Paul Simon, Songwriter

Paul Simon’s a maddening figure in modern music for me, and not because I have regularly been told I resemble him. (Admittedly, at certain angles it’s uncanny, but I liked it better when someone told me long ago that I looked like Timothy Dalton.) You can argue that he’s never delivered utter crap, but he’s certainly inspired others to create it.
A 31-track greatest-hits album allows for some brilliant less-commercial works to gain overdue appreciation. “Rene and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog After the War” in particular is a Simon song no radio programmer has given me a chance to grow tired of. “Quality,” from the Capeman musical, seems to touch lightly on every facet of Simon’s career, from youthful doo-wop to winsome folk strains to faint African rhythms.
The fact that he’s had so many hits has denied Paul Simon a proper career overview until now.

Knuckler: My Life With Baseball’s Most Confounding Pitch
By Tim Wakefield with Tony Massarotti. Foreword by Phil Niekro (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011)

Funny to pick up what you think is an autobiography or memoir and find that it’s written in the third-person. That’s what throwing knuckleballs will do to your brain, I guess. This is really a straight-out biography by ace old-school Boston sportswriter Phil Niekro about Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield, in which Wakefield apparently got involved enough to rate the main cover credit.
All is explained in the Acknowledgements section, where Wakefield and Niekro are referred to respectively as “the author and writer.” They jointly thank the usual range of colleagues, family members and those with special knowledge of the subject at hand. (“Because the knuckleball is the ultimate specialty, true experts were required”). First, however, they spend a full page acknowledging editors and agents who “demonstrated an especially high level of tolerance during the negotiations, a process that most everyone generally finds stressful.”

Well, what would a baseball book be without complex contract negotiations?

The subtitle leads you to believe that there might be some instructional, or at least philosophical element about Wakefield’s signature pitch. There isn’t. Flat-out linear chronological bio of a ballplayer.

Dig the tents, folks. Love reading the signs—like primitive Tweets of revolution. Seeing you just lounge around the Green debating issues and strumming guitars is as cool as any of the (many so far) organized rallies and events.
Beautiful weekend for Occupying New Haven, no?
Activism-wise, I never was much of a joiner. My skills veer more towards indoor pageantry and letter-writing. Never needed there to be an organized struggle before I sounded off. Didn’t need out to be a social thing.
But the Occupy [insert place name here] movement is appealing. It involves mass gathering, but is less vindictive than, say, those anti-corporate demonstrations in the ‘80s where people blocked the entrances to big buildings rather than just contemplated their meaning.
Fraught with less violence than other forms of largescale physical protest, Occupy is more like camping or flash mobbing. Its the anti- capitalists’ answers to the tour of classy houses in Newport.
The rich are different than you and me. Discuss.

Monkey Gum
Salt Water Taffy
Sweet & Sour Spray
Mike & Ike (14 oz. tub from Market Basket)
Cherry Sours
German Raspberries
Werther’s Original Hard Candies
Candy fruit slices (with a surfeit of red ones)
Mini-Marshmallows—“soft and fluffy every time!”

“Kami was visiting colleges, stopped in this cool coffeehouse, spent the whole afternoon there, and got us a gig. She ended up deferring school another year, but the coffeehouse liked us and had us back. Then the place turned into more of a club. We were one of the first bands they asked to be a weekly houseband, on Sundays. I don’t think they thought we’d actually do it. They were being polite mostly. Good friends, you know?”
But we all know how hard it is to say no to a steady gig. So now it’s a once-a-week, 200-mile commute for the New Settlers. A few tangential perks like a courier job have made it more worthwhile, but the passion for the trip was already there.
“If we really minded, we wouldn’t do it. We can’t all make every show so we’ve basically developed a second band—New Settlers West, or the New West Settlers—with counterparts for every one of us. They’re not substitutes, they’re full members.
But no matter what, at least two of us are there every week, and we’re all there once a month. That’s our pact, our band standard. The club says they’re cool with us missing a week here or there, but we’re not. It’s our country house, our home away from home.”

The big night. We “forget” to play, and just party.

Emil & Friends, Lo & Behold. Watch out! Your parents’ 1970s record collection has been copulating in the corner, and the spawn has been released. It’s like the Carpenters with Elton John on piano, Rick Derringer standing by for solos and 10cc overdubbing echoes while Kool & the Gang simmers in the corner. Not a mash-up. A fluid blending of an entire day of classic AM radio.

Jonah Hex has undergone one of the least dynamic changes of the universe-wide DC Comics reboot. Whereas most of the titles have changed their writer/artist teams, Hex is back under the reins of Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti. Some new perspectives would be nice at this point—their stories tend to get formulaic and repetitive. But that may have be getting addressed with this new series, which has more of a mystery-story slant and acknowledges the Old West existence of places like Gotham City.
There is one big change, however: Hex is no longer the star of his own book. DC has revived its old All Star Western title to feature him. Weird, since Weird Western Tales was Hex’s original home—All Star Western was the company’s more conventional Western title. Now Jonah Hex—the alcoholic, morally challenged bounty hunter and aggrieved loner—is the All Star standard-bearer. What does that say for civilization?

Made it to Open Studios yesterday—the annual event’s opening weekend, at Erector Square Studios—late in the afternoon. The gazing and schmoozing was still full-force however. I was in a rush to see the best stuff, so I asked a lot of advice. Suzan Shutan, an artist and curator I invariably run into at this affair, shouted at me from a moving car, then had the driver pull over so she could point me in the direction of big, bright pop artist Kevin Daly.
Saw some excellent print works—artists standing up to technological printing with old-school presses and bleeding inks. But as ever, it was the community feeling which swelled up that day. Erector Square is on the higher elitist end of Open Studios, as these are the folks who can afford to rent outside studios. The distinction of New Haven’s Open Studios is that it offers a separate weekend to artists who don’t have their own studios to open—this year the Alternate Space is once again the deserted storefronts on College Street across from Co-op High School.
But the Erector bunch couldn’t have been more welcoming or friendly. Open Studios is never just another art opening. It’s looser, grander, rangier. The future of art is debated. The present of art is everywhere.
The aesthetic festivities continue at Erector Square today (sunday 16th) from noon to 5 p.m. Two weekends elsewhere yet to flourish. Details here.

Apple butter. Half a dozen apples in a slow cooker with half a cup of sugar and optional cloves and cinnamon. Cook until it’s rather solid, spreadable rather than wet.