When I was five years old, my parents left my brothers and me with a babysitter and went to a church auction. They returned–fantastically, inexplicably, unprecedentedly–with a secondhand ColecoVision and a box of games, and I hopped from foot to foot as my dad delicately connected the console’s wires to the back of the TV […]
Author Archives: Sally
Great Ape
For most of my adult life, I’ve been afraid of apes, the result of an effective—too effective—intro-level anthropology class that outlined the ways in which humans and primates are just a few DNA twists away from being identical. Kate, in her post last week, asked, “Who wants to hate a chimp?” Me. I did. Chimps […]
Q&A: Nuns Gone Wild!
In 1986, Craig A. Monson—now a professor of music at Washington University in St. Louis—took a few days off from his research in Italy, and visited a little-known museum in Florence. There he found a Renaissance music manuscript that he traced to a Bolognese convent—surprising, given the raunchy lyrics of its secular selections: “One day […]
Shy Shoes
This week, it’s “The Intimates,” by Ralph Sassone, that’s getting added to my list: Sassone has a keen understanding of the professional indignities and romantic frustrations of the young and well educated, but the novel feels like the prologue to a story that hasn’t been written yet. Tweet
Jazz Hands
What are the one hundred quintessential jazz songs? Listeners of NPR Music and Jazz24, a radio station with offices in Seattle and Tacoma, have voted for their all-time favorites, and the results—which lead with songs by Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, and John Coltrane—are now available for live streaming on NPR.org. Read […]
Josh Ritter: “Galahad”
A few years ago, Michael Arthur—an illustrator whose music-video work was included in the recent New York Times series “All-Nighters”—met the musician Josh Ritter at a downtown bar. Ritter had seen Arthur’s video for his own band, Balthrop, Alabama, and the two discussed a possible collaboration. Read more at newyorker.com… Tweet
En Fuego!
January was cold this year, so cold that I contemplated lighting myself on fire on more than one occasion. February hasn’t been much better. So hooray for this warm sexy explosion of a video, which my husband sent me today. I watched at my desk, over and over, as outside people struggled vainly against the […]
Power Up the Mr. Fusion
When YouTube Time Machine débuted last fall, it was as a beta site that its creators, Justin Johnson and Delbert Shoopman III, conceived after a few rounds of beers and Johnson’s recollection of a recent night in which he’d spent hours captivated by videos from 1996—Michael Jordan highlight reels, Primal Rage videos—until other related content […]
Teen Dream
The Los Angeles-based Star–a magazine dedicated to aspiring teen-age groupies–only lasted for five issues, in 1973, folding due to pressure from “concerned citizens.” Fortunately, the Internet knows no parental advisory board, and all of the original issues of Star have been scanned and put online. Read more at newyorker.com… Tweet
My People
My grandmother’s family came from, as she put it, “hearty German peasant stock,” a phrase invoked whenever my mom or her siblings complained about chores or homework. It was Grandma’s way of saying, “Suck it up, kid.” She was clever that way. Grandpa’s family was from Poznań, Poland, and as far as my childhood self […]