http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Wed, 15 Oct 2003 12:58:41 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. 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Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/10/15/125841.php RossOriginally posted at The BloviatorAs the media continues to not only replay the now-infamous foul ball from last night's 8-3 Marlins win over the Cubs, but also incrementally reveal more and more information about the fan who allegedly "lost" the game for the Cubs (placing his life in greater and greater jeopardy by crazed fans), I was inspired to write a song that might appeal to those fans who believe in curses. And revenge.With deepest apologies to Carly Simon, and a caveat that the lyrics do not reflect my feelings about the issue (see here for my true feelings).You're To Blame (sung to "You're So Vain" by Carly Simon)You reached out for the foul ball As if you thought you might have a shot Your cap strategically pulled down to your eyes Your headphones broadcast the plot You had one hand on the baseball As you thought you had it caught And all the fans screamed that they'd like to kill you They'd like to kill you, andYou're to blame You probably think this game is about you You're to blame I'll bet you think this game is about you Don't you? Don't you?I heard "The Curse" some years ago When I was still quite naive Well, they said that this might fine'ly be the year And that the Cubbies could achieve But you gave away our life-long dreams I'll pelt you when you leave I had big dreams of the Cubs in the Series Cubs in the Series, andYou're to blame You probably think this game is about you You're to blame I'll bet you think this game is about you Don't you? Don't you?I had big dreams of the Cubs in the Series Cubs in the Series, andYou're to blame You probably think this game is about you You're to blame I'll bet you think this game is about you Don't you? Don't you?Well, I hear you work downtown in business And you're twenty-six years now The media gives me all the details I need To make sure you're run out of town Well, you're everywhere on TV news And when you're not, you're in Some dark corner and in fear for your dear life Fear for your dear life, andYou're to blame You probably think this game is about you You're to blame I'll bet you think this game is about you Don't you? Don't you? Don't you? Sports9208@blogcritics.org Wed, 15 Oct 2003 12:58:41 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/09/10/130710.php RossI guess you could call me and my wife foodies. We don't own a Viking range or know Charlie Trotter personally or anything like that, but we have always loved going out for great meals whenever we're on the road (great restaurants are harder to come by locally). We developed this affection for epicurian delights while living in Boston a decade ago, and our trusty road map was the Zagat Restaurant Guide. The guide has its quirks. For one thing, they use a 30 point scale to rate the restaurants on food, service and decor. Every locale is graded on a curve (experience has shown me that a 27 in Orlando is not the same as a 27 in Manhattan), and suburban restaurants are the most likely to have inflated ratings (I guess the locals are happy to have a decent place nearby to eat).Zagat has become quite a phenomenon since we picked up our first guidebook all those years ago: they've branched out to provide ratings for everything from movies to hotels and airlines, to New York City theater. Everywhere you go, from San Francisco to Philadelphia to London and Paris, restaurants are proud to display their maroon "Zagat Rated" signs in the front window (I've even seen Zagat listings touted by places which are not-so-well rated -- I guess there's no such thing as bad publicity).But with such widespread acceptance and visibility has come, I feel, a tempering of viewpoints, and hence, a decrease in the guide's usefulness. Specifically: I noticed recently that the online Zagat guide ratings no longer include their symbol for when reviews about a restaurant are strongly mixed. The paper and internet guides both used to show a filled-in square next to the restaurant name when customer reviews were generally uniform, and a half-filled square (it looked like two triangles, one filled, one empty), when views were split. The reviews still offer some negative commentary on restaurants, but why they've eliminated this quickly-scanned symbol I'm not sure. Is it because, with the explosion of Food TV, far more people started eating out at nice restaurants, now feel they're capable critics, and now every restaurant has its significant share of negative reviews? Arguably, this shouldn't be a concern: Zagat guides were founded on the idea that local residents could offer as good of guidance as any newspaper's resident food critic. Granted, the local residents who offered the ratings early on were Mr. & Mrs. Zagat and their friends -- very well-traveled residents with well-refined palates. Perhaps with the boom in popularity of their guides (and, I assume, a large uptick in the number of submitted ratings) has come more explicit belief on the part of the Zagats that while all things are equal, some are not.And what if a more depressing reason underlies the decision: that the widespread use of Zagat ratings by the restaurants as well as the public has led the company to try to protect restaurants by covering up more obvious signs of dischord in the dining public? The guide already culls quips from individual raters to make their reviews, and that part of the proverbial sausage making is kept behind the scenes. If they were shading things further to play nice with the industry they purport to be critiquing, it would undercut my trust in the value of the rating system.I hope it's not the latter. But I'd like to hear more about why this helpful symbol is no longer available. Books8261@blogcritics.org Wed, 10 Sep 2003 13:07:10 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/05/23/154440.php RossYesterday, Sotheby's in London sold the working manuscript for Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" for $3.5m, the most ever paid for a single piece of music.From MSNBCConsisting of 465 pages in three bound volumes, the Beethoven manuscript is believed to have been used at the work's premiere in Vienna in 1824 and was later the primary source for the first edition, published in 1826. Although two copyists, working from Beethoven's drafts, were responsible for most of the notations in the score, the composer himself made thousands of alterations and corrections in his own hand. The notebooks also contained passages of music that were excised before the first performance and have never been heard. Music5554@blogcritics.org Fri, 23 May 2003 15:44:40 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/05/09/105335.php RossIn rock n' roll, it doesn't get bigger than Meat Loaf, or his grandiose 1977 classic "Bat Out of Hell."The damned album is just huge. Some say it's over the top. For it to be over the top would imply (to my mind) that those who put it together were some how out of control. And that's certainly not the case here.Melding the Ronnie Spector-influenced Wall of Sound Bruce Springsteen applied to "Born To Run" (and prominently featuring the services of E Street drummer Max Weinberg and keyboardist Roy Bittan) with the melodrama of an opera libretto, Mr. Loaf (as my father always jokingly called him), composer Jim Steinman and producer Todd Rundgren combined to make one of the greatest albums of the '70s.Beginning with the 10 minute opener of the title track, through "You Took The Words Right Out of My Mouth" and its "On a hot summer night, will you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses" intro (OK, that part's over the top, but with a serious wink), through Heaven Can Wait, and the devastating one-two punch of "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad" and "Paradise By The Dashboard Light," it offered up the type of theatrical rock and roll exposition on young love and lust that have made "Rent" one of the most popular Broadway shows of all time and paved the way for Baz Luhrmann's "Romeo + Juliet" and "Moulin Rouge."Poor Scooter. The 85 year old Hall Of Fame Yankee shortstop and long time voice of the pinstripes, one of the sweetest men you ever will meet, had no idea what he was getting into when he recorded his memorable play-by-play for "Paradise By The Dashboard Light." He's still mortified when reminded how his "line shot up the middle" "he's gonna try for second" and "Holy cow, I think he's gonna make it" were co-opted to provide the most brazen double-entendres about teenage lust ever put on vinyl.Andrew Lloyd Weber got knighted for writing a lifetime of far worse songs than these. Meat Loaf's reward? From 19 months straight on top of the charts, to wearing man boobs as Big Bob Paulson in "Fight Club."The album has been reissued, with a couple of bonus tracks (the link below is not the most recent reissue, but it is a remastered version). Everyone should own it. There's nothing else quite like it (except, unfortunately, for Bat Out Of Hell II). Music5166@blogcritics.org Fri, 9 May 2003 10:53:35 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/05/01/094040.php RossParis' legendary restaurant Tour d'Argent will serve its 1 millionth duck next week. My wife and I contributed to the total a few years ago (I thought the duck, which is served rare, was OK flavor-wise and incredibly tender; my wife hated it). The proprietor of the restaurant, Claude Terrail, is a character, resplendent in a dark suit with his trademark blue carnation and equipped with one of the most mellifluous bass voices I have ever heard. Interesting piece of trivia about the restaurant: they pay a large share of the electric bill for Notre Dame Cathedral, so that the site can remain lit during the evening for the viewing pleasure of the restaruant's patrons.But this Reuters story on the event sounds as if it were written by a member of PETA (or the author of the Monty Python Crunchy Frog sketch).Select guests gathered at a top Paris restaurant on Tuesday to sample the one millionth duck to be snatched from grassy marshland, carefully strangled and ritually cooked with its own blood.The legendary Tour d'Argent has been serving up eight-week old ducklings, reared in the west coast Challans marshes, since 1890, meticulously preparing them according to an age-old tradition, and serving each one with a souvenir numbered tag. .... On Tuesday, the Tour d'Argent will uncork some of its finest wines and lay on fireworks above Notre Dame Cathedral, which diners will be able to see from the window as they tuck into the restaurant's one millionth roast "Caneton" (duckling). .... The Queen of England, as a princess, and Japanese Emperor Hirohito have both sampled a Tour d'Argent Caneton, famous for being served in a heady, cognac-laced sauce dosed with blood.The secret, fans say, is in strangling the ducks, keeping the flesh succulent, rather than slitting their throats.A former owner of the 421-year-old restaurant discovered the method over a century ago from a chef near Rouen who would buy cheap ducks that had been suffocated on the way to market. He tried the chef's succulent duck dish and was smitten.At La Tour d'Argent today, carcasses of freshly strangled ducks are pressed to extract the blood which is mixed with cognac and port to make a rich, sizzling sauce. Culture4994@blogcritics.org Thu, 1 May 2003 09:40:40 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/04/21/172830.php RossEclectic jazz great and civil rights icon Nina Simone, best known for her definitive version of "I Loves You Porgy" from the Broadway musical Porgy & Bess, passed away early Monday. She was 70 years old.You can read more about her life here. Music4759@blogcritics.org Mon, 21 Apr 2003 17:28:30 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/04/18/100812.php RossIt's been a while since I've posted one of these, so a brief recap: here in my home town, where the arts culture tends to run to the bland and the mainstream, there's a decent record and CD store here in town that offers many of their used CDs for $4. I like to browse through the stacks about every two weeks to see what I can find, and then I occasionally post here to brag about my discoveries.The last few weeks have been quite fruitful:Blur - Parklife - Along with Radiohead's OK Computer, probably the biggest and most important album to come out of England during the 1990s. It's also probably the most British album since the Kinks' hey day, offering slice-of-life lyrics and a tour of music styles from all over the Isle over the past 30 years. Blur's latest comes out in a few weeks, you'd be well served to pick up this one first to see what all the fuss is about.ELO - Greatest Hits - What's wrong with a little ultra-violins every once in a while? I'm a sucker for big bold, Beatles-influenced power pop, and you can't get much more of any of those things than Jeff Lynne and Electric Light Orchestra's Greatest Hits. "Evil Woman", "Livin' Thing", "Can't Get It Out Of My Head", "Turn To Stone", "Sweet Talkin' Woman", among others. The Showdown: The Sugarhill Gang Vs. Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five - "Rapper's Delight", "The Message", "White Lines (Don't Do It)". The cornerstones of Old School rap. I could do without the Ice T & Chuck D play-by-play in between tracks, but since they don't talk over the music, that nonsense is easily avoidable.Glenn Gould - The Well-Tempered Clavier I - This seminal recording is a double disc, so it cost me $8. Money well spent. Music4700@blogcritics.org Fri, 18 Apr 2003 10:08:12 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/04/12/090157.php RossFrom today's New York Times:Albert Figueroa cannot say if the water yo-yo is a danger or just a letdown. The 11-year-old, who boasts of having had 25 water yo-yos, has often seen the rubbery, liquid-filled balls burst. Sometimes the yo-yos exploded after he threw them against his school building. Other times, he said, they would simply start leaking in his hand after too many squeezes. In any case, what was left was often a deflated ball and a handful of foul-smelling liquid. No one is sure what kind of liquid is inside a water yo-yo, which sells for about dollar and became a must-have toy this year. On Thursday, the New York State Consumer Protection Board, which cannot ban the toy, urged stores to stop selling the yo-yos and parents to stop buying them.The board's chairwoman, Teresa Santiago, said that as of Friday, the board had received three complaints involving children in New York City: one child choked on the rubbery cord that attaches to the yo-yo's liquid-filled ball, another child drank the liquid and got sick, and a third child's eyes were irritated when the liquid got in her eyes.Ms. Santiago said that the State Department of Health was analyzing the liquid in several yo-yos. Some yo-yos are filled with a creamy substance, while others contain a clear liquid and glitter."We don't know what this water is," she said. "At this point no one should be buying this." The water yo-yos are usually imported from China or Taiwan, and packaged in clear bags without warning labels, the Consumer Protection Board said Thursday.Rumor has it that the manufacturers are considering adding the following warning label to their product:CAUTION: Water Yo-Yo may suddenly accelerate to dangerous speeds. Water Yo-Yo contains a liquid core, which if exposed due to rupture should not be touched, inhaled, or looked at. Do not use Water Yo-Yo on concrete. Discontinue use of Water Yo-Yo if any of the following occurs: * Itching * Vertigo * Dizziness * Tingling in extremities * Loss of balance or coordination * Slurred speech * Temporary blindness * Profuse Sweating or * Heart palpitations If Water Yo-Yo begins to smoke, get away immediately. Seek shelter and cover head. Water Yo-Yo may stick to certain types of skin. When not in use, Water Yo-Yo should be returned to its special container and kept under refrigeration. Failure to do so relieves the makers of Water Yo-Yo, Wacky Products Incorporated, and its parent company, Global Chemical Unlimited, of any and all liability. Ingredients of Water Yo-Yo include an unknown glowing substance which fell to Earth, presumably from outer space. Water Yo-Yo has been shipped to our troops in Saudi Arabia and is also being dropped by our warplanes on Iraq. Do not taunt Water Yo-Yo. Water Yo-Yo comes with a lifetime guarantee. Culture4550@blogcritics.org Sat, 12 Apr 2003 09:01:57 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/04/03/092612.php RossFrom CNN:LONDON, England (Reuters) -- U.S.-born soul singer Edwin Starr -- best known for his anti-conflict song "War" -- has died at the age of 61, his manager Lilian Kyle said on Thursday. In a statement on Starr's official Web site, Kyle said the singer had died following a heart attack at his home near Nottingham, central England. It was not clear when the singer passed away. One of the first artists to be signed to the Motown record label, Starr had been making records since the 1950s. A long-term resident of Britain, he was best-known for enduring hits "War" and "Contact." Music4323@blogcritics.org Thu, 3 Apr 2003 09:26:12 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/04/01/122520.php RossEmmy- and Tony-winning character actor Michael Jeter, best known in my household as Mr. Noodle's brother, Mr. Noodle on Elmo's World, passed away over the weekend. He was fifty years old.My favorite Michael Jeter performance was his portrayal of a homeless cabaret singer in The Fisher King, although he was far better known for his work in films such as The Green Mile and his time spent on the sitcom Evening Shade. Video4270@blogcritics.org Tue, 1 Apr 2003 12:25:20 EST