Archive for December 2010

The Greatest Song(s)

In less than three minutes, Bacharach takes you on what seems like a compressed tour of the whole territory of heartbreak, courtesy of his amazing mastery of the pop orchestra. He composes, he orchestrates, he conducts, and he creates a sound that is uniquely his, one I would come to know as the quintessential sound of 60s pop.

A Celebration of the Life of the Deceased, Or Not, As the Case May Be …

For the funeral, his daughters put together a tape of short excerpts from songs the man had loved. We were freed up to love him again in a way that would not have been possible without this aid. Damn straight we were celebrating his life! Do I think God felt slighted or envious? Do I think God was worried we were focusing our attention in the wrong place? Uh, nooo.

Time to Talk, Mr. Pistole

It is easy to imagine now, if TSA had leveled with us about what it proposed to do, what members of the public would have said what they felt about government official using radiation to take revealing pictures of them, and, as an alternative, literally groping their “privates.” TSA would be expected to respond with arguments about the recent attempted “underwear bomber,” and how these searches would make us all safer. And then a policy calculation in which the public was involved and invested could have been made, by an agency better advised about how the public felt.