Larry Kart

Not at all convinced by these columns. One of the more interesting sidebars (elsewhere) said that PSU completely accepted the punishment and would not sue and/or appeal. Furthermore, if a third party tried to sue the NCAA, PSU would join them in an effort to toss the lawsuit as being without merit (no standing) and recover legal costs on behalf of NCAA from any third-party claimant. Bam! As others have said, the PSU/NCAA agreement sounds like a a plea-bargain deal -- i.e. better this (for us, mutually) than other options we can envision. The no third-party lawsuit business seems rather fishy on the face of it, certainly not something one would cite as a sign of how fair/logical/you name it this agreement was.

Perhaps interesting (they were to me) arguments that the NCAA action against Penn State was wrong: http://www.thenation.com/blog/169002/why-ncaas-sanctions-penn-state-are-just-dead-wrong# http://www.thenation.com/blog/168891/against-abolishing-football-penn-state

I buy a good deal of stuff after test-driving it on Spotify and tend to listen there only for that purpose.

Dipping my toe into poisoned waters again, but Sandusky arguably was nuts to some significant degree, while Paterno and the other enablers didn't have that excuse (if excuse it is). They were -- seemingly cold-bloodly, rationally -- playing the game to their own personal and institutional advantage, probably thinking, "Don't bother me with this s---t, I've got a good thing going here." If I were Dante, they'd be in a lower circle of Hell than Sandusky. Where I completely understand the disgust with those who chose to turn a blind eye, there is nothing on this or any other planet worse than a Sandusky who victimizes innocent children. The enablers are one thing, but the actual act is far worse and more damaging to a kid who endures it day after endless day. Hell would be too good a place for the likes of Sandusky. I take your point about the direct damage done, but what about my point about the difference between deeds done as a result, arguably, of madness of some sort and deeds done coldbloodedy, in the service of "rational" self-interest? The former deeds, again arguably, the perpetrator could not really check himself because he did not see them as reprehensible but through some cracked lens that either turned black into white or because he took twisted satisfaction in the blackness. The latter deeds, however, could have been checked as readily as, say, a particular investment strategy could be, but the perpertators chose consciously and (so it would seem) coolly not to do that. They knew right from wrong and chose to do wrong, having carefully weighed the consequences (see some of the memos in the Freeh report). The Sanduskys of this world, I think, weigh only means of seduction/assault and means of evading detection; they are as little moral actors as rats would be.

Dipping my toe into poisoned waters again, but Sandusky arguably was nuts to some significant degree, while Paterno and the other enablers didn't have that excuse (if excuse it is). They were -- seemingly cold-bloodly, rationally -- playing the game to their own personal and institutional advantage, probably thinking, "Don't bother me with this s---t, I've got a good thing going here." If I were Dante, they'd be in a lower circle of Hell than Sandusky.

Of the making of books there is no end -- Ecclesiastes 12:12 Mr. Friedwald himself gave us a whole tome on "Stardust" alone. I'd like to tie him and Goia up in a sack, throw it off the Tallahatchee Bridge and see who or what climbs out.

I don't get why this was published in Haaretz on 7/12/12 when the dateline on the story says it was published in The Forward on 6/10/09. Unless I misunderstand something, that's one heck of a recycling job. What next, the Declaration of Independence?

No blame here, Jim, but on second thought I'm struck by your "my own world"/"any of my worlds"/"as long as I can have my world." It may be just a habit of speech, but it occurred to me that (unless I'm fooling myself here) I don't think in "my worlds'/their worlds" terms, that it all seems and feels like one world to me -- not at all in any sappy "Kumbayah" sense but simply because most everything seems to me to be connected to most everything else, even Scriabin and that perfectly shaped and contoured ass you encountered at a Playboy Club. Or to put it another say, whenever I've tried to wall off one world where I felt especially comfortable or safe from another world or worlds where I didn't, I realized that this wasn't going to work.

I recently picked up a couple of lovely old Suk/Ancerl LPs -- his Mendelssohn/Bruch and his Dvorak. What a pussycat he was, as Mel Brooks might have put it.

This is where we part ways. For instance, I think of Scriabin, a composer whose music (pace Michael Weiss) I instinctually don't much like. Do I then just "stay out of the room"? Well, yes, I don't listen to a lot of Scriabin, but I have thought about him/tried to figure out what makes his music tick, for several reasons. First because, like Bill Evans, his music is not nonsensical or cheap; second, because it it has deeply fascinated/moved many people over the years; and third, because it affected other significant makers of music for a good while and may still be doing so right now, in part because (again like Evans' music) it seemed to be a "path" down which those music-makers both could and needed to travel. Thus, we have, both in the case of Scriabin and Evans, what might be called a "reception" event and an evolution-of-the-music event. And my interest in music in general (both in terms of how it's made and works [or doesn't work]; in terms of how it affects people, etc.) means that up to a point I'm interested in paying some close attention to Scriabin, and to Bill Evans as well. Not like I would pay attention to Mozart or Monk or Roscoe Mitchell, but life isn't exactly like a restaurant.

Sounds lovely, Moms -- thanks. I've heard this recording praised to the skies before.

I'll get back to you on that later on today -- interesting aspects to this, I think, but I've got to leave the house.

See -- not without interest. I know I could bring you around. OTOH, while I agree about the specifics of Evan's latter-day "mush" insofar as I understand them, they are pretty specific musically, not just ready-made slop, and the specifics do matter -- up to the point where people who want to remain sane need to flee the room to preserve what's left of their minds.

I can't even get to this side of the money wall.

Can't find the article. What search terms should one use? I tried humor, then Jewish humor, then Woody Allen, then Sasha Baron Cohen -- no luck.

I'm no Frishberg fan myself, and my mixed views on Evans are known to the FBI, but that Frishberg (and there's no reason to doubt his account) tells us that Evans told him that he went to school on Dearie the pianist in at least one respect is a fact that is not without interest -- parallel universe or no.

Thanks, guys -- I ordered the DG set. That recording in mono, without the swimmy reprocessed stereo effect, should be just fine sound-wise, and I can't imagine a performance I'd like more. BTW, the reason its relative un-inflectedness (to coin a term) works so well IMO is that I think that the work itself is, among other things, an essay in un-inflectedness and "purification," an attempt on Beethoven's part to see just how much of his habits of inflection he could throw overboard and what would be left if he did. Thus its foreshadowing of the late Schubert piano sonatas. P.S. Given the stylistic rhyme between this version and the Oistrakh Trio's version, I wonder what if anything the story is behind this. One doesn't think of Russian virtuosi of that era as necessarily being inclined to soft-pedal overt emotional gestures, though again I think that is what this particular work demands. I I would guess that behind this approach to the Archduke lay a common pedagogical or otherwise exemplary figure.

Teddy Wilson named her as one of his favorite pianists, and according to Dave Frishberg, she was a significant influence on Bill Evans, FWTW: "During the late sixties I played a couple weeks solo opposite the Bill Evans Trio at the Village Gate on Bleecker St, and had some conversations with Bill. I asked him how he came upon his piled-fourths voicing of chords, and his immediate answer was that he heard Blossom Dearie play that way and it really knocked him out. Then he did a little rave review of Blossom, naming her as one of his models of piano playing. It was such a surprising response that I never forgot it." What Evans heard in her piano playing is evident I think in this performance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZQuVRox5l0

FWIW, Miles was a great admirer of Blossom:

The other day I picked up what would have been my ideal Archduke Trio recording -- Gilels/Kogan/Rostropovich, rec. in Moscow in 1956 and issued on Monitor -- except for one thing; it's electronically processed stereo LP of the nasty sort, with instruments wavering in and out of focus. What I love about the performance -- and it's in contrast to virtually every other performance I've heard -- is that especially in the first movement it presses firmly, almost liquidly, onward, without the little (and often not so little) pauses, swells, and other nudges of emphasis that mar (at least for me) so many other recordings. Not that I'm automatically fond of relative plainness in interpretation of Beethoven, but I think it's essential for this magnificent but IMO quite special, even quite peculiar, piece, with its near mono-thematic insistences (which probably prefigure Schubert). Scouting around, I did find one other recording that has a kinship with this one, and oddly enough it too features Russian artists of the same vintage -- Oistrakh, Lev Oborin, and Sviatoslav Knushevitsky -- which suggests that this approach to the work was one that Russian artists of that vintage probably agreed upon. In any case, it sure as heck isn't the way the Archduke is played elsewhere in the world, based on all the other performances I've now listened to. So I'd go for the Oistrakh except that it lacks the first movement repeat, and if there ever were a work that needs such a repeat, it's the Archduke. So, any suggestions? Other, that is, than "shut up" or "go shoot yourself."

For those who care, the Blossom Dearie story -- from Joel Siegel, by way of Bill Reed: http://denniscooper-theweaklings.blogspot.com/2008/05/bill-reed-presents-blossom-dearie-day.html?zx=cf136449d82a916d

Oy -- I've heard some Blossom Dearie stories that would curl your hair. She could be finicky beyond the point of psychosis/starting World War III. And those stories come from hard-core Dearie admirers. As for Mose's piano playing -- while he's nice accompanying himself/doing his own tunes, the recordings I've heard where he backs the likes of Getz or Al and Zoot make me wonder how he ever got work.

Because it was a bit less annoying than the competition, e.g. Gerry Mulligan's end-of-set sign off of the time, Julius Fucik's "Entry of the Gladiators": For example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zrAWk0WTSk Aieee!

I don't get what you just said. In any case, I simply meant that the craft of both performers depended significantly on archness/would-be hip attitude. Further, I found Dearie at best to be arguably more hip than Allison and a good deal more musically interesting, though I can see where the East Side side of Dearie might be so off-putting to some that they couldn't dig her at all. OTOH, at times Allison's "down-homeness" struck me as at least as arch as Dearie singing "Peel Me a Grape" or "Surry With the Fringe on Top."

Where the hell (in this world, anyway) is the "there" (or "general bag") to which one would go to get both Mose Allison and Blossom Dearie to show up at the same time? The Land of the Arch and the Wink. And the Coy.