Oh, dear. This picture isn’t going to do at all, not, at least, unless I come right out and confess how bogus it is. The glasses are a giveway — where are the glasses? I don’t need them, of course, because I’m not actually reading my iPad, the screen of which is dark. (Maybe that explains my frown: I can’t make any sense of a black screen. ) The picture is a pose, taken to illustrate this very entry. Gee, I’m good at looking natural! The picture makes even me feel a little uncertain. It’s as though I’m reading my latest report card, and finding it wanting.

What the picture was supposed to convey was the pleasure of reading things on an iPad — which, as I say, it’s no surprise this isn’t, since I’m not actually reading the iPad, only pretending. At first, I was just going to write a note to my friend Jean Ruaud, the author of one of the first Web logs that I began following back in 2004, before I had my own. Jean just celebrated nine years of  blogging, an anniversary that puts him well ahead of the pack. By the time I tuned in, Jean was on his second blog, Douze lunes. He doesn’t say just how long Mnémoglyphes has been going, and I’m the last person in the world to ask. But it has been going for “many years.” Even if you can’t read a word of French, you ought to have a look at the stunning photograph that illustrates his anniversary entry, “Neuf ans.”

I was going to write to Jean, but I decided to write to you as well; isn’t that what blogs are for? This afternoon, for the first time, I caught up on Mnémoglyphes in the comfort of my favorite reading chair. Instead of craning my neck at a computer screen, I held Jean’s texts in my hands exactly as I would have done had they’d been published in a magazine. When I wanted to check a word in the dictionary — Jean is far too gifted a writer for me to settle on getting the general drift of what he is talking about — I set down the iPad exactly as I should have set down a book. It was all quite pleasant and civilized, and — I know I’m repeating myself but this point cannot be trumpeted too loudly in these early days — I was in no hurry to get to the end of the piece. The act of reading HTML has been humanized, at long last, by Apple’s invention. The only people to complain will be people who aren’t very serious readers — by which I mean, of course, readers for pleasure.

As the photograph above so beautifully illustrates.

Possibly because Michael Caine referred repeatedly to Gran Torino in a recent Talk of the Town item, I expected Harry Brown to be a very different picture from the one that I saw this afternoon. The actual movie is far more interesting, more engaging, and even more beautiful. It was vastly less noisy and explosive, and there was none of that “Make my day!” fury that Clint Eastwood gives off like the heat of a sun-baked sedan. The first third — perhaps the first half — of Harry Brown is extraordinarily quiet, right out there with the meditations of Ingmar Bergman for contained feelings.

Harry Brown becomes a widower early in the movie; a daughter died years ago, in childhood. Harry’s only companion is Len Attwell (David Bradley), another resident of the council estate that has seen better days and that has been terrorized by thugs and drugs. Lynn, whose flat overlooks the subway (underpass) entrance where the boys hang out, has evidently had more than a few rude encounters, culminating in a smoky blob of burning matter pushed through his letterbox. Len tries to enlicit Harry’s support in an unspecified bit of vigilantism, but Harry very calmly tells Len that, when he got married, he boxed up his memories of serving in the Royal Marines in Ulster, and is no longer a fighting man. Exasperated, Len assaults the gang with a bayonet. He does not survive the incident. Harry finds out when DI Alice Frampton (Emily Mortimer) and DS Terry Hicock (Charlie Creed-Miles) pay a call.

The dreariness of these scenes is visually unrelieved, but it is redeemed by Harry’s palpable mindfulness, and by Alice’s not very hopeful conviction that the police ought to do a better job of protecting people like Len. (Alice’s personal gravity makes her almost unsuitable for police work — one can imagine Helen Mirren’s Jane Tennison losing her patience with this woman.) The camera shots are so beautifully composed that they transfigure the sepia-toned environment in which Harry spends his days and nights. Mr Caine is at times part of this decor; his eyes, once scornful pits in a smooth face, brim with a vitality that has nothing to do with “twinkling.”

The violence, once it starts, is both thrillingly imaginative and wholly unpredictable. Suffice it to say that Harry knows how to unbox what he learned in the marines with thorough dispatch.

¶ Matins: The plight of Cynthia Norton, 52, sometime star secretary, currently unable to find anything better than Wal-Mart, is ably captured in Catherine Rampell’s Times story, “In Job Market Shift, Some Workers Are Left Behind.”

¶ Lauds: At WSJ, Marc Myers writes about the model jazz widow, Laurie Pepper. She’s not alone; you can read about Dexter Gordon’s widow, Maxine, not to mention Sue Mingus. (via Arts Journal)

¶ Prime: Hilarious: Five “new action items” for Lloyd Blankfein to keep in mind, courtesy of “trader” Michael Lewis. (Bloomberg; via Zero Hedge)

¶ Tierce: Philips has unveiled the “World’s First LED Replacement for Most Common Bulb.” With luck, it will be in stores toward the end of this year. (Inhabitat; via Felix Salmon)

¶ Sext: A partial account of the production of “Issue Zero” of 48 Hour Magazine — partial because the author, Lois Beckett, one of the magazine’s editors, took time off to sleep, have a life. (SF Weekly; via Snarkmarket)

¶ Nones: Robert Parry’s exposé of the shell game that Rev Sun Myung Moon played so well for decades, but that’s falling apart now that he’s too old to play, is certifiably cranky, but fascinating withal. A very long read — perfect for your iPad. (consortiumnews.com; via MetaFilter, The Morning News)

¶ Vespers: We missed Kirsty Logan’s Millions droll piece on reasons for not reading books in her own library, so we’re grateful to Michael Berger, at The Rumpus, for tipping us off. 

¶ Compline: The super thing, in our view, about Frederic Filloux’s sketch of “Profitable Long Form Journalism” — inspired by his experience so far with the iPad — is that it doesn’t involve advertising. He has the idea of aggregating news stories into e-books. (Monday Note)

The more I watch An Education, the stronger my conviction becomes that, in a virtual galaxy of great performances — great performances — the most interesting thing about the movie, for me, is Rosamund Pike’s Helen. Nick Hornby’s script is always trying to get a laugh in at Helen’s expense, but Lone Scherfig’s direction propels the character along another line altogether, one that Ms Pike proves to be supremely gifted at realizing. The actress usually plays conventionally sharp girls, but, in Helen, Ms Pike triumphs as a bimbo who feels real pity for people with brains. What is the point of brains? she asks at every turn. And the people with brains don’t have an answer.

An Education is set in the early Sixties, since which time people of all kinds — those with surabundant brains as well as those with none — have been posing Helen’s challenge. What is the use of brains? Aside from a small patch of possibility that has been consecrated to the engineers who build airplanes and power plants, the ground has not been congenial to intellect. As if to prove the man-in-the-street’s skepticism about smart people, smart people spent a big chunk of the postwar period on something called Theory. Given a choice between Helen’s anti-intellectualism and Theory, I know which lesser evil I’d choose.

Let me be the first to confess that I don’t know how to talk to people who have no interest in brains. But let me also insist that I regard this as a terrible personal failing, and one that is perhaps fatally widespread among bright people. Why do I think that the Helens of the world are right to doubt the utlity of anything that I have to say? Simple: I’ve never made an effort to sympathise with their longing for straightforward certainty. It’s true that I don’t want “straightforward certainty” for myself, but to make a point of that difference is thick-headed. I’m certain — functionally — of a lot of things, and if I could hook that confidence up to my ability to speak with honest reassurance, I just might quell the anxieties of someone otherwise prone to mistake my curiosity for mercurial inconstancy.

The deep scandal of it all is that, although I’ve an imposing presence, I can squeak like a footnote, which only makes my size ridiculous. Like bright people everywhere since the end of World War II, I’m preoccupied by the need to say exactly what I think, no matter how many tedious qualifications this involves. The Helens of this world are not going to listen to me until I show myself to be more interested in talking to them than I am in getting the message just right. The minute I persuade them to listen to me, it won’t matter whether I’ve stated the message absolutely correctly. They’ll get what I’m driving at even if I can’t put it into words.

¶ Matins: From the introduction to Ian Buruma’s new book, Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents, a long view that’s a call for calm. (Princeton University Press; via 3 Quarks Daily)

¶ Lauds: Nige writes about a show at the National Gallery (London) that’s the very best sort of treat: “compact, illuniating about an artist I barely knew, and full of remarkable paintings.” In this case, the painter is Christen Købke of Denmark (1810-1848). (Nigeness)

¶ Prime: In “Small Businesses Get a Little More Optimistic,” David Indiviglio checks out “the engine of the US economy” — responsible for 70% of American job creation.

¶ Tierce: Out of more than 12,000 medical articles on the subject of food allergies, published between 1988 and 2009, only 72 satisfied the rigorous criteria devised by a federally commissioned study. As a result, it’s likely that only about 8% of adults (and 5% of children) who are thought to have food allergies actually do. The authors of the study especially want to restore the difference between a food intolerance (which can lead to discomfort but not much more) and a genuine allergy. (NYT)

¶ Sext: At The Bygone Bureau, Alice Stanley reports on Zynga addiction in the heartland, and finds that it’s contagious. She caught it from her boss, the manager of a college pub who plays Café World.  

¶ Nones: Here’s a deal to keep your eyes on: Charlapally Central Jail, outside Hyderabad, has  been chosen for a pilot project in which prisoners will do back-office work (data entry and such) for outsourced businesses. (BBC News)

¶ Vespers: Laura Miller ventures an essay on the uses and pleasures of bad writing. (Salon; via 3 Quarks Daily)

¶ Compline: The artistic vandal known as Poster Boy (Henry Matyjewics) has been sentenced to eleven months in jail, pretty much for just plain screwing up. Not for defacing subway advertisements! (WSJ; via Felix Salmon)

Allow me to apologize for failing to file a midnight entry yesterday. I was too tired up to write up anything of general interest, and everything that I had done during the day had involved a member of my immediate family on personal terms. While I don’t want to suggest any crises or deep disturbances, the day was fairly intense — which is why I was too tired to think my way around the problem of not being able to write a diary entry without violating the privacy of others.

Even Will. When Will was an infant, I felt free to project all sorts of meaning upon his expressions, knowing full well that I was indulging in sheer fantasy. But Will is not an infant anymore — even if he can’t sit up or crawl. He’s a little fellow with a rapidly expanding personality. He’s just going to have to keep his own blog.

This isn’t to say that everything he does is off-limits. But the ordinary stuff more or less is.

Happily, today was filled with fit-to-print events. If only they were interesting! The Aeron chair that I bought on Monday was delivered by Sam Flax at about three this afternoon. At first, sitting in it, here at the desk, simply felt different — almost disappointingly so. Even when the chair had been adjusted to suit my frame, it was more unusual than pleasant. Only later, when I sat down to write the Daily Office, did I realize how comfortable it is, and how uncomfortable all my working chairs have been up to now. In my late teens, I had a crush on eighteenth-century style that made electric lamps “impossible.” I got over that fairly quickly. But my devotion to Enlightenment seating was protracted to unenlightened lengths.

So far as capital-e Ease is concerned, the new chair is just about as welcoming as my bed, and for the first time ever I’m in no hurry to finish what I’m doing and escape the desk. Who knows what prose-style improvements the Herman Miller classic will wreak.

Quatorze had dropped by to help me with the chair, and we took care of a few other things. After the delivery, I made a pot of tea. Then Quatorze headed for the West Side while I turned north, on a round of shopping errands. The weather, cool and wet, didn’t bother me while I was out in it, but the moment I entered the building I felt damply soiled. Cleaned up and in fresh clothes, I was a new man.

At the moment (I’m writing a bit early this evening, just to be sure that I write at all), two chunks of veal shank are simmering in broth and mirepoix. I’ve had a bad record with jarrets de veau this winter, buying the meat with no particular meal in mind, freezing it, and then defrosting it on uncertain afternoons, only to shove the package into the refrigerator because I was too tired to cook the contents. Inevitably, spoilage would ensue. I was very tempted to repeat this sorry tale this evening; I was late getting into the kitchen, and we won’t be eating until the verge of eleven. If nothing else, however, the apartment is filled with an appetizing fragrance.

¶ Matins: The easy part: Tea Partiers take control of Colorado’s Republican Party nominating process and rewrite Maine’s GOP Platform. (Slate)

¶ Lauds: Joan Ackerman profiles John Williams, one of the giants of film-score composition — and father of some kids down the street when she was growing up in Westwood. (Boston.com; via Arts Journal)

¶ Prime: Are you an Asker or a Guesser? According to Oliver Burkeman — “This Column Will Change Your Life” — It doesn’t really matter, so long as you know which sort of person you, and the people around you, are. Nobody likes to be denied, but Askers are a lot more comfortable with “no” than Guessers are. (Guardian; via Marginal Revolution)

¶ Tierce: What makes some people faithful spouses? Maybe it’s a “fidelity” gene. But we think that Arthur Aron, out at Stony Brook, has the right answer: “self-expansion.” Commitment is not a problem if you feel that you owe your happiness to your partner. (NYT)

¶ Sext: Julia Ioffe profiles Chatroulette inventor Andrey Ternovskiy. He’s a computer genius, of course, but he got his inspirational start from working at a gift shop, aimed at foreign tourists, called “Russian Souvenirs.” Even the fact that Andrey’s uncle owned the shop couldn’t save him as a salesman. (The New Yorker)

¶ Nones: From a BBC Q & A about the United Kingdom’s governing coalition, an outline of “key priorities.” (BBC News)

¶ Vespers: A very agreeable vision of the future of the book is on view at Three Percent, where Chad Post writes about the Cahiers Series, beautifully-made books that ring variations on the theme of translation, “understood in very broad terms.” But enough about the texts; these are books to show off.

¶ Compline: Reputation and Humiliation in the Age of Facebook: at WSJ, Jeffrey Zaslow quotes a consultant who predicts a massive case against an ISP, “for spreading malicious gossip.” Meanwhile, at Indiana University, Lanier Holt beings a course in “The Principles of Public Relations” with a surprise. (via MetaFilter)

¶ Matins: In our view, no one has better captured the nature of the new American populism better than Mark Lilla has just done in “Tea Party Jacobins.” We could not agree more, that the American elite, preoccupied with getting its message just right, has almost completely forgotten how to lead. (NYRB)

¶ Lauds: Ingrid Rowland writes about Luca Signorelli’s Apocalypse, in Orvieto cathedral. As Ms Rowland reminds us, this is an unusual theme in Italian art. Orvieto’s recent history (in 1499) may explain Signorelli’s assignment. “The city’s official governor was none other than Cesare Borgia.” The cycle’s anti-Semitism, however, reflected a newly heightened hostility. (NYRBlog)

¶ Prime: Why Not: Steve Tobak’s “5 Marketing Lessons From SNL’s Betty White Show.” Aside from the third item on the list (stressing the importance of strong content), Mr Tobak’s advice seems to boil down to “intelligent recycling.” Nothing wrong with that. (The Corner Office)

¶ Tierce: In an essay about the neurobiology of patience, Jonah Lehrer explains why transcranial magnetic stimulation is superior to functional magnetic resonance imaging. (But we still get a headache thinking about undergoing these experiments.)

¶ Sext: Chris Lehmann (who admits to trawling Forbes’s Web site for “Rich People Things” material) extends his eyeglass in the direction of “investment guru” and Friend-of-Bono  Roger McNamee, and shares one of the worst technological predictions since you yourself said, “Why would I need a computer/iPad?”

¶ Nones: A report on Belgium, currently without a government, in the Guardian. As we’ve noted before, the thorniest aspect of Belgian separatism is Brussels, an artificially (but none the less actually) francophone city in the middle of Flanders. Were Brussels in the south of Belgium (Wallonia), the country could peacefully go the way of Czechoslovakia. (via Arts Journal)

¶ Vespers: At The Millions, Sophie Chung  writes about how reading Chekhov will make you not only a better person but a better writer.

¶ Compline: Frank Rich is lustily indignant about MSNBC’s indecent non-coverage of last week’s Time Square bomb attempt. (NYT)

Has it really been twenty years (or more!) since Ken Ludwig’s farce, Lend Me A Tenor, premiered on Broadway? I saw it twice, back then, once with Kathleen, and once with Megan, who was still in high school at the time. Megan remembers going, but not much more than that; and, seeing it again, this past Saturday night, I wonder what I was thinking she would make of it. I couldn’t begin to answer that question.

I didn’t remember too much of the play myself. I’d forgotten, for example, that Philip Bosco played the impresario who, in Stanley Tucci’s revival, is played by the wonderful Tony Shalhoub. Nor did I recall that J Smith Cameron played the ingénue. All I remembered was that, due to this and that mishap, a retiring young doormat of a man steps in for an ailing Italian tenor and tastes triumph as Verdi’s Otello. I wasn’t entirely sure that the ailing Italian tenor ever showed up. So Lend Me A Tenor was pretty fresh for me on Saturday night.

I like to think that Kathleen and I would have seen the revival anyway, and for the very same reason that drew the attention of our friends Judy and Curt, who were visiting from Greater Tryon. They were here for the weekend because Judy had tickets for Lulu at the Met. That was strange enough; stranger still, Judy enjoyed it — which goes to show how more genuinely musical she is than I am. (The very idea of seeing Lulu again gives me a sharp ice-cream headache.) Curt wasn’t having any of the opera, certainly, but he was game for a show or two, and Judy settled on Lend Me A Tenor because she wanted to see Jan Maxwell on stage — the Broadway stage.

For Judy had seen Ms Maxwell in a couple of productions way back in college. Both ladies hail from Fargo, North Dakota; for the matter of that, so, technically does Curt, who, until he was three years old, lived across the street from the Maxwells. (That has a decidedly G&S vibe to it, don’t you think? Something about “a twelvemonth old”…) Years ago, Kathleen and I went to see My Old Lady, because Sian Philips was starring in it; it may have been then that Judy mentioned, long distance, that she’d heard that Jan Maxwell, also in that show, was doing well on and off Broadway. Indeed. We’ve seen Ms Maxwell in at least half a dozen things since then, including, most recently, To Be Or Not To Be and The Royal Family. Now, at least, Judy and Curt can say that they’ve seen their old neighbor once — an experience that is unlikely to be repeated in Greater Tryon.

Jan Maxwell had the role that Tovah Feldshuh originated, the Italian tenor’s Italian wife. One of the meta-jokes in the farce is that Tito and Maria fight hammer and tongs in heavily accented English, never uttering a word of Italian that a Broadway audience wouldn’t comprehend. “Come-a outta here so I can keel you!” cries Maria toward the end. Ms Maxwell has been nominated for a Tony, and the photograph that usually accompanies this news shows her jumping up and down on a bed. It’s a very funny scene, and it is no figure of speech to say that she throws herself into it. But you can still tell that Ms Maxwell is an actress capable of the richest Chekhovian implications.

The play’s biggest joke, of course, is that merely donning a costume and painting your face to look like the Moor of Venice can quell your fears of being a ninety-eight-pound weakling and instill a worldly swagger. Justin Bartha made the transformation seem miraculous. As the impresario’s fretful go-fer, he was the compleat angular geek, a sonata in suspenders. But when he suavely cooed “Sure” and “Why not?” to people who, instead of seeing through his deception, took him for Tito Morelli, his voice assumed a gigolo’s unction.

Anthony LaPaglia brought to Tito Morelli’s part the build and demeanor of a Chicago gangster — a wildly successful contribution. It is Tito’s misfortune to spend the second act in flight from the police — don’t ask — but Mr LaPaglia’s tenor was not the man to let anxieties about being captured interfere with the attractions of a bodaceous leading lady who, under the mistaken impression that she has just played Desdemona to his Otello, wants to know if she was “good.” The ensuing misunderstanding is taken directly from the archives of farce, but it’s in the nature of farce to shine brightest when utterly familiar, even predictable material is brought to life by fresh actors. Jennifer Laura Thompson made a boffo and very “professional” soprano.

Mary Catherine Garrison is well on the way to becoming Broadway’s go-to ingénue, which means that her sweet heart is innocent, doe-like, and unaware in a way that brings Jean Harlow to mind. (Not very.) As Maggie, momentarily concerned that she may have had intimate relations with a lunatic,  Ms Garrison let out the  most blood-curdling scream that has ever shot into the legitimate theatre’s ether without having been prompted by a serial killer. We encourage this very talented actress to fly her freak flag early and often.

The problem with Tony Shalhoub’s performance, predictably, was that it called Stanley Tucci to mind. In the earlier phases of my dotage, I’ll be certain to tell people that I loved seeing Mr Tucci in the role of Saunders, the impresario from Central Casting. Kathleen will gently remind me that Mr Tucci never appeared on stage in any role. Oh yes, I’ll remember; it was Tony Shalhoub — Stanley Tucci’s younger, straighter twin. Saunders, modeled on Oscar Jaffe, from Twentieth Century, is an egomaniac whose brush with disaster stirs our sympathy. If Lend Me A Tenor has a fault, it’s that our sympathy quickly runs to the two men in Otello costumes whom Saunders is trying to control. They barge around a Cleveland hotel suite, up against impossible challenges. We shouldn’t want Saunders just to get out of their way, but we do.

After the theatre, our party of six high-tailed it up Eighth Avenue to Pigalle, where we tucked into what I hope will turn out to be Fossil’s latest dinner of the year. It was 12:30 when we dispersed, and the days when that hour was the beginning of the evening for Fossil are long over. But he and Quatorze were indispensable ingredients in the evening’s fun, and they’ve become great pals with Judy and Curt. So much so that, while we had the Tryonesians to brunch the next morning, Fossil and Quatorze took them to Fairway for dinner. It doesn’t get more New York than eating in the doyen of Gotham grocery stores — seriously. After all, Fairway is a Broadway theatre. 

Over the weekend, I’m told, my grandson passed a developmental milestone of sorts. Seeing an iPad at a neighboring restaurant table on Saturday, he demonstrably reached for it. At some further milestone, Will will realize that not every iPad belongs to him. For the moment, though, he wants things that aren’t being dangled in front of him. He does love playing with the iPad — if “playing” is the word. He never looks so serious otherwise. He makes me think of Churchill scowling over maps in the Cabinet War Rooms.

On Sunday, Will’s mom enjoyed her first Mother’s Day. Now I feel really old.

What happened to The Aesthete — the author of The Aesthete’s Lament? Out of the blue, she bid a grateful sayonara to her readers on Thursday — and then proceeded to take her site down, so that there’s nothing to link to now for those who weren’t following The Aesthete’s Lament‘s feeds. People get tired of blogging all the time, but they don’t, as a rule, dismantle their sites right away.

Was The Aesthete a man or a woman? The real question, of course, is why anybody cared. The importance of The Aesthete’s Lament is, at least at the moment, best captured by the difficulty of summarizing its mission. To say that it was devoted to “traditional” interior design would be awfully wrong-footed, because one of the things that the site’s series of white-on-white interiors demonstrated was a yearning for the modern, but on terms of comfort that Modernism disdained. The Aesthete had a view of household decor that was every bit as personally seasoned as those of the famous designers whose work she covered.

But The Aesthete did not stop there. There were pictures of her home, of a dining room in progress, of prettily -laid tables in holiday candlelight. We thought that these entries, combined with The Aesthete’s anonymity, were a mistake. They excited a perhaps lamentable but utterly inevitable curiosity about the author’s gender. Word filtered down, from authoritative sources, that The Aesthete was a woman, but the intensity of interest in clarifying this matter was a itself sign of sensed instability. Certainly, The Aesthete’s references to her husband, and even those to her daughter, supported the leaked wisdom. On the other hand, there were confusing images, such as the following celebration of a birthday. It is possible that the child in the photograph is a girl, but it’s a possibility that demands a lot of explanation. It’s possible that The Aesthete was once upon a time the toddler on the floor alongside this little fellow (not shown). But the entry is a frigate of ambiguity.

What difference it makes, whether The Aesthete is a man or woman, is a matter for discussion some other time; for the moment, we’ll content ourselves with stating what seems to be obvious, which is that, for better or worse, human beings want to know whether they’re listening to men or women: it does make a difference. More particularly, readers interested in interior design, a subject that most men dismiss (to their detriment) as womanly, but also one that few women write about, understand that the observations that men make are seasoned by a struggle that simply doesn’t present itself to women. What a woman has to say about a white-on-white drawing room is not, in the end, equivalent to a man’s judgment of the matter. Neither opinion is inherently superior — superiority is not the point — but both have been shaped by very different pains and struggles. And that gives what The Aesthete has to say about, exempla gratia, the wit and wisdom of Van Day Truex a gender-specific point that is baffled rather than muffled by anonymity.

It’s impossible to dissociate this identity murk from the hunch that the sudden shutdown (more than a mere abandonment) of the site was somehow related to a short-circuit in the expectations that The Aesthete had allowed anonymous blogging to mourish.

¶ Matins: Bart Centre of New Hampshire is candid about his motivation in starting up the  service that he calls Eternal Earth-Bound Pets, which promises care for pets left behind by the Raptured. (Bloomberg; via 3 Quarks Daily)

¶ Lauds: Our favorite baritone in the whole world, Thomas Meglioranza, is interviewed by Linda Richter, at Classical Singer. We can’t give you any music here, but we can call attention to Tom’s superb diction, which makes everything that he sings a story.

¶ Prime: Here’s hoping that Jon Meacham is cheered by Felix Salmon’s good reasons to buy Newsweek from the Post Co.

¶ Tierce: The fascinating thing about Jonah Lehrer’s piece on underdogs, and why we root for them, concerns referees, who quite conspicuously don’t! It appears that referees are stoked by cheering crowds.

¶ Sext: At The Awl, Graham Beck rather impudently compares his whiskey chocolate chili to Picasso’s most recently-sold painting.

¶ Nones: The Economist puts it very well, with a starkly unflattering picture of the Greek political system that joining the Euro zone may have put to an end. (via The Morning News)

¶ Vespers: John Self not only writes about but displays the ten volumes of Penguin’s Central European Classics series. What a delightful reading list to polish off all once, if only one were still in school. In particular, Mr Self has been reading Slawomir Mrozek’s The Elephant.

¶ Compline: Catherine Lutz talks about her book, Carjacked: The culture of the Automobile and Its Effect on Our Lives, with Melissa Lafsky, at The Intrastructurist. One point that’s hammered home nicely: there’s really nothing you can do that’s anywhere near as dangerous as driving around in a car.

The old régime

Although I never tried to write anything today (except of course the Daily Office, and this), I am very happy with this day-to-myself. There were minor worries and annoyances — a credit card has been compromised (but not so badly that I can’t continue to use it until the replacement arrives), and the tower computer has shown a few troubling signs of systemic instability.

And I suppose I ought to note that nothing very amusing happened. I was delighted by the job that Morning Calm (our wonderful neighborhood framer) made of some old prints that Kathleen grew up with, and that badly needed refreshing, but in mitigation there was a complete lack of ideas about where to hang the things. I ran over to the gallery while Jason was here (see “instability,” above), and picked up the dinner menu on my way home. Am I pleased with the day in spite of these humble doings or because of them? It’s hard to say, because it’s a mixture of both.

I played a round of Dwindling Lump, the fascintating household storage game. A large shopping bag full of clean, empty bottles gave way to a decidedly less voluminous box-full 0f miscellaneous kitchen doodads. The doodads were evicted from a bin to make room for baking supplies (extracts, Karo, and other things that are not wanted in everyday cooking), so that the empty bottles could have the baking supplies’ (rather inappropriate) place in the kitchen. The point of the game of Dwindling Lump is that the detritus that remains unplaced at the end of each round takes up fewer cubic feet . I am approaching zero with a zest that laughs Zeno’s paradox to scorn.

What really happened today was the decision to mount a new site, www.dailyblaguereader.com, designed expressly to be read on an iPad. The content will be the same, but the look and feel will be vastly simpler than that of The Daily Blague proper. No blogroll, no “Categories.” No comments. In important ways, the new DB won’t be a blog at all. It will be the functional equivalent, really, of the pseudo-blog that I created toward the end of the summer of 2004, when I was wrestling with the question, “Do I need a blog?”  

The genesis of the new site condensed in the course of a conversation with Steve Laico, the man who makes my sites real. I’d scheduled the phone meeting because I felt that a talk was in order, but I had no idea of what I was going to say. I knew that I wanted to do something in the way of iPad-specific design, but the particulars didn’t emerge until the conversation was well underway.

So, in case anyone is interested down the road, today is “when it happened.” The actual launch of the new site won’t be what matters. It may be that, as has often happened before, I’m uselessly ahead of the times. Great idea, but no takers yet. I don’t think so, though. I write for readers, and, as a reader, I can see that the iPad nothing less than rescues the whole business of reading from the personal computer.

Not that I’ll ever write a single entry for any of my sites on an iPad. We will all continue to work at our computers. We just won’t use them for reading.

¶ Matins: At The Economist, a report on the social nature of television watching. The piece shows why “there is little to suggest that television is growing a long tail of niche interests.” The implication is that people watch television largely because other people watch television. This is heartening news, in its way — if people didn’t believe that they were participating in some sort of group pastime, they wouldn’t watch television. But it also contributes to the pile of explanations why really good television programming will always be vaninishingly rare. (via Arts Journal)

¶ Lauds: Peter Plagens offers a list of “ten things to think about regarding” the record-breaking sale of a 1964 Picasso painting the other day. (ARTicles)

¶ Prime: We were wondering when Felix Salmon would get round to dicing the Buffett/Deal Book piece to which we alluded yesterday in this space.

¶ Tierce: Philip Ball suggests that proponents of “Intelligent Design” familiarize themselves with the work of evolutionary geneticist John Avise. “What a shoddy piece of work is man.” (Nature; via 3 Quarks Daily)

¶ Sext: At Sparksheet, an intereview with Blake Eskin, the Web editor of The New Yorker. As long-time subscribers, we feel that we’re in good hands. (via The Rumpus)

¶ Nones: Good grief! In the middle of everything that’s going on in the world today, the leaders of nations belonging to the Unasur bloc (a counter-US South American treaty organization) won’t play show up at the EU-Latin America summit if Honduran president Porfirio Lobo attends. It’s amazing that there’s still any life in this story. (BBC News)

¶ Vespers: The Rumpus at its best: Kevin Evers writes about a drolly meta book, From Old Notebooks, in which Evan Lavender-Smith assembles a miscellany of thoughts about writing his first book. Which of course the miscellany becomes.

¶ Compline: Researcher Paul Bloom’s sketch of an investigation at Yale into the moral nature of very small children makes for fascinating reading, but it’s the conclusions drawn at the end that make this preview from the coming weekend’s issue of the Times Magazine a must-read.

For thirteen years, I have been taking taxis up First Avenue from the Lower East Side — Planet Megan. Imagine my surprise when, on a recent uptown lurch, the cab driver chose not to scoot through the stoplight-free tunnels in front of the United Nations complex. For the first time ever. I can’t say that the surface route was any slower, really, but the idea that we might be stopped made me fret. Not so much, though, that I didn’t catch a glimpse of the modernist monument that the United Nations has occupied for just about as long as I’ve been alive. Until now, that is; the organization has decamped so that the sixty year-old forum of international harmony can be given a new lease.

Driving by, instead of below, the front of the United Nations was this taxi ride’s second novelty. The first was a trip down East Fifth Street, which, west of Loisaida Avenue, is a cul de sac. A rather Jacobean-looking public school on Avenue B appears to have been  blocking Fifth Street since long before the United Nations was even dreamed of. Dead ends, common as dirt elsewhere in the United States, are quite unusual in Manhattan. Indeed, unless stopped, I am going to seek fame and fortune by researching a coffee-table book on the subject (lavishly illustrated). I’m going to call it Culs de Cons. I have never been able to fix the meaning of those two rather nasty French word in my mind, so it seems only sanitaire to repe them into the same title, where I can keep them out of trouble. 

Update: To the contrary notwithstanding, I heretofore nominate this entry as Most Desperate of 2010. It’s only May, I know, but, sometimes, you can just tell from the smell. 

¶ Matins: At the National Journal, Jonathan Rauch writes about a phenomenon that we highlight every time it comes up: Red state families make adults; blue state adults make families. (via MetaFilter)

¶ Lauds: Andrew Alpern has donated his collection of 700 works by Edward Gorey to Columbia University — which had better mount a show! (via NYT, Arts Journal)

¶ Prime: Andrew Ross Sorkin wonders if Warren Buffett has it right about the SEC action against Goldman Sachs. (NYT)

¶ Tierce: Inevitably, “auties” argue that they are different, not damaged. Who wants to be a dumb old neurotypical, anyway? (New Scientist)

¶ Sext: Fashion marketers are slow to grasp the New iPad Order: their Web sites, dependent on Adobe Flash, don’t play on the Apple screen. We take this as proof positive that the iPad is indeed the device with which most people will connect to the Internet. (PSFK; via kottke.org, The Morning News)

¶ Nones: The polluted northern Chinese city of Datong, remembering that it was briefly the Ming capital, is rebuilding its city walls, complete with watchtowers every 200 meters. (BBC News)

¶ Vespers: At The Millions, Colin Marshall explores the strange but magisterial fiction of Kobo Abe (1924-1993).

¶ Compline: Chris Lehmann skewers Nancy Hass for boo-hooing about the death of couture. Plus ça change, baby! (The Awl)

There’s a first for eveything: saying this is how we package experiences that we’d never imagined.

I went to Carnegie Hall this evening to hear an Orpheus Chamber Orchestra concert, the last of the season. The beautiful performances were not, as you can well imagine, the new experience. On the program were Stravinsky’s Octet for winds, Bruch’s First (and only famous) Violin Concerto, and Beethoven’s Second. If you have to ask, “Second what?”, send me an email.

There were two new experiences, although they were both of one kind. In the first, I listened to Stravinsky’s very playful chamber music as if my grandson Will were on my knee. Rationally, I understand that the music would not have appealed to any four month-old baby. Stravinsky did a good job of tempting me to think otherwise. Even Kathleen thought so.

Then, at beginning of the slow movement of the Bruch, Ryu Goto’s stroke of firm crescendo was as gentle as my grandson’s skin. That is really what I thought as I heard the sound — a first in my long history of responses to music. Skin!

If Orpheus’s performance of Beethoven’s Second failed to rouse any reminders of Will, that’s undoubtedly because I’d had a very early lunch, and nothing to eat since. Just at the time when I’d ordinarily be enjoying an afternoon snack, I was in a taxi bound for Will’s house in Alphabet City. His father was taking his first business trip qua pops, and his mother, I thought, could use a few moments of supporting staff. So I popped into a taxi, in tie and blazer, daring to be spit up upon (Will rose to the challenge!), and spent an hour with mother and child before heading uptown. I was so freaked about the uncertainty of snagging taxis that I arrived and departed early. I’m sure that I was of no real help to Megan at all. I’ll try to make up for that tomorrow.

But “they can’t take that away from me”: the memory of a smile that makes life not so much worth living as simply imperative.

¶ Matins: At Surprisingly Free, Jerry Ellig observes that taking procedural shortcuts (resorting to “fast tracks”) can lure regulatory rule-makers into carelessness. He urges the FTC, which may be given enforcement power over online firms, not to repeat the errors of the FCC’s recent “net neutrality” fiasco. 

¶ Lauds: Lauren Wissot loves Enron — the musical. In spite of itself. (The House Next Door)

¶ Prime: At the Times, Dan Bilefsky and Landon Thomas present a lucid explanation of why the proposed Greek bailout is unlikely to make anybody happy.

¶ Tierce: Hugo Mercier reports on a study showing that, to soccer players at least, there’s something more important than scoring points. (International Cognition and Culture Institute; via The Morning News)

¶ Sext: John Hargrave tests his VISA card’s concierge service. (Not surprisingly, this “service” helps cardholders spend more money.) It’ll be interesting to see how long this sort of thing is tolerated: (The Blog of Tim Ferriss; via The Morning News)

¶ Nones: How do you feel about Jonestown tourism? Good idea? Not so much? (NYT)

¶ Vespers: Maud Newton celebrates her blog’s eighth anniversary by offering a tour d’horizon of today’s better bookish blogs. She also notes a spot of fatigue.

¶ Compline: At The Bygone Bureau, staff members contribute to a collection of cooking-disaster stories that are not so much sidesplitting as illuminating: what does cooking look like to people who don’t really cook?