Couple of weeks ago I was on the train and looked around and noticed that were only a few white faces. It wasn’t an unusual sight. It was common. I just happened to make a note of it and then moved on to whatever else was on my mind.
It’s one of the things you take for granted when you live in New York–and can be painfully aware of when you leave: diversity.
[Photo Via: Think Different]
Cool little feature over at Esquire. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar lists 20 things he wish he’d known when he was 30:
Be patient. Impatience is the official language of youth. When you’re young, you want to rush to the next thing before you even know where you are. I always think of the joke in Colors that the wiser and older cop (Robert Duvall) tells his impatient rookie partner (Sean Penn). I’m paraphrasing, but it goes something like: “There’s two bulls standing on top of a mountain. The younger one says to the older one: ‘Hey pop, let’s say we run down there and screw one of them cows.’ The older one says: ‘No son. Let’s walk down and screw ’em all.’” Now, to counter the profane with the profound, one of my favorite quotes is from the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer: “Talent hits the target no one else can hit; genius hits the target no one else can see.” I think the key to seeing the target no one else can see is in being patient, waiting for it to appear so you can do the right thing, not just the expedient thing. Learning to wait is one of my greatest accomplishments as I’ve gotten older.
Listen more than talk. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.
Being right is not always the right thing to be. Kareem, my man, learn to step away. You think being honest immunizes you from the consequences of what you say. Remember Paul Simon’s lyrics, “There’s no tenderness beneath your honesty.” So maybe it’s not that important to win an argument, even if you “know” you’re right. Sometimes it’s more important to try a little tenderness.
When choosing someone to date, compassion is better than passion. I’m not saying she shouldn’t be passionate. That’s a given. But look for signs that she shows genuine compassion toward others. That will keep you interested in her a lot longer.
Good piece on a group of session musicians called “The Section” by David Browne in the new issue of Rolling Stone:
[Danny] Kortchmar’s terse guitar riffs, inspired by his hero Steve Cropper, nudged their way into the songs. He had his own rules: “The parts gotta be simple. You gotta help the song. Don’t step on the singer.” Kunkel became known not just for his firm, unobtrusive playing but as one of the few drummers who would read the words to a song before recording. “I’d get a feel for what the artist was trying to portray,” he says. “If it’s a love story and doesn’t require big drums, what can I do to complete the story?”
…They may also be the last of the great session crews, before home studios, Pro Tools and GarageBand made studio ensembles superfluous. With them, a style of pop – and of making records – came to an end. “I’m running around with a baton in front of me and there’s no one to hand it to,” says Sklar. Asked to name their successors, producer Rick Rubin – who occasionally uses a small, hand-picked combo when recording with acts like Adele and the Dixie Chicks – pauses. “I’m not sure,” he says. “You don’t really need bands anymore.”
Kortchmar, Kunkel, Wachtel and Sklar have been approached about participating in a rock & roll fantasy camp devoted to rhythm sections. “If one of your ambitions is to hang out with Sammy Hagar, you’ll be disappointed with us,” Kortchmar says. “But we want to demonstrate what it’s like to play in an ensemble. That isn’t taught much by anyone.”
[Photo Credit: Joe Martz]
Dig this article on Raymond Chandler by Jonah Raskin over at Boom:
Raymond Chandler relished finding names for his quirky characters, including Philip Marlowe, the pipe-smoking, chess-playing private eye—a literary kinsman to Sam Spade, Dashiell Hammett’s solitary sleuth—whom I first met in the pages of fiction as a teenager and whom I have known more than fifty years. Sometimes the names are dead giveaways about the morality or immorality of the character, sometimes they’re opaque, but I’ve always found them intriguing and an open invitation to try to solve the mystery myself. In his first novel, The Big Sleep (1939) Chandler calls the bellicose gangster Eddie Mars, the smut peddler Arthur Gwynn Geiger, and the top cop Captain Cronjager. In The High Window (1942), Lois Magic is the femme fatale, Linda Conquest is a torch singer, and Leslie Murdoch is the effete son of a nasty heiress who has murdered her own husband and brainwashed Merle Davis (a wholesome girl from the Midwest and a victim of sexual assault) into thinking she’s guilty of the crime. Nice people, Marlowe observes wryly.
Born in Chicago in 1888, near the end of the Victorian era, raised in England among elite Edwardians, and transplanted to Los Angeles in 1913, Chandler saw California through the eyes of an English eccentric. A veteran of World War I who was wounded in action in France, and a child of Prohibition and Depression America, he recognized that crime was an industry in both boom and bust times, and a rich field for a writer. Then, too, as a displaced person and an alien in the Southern California world of cars and freeways, among phony and lonely people, he tapped into a vast reservoir of mass discontent. In his seven novels, all of them set in and around Los Angeles, he depicted the world as a vile place inhabited by loathsome people. A cynic, he envisioned no way to escape nastiness—certainly not by going to the movies, which, in his view, offered much the same trite boy-meets-girl story over and over again and trivialized psychological issues and social problems.
“Twenty-four hours a day somebody is running, somebody else is trying to catch him,” Chandler wrote of LA. He added that it was “a city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness.” Chandler loved and hated LA in much the same way that Balzac loved and hated mid-nineteenth-century Paris and F. Scott Fitzgerald loved and hated Jazz Age Manhattan.
[Featured Image Via the most cool: Daylight Noir]
“Eugenie in the Garden” by Lilla Cabot Perry.
Friday night, went to Eataly for bread and prosciutto; Saturday, the Farmer’s Market.
It was uncommonly beautiful in New York today, one of those days that the weatherman likes to call one of the ten best days of the year. Watching the Yankees on an HD TV, the colors and sharpness created an almost surreal hyper-realism.
Another pretty good game in a good series, too. The A’s won 5-4.
Tough day for Andy Pettitte as Brian Heyman reports:
“It’s a struggle,” Pettitte said. “The issue is everything. Everything I’ve got to do as a starting pitcher, I’m not able to do right now. … My release point is floating around a little bit. … It’s been a long, long time since I haven’t had a feeling for my pitches.”
Pettitte is good at being brutally frank when it comes to self-assessments.
“My cutter is nonexistent right now,” Pettitte said.
Joe Girardi said he wasn’t going to make a big deal out of two bad starts. Pettitte is just hoping to find a steady release point in a hurry.
“I wish I could tell you something hurt,” Pettitte said. “But I feel good.”
I wish I could be more expansive but I kept nodding off which added to the dreamlike quality of the afternoon. I was up in time to watch the end of a thrilling OKC-Memphis game and plenty awake to watch the Knicks take one in the nuts against the Pacers at the Garden.
Then I stretched, took a shower, changed clothes and took a good, long walk.
[Photo Credit: J. L. Russell]
Yanks and the A’s followed by Agita at the Garden.
Andy caught a beatin’ last time out, let’s see what he’s got today.
1. Gardner CF
2. Cano 2B
3. Wells LF
4. Hafner DH
5. Suzuki RF
6. Nix 3B
7. Overbay 1B
8. Nunez SS
9. Stewart C
Never mind the cool breeze:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Photo Via: Eye Heart New York]
Phil Hughes pitched his best game of the year, Chris Stewart and Lyle Overbay hit solo home runs (Overbays was a bomb) and Mariano Rivera was the last man standing–though he didn’t earn a save–as the Yanks beat the A’s yesterday afternoon, 4-2.
Smiles all around.
Today gives another afternoon game and Game 1 of the Knicks-Pacers, which proves to be dramatic, dumb, aggravating, and other clumsy adjectives to describe hardship and pain.
But first, listen to this:
“Fallin'”–Teenaged Fan Club with De La Soul
[Photo Credit: Katherine Squler]
Cool breeze but just bee-too-tee-ful in the BX today.
Brett Gardner CF
Robinson Cano 2B
Vernon Wells LF
Travis Hafner DH
Ichiro Suzuki RF
Chris Nelson 3B
Lyle Overbay 1B
Eduardo Nunez SS
Chris Stewart C
Never mind the sun rays:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Photo Via: The Minimalisto]
I watched the first part of the Yankee game on the count of I was too chicken to watch the Knicks. For me, as a casual Knicks fan, and one with a delicate constitution, they are more aggravating than enjoyable. So pronounced first-half leads–hell, 20-point 4th quarter leads–are just fool’s gold, dirty tricks.
But as the night wore on, and A.J. Griffin out-dueled C.C. Sabathia (both pitched well, in spite of a tiny strike zone), I found myself watching more of the Knicks and my emotion blurred out any memory of what was going on in the Bronx. (The A’s won, 2-0.)
The Knicks did almost blow a 20-point 4th quarter lead, of course, until Melo hit a huge three-pointer (and his first since Christ was a cowboy), and then Paul Pierce missed a shot before J.R. Smith scored and was fouled leading to another three-point play. Both possessions for the Knicks punctured the optimism and good cheer of the Boston crowd and that in and of itself was a pleasure to witness.
And so, the Knicks won a playoff round for the first time since 2000. Not only that, but they set the stage for another throwback match-up as they’ll face the Indiana Pacers–a bruising group–in the second round.
As Carlito once said, “Here comes the pain.”
Poppa Large toes the rubber tonight in the BX.
He hasn’t been throwing hard and he has not been great, but he’s been tough and a gamer.
Brett Gardner CF
Robinson Cano 2B
Vernon Wells LF
Travis Hafner DH
Ichiro Suzuki RF
Eduardo Nunez SS
Lyle Overbay 1B
Jayson Nix 3B
Chris Stewart C
Wait, that’s Ichi batting fifth? Got to love your 2013 Yanks.
Never mind the agita those Knicks are giving ya:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Photo Credit: John Iacono/SI]
Over at Deadspin, here’s Jim Windolf on how Daily News writer Frank Isola became the most hated man at MSG.
[Photo Credit: Calvin Flow; Tony Shi]
