Daily Office Monday
Descending to Eli’s — many of Manhattan’s best food markets are in basements.
¶ Matins: JR has been writing bits and pieces about one of his favorite brasseries, the Nord-Sud in the 18ième; now he has posted a couple of photographs.
¶ Tierce: Morning Hash: In Bob Tedeschi’s story, “After Suicide, Blog Insults Are Debated,” the Times aims for excitement but winds up stripping the story of much-needed perspective.
¶ Vespers: “Ribaldry and lightheadedness” — what’s that in Hebrew? Yiddish? Somehow, these terms of art didn’t make it into the King James Version. But then Hasidism hadn’t been invented yet, had it.
Oremus…
§ Matins. There are, alas, no brasseries in Yorkville — although I’ll bet that Café d’Alsace, with its special line in exotic brews, could qualify.
On Friday — was was still February, but only technically, since it was also the day after 28 February — the rich atmospheric moisture reminded me of mornings in the country when I would look at the sad muddy garden beds with a newly twinkling eye. It’s as though the air were not only perfumed but clotted by whatever it is that makes plants grow.
Looking forward to spring is all that’s getting me through this wretched cold. It’s not the worst cold that I’ve ever had, but the congestion has proved to be cruelly resistant to nighttime cold remedies (ie NyQuil). When I wake up, my mouth feels like an improperly cleaned concrete mixer.
§ Tierce. Sometimes, it seems to me that the Times does not know its audience. Is an article in the Monday Business Section, which for years now has focused on media and Internet issues, written for the newspaper’s general readers, or is it a news flash intended for “industry insiders”? The latter, presumably, already knew who Paul Tilley was. Mr Tilley jumped out the window in a Chicago hotel and plunged over twenty storeys to his death, possibly humiliated by attacks at two leading advertising blogs.Â
At the time, he was “the creative director of DDB Chicago.” We could start by spelling out what that means, in today’s corporatized ad world. Are we to care about Mr Tilley simply because his suicide might have been “triggered” by hostility in the Blogosphere? In that case, we’re reading the wrong newspaper. At the Times, the story ought to be of interest only because of Mr Tilley’s professional status. We’re told that he “oversaw teams that created” some apparently well-known ad campaigns, but that’s not enough.
While the story gives us a sampling of some snarky comments aimed at Mr Tilley, it doesn’t tell us much about the man or what (if anything) he might have done to inspire them. And to compare Mr Tilley to Megan Meier, the teenaged MySpace martyr, is grotesquely specious. It suggests that blogging has developed a new kind of shaming; whereas in fact blogging has only provided shaming — and every other form of social interaction — with a new forum.
§ Vespers. I’d have thought that the promoters would get the rabbis to sign off on the proposed concert before selling tickets. And I’m not even their lawyer!
I have never been inside Madison Square Garden. A friend got us tickets to a concert about a year ago, but Kathleen was sick and I wanted to go to a book-reading. I was beginning to think that the it would be demolished without my ever seeing it. I don’t know (and am too lazy to check) which incarnation of the Garden housed the circus in the days of my youth, but I think that it was the one prior to what’s currently standing. (I hated the circus, but I loved the little lizards, erroneously called “chameleons,” that we’d inevitably buy — and just as inevitably kill within the week.)