More “On Language”: Safire and the Russians

The universe seems to have more to say about readers, reading, and language: I learned that William Safire died on the day I began to learn Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil Service, known as the Vespers. For two decades the former was the touchstone for the care and proper handling of this English language...

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 Mapeel     9/29/2009     literature, music   

Reading Comprehensions

Since you are visiting this blog, you are a Reader, someone who actively enjoys reading, and thereby reading comprehension. One of the great joys as a Reader is understanding subtleties of language, straight out, or the complicated systems of signs and signifiers to the signified as described by Ferdinand...

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 Mapeel     9/24/2009     literature, West Wing   

The Light that Finally Failed

I agree with Edward Copeland, attention must be paid: Guiding Light aired its final episode yesterday, Friday, Sept. 18, 2009. It had run continuously for 72 years—-an actual lifetime-—five days a week, 52 weeks a year, first on radio, starting in 1937, then on television, beginning in 1952. It was...

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 Mapeel     9/19/2009     television   

HBO. You Can’t Imagine What They’re Up To

They are drowning a mime in a river under the thumb of a thug little person. Surprising, isn’t it. While linear narrative is antithetical to HBO’s whole endeavor here, I will employ this now quaint device to tell my little story.For just seventy-two hours there is cube at Gansevoort and Little West...

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 Mapeel     9/17/2009     current events, television   

Larry Gelbart and Jay Leno: Send Out the Clowns

Thirteen years ago I edited a book for the day job on stand-up comedians that was published by Harry N. Abrams. We asked Larry Gelbart to write the intro for the book, which he kindly did. In the library cataloging of the book, he is listed as the editor. C’es la vie. If I’m going to be upstaged by...

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 Mapeel     9/14/2009     current events   

9/11: My Story

I’ve heard it said that the indiscriminate nature of the attack transformed all of us on that island into victims of attempted murder, but I’m not at all sure that geographic proximity to the catastrophe confers this status on me or anybody else. Let’s not forget that when it all happened I was a rubbernecker...

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 Mapeel     9/11/2009     9/11, current events, literature   

A Day at the Races, a Night on the Camp Grounds

I’m off to the races tomorrow, to Saratoga Springs, New York. I don’t follow the sport, but my travels are taking me to the Amtrak station in Saratoga, and so I’m just popping over to see the time-honored end of the season at the track. It seems I’m stumbling into a piece of racing history. A horse...

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 Mapeel     9/04/2009   

Dressing for Success, But on Whose Terms?

In 1992 D.A.Pennebaker was granted unprecedented access to the strategy sessions of the Clinton campaign led by communications director George Stephanopoulos and lead strategist James Carville. From that came The War Room, a timely, important documentary, capturing a historical moment when media would...

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 Mapeel     9/01/2009     Film