Five Books About The Opera Business

Posted on September 13, 2015 by Eddie Pensier

Eddie Pensier writes:

toughestshowonearth

The Toughest Show On Earth: My Rise And Reign At the Metropolitan Opera Joseph Volpe and Charles Michener

Volpe was the Met’s General Manager from 1990 to 2006. In retrospect his tenure may have been conservative, but he mostly avoided the labor disputes, censorship and fondness for trashy, trendy productions that have marred the administration of his successor, Peter Gelb. Volpe wasn’t without controversy, though: he presided over two of the most infamous flops in Met history; Graham Vick’s Il Trovatore (a shockingly inept effort from a director with a normally great theatrical imagination); and Robert Wilson’s Lohengrin (say the words “minimalist Wagner” to yourself and you’ll realize how this project may have been ill-advised from the get-go)*. Volpe describes his rise to management from his early days as a carpenter, talks about his infamous firings of Kathleen Battle and Angela Gheorghiu, and gives a well-rounded look at the challenges of running an institution as massive as the Met.

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Posted in Books Publishing and Writing, Music | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Juxtaposin’: Stairs

Posted on September 11, 2015 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

unknownstairsbroadmuseumlosangeles

Posted in Architecture | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Architects That Don’t Suck: John Gaw Meem

Posted on September 8, 2015 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

John Gaw Meem — native of Brazil, an amateur architect trained as a civil engineer — popularized the Pueblo Revival style in New Mexico. This 1992 New York Times article, which notes that Meem “married the spirit of native pueblo architecture with the necessities of the modern world,” is a good introduction to him and his work. I liked this quote:

“Some old forms are so honest, so completely logical and native to the environment,” he once wrote, “that one finds — to one’s delight and surprise — that modern problems can be solved and are best solved by use of forms based on tradition.”

As great as his aesthetic accomplishments were, I can’t help wondering if his greatest feat was using his influence to pass Santa Fe’s 1957 historical zoning ordinance:

That in order to promote the economic, cultural and general welfare of the people of the City of Santa Fe, and to insure the harmonious, orderly and efficient growth and development of the municipality, it is deemed essential by the City Council of the City of Santa Fe, that the qualities relating to the history of Santa Fe, and a harmonious outward appearance which preserves property values and attracts tourists and residents alike, be preserved; some of these qualities being: the continued existence and preservation of historical areas and buildings; continued construction of buildings in the historic styles, and a general harmony as to style, form, color, proportion, texture and material between buildings of historic design and those of more modern design.

San Esteban del Rey Mission, built in the 17th century, restoration overseen by Meem in the 20s.

Related

  • This National Register of Historic Places document (PDF alert) is an excellent summary of Meem’s life, work, and influence. Looks like a couple of Meem houses are up for sale right now.
  • The New Mexico Architectural Foundation gives tours of Meem’s buildings at the University of New Mexico and his archives.
  • A Notre Dame architecture student posts some inspirational quotes from Meem: “Well you know if you look back at this business of recalling a traditional form, it’s happened so frequently in history — the Parthenon built in marble recalls the wooden temples of ancient Greece. They could have built something that didn’t recall it, but they did recall it, and that doesn’t make that building a lie or something that is wrong. It’s legitimate, it’s right and of course the whole of the Renaissance does the same in the sense that they caught first from rediscovering Greek forms, Roman forms and they adapted them, they changed them, they didn’t copy them exactly, but the result was a tremendous era in architecture, of period, marvelous buildings, you cannot label all of that as being completely incorrect.”
  • John Massengale declares Santa Fe the most beautiful city of the 20th century.
  • Back here I featured the New Mexico adobe house.
  • Sir Barken shared some snaps of a Silver City, NM.
Posted in Architecture | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Listing Movies: 101 American Movies

Posted on September 7, 2015 by Fabrizio del Wrongo

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

In July the BBC published a list purporting to represent the “greatest” examples of American filmmaking. I put the key word in quotes because I’m not sure what it means. The only clarification offered by the BBC: the movies on their list are great on an “emotional level.” I suppose that’s as good a definition of greatness as any.

It’s a good list. Not too egghead-y, not too populist, with most of the Big Kahunas of American film being represented. Still, there are some problems. For example, Billy Wilder claims five spots on the list. Wilder is a great filmmaker. But is he really responsible for more great movies than either John Ford or Howard Hawks? A friend suggests that Wilder’s cynicism and sharpie persona jibe with contemporary attitudes. I suspect he’s right; Wilder seems to be the go-to “classic” filmmaker for many folks under 50. But the surfeit of Wilder films is partly responsible for the absence of some real giants: King Vidor, Fritz Lang, Harold Lloyd, John Huston, Raoul Walsh, Frank Borzage, George Cukor, Douglas Fairbanks, and surely some others I’m overlooking at the moment are nowhere to be found on the BBC’s list. Still others are underrepresented. Ernst Lubitsch, who I think is one of the absolute greats, claims a measly one film, 50% of Spike Lee’s tally. Leo McCarey is present via “Duck Soup,” but I fear that’s the Marx Brothers entry before it’s the Leo McCarey one.

Anyway, since I’m a nerd and I need something to blog about, I decided to make my own list. “Hey,” I thought, “I’ll make a list that puts this BBC one to shame!”

That’s easier said than done, as I learned while toying with my choices. The numerical limit creates a problem of selection: It just isn’t possible to whittle the American cinema down to 100 titles and avoid leaving out a bunch of deserving stuff. My first cut was closer to 200, and by the time I got it down to around 120 I started feeling a sting with each strike of the proverbial blue pencil.

To compensate, I imposed rules, all of them fairly arbitrary. For instance, I decided to limit directors to three titles. Is that reasonable? I’m not sure. But without a limit, guys like Ford, Hawks, Lubitsch, and Hitchcock would dominate the list, and prevent it from being as eclectic as I initially envisioned. And variety is important, right? The list, it seems to me, should encompass all (or most) of what I see as being great about American movies. Otherwise, what’s the point?

I also decided that I wouldn’t include anything I didn’t like. In other words, I would make no selections based solely on factors like historical importance, reputation, and political correctness. Of course, this adds a degree of subjectivity to my list. But is objectivity even possible in such an undertaking? After all, there are no carved-in-stone criteria for greatness, or even okayness. So why bother feigning objectivity? It’s my list, and it reflects my tastes. How could it be otherwise?

Ultimately, any list of this kind ends up saying more about itself — about the process of compiling it — than its purported topic. I’m okay with that.

Intolerance (Griffith, 1916)
One A.M. (Chaplin, 1916)
True Heart Susie (Griffith, 1919)
Broken Blossoms (Griffith, 1919)
One Week (Cline, 1920)
Nanook of the North (Flaherty, 1922)
Why Worry? (Newmeyer/Taylor, 1923)
The Big Parade (Vidor, 1925)
Lady Windermere’s Fan (Lubitsch, 1925)
The Gold Rush (Chaplin, 1925)
Sunrise (Murnau, 1927)
The General (Bruckman, 1927)
The Wind (Sjostrom, 1928)
The Iron Mask (Dwan, 1929)
Morocco (Sternberg, 1930)
Love Me Tonight (Mamoulian, 1932)
The Old Dark House (Whale, 1932)
Trouble In Paradise (Lubitsch, 1932)
Red Dust (Fleming, 1932)
Me and My Gal (Walsh, 1932)
A Man’s Castle (Borzage, 1933)
Duck Soup (McCarey, 1933)
The Bitter Tea of General Yen (Capra, 1933)
It Happened One Night (Capra, 1934)
Top Hat (Sandrich, 1935)
Dodsworth (Wyler, 1936)
The Awful Truth (McCarey, 1937)
Holiday (Cukor, 1938)
Gunga Din (Stevens, 1939)
Stagecoach (Ford, 1939)
His Girl Friday (Hawks, 1940)
The Shop Around the Corner (Lubitsch, 1940)
Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
The Lady Eve (Sturges, 1941)
How Green Was My Valley (Ford, 1941)
Double Indemnity (Wilder, 1944)
Meet Me in St. Louis (Minnelli, 1944)
To Have and Have Not (Hawks, 1944)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Kazan, 1945)
Notorious (Hitchcock, 1946)
Out of the Past (Tourneur, 1947)
Daisy Kenyon (Preminger, 1947)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (Huston, 1948)
Unfaithfully Yours (Sturges, 1948)
The Reckless Moment (Ophuls, 1949)
Intruder In the Dust (Brown, 1949)
Wagon Master (Ford, 1950)
Winchester ’73 (Mann, 1950)
Singin’ in the Rain (Donen/Kelly, 1952)
The Big Heat (Lang, 1953)
The Band Wagon (Minnelli, 1953)
The Night of the Hunter (Laughton, 1955)
The Killing (Kubrick, 1956)
Seven Men from Now (Boetticher, 1956)
Men In War (Mann, 1957)
Touch of Evil (Welles, 1958)
Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
Day of the Outlaw (De Toth, 1959)
Rio Bravo (Hawks, 1959)
The Sundowners (Zinneman, 1960)
Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960)
The Nutty Professor (Lewis, 1963)
Chimes at Midnight (Welles, 1967)
The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah, 1969)
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (Mazursky, 1969)
Putney Swope (Downey, 1969)
Hi, Mom! (De Palma, 1970)
Born to Win (Passer, 1971)
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Altman, 1971)
Cabaret (Fosse, 1972)
The Godfather, Parts I & II (Coppola, 1972/1974)
Mean Streets (Scorsese, 1973)
Jaws (Spielberg, 1975)
Shampoo (Ashby, 1975)
Nashville (Altman, 1975)
Next Stop, Greenwich Village (Mazursky, 1976)
Citizens Band (Demme, 1977)
Always for Pleasure (Blank, 1978)
The Black Stallion (Ballard, 1979)
The Empire Strikes Back (Kershner, 1980)
Shoot the Moon (Parker, 1982)
The Right Stuff (Kaufman, 1983)
Heartbreakers (Roth, 1984)
To Live and Die in L.A. (Friedkin, 1985)
Blue Velvet (Lynch, 1986)
Let’s Get Lost (Weber, 1988)
Die Hard (McTiernan, 1988)
Near Death (Wiseman, 1989)
Where the Heart Is (Boorman, 1990)
Carlito’s Way (De Palma, 1993)
Six Degrees of Separation (Schepisi, 1993)
Vanya on 42nd Street (Malle, 1994)
Before Sunrise (Linklater, 1995)
The Matrix (Wachowski/Wachowski, 1999)
Three Kings (Russell, 1999)
Cast Away (Zemeckis, 2000)
Mulholland Dr. (Lynch, 2001)
Training Day (Fuqua, 2001)
Apocalypto (Gibson, 2006)
Crank: High Voltage (Neveldine/Taylor, 2009)
Margaret (Lonergan, 2011)

Some comments:

  • There are 101 movies rather than 100 because I wanted to include “Chimes at Midnight.” “Chimes” was made by an American yet is not a product of the American film industry — or of any country’s film industry. So it’s 100 American movies plus “Chimes.”
  • I think the greatest decades for American movies are the ’30s and the ’20s, followed by the ’40s and the ’70s. The BBC list included five movies made prior to 1930 — which is embarrassing. I tried to correct that. I have fewer entries from the ’90s and ’00s. That’s fine. I think movies are in decline, more or less.
  • Filmmakers with three titles: Griffith, Ford, Hawks, Welles, Hitchcock, Lubitsch. Seems about right to me. I had Altman with three films, but I sacrificed one in order to make room for another documentary.
  • Filmmakers with two titles: Keaton, Chaplin, McCarey, Capra, Sturges, Minnelli, Mann, Mazursky, De Palma, Altman, Coppola (if you count both Godfathers), Lynch. Again, seems about right. Some might quibble with Mann, Mazursky, and De Palma. I think they’re among the greats. I wish I had found room for a second Peckinpah.
  • Yes, I cheated by listing “The Godfather” and “The Godfather, Part II” as one movie. It’s good to be the guy who makes the rules.
  • Kubrick: A giant, no doubt, but I’m not a huge fan. I do love “The Killing.” If I were to pick a second title, it would be “Lolita” or “Dr. Strangelove.” Most of his later movies strike me as bizarre more than good.
  • De Palma: Is De Palma’s greatness still a matter of controversy? I suspect so, at least in some quarters. I have him with two titles and could have given him three. I don’t think the two I picked — “Hi, Mom!” and “Carlito’s Way” — are necessarily his best, but they do represent his range. And the list needed the variety offered by the grubby avant-gardism of “Hi, Mom!” and the meat-and-potatoes gloss of “Carlito’s Way.”
  • Scorsese: “Mean Streets” is my favorite Scorsese, and that’s the one I chose. I dislike “Raging Bull.” “Goodfellas” is hilarious, flashy, and memorable, but I see it as a dumdum joke taken way too far. (Yes, that’s part of the point, but do I have to watch all of it?) I love “Taxi Driver,” but I nixed it in favor of “Putney Swope.”
  • Fincher, Wes Anderson, P.T. Anderson: Talented guys, but I haven’t loved any of their movies, and I’ve been annoyed by several. I’ve been meaning to revisit “Fight Club.”
  • Tarantino: I suppose the list might have included “Pulp Fiction” or “Jackie Brown,” both of which I like. “Kill Bill” and “Basterds” are like diarrhea: just when you think they’re finished, here comes more. “Django” I disliked. Ultimately, I don’t regret QT’s absence.
  • Sirk: I’m hip to Douglas Sirk. Just not to the extent that your college professor is. I had a John Stahl movie on the list for a while, but I ended up cutting it. I like Stahl more than Sirk.
  • Coens: They’re among the most proficient and distinctive filmmakers of their generation, yet I’m just not that enthusiastic about movies like “Fargo” and “No Country for Old Men.” I tend to enjoy their wild comedies best. I suppose I might have included “Raising Arizona” or “The Big Lebowski.”
  • Woody Allen: I am somewhat bugged by the lack of Allen movies. I like a bunch of Allen, albeit in a reserved sort of way. Perhaps that reservedness is what prevented me from including him.
  • Malick: Maybe you can include him on your list?
  • Yeah, there are a lot of white guys. Look, I’ve enjoyed aspects of Spike Lee’s work, but he’s not my idea of a great filmmaker, or even a particularly good one. Charles Burnett is my idea of a bore. I’m happy to have Antoine Fuqua’s galvanizing “Training Day” on the list. On the other hand, I regret not finding room for Carl Franklin’s “Devil in a Blue Dress” and “One False Move.” (Why does no one talk about Franklin?)
  • As for women . . . Has there been a great female American filmmaker? I ask this in earnest, and I asked myself the same question while compiling the list. I think we can all appreciate the talents (and chutzpah) of Dorothy Arzner and Ida Lupino — and still admit they’re not among our greatest filmmakers. I suppose the best contemporary candidate is Kathryn Bigelow. I like her a lot, my favorite of hers being “Point Break.” It’s a terrific action movie, but “To Live and Die in L.A.” and “Die Hard” are, I think, better. Serious question: Does the Lana Wachowski who co-directed “The Matrix” count as a female filmmaker? UPDATE: I just realized I forgot Elaine May. I think she’s pretty great.
  • I get it: You think I’m nuts for including the “Crank” sequel and “Apocalypto.” I take “Crank: High Voltage” to be an avant-garde sketch comedy in the vein of “One Week,” “Putney Swope,” and “Hi, Mom!” It’s wild, fearless, and totally of its moment. As for “Apocalypto” . . . well, Mel Gibson might be crazy, but “Apocalypto” is, for me, a singular experience — immediate, fierce, rueful, and wise.
  • Many people probably haven’t seen (or even heard of ) “Born to Win,” “Heartbreakers,” “Shoot the Moon,” “Citizens Band,” “Where the Heart Is,” and some others. I think making “reach” selections like these is part of the fun of messing with a list of this type. Who wants a list comprised of “Casablanca”-style classics? Besides, I love all of these movies.
  • Some of the movies I regret not finding room for: “Taxi Driver,” “Something Wild,” “The Long Goodbye,” “California Split,” “The Maltese Falcon,” “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” “High School,” “Bonnie and Clyde,” “Cabin in the Sky,” “The Bride of Frankenstein,” “Young Frankenstein,” “The Manchurian Candidate,” “Straw Dogs,” “Ride the High Country,” “The Magnificent Ambersons,” “The Merry Widow,” ” The Palm Beach Story,” “The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek,” “On Dangerous Ground,” “King Kong,” “Show Boat,” “Caught,” “Letter from an Unknown Woman,” “Gentleman Jim,” “Enemies: A Love Story,” “Ruggles of Red Gap,” “E.T: The Extraterrestrial,” “Star Wars,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Candy Man,” “Airplane!,” “The Navigator,” bunches of Ford, Hawks, Hitchcock, and De Palma, something from William Wellman, something starring Mary Pickford, something starring Greta Garbo, something starring Jimmy Cagney, something starring Bette Davis. (The absence of Cagney, Wellman, and Davis makes me realize — and regret — that the Warner Brothers films of the early ’30s are not represented. But fuck it, I’m not going back and making changes now.)

Well, wasn’t that obnoxiously self-involved?

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , , | 23 Comments

Linkage

Posted on September 7, 2015 by Paleo Retiree

Paleo Retiree writes:

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Architecture Du Jour

Posted on September 6, 2015 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

paramountpicturesgate

One of the gates at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles, CA.

Click on the image to enlarge.

Posted in Architecture, Movies | Tagged | Leave a comment

Classic Soul

Posted on September 4, 2015 by Fenster

Fenster writes:

My kids don’t like it when I tell them I don’t like hip hop music.  They think if I don’t like hip hop I don’t like black music and that I am acting racist.  I am bothered by their reaction.  Not so much about the charge of racism–I mean if we’re all racist then the charge starts to lose its sizzle.  Are they not racist too?  No, what rankles is the charge that I must not like black music.

Aha, it dawns on the old codger that of course they would feel that way since hip hop and its close cousins have pretty much comprised black music in their lifetimes.  They may know a Beatles song here or Jimi Hendrix there but Aretha?  Luther Vandross?  Stax-Volt? Muscle Shoals? Quiet Storm?  Motown?  Uh-uh.

Too bad, too.  All these things are in my view as good as it gets.  Not quite down the memory hole but dangerously close.

So now comes Howard Husock’s article in City Journal bemoaning the turn away from gospel, blues and soul toward rap.  His article, like many in the generally estimable City Journal, has something of a moralizing/grumpy edge to it.  And it is not all that deep–he paints with a broad and somewhat predictable brush.

Still and all, to this grumpy moralizer it is an article that is worth reading and it is good that he wrote it, if only to bring to center stage the notion that black music was really quite different prior to the rise of rap, and different not just musically but also in terms of values and ideas.  Judging from the comments it seems some of his readers know little about pre-rap black music.

In that regard, I am cutting and pasting a blog post I wrote quite a while ago, when blogging was newer and I was blogging on my own–e.g., for sure you have not read this before.  It tells a similar tale as the one told by Husock.  It has to do with an experience I had as an administrator at a well-regarded art college.

Since I was blogging on a controversial racial topic while an administrator at a college I had to be quite sure to remain anonymous.  The blog was published under the name of Fenster, of course, and that helped with desired anonymity.  But the experience I was writing about was quite specific and known to the members of my community so I wanted to be doubly sure I remained anonymous.

So I used a contrivance: I began the post with a letter that I had received from a former student at an art college recounting the experience I wished to explore.  I wrote the letter, of course, and it described my experience.  I reasoned that the fake letter would make it difficult to pin the issue on me.  Such are the dangers, or at least the perceived dangers, of blogging about higher education’s odd contours from the inside.  I am not proud of the resort to anonymity, or the use of a fake letter to make myself even more anonymous but there you have it.

Here is the letter I supposedly received from someone else:

A few years back I graduated from the well-regarded art department at a well-regarded college. The capstone of the program was a senior show in which the best work got put in a gallery. This was done around the time of graduation so parents got to come, and it was done up as a pretty big deal. A couple of other seniors decided to publicize the event around campus. They created a series of posters, each of which had a TV star from the 70s on it, along with a cute quote promoting the show.

One poster featured the mother in the show Good Times, Jimmie Walker’s mom. Remember this was a spin off from the Jeffersons? She was a domestic working for the Jeffersons, and played the same role on Good Times.

Anyway, the poster had a picture of her saying something like “Come on Down to the Senior Show”. She had her maid’s uniform on and had a kitchen spoon in hand. I guess the administration found it offensive, probably because it reminded people of Aunt Jemima imagery. They ordered that all of the posters be taken down right away. Then a delegation of administrators arrived at the senior show itself and closed it down because of the offensive posters, giving all of us–students and parents both–a mini-lecture about sensitivity and responsibility. My parents were shocked, I was upset and embarrassed. Like most of the students who had work in the show, I wasn’t responsible for the posters and didn’t know the details about them. So to some extent I felt I was being punished personally for what someone else did. But even so, I didn’t really find the poster offensive. I don’t know a lot about Aunt Jemima, but I do remember Good Times fondly, and have no negative sense of the character.

The next day we had one of those campus wide cathartic meetings at which everyone–mostly white people–got to lecture each other about sensitivity and older faculty got to lecture all of us about the meaning of “intentionality” in the creation of art, and how we need to be much more aware of cultural stereotyping. The idea, I take it, was that her role as a domestic was demeaning and somehow redolent of slavery and things like that . . .

And this was my response:

Dear Reader:

That actress was Esther Rolle, and your story is illuminating in a number of respects. It seems to me that in his or her quest to ground an objection in history, the faculty member you mention may have gotten some of the details wrong.

 Rolle was a proud and independent woman in real life who played a proud and independent woman on TV. In fact, as this site points out, she and John Amos were strongly in favor of building the TV family around positive role models, including a solid, two-parent family. Indeed, they objected when the focus of the show morphed from the family to their son, proto-hip-hopper Jimmie (Dy-no-mite!) Walker.

Rolle found the show turning in an offensive direction. She told Ebony Magazine in 1975, “He’s (Walker’s character) eighteen and he doesn’t work. He can’t read or write. He doesn’t think. The show didn’t start out to be that. (The) role of a bright, thinking child, has been reduced. Little by little – with the help of the artist, I suppose, because they couldn’t do that to me (emphasis added) — they have made J.J. more stupid and enlarged the role. Negative images have been slipped in on us through the character of the oldest child.”

So to the professors question about intentionality, I would possibly toss back a rejoinder about proportionality. Yes, Rolle played a domestic, but is the main issue the job description or the content of character? Methinks your professor may be mistaking motes for beams, possibly due to the beam in his or her own eye.

I mean, the clown Jimmy is to my mind much more offensive and minstrel-like. And isn’t it his character, not Rolle’s, that has morphed, survived and prospered in a hip-hop era?

But does anyone on campus find it offensive to systematically portray blacks as uneducated, as uninterested in education, as hustlers, as gangstas? The media are overflowing with this imagery. Pick up a newspaper and do the counting and sorting yourself. Do faculty hold teach-ins on the problems appropriating this imagery in one’s work? I’d wager not.

And here’s a more recent story, related by descent to the one you’ve recounted: just a few days ago, Garry Trudeau’s comic strip Doonesbury had Bush refer to Condi Rice as “Brown Sugar”. So consider: the image of Esther Rolle is offensive and a reference to the National Security Advisor as a sexually available slave girl is not?

After all, consider the actual lyrics of that Rolling Stones song:

Gold coast slave ship bound for cotton fields,
Sold in a market down in New Orleans.
Scarred old slaver know he’s doin’ alright.
Hear him whip the women just around midnight.

Ah brown sugar how come you taste so good
(a-ha) brown sugar, just like a young girl should
A-huh.

Drums beating, cold English blood runs hot,
Lady of the house wond’rin where it’s gonna stop.
House boy knows that he’s doin alright.
You should a heard him just around midnight.

Ah brown sugar how come you taste so good
(a-ha) brown sugar, just like a black girl should
A-huh.

I bet your mama was a tent show queen,
and all her boyfriends were sweet sixteen.
I’m no schoolboy but I know what I like,
You should have heard me just around midnight.

I’d think, dear reader, that your patronizing professors, who may be quick to giggle at Doonesbury and boogie to the Stones, ought to read these lyrics carefully before their next highfalutin’ lecture.

A-huh.

 

Posted in Music | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Naked Lady of the Week: Lorna Morgan

Posted on September 4, 2015 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

lmcover

No one fills out a sweater like Welsh native Lorna Morgan. Her creamy skin, dark tresses, cherubic dimples, and — let’s not mince words — huge tits have been a mainstay of big boob sites for 15 years. A former actress, she’s a natural in front of the camera at conveying a innocent playfulness that contrasts with her ready-to-get-down body. She’s never done any hardcore but there are some girl-girl softcore vids floating around in the ether. These samples came from sites like Pinup Files, XX-Cel, and Score, so check them out for more.

Epic boobage below the jump. Happy Labor Day weekend.

Continue reading →

Posted in Sex, The Good Life | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Music Du Jour

Posted on September 3, 2015 by Paleo Retiree

Paleo Retiree writes:

Vince Gill and the legendary pedal steel guitarist Paul Vincent — with backing from Marty Stuart and The Fabulous Superlatives — perform Merle Haggard’s wonderfully acerbic-yet-heartrending 1970 tune “I Can’t Be Myself.”

Related

  • Gill and Vincent also perform the tune on “Bakersfield,” a recent CD of covers of songs from the likes of Merle Haggard and Buck Owens. Even though I’d have enjoyed one or two more uptempo shitkickers than they include — the collection is a little heavy on soulful love-and-heartbreak numbers — I’m enjoying the album a whole lot.
  • If you don’t know anything about the Bakersfield Sound, it’s time to educate yourself. The Bakersfield era — a direct, no-frills expression of white working-class masculinity — was one of the Really Great Moments in American popular music, IMHO.
  • Some praise from me for Marty Stuart.
  • Vince Gill, himself a virtuoso, highlights his 14 favorite guitarists.
Posted in Music | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

A Good Nonstick Pan

Posted on September 3, 2015 by Paleo Retiree

Paleo Retiree writes:

Over the years, my wife, an excellent home cook, has been unhappy with the nonstick pans she’s tried. They don’t distribute the heat effectively; they don’t impart any flavor; the surface loses its effectiveness in just a few years; she’s already a virtuoso with her beautifully-seasoned, decades-old $25 iron pan … so what’s the point? Recently, though, I did a lot of research and treated her to a ritzy Woll nonstick pan, and she’s been using it nearly every day. The base is heavy and handles heat well; the nonstick surface is a newfangled material supposedly incorporating titanium and diamonds that’s said not to have a lot of Teflon’s disadvantages; and the very comfy handle detaches, which turns out to have some benefits. So far, she’s enjoyed the Woll for cooking fried eggs — they develop a diner-worthy brown-and-webby crust — omelettes and frittatas (that she finishes under the broiler), and for sauteeing veggies that she’s pre-steamed. She’s just begun to experiment with fish and shrimp, and so far the results have been promising — a piece of delicate fish like flounder is less likely to fall apart when the surface is nonstick. The pan seems beautifully made — a satisfying example of Mercedes-like Awesome German Engineering — so we’re feeling optimistic about its lasting powers.

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Posted in Food and health, Shopping | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments