Lots of good stuff on the music/book/Internet front in recent weeks.
Last night, NPR did a piece on a jazz band called Happy Apple. I liked the samples they played in the piece, not to mention the band’s general attitude. So I jumped over to iTunes and download “Youth Oriented.” Loved it. So much that I went back to iTunes and grabbed both of the other CDs that were on there: “The Peace Between Our Companies” and “Afternoon in Marrakech.” The latter is a 34-minute meditation that’s really a departure from the other two works.
I think my favorite tune so far is “Paulie’s Quick Temper” from the “Peace” CD. Can’t help but wonder if it’s inspired by Paulie Walnuts on the Sopranos. There’s one part where it sounds like a CD stuttering, that maddening sound you get when the disc is scratched. Then it hops into an incredible jam. Really nice stuff. I’ll be spending a lot of time exploring these discs …
On the novel front, I’m well into Andrea Levy’s “Small Island,” which is a marvelous book. She’s Jamaican, and the novel focuses on Hortense and Gilbert, who move from Jamaica to England after the Second World War. The contrast between the two islands is stark, and Levy does a wonderful job of breathing live into the characters, both Jamaican and English. I really like the scene where Hortense is having her first encounter with the English winter and its bleak, truncated days. I can only imagine how she must miss that year-round 12 hours of daylight in Jamaica. I know I do …
And online, I’ve been reading a lot of travel sites, especially Travel Blog. There’s a lot of drivel there, but if you sift through it (I use my RSS aggregator for this) there’s at least one gem a day. Neat stuff about real people doing real stuff on the road. For something a little more off the wall and irreverent, I’m also checking Gridskipper daily.
And last but not least, two momentous TV events loom. Fetch, Tivo. Fetch:
1. Penn and Teller’s “Bullshit!” begins its new season on Showtime Monday night.
2. The Family Guy returns on May 1. I can only hope and pray this resurrected version is as cool, irreverent and offensive as the first three seasons …
Now Playing: Lincoln At Nevada from the album “Leftover Salmon” by Leftover Salmon
4 replies on “On apples and islands”
Penn, er, Bob:
How do you balance the demands of starring in a TV show while running a media division?
Liz
p.s. I am giving you shit a) because you look like Penn Gilette and you can’t deny it, and b) because you made fun of Big Bone Lick state park.
1. Guilty as charged, though I had hoped that my ponytail-ectomy a few years back had purged my inner Penn.
2. How can you not make fun of a park called Big Bone Lick. I mean, come on, Liz. Big Bone Lick State Park. That’s just weird and bizarre …
we have a guy on a local tv station that does the weekend state political talk news show. ryck exclaimed one day that he appeared to be the illegitimate offspring of benz and buddy hackett. I really can
Damn Buddy and his pro-life crap. I tried to convince him that for the good of humanity, we had to abort our love child. But no. Buddy insisted that all life is precious.
I’d enter this as Exhibt A to prove otherwise …