November and lasted for a month, until Saturnalia and the "Waxing of the Light". The festival included night-time feasting, drinking, and merriment.... The short, cold days of winter would halt most forms of work. Brumalia was a festival celebrated during this dark, interludal period. It was chthonic in character and associated with crops.... Farmers would sacrifice pigs to Saturn and Ceres. Vine-growers would sacrifice goats in honor of Bacchus.... 

My word for this time of year is "Darkmonth," and today marks the first day of Darkmonth. I put the solstice in the center — it's December 21st — and count back 15 days to get to the first day, and that is today, the 6th. We have not yet reached the coldest month-long period of the year — and you never know exactly when that's going to be (and it's very rarely 30 consecutive days). But we have reached the 30 darkest days of the year, and by the first day of winter, we'll be halfway through the darkest month. 

I can see that Saturnalia is a more optimistic idea, because you're not saying only 2 more weeks of the darkest month, but it's the waxing of the light. Each day is a bit more light — even as the coldest days are yet to come. 

Here's the first post where I talked about Darkmonth — in the first year of this blog, 2004. I like that Meade shows up and makes the first comment — in 2009, the year that we met. By the way, it was Meade who first saw the dot of sunrise light burning up the inside of the capitol and made me see it too. 

Song cue:

 

Some people work very hard/But still they never get it right...

Like Brumalia to Darkmonth, there's also this other song with the same title.

"They said Torres continued to call out to Boone saying he couldn't breathe, to which she is heard saying, 'That's on you. Oh, that's what I feel like when you choke me.'"

From "Florida man dies inside suitcase, girlfriend charged after claiming they were playing hide and seek: report" (Fox News).

Boone allegedly told police that they thought it would be funny if he got inside the suitcase, Fox 35 Orlando reported. She allegedly said they were drinking at the time and she passed out on her bed. When she woke up-- hours later-- she allegedly said she found him unresponsive and not breathing....

But she made videos, which police retrieved from her phone.

Deputies said Boone is heard laughing and saying, "For everything you've done to me, [expletive] you! Stupid!"

ADDED: Not exactly on point, but I thought about The Velvet Underground's "The Gift":



Spoken-word lyrics here. Excerpt:

Waldo Jeffers had reached his limit. It was now mid-August, which meant he had been separated from Marsha for more than two months.... He didn't have enough money to go to Wisconsin in the accepted fashion, true, but why not mail himself?... He bought masking tape, a staple gun and a medium sized cardboard box just right for a person of his build. He judged that with a minimum of jostling he could ride quite comfortably. A few air holes, some water, perhaps some midnight snacks, and it would probably be as good as going tourist!...

"Egypt's musicians' union has banned a leading singer from performing in the country for 'mocking' the River Nile."

"It came after video emerged showing Sherine Abdel Wahab being asked at a concert to sing Mashrebtesh Men Nilha (Have You Ever Drunk From The Nile). She responded by saying 'drinking from the Nile will get me schistosomiasis' - a disease caused by parasitic worms that is commonly known as bilharzia. Abdel Wahab then advised the fan to 'drink Evian water' instead. On Tuesday, the Egyptian Musicians Syndicate announced that it had reviewed the video and decided to suspend the 37 year old over her apparent 'unjustified mockery of our dear Egypt.'"

BBC reports.

I tried unsuccessfully to find the lyrics to the song. (Does it profess some deep, quasi-religious love for Egypt?) But I found this video, which went up in 2007 and which has comments about "Sherine" — "Queen Sherine," "I love Sherine and Egypt"...



... so I'm assuming the singer is the same woman who's now being punished, apparently punished for making fun of the lyrics of her own song or perhaps expressing some genuine concern that the song's metaphor is taken literally by some people and causing a very serious disease.

ADDED: This story made me think about "The Velvet Underground — Live at Max's Kansas City," a record I've listened to enough to have engraved on my brain the reaction to the crowd's clamoring to hear a particular song that the singer rejected as encouraging a bad health problem. The concertgoers want to hear what was one of the Velvet Underground's greatest songs, and Lou Reed said: “We don’t play ‘Heroin’ anymore.” From a longer report of the incident:

Lou Reed is on the stage at Max's listening to the audience shout their requests. "Heroin . . . Heroin . . . Yeah, Heroin." Lou answers in a real flat, magnificent "fuck you" tone, "We don't play Heroin anymore." Big deal. So what if Lou Reed refuses a request? But listen to his voice on Live at Max's, his tone. He's not only saying that he doesn't want to play the tune. He's dissing the guy who requested the song. Why would Reed do this? Granted, the Underground stopped playing "Heroin" when people came up to them saying things like "My brother died because he took heroin when listening to your album."...  It's almost as if Reed's answer shares the complex, obscure attitude of the "I-wear-black-and-thus-must-be-hipper-than-thou" syndrome. He's got his eyes shut and his mind made up: if the guy in the audience doesn't know about Heroin, then he's not up to my level. Reed has changed so much, while always maintaining his title as the infamous "engaging character."

Don't do heroin and don't drink river water. Health alerts from pop stars. They are not perfectly well received. We look to the artists for metaphor and mystery.



I don't know just where I'm going/But I'm gonna try for the kingdom, if I can/Cause it makes me feel like I'm a man....

80s Dusty.

I love Dusty Springfield, but have absolutely no memory of this...



... and I watched a lot of MTV in the 80s. I remember the Pet Shop Boys, chiefly this, but never knew they got together with Dusty Springfield.

Why am I looking at Dusty Springfield this morning? It was a strange journey! Routine checking of Instapundit took me to a Campus Reform piece titled "Student gov to pursue mandatory LGBT 'ally training' for faculty." It says LGBT in the headline, but the text refers to "LGBTQIA+." I figured the A was "asexual" — correctly, I see — and I wondered why do people who want nothing need anything? Recognition? Hey, what about me? I need nothing.

And you know me, I like to say Better than nothing is a high standard. I think there's too much bad sex going on and recommend valuing nothing as pretty high on the list of things you might want.

I played my favorite nothing song, "Oh! Sweet Nuthin'" by The Velvet Underground, and thought about other great nothing songs. "All or Nothing at All," "Nothing Was Delivered," "I Who Have Nothing," "Nothing Compares to U." Here's a whole big list, so you don't have to tell me I "forgot" any nothing songs, and you can find your own favorites. Maybe you like "Money For Nothing" or "King Nothing."

With that list, I stumbled into 80s Dusty. The 80s look and feel so anaesthetized. That hair, that makeup, the shoulder pads — such deadness. I don't think nothing has to be like that. The antidote is this 70s nothing:



IN THE COMMENTS: Left Bank of the Charles helps out with 2 great nothing songs where the nothing isn't in the title: Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" ("Nothing really matters") and The Talking Heads's "Heaven" ("Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens").

Andy Warhol hated Frank Zappa.

From "The Andy Warhol Diaries," Thursday, June 16, 1983:

Frank Zappa came to be interviewed for our TV show and I think that after the interview I hated Zappa even more than when it started. I remember when he was so mean to us when the Mothers of Invention played with the Velvet Underground— I think both at the Trip, in L.A., and at the Fillmore in San Francisco. I hated him then and I still don’t like him. And he was awfully strange about Moon. I said how great she was, and he said, “Listen, I created her. I invented her.” Like, “She’s nothing, it’s all me.” And I mean, if it were my daughter I would be saying, “Gee, she’s so smart,” but he’s taking all the credit. It was peculiar.

Here's Moon performing the old 1982 song "Valley Girl." Listening to that today is a completely different experience because back then talking like that was really weird and unbelievably stupid. Today, that kind of speech is so common, perplexingly common. I hear it all the time from people who completely intend to be taken seriously — mainstream journalists, law professors — female and male.

The consequences of blushing.

1. I was reading this Wall Street Journal essay — "The Appeal of Embarrassment/Blushing, fidgeting, looking down — the more contrite a wrongdoer looks, the more likable he seems" — written by Robert M. Sapolsky, a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University and author of the enticingly titled "The Trouble with Testosterone" and "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers."

2. I don't give a damn about zebras and their freedom from ulcers. (I'll just guess that when any given zebra slips toward ulcer-producing mental activity, some lion eats him, and that's the end of that trajectory.) But I am interested in the trouble with testosterone in connection with the subject of Sapolsky's essay, which is Anthony Weiner. Something about that ravaged face. Is he using testosterone to build up those muscles he shows off in his selfies?

"And there's even some evil mothers/They're gonna tell you that everything is just dirt..."

"... that women never really faint/And that villains always blink their eyes/And that children are the only ones who blush/And that, life is just to die."

A Velvet Underground lyric.

Are you one of those evil mothers that tell you women never really faint? I kind of am.

"I had many love affairs — and a lot of awful lovers. I wasn't into 'sexscapades' but I did try it once. I had three people in one day."

Says Shirley MacLaine. Who were these "people" — as she calls them? Not Jack Lemmon:

'I wasn't attracted to Jack Lemmon. He was a sweetheart. He didn't have that dangerous, complicated sexual thing that I liked helping the man I was attracted to figure out.

"Jack Nicholson had too much of it. He is authentically dangerous."

Authentically dangerous... is too much. Presumably, Lemmon wasn't even inauthentically dangerous.  It's so hard for a fellow to get into exactly the right zone.

I had quite a relationship with Robert Mitchum. And Yves Montand...

So there you have it. That's the zone. Robert Mitchum. (And Yves Montand...)

Song lyric evoked:

Can I have your autograph?
He said to the fat blonde actress
You know, I've seen every movie you've been in
From "Paths of Pain" to "Jewels of Glory"
And when you kissed Robert Mitchum
Gee, but I thought you'd never catch him
You're over the hill right now, and you're looking for love...

What Goodwin Liu said about Samuel Alito...

At his confirmation hearing, lawprof Goodwin Liu, nominated for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, is  being taken to task by Senator Kyl for what he said at Samuel Alito's confirmation hearing. (There is also talk of Liu as a future Supreme Court nominee.)

“Judge Alito’s record envisions an America where police may shoot and kill an unarmed boy to stop him from running away with a stolen purse … where a black man may be sentenced to death by an all-white jury for killing a white man,” Liu wrote. “I humbly submit that this is not the America we know. Nor is it the America we aspire to be.”

The testimony was “vicious, emotionally and racially charged, very intemperate, and to me it calls into question your ability to approach and characterize people’s positions in a fair and judicious way,” Kyl said.

Liu only acknowledged that this language was “unnecessarily flowery.”

Flowery? As Lou Reed once sang, "Vicious, you hit me with a flower...."

Elvis and Adam Lambert.

Oh, there was so much potential for extravagant self-indulgence. But in the end, they were pretty much on the same level. And 2 must go this week. So everyone's at risk, and no one can be saved. Angsty!

IN THE COMMENTS: Lyssa says: "What I couldn't believe was that nobody, not even Randy, commented on Siobhan's 'sexy Elvis' Halloween costume."

Ha ha ha. Stray thought: When are they going to have Lou Reed night?

I'm quite serious about replacing the depressing Father Time/Baby New Year with the New Year's Tick.

I like to frontpage comments, you know, and now and then, I need to frontpage my own comments. This is one of those times.

There was that "tick" post on New Year's Eve Eve (i.e., last night):

"New Year to arrive a tick later."

Oh! A tick!

Ricpic waxes poetic:

The New Year came in wobbly.
A tick or two behind.
It threw off lonely sticklers.
The rest? They didn't mind.

And Stephanie says:

?retal kcot a evirra ti t'nseoD

(Wait a sec, I have to do this.)

Then blogging cockroach says...

tou ieduv siht kcehc einahpets yeh

... and links to this:



That drives reader_iam to poesy:

i do love the backwards elements of the cockroach nature
as don't we all
or at least should
if not ought

Blogging cockroach responds in kind:

that should be tuo
which proves i ve had too much
spilled cheap merlot tonight
to be hopping around backwards
lookout when the champaign flows
tomorrow night wheee
which i hope doesn t turn into
eeehw
anyway here is tick tock gone bad
and too long
but you can stop it when it
ceases being funny about 40 seconds in
hey they can t all be gems
and i promise never to trip
trippingly to reader s ear
a cockroach doing that would
freak some people out
but just don t sleep on the kitchen floor
and we ll all be fine

Chip Ahoy says:

.diputs era stac yhW

dnuora gnifoog tsuj s'ti swohs swollof taht oediv etunim 4 ehT .yllaer toN

The cockroach continues to inspire reader_iam:

ah but cockroach
your trips are tweets to the ear
like birds in dawn of spring s own dawn
here here see here they sing
back again as always are we
so wake up
if only, and to ...

The cockroach skitters on across the keyboard again:

not having the vers libre poet in me
i fear my prosaic nature sometimes
misses the subtleties of
dear reader s lovely lines
which is not to say
reader should not write
a lot more of them
because you always want more
when someone doesn t quite
write enough rather than when
they write too much
which is also true about food
but i m not as appreciative when
the cook has cleaned up
too well afterwards

Then, when everyone is nestled all snug in their beds, I am awake. It's 2:23 a.m.:

And where is everyone? Last night, you guys were talking all night, and now here I am with insomnia and no one is around.

Were you afraid of the tick?

Thanks for all the poetry, but it was all before midnight. If you can't stay up until midnight tonight, how do you expect to celebrate New Year's Eve tomorrow night?

I think I'll try to draw a picture of the New Year's Tick. Or see if I can get people to send pictures of the New Year's Tick. And I'm going to push for the adoption of the New Year's Tick as the new New Year's mascot, replacing that stupid — and frankly depressing — Old Man and Baby mascot. Or the Ball. What the hell kind of symbol is a Ball?

I hope that doesn't offend blogging cockroach. You must understand that we can't have a cockroach as a holiday symbol. Not for New Year's anyway.

This insomnia is giving me grandiose thoughts, but I really think this New Year's Tick thing can catch on. Perhaps if we draw it the right way. I think Santa Claus wasn't such a big deal until those Coca Cola ads got the character drawn just the right way. People loved him once his attributes became appealing and standardized.

Help me do that with the Tick.

Also, that "Night Before Christmas" poem helped with the popularization of Santa Claus, so maybe some of you poets can write something similarly beguiling about the annual arachnid.

Inside the kitty cat wall clock he hid/Our eagerly awaited arachnid.

See? I can't do it!

An arthropod/From God/Trod...

No... I need help with the poem. And with the drawing. And with the sleeping.

The children were nestled all snug in their beds/Not knowing the Tick crept so close to their heads....

(Links added.)

In the cold light of morning — and it's 0° — I can see these are not mere insomniac ravings. I really do want drawings — or photoshoppings — of the New Year's Tick. I will reward you with frontpagings and tags. More poems too. I love the poems and the depictions of ticks — detickshuns, if you will.

We went out in the icy snow and celebrated last night. Tonight we stay in. I'll be live-blogging New Year's Eve, so please join me. I will reward you profusely with frontpagings and tags... and ticks.

"There's an edgy attitude. Not toughness. Not meanness."

It's Betsey Johnson, talking about fashion.



Several points:

1. I used to buy Betsey Johnson clothes when they were at Paraphernalia (which she left in 1969). Does anyone else remember shopping for clothes at Paraphernalia in the Betsey Johnson days? I loved that stuff.

2. I love the version of "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" that plays at the end of the video.

3. Betsey has worked out a really nice image for herself as an aging woman. It's almost clownish, but it suits her. I could get my hair cut like that. What stops me?

4. "She lived in the Chelsea Hotel in the late '60s. Edie Sedgwick was her house model. She became a friend-of-Andy. She designed the costumes for 'Ciao, Manhattan.' She made velvet suits for the Velvet Underground. She made Lou Reed's pants too big in the crotch, provoking his anger. She married John Cale, making matters worse. She shocked the fashion establishment. She hung out at Max's Kansas City. She shocked the fashion establishment at Max's Kansas City. She played Yoko Ono to Lou Reed's Paul. She broke up the Velvet Underground."

5. She reminds me a little of Susan Estrich.

Friday pop quiz.

What Velvet Underground song mentions Wisconsin?

"And I feel just like Jesus' son."

No, this post isn't about "The Da Vinci Code." It's a nice found video of Lou Reed singing "Heroin," back in 1972, with John Cale playing the electric viola. (Via Boing Boing.) And then Nico sings "Femme Fatale." She's got brown hair here, and she's somewhere along the way in her stupendous decline.