Thursday, February 20, 2025
For a few years a couple of other Buffalo Spree writers and I did an annual Academy Awards predictions column. It was fun to write, but looking back on it I am somewhat surprised that the Oscars don't really provide the sort of insight into the zeitgeist that I'd have thought. That said, it's interesting to consider this year's nominees as cultural signifiers.
- Emilia Perez
- A Complete Unknown
- Conclave
- Nickle Boys
- I'm Still Here
- The Substance
- Dune, Part Two
- Wicked
- Anora
- The Brutalist
What are we to make of this list?
Wednesday, February 19, 2025
Christgau on Louis Armstrong. Teachout's bio is essential, and Laurence Bergreen's 1997 Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life, does an amazing job of describing the New Orleans that Armstrong came from. Gidden's book is likewise essential.
I use my FB page for things that should be Outside Counsel posts too often. Here's what I was posting there when I was doing my Armstrong dive
Thursday, February 06, 2025
Some of my students are getting their LSAT results back this week. I hate the LSAT, which seems to mostly measure how white and advantaged a 20 year old person is. My Buffalo State students seem to fall at one extreme or the other on the LSAT bell curve, and this seem to be pretty much all based on race, although there is a little bit of pure socio-economic statis mixed in as well.
The thing is that although it is possible to prep for the exam- in fact, for most students a prep class seems essential- the prep classes seem to be exclusively test prep. I see this all the time with my students' vocabulary. They use the vocab they've learned in test prep classes, but their usage is ever so slightly off. They've learned the words, but they haven't learned the words in any context. The difference, as Mark Twain tells us, is the difference between lightening and the lightening bug, and I just don't know what can be done about it.
Wednesday, February 05, 2025
Tuesday, February 04, 2025
Thursday, January 23, 2025
Tuesday, January 21, 2025
I spent Sunday listening to vinyl, starting with Eric Clapton's No Reason to Cry. I must have read something during the week about the studio where it was recorded- Shangra-La, in Malibu, built by The Band. I've writen before about this Clapton set, but for some reason I was in a receptive frame of mind this time. It is sort of Clapton backed by The Band, and it showcases how tastefull they were. (There aren't individual credits for each song, which is annoying.) I followed that up with Rick Danko's solo set, which I quite like, and then on to The Basement Tapes. Of the latter it seems to me that Robbie Robertson, who produced it, was making the case that he and Dylan were peers and full-fledged collaborators. There must have been something in the zeitgeist because Garth Hudson died this morning, the last surviving member of The Band, and, for me, the member whose sound defined them. Garth and Robbie were the two members that didn't sing- Robertson says in his memoir that he wrote for the voices of Richard, Rick and Levon which is why he didn't take on vocals. Presumably Garth didn't sing because he was too busy playing organ, saxaphone, accordian and whatever else came to hand.
I spent some time a couple of years ago reading Helm's and Robertson's memoirs. The memoir I wish existed was Garth's.
Does anyone read E. L. Doctorow today? Like William Kennedy, another writer who seemed to have caught lightning in a bottle, the parade seems to passed him by, and I wonder why that is.
