February 8, 2007 – 5:22 pm
Here’s a stunning photograph, today’s “Featured Picture” over at Wikipedia. Worth a look.
February 5, 2007 – 11:13 pm
Well, it’s mighty cold here in Gotham. The temperature is dropping back down into the single digits tonight, and adding a piquant accent is a howling wind that appears to have dropped straight down to Brooklyn from somewhere up around Port Radium. The few pedestrians that I can see out on the street, swaddled and muffled beyond any regard for fashion, tilt forward into the Boreal gale as they make their way to shelter. Otherwise, all is quiet save for the occasional pop as frozen sparrows, dislodged from their miserable perches by the icy blast, shatter like lightbulbs on the stony ground.
Here in our modest bow-front Victorian limestone townhouse, however, we are snug and warm, thanks to the controlled combustion of a steady flow of natural gas. This resource is provided, at exorbitant cost, by our mild-mannered neighbors to the North — who are, now that I think about it, the same ones who are supplying us with all this Arctic bluster in the first place.
You know, that’s a pretty smooth operation.
February 3, 2007 – 2:45 pm
On the editorial page of today’s Times there is a paean to coffee by guest columnist Stacy Schiff. I happened to read it as I was enjoying an exceptionally tasty and enlivening mug of Indonesian joe, so it was well received. In particular I enjoyed two quotes, reprinted below.
January 28, 2007 – 11:21 pm
I’ve just got back to New York after a brief visit to San Diego to visit my father, and no matter how often I make the trip I still find it startling how utterly different the two corners of the continent are, and how easily we flit back and forth. It was a breezy 10° F. or so at dawn on Friday when I headed for JFK, and a sunny 70° at Lindbergh field when I blew in. Now, back in Brooklyn, though it’s warmed up quite a bit, it’s still snowing wetly.
January 26, 2007 – 12:43 am
I’ll be flying to California at the crack of dawn tomorrow — I’m going off to San Marcos to visit my father. I was dithering over what books, music, etc. I might take for the ride, when suddenly I remembered that I had, a couple of years ago, got my hands on a collection of hundreds of hours of recordings of the old Jean Shepherd radio show.
January 20, 2007 – 10:57 pm
There are few topics that get folks as worked up these days as the notion that there might in fact be innate differences amongst people (or even worse, statistical differences between identifiable groups of people). You may recall that Harvard president Lawrence Summers was tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail for so much as suggesting that known differences in the distribution of various cognitive attributes in men and women might account for some of the unequal success of the sexes in the sciences.
January 18, 2007 – 6:16 pm
I tend to procrastinate; I’ve had a problem with it all my life. For years I’ve meant to come to grips with this psychic defect, but I never seem to get around to it. I’m not alone in this, I realize: 15-20% of us are prone to habitual and reflexive deferment of life’s little obligations, and even though Mark Twain advises us never to put off till tomorrow that which can be done the day after tomorrow, many folks would still like to have a better understanding of why we so often would rather do just about anything than the thing that needs doing now.
For those of you who share this affliction, I’ve found a splendid resource for all things cunctatory: Procrastination Central. It’s the perfect place to spend some time when you should be doing something else. Take a look, if you can find the time.
January 15, 2007 – 12:34 am
We are home once again – just the two of us, having safely ensconced our son in his new home in the halls of academe. Thanks to those of you who have emailed in response to the previous post; the immediate connection with a community of friends is one of the most rewarding aspects of maintaining this website.
January 13, 2007 – 11:57 pm
We are in Wellfleet this evening, having arrived late last night on an important mission. No, I’m not talking about plucking oysters from the bay, though this afternoon did find me splashing about at low tide as usual. This weekend, however, the task at hand is to take our son Nick off to college. He was accepted as a midterm admission at a well-known university in the Boston area, and the moment is at hand; we drop him off tomorrow.
January 11, 2007 – 12:37 am
Readers visiting waka waka waka this evening confident that yesterday’s service interruption must have been due to the gestation of a particularly expansive discursion upon some fascinating topic or other are, I’m sorry to report, mistaken. While there is, as always, no shortage of topics, events, and cultural foibles about which an essayist might comment, I am, tonight, unequal to the task, and must refrain.
January 9, 2007 – 1:34 am
In discourse these days, whether about politics, religion, philosophy, or any of the other topics that seem so effectively to get everybody’s knickers in a twist, we will all have observed by now that some people have what is known as a “short fuse”. I’ve been noticing more and more that quite a few folks go one better, and operate on what might be thought of, if we are willing to test the metaphor’s tensile strength, as a proximity fuse: they detonate at the expression of any thought that even reminds them of whatever it is that they are crusading against.
Such minds are like eels lurking in the coral, snapping at whatever shiny object paddles by. I suppose other eels find them attractive, but to swimmers they are merely a nuisance.
January 8, 2007 – 12:53 am
I must say, at the risk of sounding Grinchy once again, that I am not at all sorry that the holidays are over. The garish displays are coming down. The tourists crowd the city less densely, and the reduced incidence of pastel pink and primary-colored polyester outerwear stretched over ample midsections allows Gotham’s naturally dingy palette to return to the fore. Gone are the gift-laden shoppers who turned the subways into freight trains; gone as well is the bloody “Carol of the Bells” that blared from every loudspeaker. The hawking of rubbish to the besotted is much abated, and fools are once again being separated from their money at the normal workaday pace. For those of us for whom gift-shopping is a baffling mystery, the anguish of the annual Deadline has passed, and we are delivered, for better or worse, for another year. No more obligatory holiday parties, corporate gift drives, and salvos of greeting cards (actully we utterly dropped the ball on that last item this year; apologies to all).
No, that’s all behind us now. Nothing lies ahead but grim and slushy Winter, and the resumption of life’s dreary toil. Snows will fall, and blacken on the city streets, as we trudge to our daily servitude through the bleak and cheerless months to come. The distant memory of the summer’s fetid heat will seem an otherworldly illusion as the Boreal winds howl down Broadway straight from Baffin Bay, and the ancient questions, set aside during the recent Saturnalian euphoria, will gnaw us once again with renewed vigor.
Yippee! My time of year.
January 6, 2007 – 5:00 pm
The NFL playoffs are beginning, and with both of our local franchises having made it into the postseason tournament, the media hereabouts are brimming with informative coverage of the impending contests.
The best part, for the seeker of wisdom, is the commentary by the players and coaches themselves, in which they offer the lay audience a glimpse of the arcane inner workings of the game, and share with us the expertise that they bring to bear as they gird their loins for the struggle ahead.
January 1, 2007 – 12:40 am
Well, we are back in New York, after a restful interval in Cape Cod. The weather was cold and damp, and the outer Cape largely deserted, but it was nevertheless balm to the soul to be out there. I scooped up a few dozen oysters, of course, despite temperatures just above freezing, a leaden sky, and a chilling wind and drizzle.
December 29, 2006 – 12:28 am
We are in Wellfleet tonight, after a long day on the road. It’s mighty quiet out here, as you would imagine — which is just what the doctor ordered, here in the final days of a difficult and sorrowful year. Reading, rest, and quiet reflection top the agenda (and perhaps scooping an oyster or two out of the bay), so do forgive me if waka waka waka operates on a reduced schedule for the next few days.
December 27, 2006 – 10:46 pm
Yesterday evening, having spent more than a week unable to work out as usual due to back trouble, and feeling, consequently, a little in need of some exercise, I decided to walk for while before getting on the subway to go home. My office is on Park Avenue just south of Grand Central Station, and I thought I might stroll down as far as Union Square, or perhaps even Houston Street. It being an unusually mild evening, however, I decided to press on, and wound up walking the whole way back to Park Slope: a distance of about 7.62 miles, according to Google Earth.
December 25, 2006 – 12:55 am
To all of you, Merry Christmas!
December 20, 2006 – 11:05 pm
You may already have run across this item, but it appears that a Japanese man recently survived a three-week exposure to the elements, without food or water, by doing something that primates aren’t usually thought to be capable of: hibernation.
December 20, 2006 – 3:01 am
To kick off the holiday festivities, my mother-in-law, ancient of days, has, for what seems like the fortieth or fiftieth time, fallen and broken her leg, and is once again in hospital. Service at waka waka waka may be light for a few days as we cope.
December 18, 2006 – 10:33 pm
It might seem odd, given my background as a recording engineer, but I don’t own an iPod or similar device. I admire their sleek and efficient design, and the sound quality is acceptable, but I haven’t got one.
December 8, 2006 – 12:22 am
It’s been an awfully busy week both day and night — I’ve had scant opportunity to write, and probably won’t get much of a break until the weekend. So for today, we will simply comment briefly on two items drawn from today’s issue of Gotham’s paper of record.
December 5, 2006 – 4:19 pm
Poking around at Mangan’s Miscellany a moment ago, I saw that Dennis had linked to a blog maintained by Wheel of Fortune host Pat Sajak. I dropped by for a visit, and Mr Sajak’s musings are whimsical, thoughtful and articulate. It is gratifying to see solid evidence of a Hollywood celebrity with a rational mind. Onto the sidebar it goes.
November 30, 2006 – 12:41 am
You may have heard of the Antikythera Mechanism: a mysterious clockwork device, over two thousand years old, that was found in a Mediterranean shipwreck in 1902. Archaeologists have puzzled over it ever since its discovery, and the atavistic doohickey has meanwhile fueled many an Atlantean’s febrile imaginings. Now, a team of researchers have announced that they have determined exactly what the Mechanism does, but the mystery of how such a thing came to exist at all in 80 B.C. has only deepened.
November 28, 2006 – 12:19 am
A long day of recording today, at New York’s Avatar Studios with my old pal Steve Khan. We’re in Studio ‘C’, working on Steve’s latest effort, with trumpeter Randy Brecker and percussionists Marc Quiñones and Bobby Allende. It’s getting late, and it doesn’t look like we’re leaving anytime soon, which of course leaves me scant opportunity for lengthy bloviation.
As always, however, I hate to send visitors away empty-handed, so here is an excellent post by Scott Carson on moral responsibility and the “false cause” fallacy.
November 23, 2006 – 6:58 pm
To all of you. I thank you for visiting, reading, and commenting, and I hope this day finds you at peace, in good health, and in the company of those you love.
November 23, 2006 – 1:12 am
The New York Times yesterday featured on its front page the story of a college student by the name of Brian Stelter, who has risen to outstanding success with a blog about the TV news industry.
November 20, 2006 – 5:58 pm
Here’s something that happened to me a while back — around 1983 or so, if memory serves. I was reminded of it a few days ago, and thought it might be worth a post.
November 17, 2006 – 1:58 pm
The front page of today’s New York Times features an outstanding photo, a real peach. In the foreground are the presumptive Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and her intraparty foe Steny Hoyer. Ms. Pelosi, who has yet even to take up the gavel, has already shown outstanding political ineptitude in her attempt to foist small-bore Pennsylvania pork broker and Mideast defeatist John Murtha upon the House as majority leader. The Democratic caucus, in what many see as a telling lack of fealty and sign of party disunity, decisively rebuffed her, installing Mr. Hoyer, currently the minority whip, instead.
November 10, 2006 – 1:38 pm
We’ll be traveling this weekend, and Internet access will be iffy, so waka waka waka will most likely be off the air until late Sunday, or perhaps even Monday.
You never know, though.
November 9, 2006 – 12:49 pm
I am reminded again, by a post at a neighboring site, of what an outstanding weblog is maintained by the Englishman “Deogolwulf” under the banner The Joy of Curmudgeonry. He writes with style, scholarship, tartness, and wit, and I urge you all to visit.
November 8, 2006 – 5:01 pm
Well, Election Day is over at last. No more infuriating telephone spam, no more of the juvenile taunting and slanderous invective that, as this editorial rightly points out, should be enough to keep any self-respecting adult out of public service, and no more dithering over which of the current drift of egomaniacal swine are the ones we ought to hold our noses and vote for.
I don’t have much to say about the results, other than to note with satisfaction the ouster of that blustering ignoramus, the self-righteous, swaggering creationist and homophobe Rick “Frothy Mix” Santorum, and to register hearty approval, also, to the belated departure of Donald Rumsfeld, at whose feet I lay much of the blame for our catastrophic bungling in Iraq.
As for local news, my Congressional district here in Brooklyn is now to be represented by one Yvette Clarke, who occupies a slot on the ideological continuum somewhere just to the left of Leon Trotsky, and our junior senator will continue to be the scheming carpetbagger Hillary Clinton, who was indeed preferable — she does, after all, exhibit a certain shrewdness — to her Republican opponent, the amiable and bumbling nullity John Spencer.
Of course, this is all just an opening flourish, a prefatory ruffle of drums and flutter of strings, to the performance that awaits us in 2008.
November 4, 2006 – 10:29 pm
I’m afraid I’m a bit under the weather tonight, and won’t be offering much of interest. I had a session today with my periodontist — Dr. Louis Franzetti, a good man, whom I like very much — that lasted from 10 a.m. until almost 5 o’clock. He addressed the left side, upper and lower: peeled away my gums, scraped and blasted the exposed bone, did some rather extensive bone-grafting, drilled a titanium implant into my lower jaw, and sutured my gums back on. He is a kind man, and a master of his art, but let me tell you, the experience was not entirely pleasant, and were it not for the blessings of organic chemistry I would be contemplating an untimely exit from this world right about now.
We’ll be back on the air again soon, perhaps even tomorrow.
November 3, 2006 – 12:35 am
From Duncan Werner comes a link to an old memory — the story of Jose Feliciano’s performance of the Star-Spangled Banner at a World Series game between the Detroit Tigers and the St. Louis Cardinals, way back in 1968.
October 31, 2006 – 10:44 pm
I am glad to see that NASA has decided to send a shuttle mission to service and augment the Hubble Space telescope. A decision had been made to abandon the instrument due to safety concerns in the wake of the 2003 Columbia mishap, with the agency choosing to focus instead on building out the international space station. Like many, many others, I was as mad as a cut snake to hear that the telescope was going to be left to die, and it’s good to see that the nervous nabobs of NASA have changed their minds.
October 29, 2006 – 2:54 pm
Last night we added an extra hour in our return to Standard Time. Like most people, I heartily approve; I enjoy the notion, however illusory of gaining a line on the moving finger. Now if we could just persuade Congress to “fall back” three hours a night in perpetuity, I might even get rid of these bags under my eyes.
October 28, 2006 – 11:06 pm
Feeling a bit cooped up earlier today, I took myself for a longish walk in Prospect Park, which begins right at the end of my block here in Brooklyn. It was was just what the doctor ordered; few prescriptions can rival in therapeutic value the simple act of getting outside.
October 27, 2006 – 8:17 pm
I’m sure that almost all of you, by now, are familiar with Google Earth. This fantastic tool, which requires nothing more than a good Internet connection and a free software download, allows the user to zoom in on high-resolution satellite images of any location on the Earth’s surface. The resolution varies from place to place, but will only get better with time, and already there are large patches of the planet that are represented in astonishing detail. The pictures aren’t live, of course, but are snapshots taken on clear days over the past three years or so.
October 20, 2006 – 11:48 pm
Well, old Rabbie Burns was right; things never turn out quite as planned. After spending many hours at LaGuardia Airport this evening, we were sent home, our flight to Michigan canceled due to high winds. We will try again tomorrow; our goal is to be there watch the Maize and Blue trounce the Iowa Hawkeyes in Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor at 3:30 p.m. tomorrow.
Going to a game at the Big House is quite an experience; I hope to have a report to file later this weekend.
October 20, 2006 – 3:05 pm
We’ll be traveling to Ann Arbor, Michigan this evening, and waka waka waka may have to lie fallow for a day or two. Visitors are encouraged to browse our archives in the meanwhile, and we’ll be back as soon as we can.
October 13, 2006 – 5:50 pm
Today is Friday the 13th, always a good day for me, as I was born on one, back in 1956. And this year is no exception; my lovely wife Nina and I are back in Wellfleet this weekend, and as always it is balm to the spirit to be here. And as if the cool sea breezes, lovely autumnal light, and serene natural beauty of this New England coastal village weren’t enough, tomorrow is the 2006 Wellfleet Oysterfest, a gustatory extravaganza that draws lovers of our renowned and eponymous mollusc from all over the Northeast. Expect another favorable review.
October 11, 2006 – 11:39 pm
There was a tragic and shocking event here in New York today, as most of you have probably heard by now. Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle, acquired just this summer by the Bombers in the trade with the Phillies that also brought Bobby Abreu to the Bronx, was killed, along with his passenger, when the small plane he was piloting flew into a high-rise apartment tower on East 72nd Street.
I don’t really know what to say about this sad, strange story; I just thought it would be remiss of me not to make note of it. It is always so unsettling to see how some lives end while the rest of us go on, for a while at least.
October 10, 2006 – 9:59 am
It’ll be lighter fare this week, as I am working rather long hours and will be traveling on Thursday. For the moment, two pointed little jokes:
October 3, 2006 – 11:07 pm
The technological infrastructure here at waka waka waka is provided by an outstanding hosting service called BlueHost. Among the many excellent services they provide for the absurdly low fee of $6.95 a month is a versatile website-statistics package. It occurred to me earlier this evening that it might be amusing, in lieu of coughing up yet another grim and controversial entry about the accelerating decline of civilization, to look over some of the search-engine phrases that have brought visitors here over the past year.
September 30, 2006 – 11:19 pm
It was a long and busy day today – kung-fu testing and seminars all day in Chinatown, and a glorious victory by the Michigan Wolverines this evening in Minnesota. So the waka waka waka staff are taking a much-needed break. We’ll be back soon, most likely tomorrow.
September 25, 2006 – 12:27 am
From Ornette Coleman:
There is no bad music, only bad performances.
This idea unfolds nicely.
September 22, 2006 – 11:59 pm
Well, time to lay off politics for a moment – although there is plenty to talk about, in particular that narcissistic moonbat Hugo Chavez’s statesmanlike performance at the UN, and the heartening domestic response in which even familiar left-wing drones such as Nancy Pelosi and Charlie Rangel paused in their bastinadoing of the C. in C. to circle the wagons. “Hey! You can’t slander the President of the United States,” they cried with one voice. “That’s our job.” Clearly, what is needed for world peace is an attack from space.
But there will be ample opportunity to get back to world affairs soon enough. Yes, the clash of civilizations rages on, the polar icecaps deliquesce, insane despots smirk approvingly as atom bombs roll off the assembly line, and the Pope lays his plans for the Rapture, but all that must wait.
I whacked a mouse.
September 20, 2006 – 11:08 am
Avast, ye scurvy bilge rats. Just in case you didn’t know, today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day.
September 19, 2006 – 11:12 pm
By now you may know that there has been a coup in Thailand, the 17th since World War II. General Sonthi Boonyaratkalin made his move while Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was out of town, visiting Gotham for one of those occasional UN hootenannies that so effectively maintain idyllic peace and stability in the world (and do an even better job of reducing every thoroughfare east of Seventh Avenue to a state of total vehicular thrombosis for days on end).
September 14, 2006 – 11:32 pm
As happens every year around this time, my charming hundred-year-old Victorian bowfront limestone has been invaded by mice. I think they spend the warmer months outside, either in our small back yards or up in Prospect Park, which is just at the end of my block, but right after Labor Day each year they set up shop indoors. I’m up late most nights, and they’ve been pretty bold this time around – skittering across the floor, squeaking behind the cupboards, even jumping out of my sink when I went to put a dish in there the other night.
Usually it’s not a big deal. I get some old-fashioned mousetraps, bait them with something attractive, set them in strategic places, and typically take out three or four of the little varmints each night. It’s the big ones at first, then the smaller ones, and after a few days it’s all over. This year, though, something has gone horribly wrong. I haven’t nailed a single one.
September 13, 2006 – 10:50 pm
It’s video week at waka waka waka. My friend Jess sent me this clip, which is a prickly discussion between Matt Lauer and George Bush on the subject of torture. Here are two men who obviously loathe one another; they are trying as hard as they can not to attack each other physically, and just barely managing. They are standing almost toe to toe, and while Lauer is trying awfully hard to be deferential (you’re always “one down” when you’re with POTUS), W is right up in his grill, jabbing away with his index finger in a way that would certainly get my Irish up. It’s hard to believe this is the President of the United States being interviewed by one of the nation’s foremost news anchors; the whole thing seems more like two ill-tempered dads getting into it at a little league game.
