TCP/IP
Sarah Deming writes in detail about being the research assistant for Scott Jurek's new memoir, Eat and Run, co-authored by Steve Friedman.
One day when I had Scott on the phone I sheepishly asked for running advice. I felt guilty doing this, kind of like cornering a doctor at a cocktail party and asking him to tell you if your mole looks cancerous.
To my surprise, he seemed delighted to talk about my pathetic attempts to run around the park.
"You're not pathetic," he said.
I continue to be amazed at the satisfaction he takes in helping regular people discover the joy of running. He is as much a great teacher as he is a great athlete...
Sarah also has compiled her boxing coverage.
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In case this isn't totally obvious for some reason, my wife is not the same Sarah Deming who sued over being misled by the trailer to Drive.
I quite liked Drive, at least until it got bloody. Certainly I thought the car sequences (the teaser and the chase) were among the best in recent memory. Darrin Prescott was the man responsible for those delicious examples of car control, and at Wired Prescott selects movies he respects. No real surprises, Bill Hickman is his main man of course. (I recently discovered a ludicrous Bill Hickman infomercial on YouTube.)
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In the mood for some Mendelssohn? Not me either, at least not usually, but this piece by Russell Platt has me curious about the Octet, yet another benchmark of standard repertoire I've never heard. (via Alex Ross.)
If I look at the Octet later, I will download the music and score. I guess this is better than when I had to go to a library for a CD and printed paper? In a related essay, Matthew Guerrieri discusses The Plight of the Page Turner.
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Darcy James Argue is offering up amusing and informative blurbs about the members of Secret Society. Sponsor one of these musicians to help the production of the next CD, Brooklyn Babylon, the successful collaboration between DJA and Danijel Zezelj.
George Colligan has written a glowing review of my old buddy Jeff Williams's newest CD, Another Time. I just grabbed this on iTunes. It sounds terrific! I remember that Jeff's quintet gig at Visiones (or was it Mondo Perso?...) with Tim Ries, Pat Zimmerli, Kevin Hays, and Doug Weiss was like the second gig I saw in NYC in the fall of 1991. A few years later, Jeff agreed to be on Live at Smalls with Bill McHenry, Reid Anderson, and me. I heard that again recently and thought Jeff was great on it.
Speaking of gigs, I was at Tim Berne's Snakeoil with Oscar Noriega, Matt Mitchell, and Ches Smith last night and it was better than ever. And I had just come from Film Forum's Spaghetti Western festival, where Lee Van Cleef was better than ever, in The Big Gundown. (It was an unusually satisfying night of entertainment.)
But Snakeoil certainly won't be the last gig I'll be at this week and the next. Nate Chinen's NYT Jazz Listings gives a few indications of where I might turn up.
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Terry Teachout documents losing his mother in "The Long Goodbye." One of the best things you can do with grief is turn it into art. I suspect "The Long Goodbye" will be helpful to others going through similar experiences.
06/14/2012
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