The Daily Fix: Dana Carvey “Choppin Broccoli”
Published August 28th, 2007 in Music and Comedy. Closed
This guy blew us away the other night at his show at the Wiltern:
Music: Eric Clapton - Before You Accuse Me (live from Osaka 1999)
Published August 13th, 2007 in Music. Closed
quixotic \kwik-SOT-ik\, adjective:
1. Caught up in the romance of noble deeds and the pursuit of unreachable goals; foolishly impractical especially in the pursuit of ideals.
2. Capricious; impulsive; unpredictable.
Some of his plans were quixotic and much too good for this world, but he never wavered in a cause that he considered just and he commanded the respect of all who opposed him.
– “Dr. John Dewey Dead at 92; Philosopher a Noted Liberal”, New York Times, June 2, 1952
The Daily Poem: somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
Published July 27th, 2007 in Poetry. Closedsomewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
by e e cummings
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
coruscate \KOR-uh-skayt\, intransitive verb:
1. To give off or reflect bright beams or flashes of light; to sparkle.
2. To exhibit brilliant, sparkling technique or style.
They pulled up at the farthest end of a loop path that looked out over the great basin of the Rio Grande under brilliant, coruscating stars.
– Bill Roorbach, “Big Bend”, The Atlantic, March 2001
phantasmagoria \fan-taz-muh-GOR-ee-uh\, noun:
1. A shifting series or succession of things seen or imagined, as in a dream.
2. Any constantly changing scene.
The new writings more and more take the form of apocalypses — that is, of supernatural visions which reveal past, present and future under the guise of a phantasmagoria of symbolic persons and animals, divine and diabolical beings, celestial and infernal phenomena.
– Edmund Wilson, The Dead Sea Scrolls: 1947-1969
ratiocination \rash-ee-ah-suh-NAY-shun; rash-ee-oh-\, noun:
The process of reasoning.
There is no question that Joyce and Nabokov. . . brilliantly explored and expanded the limits of language and the structure of novels, yet both were led irresistibly and obsessively to cap their careers with those cold and lifeless masterpieces, “Finnegans Wake” and “Ada,” more to be deciphered than read by a handful of scholars whose pleasure is strictly ratiocination.
– “How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love ‘Barry Lyndon’”, New York Times, January 11, 1976
jejune \juh-JOON\, adjective:
1. Lacking in nutritive value.
2. Displaying or suggesting a lack of maturity; childish.
3. Lacking interest or significance; dull; meager; dry.
Were I to make this public now, it would be dismissed as the raving of a mind at the end of its tether, unable to distinguish fiction from reality, real life from the jejune fantasies of its youth.
– Ronald Wright, A Scientific Romance
This guy is simply amazing.
incipient \in-SIP-ee-uhnt\, adjective:
Beginning to exist or appear.
Sir George devoted much of his energies to worrying about money and was preoccupied by thoughts of his incipient pauperdom.
– Philip Ziegler, Osbert Sitwell
This is the slow version of “After Midnight” that was made famous in the Michelob Beer television add from 1988. Although Clapton’s original version of this J.J. Cale tune was release on his debut solo album, this slower version was released on Clapton’s 1988 compilation “Crossroads”.
