I post a weekly diary of historical notes, arts & science items, foreign news (often receiving little notice in the US) and whimsical pieces from the outside world that I often feature in "Cheers & Jeers".
OK, you've been warned - here is this week's tomfoolery material that I posted.
CHEERS to Bill and Michael in PWM and ...... well, each of you at Cheers and Jeers. Have a fabulous weekend .... and week ahead.
ART NOTES — an exhibition entitled Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers — a career retrospective of ninety works including prints, photography, sculpture and relief paintings made using black soap and wax — opens this weekend at the Guggenheim Museum in NYC through January 18th.
Honeysuckle Rose, 2021
YOUR WEEKEND READ #1 is this review in The Guardian by Drew Lawrence on the fictional HBCU in the Cosby Show spinoff A Different World — and how a sequel is being planned for Netflix later this year.
THURSDAY's CHILD is named Tommy the Cat - who survived on leftovers from fans at Anfield Stadium in Liverpool, England before being trapped by a animal protection society ("Strangest place we've trapped a cat") and now has a forever home ... where the eating is surely better.
Tommy the Cat
YOUR WEEKEND READ #2 is this essay in Salon by Amanda Marcotte, on the theocratic reign at the State Department of Marco Rubio.
YOUR WEEKEND READ #3 is this essay in Smithsonian magazine, about a lawsuit being filed (by a rock band’s last surviving member) to obtain the complete J. Edgar Hoover-led FBI files kept on the band (a small, heavily-redacted version of which was released in 2011), namely …. “Hey, Hey, We’re The Monkees”.
FRIDAY's CHILD is named Trident the Hero Cat - who awoke a couple to an item that had fallen onto the heating element in their dishwasher and started to melt, causing an acrid smell.
Trident the Hero Cat
BRAIN TEASER — try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC ...… and the usually easier, less UK-centered New York Times quiz.
THE OTHER NIGHT yours truly hosted the Top Comments diary with an ode to the longtime D/K poster Elwood Dowd who has died at the age of seventy-two — with a mini-bio and some personal remembrances. If you ever enjoyed any of his essays/comments on this site … I hope this essay will tie-up any loose ends.
→ Addendum: since it was posted, his daughter added her thoughts.
OLDER-YOUNGER BROTHERS? — Led Zeppelin bassist/mandolinist John Paul Jones and four-time Academy Award nominee Willem Dafoe.
John Paul Jones — b. 1946
Willem Dafoe — b. 1955
...... and finally, for two songs of the week ...........................… regular readers of mine will notice the relative absence of music from genres that are not my style (country, rap, heavy metal, hip hop). Yet there are always exceptions, and today I’ll highlight two songs outside my comfort zone that I enjoy.
Born as Kurtis Walker in 1959, Kurtis Blow was the first commercially successful rapper and the first to sign with a major label in 1980. And it was his debut single from his first album The Breaks that was the first gold record for a rap song.
The recording quality (and ability to hear the lyrics) helped make it a good introductory song to the genre, it was clean and did not venture into some of the more violent/sexist themes that sometimes arose later on. And the humor (“These are the breaks!”) still brings a chuckle to me, forty-five years later:
If your woman steps out with another man
And she runs off with him to Japan
And the IRS says they wanna chat
And you can't explain why you claimed your cat
And Ma Bell sends you a whopping bill
With eighteen phone calls to Brazil
In more recent times
He has gone on to a career with seventeen albums and is an ordained minister.
For hip hop: hearing this 1992 song (which began with a descending jazz double bass sound) made it accessible to this jazz buff. The Digable Planets are made-up of Ishmael “Butterfly” Butler, Mariana “Ladybug Mecca” Viera and Craig “Doodlebug” Irving and have existed on-and-off since 1987.
They are considered to be part of ‘alternative hip hop’ (is there any genre of music that does not have an ‘alt’ version?) and also jazz rap … which seems to have peaked since the mid-1990’s, yet there are noted samplings of classic recordings.
An early Digable Planets photo ...
…. and more recently
The video of Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat) opens in the Soho district of NYC (a place I miss having the Dean & Deluca store to visit), it name-checks Miles Davis, it reached #15 on the pop charts and won the 1993 Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group.
