Buy! Buy! Buy!

David Brooks writes in the NYT about "the trampling of decent norms about how to use and harness money.

Sixty-two scholars have signed on to a report by the Institute for American Values and other think tanks called, “For a New Thrift: Confronting the Debt Culture,” examining the results of all this. This may be damning with faint praise, but it’s one of the most important think-tank reports you’ll read this year.

David goes on to list a number of reasons or the 'agents of destruction' who have played a role in making the American public "less socially conscious about money and debt." Strangely, he does not include what I consider the most important agent: the self. Personal responsibility comes first, no...before you starting blaming other causes that have merely supported this personal indulgence and irresponsibility.

By the way, you' have to BUY the report. Copies are $7.00 each. (Fair enough.. not an expensive report costing hundreds or even thousdands. And yet... there are many free reports that many organizations put out from time to time. Make it free, Institute of American Values!

Update: After reading Brooks' article some more I realized there is a nice summary of the report by Barbara Dafoe Whitehead in the American Interest, which is available for free online.

Visual Music

I need not say anything. Just watch as Michael Moschen puts on a quietly mesmerizing show of juggling.

Hallelujah

Sometimes, you become famous 10+ years after your (premature) death, thanks to a TV show watched by millions.

Jeffrey Scott Buckley (November 17, 1966 – May 29, 1997), raised as Scotty Moorhead, was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. (In 1997), while awaiting the arrival of his band from New York, he drowned during an evening swim in the Wolf River. His body was found on June 4, 1997

Buckley's first #1 came posthumously in March 2008 when "Hallelujah" topped Billboard's Hot Digital Songs following a performance of the song on American Idol.

The song was originally written and sung by Leonard Cohen. You can see Buckley performing the song live here and here. There are quite a few other singers who have attempted this song, as seen unde related videos at the above youtube links.

A well-written biography of Buckley can be read here. It seems that, sadly, like Jeffrey, who drowned and died at age 30, his father, Tim Buckley (also a musician), died from an accidental drug overdose in 1975 at age 28!

On June 25, 1975, at the age of 28, Tim Buckley was dead from an accidental drug overdose.

Another interesting tidbit gleaned at the above link:

An ardent enthusiast for a myriad of musical forms, Jeff Buckley was an early champion among young American musicians for the work of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the world's foremost Qawwali (the music of the Sufis) singer. Buckley conducted an extensive interview with Nusrat in Interview magazine (January 1996) and wrote the liner notes for the singer's The Supreme Collection album which was released on Mercator/Caroline Records in August 1997.

Hmm.. I thought it was the soundtrack in the movie, Dead Man Walking, that introduced Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan to the western world. Maybe the music connoisseurs knew him - the movie just made him more popular; just as American Idol has popularized Buckley.

Note: Found out about Buckley and this song via this question in India Uncut's Workoutable section.

Literary feuds

Literary feuds are fun. Naipaul is in the news again, this time not for throwing pointed barbs at others but for a pointed vitriolic attack on him by a fellow Caribbean Nobel laureate.

The distraction of Walcott vs Naipaul: With his poem, The Mongoose, Derek Walcott attacked his literary contemporary and nemesis - and overshadowed some great new work.

Rhyme and punishment for Naipaul: A wickedly humorous poem by a Nobel prize winner has drawn more blood in a vitriolic feud between literary lions.

And here's an excerpt from Walcott's poem, The Mongoose':

I have been bitten, I must avoid infection
Or else I'll be as dead as
Naipaul's fiction
Read his last novels, you'll see just
what I mean
A
lethargy, approaching the obscene
The model is more ho-hum than
Dickens
The essays have more bite
They scatter chickens like critics,
but
each stabbing phrase is poison
Since he has made that snaring
style
a prison
The plots are forced, the prose
sedate and silly
The
anti-hero is a prick named Willie
Who lacks the conflict of a Waugh or
Lawrence
And whines with his creator's
self-abhorrence

Literary relics

Sam Jordison at the Guardian wonders who amongst fthe amous writers today will be 'lost' and unknown in the near future. The comments from readers below Sam's post provide some exciting food for thought. (Strangely, he lists authors that I have read and loved: Auster, McEwan, and Rushdie (only pre-2000 though). I have read a little bit of Bellow (who I often confuse him with Salinger) but have not read anything from Pynchon yet.)

Plenty of the authors who seem terribly important today will soon be stuck on the shelves gathering dust just as fast Delderfield and co. Paul Auster, Thomas Pynchon, Saul Bellow, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie ... It's hard to say who will stay and who will go - but fun to guess. So now it's over to you. Who will disappear, and why? And if I do decide to make that link and read a book by Delderfield, can anyone tell me a good place to start?

Two hours to watch 60 minutes

Andy Rooney is brilliant here as he "throws some rocks" at Windows and Bill Gates as he compares his experiences writing on a PC versus those he needed on his old typewriter.



And on that light note, good night, folks. Its time to get off this Windows-based monstrosity that has taken over my life. Au revoir --- until tomorrow! (Actually... off to the Gardner Museum tomorrow - so, blogging may continue to be light.)

Notoriously famous or famously notorious

Excerpt from an article in the Guardian about the 'US taste for ghoulish murderabilia'*

Many Americans are cheerfully oblivious of the distinction between glory and infamy. Indeed, it's telling that the very word "notorious" is so commonly misused in the US that most people think it means "famous".

So, which celebrity did this remind you of?

* I am not sure the US is the only country with such morbid tastes... but lets not point fingers here. People who live in glass houses and all. (This also reminds me of an old quote that I first heard 20+ years back: "When you point a finger, remember that three point back at you.")