Morning

¶ Manners: Whether or not there is any truth to the story that Senator John Edwards has fathered a “love” child with documentarian Reille Hunter (thanks, Joe), I’m far more distraught by David W Chen’s report on the bad workplace conduct of Representative Anthony Weiner of New York (Brooklyn and Queens).

Noon

¶ Quilts: Ian Hundley designs quilts that look like World War I aerial photographs of the French countryside. Well, that’s what they look like to me.

Night

¶ Moses: Wow! Joe Lieberman, who addressed John Hagee’s Christians United For Israel Washington-Israel Summit yesterday, compared Rev Hagee to Moses! To think that Senator Lieberman might be our Vice President today! D’you think he’d be cuddling up to the man who blamed the devastation of New Orleans on the Big Easy’s having hosted a Pride parade?

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Morning

¶ Mamma: I’m off to the movies — to see Mamma Mia!, if the winds are propitious (if the line, if any, isn’t too long, if the projectionist got a good night’s sleep, &c &c).

A great summer summer weekend to all — stay as cool as you can!

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Morning

¶ Poll: Behind the brouhaha about The New Yorker‘s Barack and Michelle Obama spoof cover, entitled “The Politics of Fear,” there’s the deepening impression that “race” (skin color) is still a matter about which black and white Americans don’t share a perspective.

Noon

¶ Turner: I took another look at the Turner show at the Met this afternoon. It’s growing on me!

Night

¶ Stone: Incidental to the Museum visit, there as a bit of book-buying, both at the Museum itself and at Crawford-Doyle, the favorite-bookstore that happens to be right around the corner on Madison, between 81st and 82nd. I could have bought this at C-D, but I’d already fallen for it at the Museum.

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This week’s rather shaky images were taken on the Fourth of July from the rooftop of a building in Chelsea where a good friend of ours lives. The weather was awful, and it didn’t take long for the fireworks to disappear into the clouds of their own smoke. My photographs, therefore, are to be viewed as studies in impressionist color.  

Morning

¶ Lift: Now that Kathleen has her very own personal computer (her first, amazingly; until now, her laptops have always been the property of a law firm), and now that we have conquered the Wi-Fi problem (I didn’t say that!), my dear wife has been discovering all sorts of things online, among them a whimsical New Yorker cover that might have been, by Bob Staake.

Noon

¶ Clock: I’m a sucker for gizmos like the World Clock, which whir along fantastically if somewhat meaninglessly. What kind of triumph will it be if the number of items of email spam exceeds the number of dollars of US debt?

Night

¶ Mad ! Following a link from kottke.org, I came across a blog devoted to Mad Men. It’s called A Basket of Kisses, and it comes from “the highly creative, occasionally obsessive computers of Roberta and Deborah Lipp.” (more…)

Morning

¶ Marble: What I’d really like is a cast-marble copy (whatever “cast marble” is) of Houdon’s Louvre bust of Voltaire — the one with the perruque. The new Scully bookshelf, with its rows of Library of America spines, seems to demand a completing cliché. But the one Web site that seems aware of a decent copy no longer offers it.

Meanwhile, I came across this site. which I would rename Glad I Don’t.

Noon

¶ A Little Learning: Hand-wringing in the UK about making school easy for kids.

Night

¶ Harris Pat: Spooky! Fossil Darling, on the phone with me but talking to LXIV as he often does, said to his companion, “I’ve always been true to you in my fashion.” About two beats later, I heard LXIV reciting the same Cole Porter lyrics that were coming out of my mouth:

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This week’s Daily Office photos were taken last week in Carl Schurz Park, by the East River. Last week’s pictures, as I hope Friday’s would make quite clear, were taken the previous week in Santa Monica, at the Huntington Museum, and in the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.

Morning 

¶ Weekend Reading (Babies): I had a look, yesterday, at the Times Magazine for a change, intrigued, against my better judgment, by Russell Shorto’s cover story. As a piece of journalism, the piece embodies unfortunate trends in general-interest reportage, especially the whiff of apocalyptic gunsmoke (“No more European babies! No more Europeans!”) that is inevitably dissipated by gusts of common-sense exposition later on. Editors seem to like to front-load the drama and shove the useful information to the back end, whether to spare lazy readers or to reward diligent ones it’s hard to say.

Noon

¶ JVC Jazz: On Friday night, Kathleen and I went to a sold-out jazz concert at Carnegie Hall, featuring (first) Dianne Reeves and (then) Al Green.

¶ BookSaga: Down in Georgia, a fellow by the name of Perry Falwell runs an on-line bookshop. He scours the thrift shops for finds that he speeds along to interested customers. (Somebody’s got to do it, if Goodwill won’t.) His new Web log, BookSaga, is compulsively readable. I plan to stay tuned.

Night

¶ Gondry:  A few weeks ago, at brunch, a friend insisted that I rent and see Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind. This evening, I got round to it. A great, great train wreck!

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Morning

¶ Chant: What is it about Gregorian Chant? Why is it one of those things that are always, it seems, being “rediscovered”?

¶ Encyclopedia: In the Telegraph, the obituary of Wilf Gregg, a personnel manager with a sideline in murder. The late Mr Gregg co-edited The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers.

Noon

¶ Turner: The Turner show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art hasn’t formally opened yet, but I was able to take advantage of a members’ preview this afternoon. As I always do, the first time I see a show, I breezed through the galleries. I didn’t see any of the really famous late paintings, but still…

Night

¶ Civil Pleasures: My new Web site, which will replace Portico, has been launched.
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Morning

¶ Blot: Any hope that, having attained the age of reason (ie sixty), I might have grown up to be a steady, sensible man, finally, was shattered yesterday when I almost landed George and myself in the LA clink, or at least loaded us both with $200 fines.

¶ Hallelujah: While we were at breakfast, the hotel did a bit of recomputing…

Noon

¶ Unfunny: It’s Friday, but I’m not going to the movies today. What would I have seen if I’d stayed home? Not these turkeys.

Night

¶ Homebound: Time to head down to LAX and eastward. Home for breakfast! More anon…

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Morning 

¶ Oregano: Having seen Melvin Frank’s A Touch of Class when it came out, in 1973, and liked it very much, I remembered two things about the film very clearly: the assignation that Steve Blackburn (George Segal) and Vicki Allessio (Glenda Jackson) achieve during a performance of Beethoven’s Seventh, a symphony that ever since has trailed a rather unwonted allure. The other was “oreGAHno.”

Noon

¶ Apron: There’s a movie, don’t you think, in Dan Barry’s story about the West Virginia Mason who was expelled because he advocated reforms that would put an end to archaic discriminatory practices.

¶ Gidget: George Snyder — whom I hope to spend Thursday with, in Los Angeles — sent me a link to Peter Lunenfeld’s delightfully polymathic look at Gidget, in The Believer. Who knew she was Jewish?

Night

¶ Tornado: If you haven’t seen the most amazing close-up of a tornado ever, be sure to check out Lori Mehmen‘s ticket to the photographers’ hall of fame. (via JMG)
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It has become a commonplace in New York to complain that the four ladies of Sex and the City — Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda, and Samantha — are gay men in drag. I didn’t watch the HBO show often enough to be able to discuss this proposition, but I can say with certainty that it is not true of the movie. The most one could say is that the girls represent beaux idéals of gay men — but ideals acting not quite as gay men behave. It’s possible that no women behave as the Fab Four do. But it is certain that no men do.

What the girls do look like, though, is a pack of survivors from fancy private school. While Carrie and Samantha might have run into each other in the course of a wild evening (or, more likely, a not-wild evening) and become bosom buddies, Charlotte and Miranda are cut out of such different cloths that the only way for Carrie to know how to wear them would be her never knowing a reason not to — and, as we all know, Samantha prefers to wear sushi. In short, forget the Pines context and replace it with Spence. While it might be difficult to imagine someone like Samantha attending an imaginatively demanding school such as Spence, the truly amazing (not) thing about schools like Spence is that, every now and then, they just have to take on girls like Samantha. Good for everybody.

My ongoing friendship with Fossil Darling is proof that this is how it works. There is no other earthly reason for us to be on speaking terms. We have both put off going to a Blair reunion for about twenty-five years, largely because of creeping largesse.  But if and when we do finally go (and, here, I’m going to switch movies), I do hope that there won’t be some roadside smackdown in which we fight about who was the Carrie. FD’s going to be the Samantha, no question. But if he thinks he’s going to diminuendo me into a Miranda, he’s got a very flat tire in his future.

Morning

¶ Brooks: As sermons go, David Brooks’s column on the evils of encouraging consumer debt is tidily effective: it’s both frightening and obviously correct.

¶ Kakutani: One might well ask why Janet Maslin didn’t review David Sedaris’s new book for “Books of the Times.” Ms Maslin writes very creditably about crowd-pleasers; she knows that prospective readers are looking for a good time. Michiko Kakutani’s idea of a good time, however…

Noon

¶ Sex and the Lightbulbs: I still can’t believe it! Yesterday, in view of the extreme heat and a consequent overloading of the power grid, Con Ed called Yorkvillians to ask us to turn off our “energy-intensive” appliances — everything except the refrigerator. Well, this afternoon, they called back! To say that, whatever the problem was, they’d fixed it! This takes us to an entirely new level of civic cooperation — and at least three bunny hops away from Idiocracy. If I’d known about the call sooner, I’d have stayed home and cranked up the a/c — and I wouldn’t have gone to see Sex and the City. But I’m sure glad I did!

Night

¶ Remains: Reading Cara Buckley’s story about the return of Native American remains from the American Museum of Natural History to the appropriate tribal area in British Columbia, it occurred to me (not for the first time) that, if I had to identify one collection from the omnium gatherum at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that does not, to my mind, belong there, it would be the immensely popular Egyptian art — most of which centers on human remains. (more…)

Morning

¶ Permission: When Kathleen, home late last night from Washington, told me that she just wanted to forward a message from her new personal computer to the office, before going to bed, I almost begged her not to. Then I wished that I had. Finally, though, I sort of fixed the problem.

¶ Eric: One of the smartest bloggers to grace the Internet has returned, après une longue absence, as a French textbook about a fellow called John Hughes (Zhan Ãœg) put it when I was in school (it is possible that I remember this because I never read next, or any other, sentence in the book), to the Blogosphere. “And they were Sore Afraid.”

Afternoon

¶ Strange Maps: Wow! If there was ever a site for me, Strange Maps is it! (Thanks, kottke.org.)

Night

¶ Full Faith & Credit: Article IV of the US Constitution begins:

Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.

This will sound elitist, but I’d be amazed if one of this country’s three hundred million people knows what this clause means. What it means was just tested in one of our most conservative states, Virginia, and amazingly well. The justices of the Virginia Supreme Court (a state, not a federal, court) probably don’t like same-sex marriage any better than the lower judges who ruled the other, more popular way, but they do credit to their grand old man, Thomas Jefferson, a man who always seemed to know when to turn off his inbred inner bigot in favor of his outer enlightened idealist.

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Morning

¶ Marion: The Édith Piaf biopic, La Môme (La Vie en Rose), made a big Marion Cotillard fan out of me, and I set about seeing as many of her movies as I could. Her presence in Ma vie en l’air, which didn’t even make it to the United States as a video, is somewhat decorative; the movie is really about two guys who don’t want to grow up. But she brings to it a screen-goddess quality that’s reminiscent of Ava Gardner or Rita Hayworth. Unlike those divas, Marion Cotillard is a genuine actress, but, at least in this droll comedy, she’s a goddess, too. There are always a few goddesses running around, but today’s filmmakers don’t seem to know what to do with them.

¶ Newton Falls: The heartwarming story of a pluckily-revived paper mill in the middle of Nowhere, Upstate, will — ought to — make a great movie. But I wish that reporter Fernando Santos had given my inner business historian something more to work with.

Noon

¶ Exemptive: “What is the scope of the Commission’s authority to exempt?” This burning question is addressed as I write by a panel of securities lawyers that includes my dear wife. Tune in!

Night

¶ Dissertation: As the song says, “At Last.” I had a call from M le Neveu this evening. To get an idea of how unlikely it was that he would finish his dissertation — and I hasten to note that he has finished his disseration — have a look at the table entitled “Cumulative Completion Rates for Cohorts Entering 1992-4, by Fields” (scroll down a bit).
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¶ Matins: The curious thing about seeing Reprise on Friday was having seen The Four of Us on Wednesday: peas in a pod, if you ask me. A great deal of what I said about either one of these pieces works as a description of the other.

¶ Tierce: Take it from me: because I am older, I am wiser. Don’t be deceived by the fact that I’m, er, slower. Sara Reistad-Long reports.

¶ Nones: If I were young, and had the ambition that I so conspicuously lacked when I was young, I’d want to take this course, coming soon to NYU. Just imagine — that voice coming to you several times a week from the other side of the lectern.

¶ Compline: RomanHans, at World Class Stupid, is almost always very funny, but today he really tickled my funny bone. “The Hipster’s Guide to Starting a Home-Based Business.”

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¶ Matins: The latest Indiana Jones movie opened yesterday in Cannes, and here’s what BBC reviewer Mark Savage had to say:

It is a load of old nonsense, of course, but the journey is worth the price of admission.

¶ Tierce: The big story in this morning’s news is a Times study of the subway system’s elevators and escalators. If you live in New York, but don’t think that this is a big story, then you are part of the problem.

¶ Sext: It’s hardly a matter of general interest, but I’m tickled nonetheless that the Supreme Court has decided Kentucky v Davis in favor of the status quo. Municipal bonds retain tax-exempt status within issuing states.

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¶ Matins:  My idea was to mention the video that we watched this evening, after LXIV reminded us that JKM had strongly recommended it when we visited her in the place where, in the Ealing Comedy, at least, you could get a Passport to Pimlico. It’s an adorable movie, and I’ve just spent £9.95 ($100,000) on shipping to make sure that I have my very own copy of the DVD, which is not available in the U S of Movies, within the next ten minutes.

¶ Lauds: Speaking of Édouard (and this will make sense only to those of you who clicked through at Matins), I was very touched by a comment that Jérôme posted at the latest Sale Bête entry. The end of incognito?

¶ Tierce: Nice fix-it columns in the Times: Clyde Haberman on the Rockefeller Drug Laws, and Andrew Ross Sorkin on Kenneth Griffin, a hedge-fund whiz kid who thinks that Wall Street let the young ‘uns have too much fun with the car keys.

¶ Compline: Another season of  Orpheus at Carnegie ended last Saturday night. At first, I thought I wouldn’t be able to go, so I gave the tickets to LXIV. Then I could go, and he didn’t have a taker for the other ticket — and I went. But I let LXIV play host and sit in the aisle seat.

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¶ Matins: Five movies in one afternoon and evening — I tacked on Rushmore at the end. Even though I still haven’t got to the bottom of the NuLytely literbox, I’m ready for bed, and no longer hungry. The munchies passed at around nine o’clock, long before I started in on the Sauvignon Blanc.

¶ Nones: Well, that’s over — and LXIV and I celebrated with a lovely lunch afterward. Just when I was getting good at remembering Versed, they changed the anaesthetic to something called Propothal, about which I can find nothing very official on the Internet.

¶ Compline: Somehow, I managed to squeak through on the Book Review front. This week’s look, at Portico. (more…)

¶ Matins: On Saturday night, we heard the third and final concert given by Itzhak Perlman with Members of the Perlman Music Program. It was even superer than the first two.

¶ Nones: The first glass of Pineapple NuLyteley, she go down so smooth. Very faint aftertaste,  not unpleasant at all. As for the D-Minus-One Film Festival: one down, three to go. (more…)

It’s a beautiful face. The moustache, snaking from nostril to lip, looks more like makeup than something a grown man would wear, and it completes Don Ameche’s American boyishness — so vital in a movie about decadent Europeans on the eve of World War II.

Tibor Czerny — that’s Ameche’s name in this movie — has just learned that the girl he didn’t know he was crazy about until just this minute (Claudette Colbert’s Eve Peabody) is traveling around Paris using his name — prefacing it with “Baroness.” As an eighth cousin of the real Baron Czerny of Budapest, this taxidriver that Ameche’s pretending to be is “more a baron than you are a baroness,” as he will tell Eve when he tries to rain on her parade at the [John Barrymores’] weekend place at Versailles — his very next scene.

And, hey: what a smile!

Crocodiles on the Nile are green!

¶ Matins: Kathleen is off to Albany this evening, for an overnight trip. Shame about the awful weather; if it were nice, she could pretend that she was in North By Northwest. As, er, one of the extras — not Eva Marie Saint.

¶ Tierce: Today’s Metro Section (The New York Times’s regional coverage) is full of complicated stories: it’s hard to decide, not so much right from wrong, as who ought to prevail.

¶ Sext: The delightfully inimitable George Snyder writes a bit about the people in one of my very favorite pictures, which is mine, all mine — or, at least, in the neighborhood.

¶ Vespers: God, I’m complicated. Do I go to the movies tonight, and, if so, where; but, if I go tomorrow, then to which one? And what about Friday? Yikes! But here’s the deal: Roman de Gare tomorrow, at the Angelika. Then She Found Me on Friday morning, at the Sunshine.

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