8:15 last evening
at East 97th Street and the East River,
on the UES
Saturday, September 1, 2012
won’t be long now
“She takes the winter and makes it summer
Summer could take some lessons from her.”
“Keep Betty Grable, Lamour and Turner
She makes my heart a charcoal burner”
1963
Friday, August 31, 2012
‘til I saw the light
It was late... last night
I was feeling something wasn't right
There was not another soul in sight,
Only you... only you.
1972
peaked at #16 on the Billboard Hot 100
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Apple kills Star Trek
In typical internet backlash, the Apple patent victory this week over Samsung’s Galaxy copy of the iPhone has its ardent vocal detractors.
But the jury said “Are you kidding me?” THIS was a cell phone before Apple:
Apple invested 4 ½ years and enormous amounts of money to make phones look and work like this instead:
Consumers liked them. It turned telecom design on a dime.
According to evidence and testimony, Samsung invested about 4 months and a comparative pittance and hit the market with this:
Hm.
Now Samsung has to pay Apple a bit more than a $billion and do what Apple did in the first place...that is...
...invest years of work and enormous amounts of money to figure out a next gen phone that works differently from the iPhone and is INSANELY BETTER. That’s how you take a market back.
25labs.com
That’s competition. That’s how great products leapfrog each other and how patent spurs innovation.
If Samsung is smart, they’ll go back and do just that.
blog.lib.umn.edu
nor does shadow
The Alexander Hamilton Bridge carries I-95 and Route 1 across the Harlem River on the way to the GWB.
Starting in 1958 at a cost of $7.5 million for the bridge, $21 million was spent on the entire engineering project.
Construction began in 1960 and by the spring of ‘62, the main span was joined high above the Harlem River.
The single main arch is 555 feet long.
It carries just under 200,000 vehicles every day.
The main steel arch clears the water by 135 feet.
The slimmed down plate girders reflect the streamlined standards of American design in the 1960’s.
The new bridge opened to traffic in 1963, the same year JFK was assassinated. That happened in November and America was never the same again.
It was a different time.
Some things change.
Light does not.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
a (Mel)rose by any other other name
Israel Senior Center
When the Hope of Israel Senior Center opened in the Melrose section back in 1982, the greensward lot next door must have been an inspiration.
Blooming flowers and trees made it look like this back then.
Israel Senior Center
Israel Senior Center
Today it looks like this.
The senior center is gone now.
I don’t know why it closed.
But I’m sure I would have liked that garden.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
right up my alley
"People who want to play jazz actually outnumber those who enjoy or even tolerate it, let alone pay to hear it."
Wow. For me, that was hard to read.
A pianist, Bill Anschell, offered that to AllAboutJazz.com in an article he wrote about the diminishing opportunities in our American musical idiom.
He was hard on the state of the musical industry in general.
He identified "Gig Whores" (who will play any music at any venue with any lame band in order to pay the rent)
Also "Jazz Educators" (who train musicians who, unable to make a living performing, become jazz educators themselves, thus perpetrating a vicious cycle.)
And the "Arts Administrator" (one who "Diverts and sucks dry the scant dollars that governmental agencies and charitable foundations earmark for jazz artists.)
Ouch.
This jazz band “Tin Pan” is gutty and wonderful fun,
and clearly following their hearts.
"What most of us turn to music for is an emotional experience."
That’s what neuroscientist Daniel Levitin wrote in his book "This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession."
Buy the music you love.
It helps the musicians who love to make it.
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