Cinephilia and Beyond has this good post on Scorsese editing Life Lessons. The editing room–room 306 of the Brill Building–stuff was shot when I was a senior in high school and working in the building. Ah, memories.
New York Stories – Life Lessons (1989) from Aitor Garcia on Vimeo.
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We’ve seen it before so no need to get into it. And Hughes wasn’t terrible exactly. The offense didn’t do much either.
The Jays were going to have to beat the Yanks at some point.
Final: Jays 5, Yanks 2.
Let’s just hope that was their one win for the series.
I’m slippin’, I admit it. The Yanks have handled the Jays this year. So why does something tell me that stops this week, especially with Phil Hughes pitching tonight?
Stupid Heebie Jeebies.
Brett Gardner CF
Derek Jeter SS
Robinson Cano 2B
Alfonso Soriano LF
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Curtis Granderson DH
Lyle Overbay 1B
Ichiro Suzuki RF
Austin Romine C
Jeter’s back.
Never mind the Birds:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
Clayton Kershaw’s making a case for himself writers Jay Jaffe.
[Photo Credit: Stephen Dunn / Getty Images]
Around this time 13 years ago I got together with my friend Alan to make a mix cd of the rap records that has been released that year. A rash of good hip hop records came out in 2000, from major label and underground artists alike. There were joints from name brands like Jay Z, Snoop, Dre, Eminem, Ghostface, MOP, Common, Xzibit, Wu, Outkast, and De La Soul. The veterans were still heard–Biz, Phife and Sadat X. But some of the records I liked most were from so-called underground artists like J-Live, Quasimoto, Dialated Peoples, Kid Koala, Slum Village, Cali Agents, Rah Digga, Encore, and The Nextmen.
Alan and I had known each other for a few years and always talked about doing something together. Alan was a record nut and an engineer. He’d programmed drums for Tori Amos, Madonna, and C&C Music Factory. Worked with Francois Kevorkian and Steinski.
Alan was a whiz at Pro Tools, a professional audio editing program. It was a chance for me to make a dream mix because of what Alan could do technically. I figured we’d make a little cd that I could give to friends for the holidays.
Alan lived in Midwood, Brooklyn, I lived in Carroll Gardens. I’d go over to his place with my records and video tapes. What started as a quick project turned into something more substantial. Four months and more than 120 studio hours later we produced an album-length mix cd we called “Borough to Borough.” (By the time we finished I’d moved to the Bronx.)
After each session, Alan burned a cd of what we’d done. I’d take it with me, listen to it for days, make notes, and the next time we saw each other, we’d make corrections before moving on to the next track. We shared similar sensibilities so there was an easy shorthand between us–remember that Bugs Bunny cartoon when?, what about that George Carlin line? Still, it was the first time I ever truly collaborated with someone. I learned that I couldn’t always have my way. Sometimes, I had to let Alan show off like when he reprogrammed the drum pattern on a Jurassic 5 record because there was no place on the instrumental where the drums were in the clear. And I was always happy to let him do his thing because it sounded great but also because I admire watching a craftsman at work.
If the project was a fantasy come true for me, it was liberating for Alan. He could play and do anything he wanted to do; he wasn’t just a hired hand. So we played and played, and honed the sombitch until we were satisfied. Then we packaged it and sold it and even got reviewed in a few British music magazines.
So here you have it. An audio collage, featuring rhymes, scratching, dope production and a host of spoken word and movie clips. You’ll recognize the voices of Fred Gwynne, Jack Nicholson, Elliott Gould, George Carlin, Marv Albert, Bill Murray, Frank Oz, Holly Hunter, Steve Martin, Elaine May, Walter Matthau, Al Pacino, Jack Palance, Joe Pesci, Goose Gossage, Richard Pryor, Mel Blanc, John Sterling, Mel Brooks, Bill Cosby, Earl Weaver, Nicholas Cage, Jackie Gleason, Chris Russo, Mark Rydell, Albert Brooks, Michelle Pfieffer, Gabe Kaplan, Mike Tyson, Robert De Niro, Orson Welles, John Turturro, Art Carney and Fat Clemenza.
Enjoy:
Track Listing:
Intro. Beat by DJ Desue (Barber Shop Emcess…”Music, Money and Women”)
Yes. J-Live, produced by Emmai Allaqueva
Hotshit. Nextman
Tour Guide. People Under the Stairs
I Don’t Know. Slum Village
Crookie Monster. Produced by the Alchemist
Oooh. De La Soul
Dew It. Biz Markie. Produced by Ill Chemist/Al D
What’s Up Fatlip? Fatlip
Microphone Mathmatics. Madlib
Lyrical Fluctuation. Jigmastas, beat by DJ Spinna
Service. Dialated Peoples. Cuts by Babu
Take Over. Joey Chavez. Cuts by DJ Revolution
Any Champion. Pacewon. Cuts by DJ Revolution.
Worldwide. Defari. Beats by Joey Chavez
Love/Hate. Encore. Beat by Nextmen
Rhymes. Get Open featuring Sadat X
Nasty or Nice. Beat by Y@k Ballz
Lesson of Today. Rah Digga. Produced by DJ Premier
Rockaparty. J B Lee. Produced by Ill Chemist, Al D
Loop Diggin’. Madlib
Ass Finish First. Beat by DJ Nu-Mark
J-Liveness: Produced by Pete Rock
Players/Fall in Love. Slum Village
Barhopper. Kid Koala
Just One More Thing. People Under the Stairs
Them That’s Not. J-Live
Nighty Night. Beat by Madlib
Picture of me in Gravesend, Brooklyn with Sammy’s 62 Dominican Republic shirt from the ’98 season and Nathan’s cup of soda. Picture by Alan Friedman.
A new documentary on J.D. Salinger claims more Salinger books are coming:
But a forthcoming documentary and related book, both titled “Salinger,” include detailed assertions that Mr. Salinger instructed his estate to publish at least five additional books — some of them entirely new, some extending past work — in a sequence that he intended to begin as early as 2015.
The new books and stories were largely written before Mr. Salinger assigned his output to a trust in 2008, and would greatly expand the Salinger legacy.
One collection, to be called “The Family Glass,” would add five new stories to an assembly of previously published stories about the fictional Glass family, which figured in Mr. Salinger’s “Franny and Zooey” and elsewhere, according to the claims, which surfaced in interviews and previews of the documentary and book last week.
Another would include a retooled version of a publicly known but unpublished tale, “The Last and Best of the Peter Pans,” which is to be collected with new stories and existing work about the fictional Caulfields, including “Catcher in the Rye.” The new works are said to include a story-filled “manual” of the Vedanta religious philosophy, with which Mr. Salinger was deeply involved; a novel set during World War II and based on his first marriage; and a novella modeled on his own war experiences.
Here’s the trailer:
The fifth home game at Yankee Stadium after 9.11 was Cal Ripken Day. Here’s my scorecard. The game ended in a 1-1 tie, called due to rain. It was a cold, miserable day. I remember seeing cops on the roof of the Stadium behind the lights. They looked like prison guards.
Ripken gave a short speech before the game, saluted all the famous Yankees, including Jeffrey Maier which prompted boos and laughs. During the National Anthem, the crowd joined in, slowly at first, low but firm. “Oh, say does that…” It gave me the chills. The city was still under the perishable spell of togetherness that existed in the days and weeks after the attacks. During the 7th inning stretch, the field was cleared of everyone but the umps when Eddie Layton played “God Bless America” on the organ. There was more solemn singing from the crowd.
It was a memorable day. Cal whiffed 4 times. And nobody won.
And on Sunday the Yankees didn’t score much once again though Evan Longoria and Robinson Cano looked like the studs that they are. Ivan Nova and Alex Cobb were in good form and then the bullpens took over with the score tied, 2-2. It went to the 11th when Alfonso Soriano doubled with 1 out, stole third and then scored on a sacrifice fly by Curtis Granderson.
Mariano Rivera got 3 outs on 5 pitches–including a scary line drive off Longoria’s bat–as the Yanks avoid the sweep and win the game, 3-2.
Okay, now we can digest.
[Photo Credit: ]
Yanks look to avoid the sweep:
Brett Gardner CF
Ichiro Suzuki RF
Robinson Cano 2B
Alfonso Soriano DH
Curtis Granderson LF
Eduardo Nunez SS
Lyle Overbay 1B
Mark Reynolds 3B
Chris Stewart C
Never mind those brooms: Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Photo Credit: Bruce Davidson]
The problem with the hole the Yankees dug during the first four months of the season is that games like Friday and Saturday, games that could be easily dismissed if the year were going the way it normally does for the Yanks, sting all the more. The days on the calendar are dwindling, and the optimism that built slowly over the course of eleven wins in fourteen days against the Tigers, Angels, Red Sox, and Blue Jays evaporated like morning dew in the desert after two disheartening losses in two nights to the Tampa Bay Rays.
After swallowing the bitter pill of Hiroki Kuruda’s loss on Friday night, my hopes were not high as CC Sabathia took the mound for the Yanks against David Price. Early on, though, there were signs that the Yankees might be able to steal a victory. Price didn’t look as sharp as he usually does (all four Yankee hitters to come to the plate in the first inning hit the ball on the screws, but only Robinson Canó managed a base hit), and Sabathia seemed to be in control. In fact, over the first five innings CC looked better than we’ve seen him in ages. He yielded only a double to Evan Longoria in the first and a walk to Desmond Jennings in the third, nothing else.
The game was scoreless through the first four innings, but then the Yankees started a modest rally when Alex Rodríguez and Vernon Wells each singled to lead off the top of the fifth. After Curtis Granderson struck out and Mark Reynolds singled, young Austin Romine came up to bat with one out and the bases loaded. After working the count full, Romine fouled off three straight pitches before finally taking ball four and pushing in the game’s first run. It was a professional at bat.
Ichiro was up next, and Romine earned his team another run, but this time with some quick thinking on the base paths. Ichiro hit a slow grounder to Ben Zobrist at second base. Knowing that a double play would end the inning, Romine stopped dead in his tracks instead of running into an out, and Zobrist was forced to throw to first to get Ichiro. By the time James Loney threw to second to try to complete the 4-3-6 double play, Romine had already arrived safely and Wells had scored to give the Yanks a 2-0 lead. One more base hit would’ve been nice, but Eduardo Núñez fouled out to end the inning.
Sabathia did what he always used to do — that is, he shut down the Rays following that inning — but he veered off the tracks in the top of the sixth, probably just six outs before he could’ve handed the ball to David Robertson and Mariano Rivera. Sabathia had allowed just a single and a walk while striking out five and inducing nine ground ball outs over the first five innings (even Longoria’s double was just a well-struck grounder down the third base line), but a different pitcher came out for the sixth inning. Sadly, it was Average Sabathia, not Ace Sabathia.
Sam Fuld pounded a single to left field, but it wasn’t time to worry. When Sabathia walked Desmond Jennings on four straight pitches and then fell behind 2-0 to Ben Zobrist, it was time. When Zobrist hit a turf double through the gap in left center field to score Fuld and Jennings and then came home two pitches later on a Longoria single, it was over. Just like that.
Jake McGee cruised through the seventh, Jose Peralta did the same in the eighth, and the ninth inning brought Fernando Rodney to the mound to get the final three outs. He put an arrow through the moon, and that was that. Rays 4, Yankees 2.
When your highest paid pitcher takes the mound in the sixth inning with a two-run lead, there is an expectation of victory, but if we’re being honest we cannot pin this loss on CC Sabathia. He gave up only three runs in six and a third innings, but the Yankee hitters didn’t do much to help him out. The trio in the middle of the lineup, Canó, Soriano, and Rodríguez, has cooled off considerably (those three hitters are a combined 3 for 24 so far in this series), and aside from that fifth inning, the Bombers were never able to put more than one runner on base during any given inning. Quite simply, that isn’t good enough.
The good news, though, is that these losses haven’t eliminated the Yankees from contention. Tomorrow, after all, is another day. I still believe.
[Photo Credit: Chris O’Meara/AP Photo]
That’d be C.C. Sabathia and David Price, fat and skinny, but both large men.
Ichiro Suzuki RF
Eduardo Nunez SS
Robinson Cano 2B
Alfonso Soriano LF
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Vernon Wells DH
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Reynolds 1B
Austin Romine C
Yanks need this one.
Never mind the dome:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Picture by Bags]
Recently, a friend and I have been covering all of the wonderful sayings that involve the word “shit.”
Like: Shit or get off the pot, you gotta be shittin’ me, and I don’t give a shit. Also: shithead, shitheel, shitface–or shitfaced; shit for brains, shitkicker, horseshit, bullshit, dogshit, cowshit, ratshit, batshit (thank you, George Carlin); full of shit, piece of shit, pile of shit, tub of shit, and crock of shit. How about shit-eating-grin? That’s a good one. So is shit a brick, shit on a shingle, shoot the shit, fuck that shit, and good ol’ up shit’s creek?
Oh, shit.
One of my favorites is “shit the bed.” As in, Hiroki Kuroda really shit the bed last night. And he did, giving up home runs and putting his team in a shithole from which they would not emerge. Tough shit, huh? Even when they had a 2 out rally late in the game, down 5 runs, Chris Stewart nailed a line drive to left, sure to score at least 1 of the 2 runners on base, the ball was caught and the Yanks were shit out of luck.
So, to recap, how was the game last night?
Shitty.
Final Score: Rays 7, Yanks 2.
Tonight, C.C. really needs to get his shit together.
[Photo Credit: Scott Audette/Reuters]
Our man Hiroki, looking to rebound after a so-so start against the Red Sox, goes tonight in Tampa. Yanks on the creep.
Is it real or is it memorex?
Brett Gardner CF
Curtis Granderson DH
Robinson Cano 2B
Alfonso Soriano LF
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Lyle Overbay 1B
Eduardo Nunez SS
Ichiro Suzuki RF
Chris Stewart C
Never mind the cowbells:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
Ah, to be in San Francisco to see this Diebenkorn show.
Here’s 10 notes when starting a painting from Diebs, who is, as you all know, one of my heroes.
Over at the New Yorker, Anthony Lane delivers the finest tribute to Dutch Leonard that I’ve come across so far:
Once you hear the Dutch accent you can’t get it out of your head, and for innumerable readers it became a siren song. I fell prey to it in the mid-eighties. Leonard had a breakout, with “Glitz” (1985), and it led many of us to raid the back catalogue with glee. Some of the books weren’t easy to get hold of, and the hunt only sharpened our zeal. A friend and I ravened through whatever we could lay hands on; there is a strange, barely sane satisfaction in happening upon an author—or a painter or a band—and making it your mission to consume everything that he, she, or they ever produced. You rarely succeed, yet the urge for completeness is a kind of love, doomed to be outgrown but not forgotten. I have often pursued the dead in that fashion, but Leonard may be the only living writer who spurred me to such a cause.
…One proof of literary genius, we might say, is a democratic generosity toward your mother tongue—the conviction that every part or particle of speech, be it e’er so humble, can be put to fruitful use. If that means trimming the indefinite article, leaving us with a Albanian and a oyster, so be it. Nothing need go to waste. Richard again, aiming at the formal locutions of a police report, and missing by yards: “I cruised the street and the street back of the residence, the residence being dark, not any light on, but which didn’t mean anything.” So much dumb-ass delusion in so little space, and the linguistic shortfall squares with an overriding sense, throughout the novels, that our grip on the world—and this goes for all of us, not just the chancers and the thugs—is never as secure or as enduring as we would like. Marriages crack like plates; one side of the tracks has no concept of life on the other side, though it may harbor a risky desire to find out; and words will not stay still. That is why the movies inspired by Leonard’s fiction (a slew of disasters plus the odd success, like “Get Shorty,” “Out of Sight,” and “Jackie Brown,” which was based on “Rum Punch”) struggle to match his equilibrium. The souls that he surveyed, even when they were played by George Clooney and John Travolta, were unquiet and fairly uncool. Leonard’s gaze was cool, but, in all honesty, it belonged in a book.
I’m curious what Leonard’s reputation will be in 40-50 years. He sold a lot of books in his time but was also a critical darling. Not many writers enjoy both kinds of success but he sure did.
[Photo Credit: AP]
Took three hours before they played ball yesterday and I missed the whole damn thing. But when I saw the final score, Yanks 5, Jays 3, on a day where they only got 4 hits, well, I had to smile.
The Bombers are on a run and in for a test this weekend down in Tampa where they haven’t always fared well. Never mind the stud pitching they’ll have to face.
Still, winning, she’s better n losing, nu?
[Photo Credit: Danny Santos via This Isn’t Happiness]
Alex Rodriguez promises to shut his people up about all non-baseball-related mishegoss. Let’s see how long that lasts. Meanwhile, he pal David Ortiz had this to say:
“I didn’t like it. I don’t think it was the right thing to do,” Ortiz told USA TODAY Sports. “But we don’t all think alike, and the guy who did it, Dempster, is a great guy. It’s not that I didn’t think it was right because Alex and I are friends, because once you cross the white lines, everyone’s on their own.
“But we’ve got Tampa right on our heels, and that pitch woke up a monster in the Yankees’ team at that moment. You saw how the game ended up. CC (Sabathia) was throwing 91 (mph) and started throwing 96. Alex later hit one way out there. You’re talking about a good team that you can’t wake up. But we learn from our mistakes.”
Andy’s on the hill this afternoon. Gray skies in New York so it could be a wet one.
Ichiro Suzuki RF
Vernon Wells DH
Robinson Cano 2B
Alfonso Soriano LF
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Reynolds 1B
Eduardo Nunez SS
Chris Stewart C
Never mind the brooms:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Photo Via: Casaboobcas]
