The great Leslie Nielsen has departed this realm at the age of 84, and we shan’t see his like again, surely. He will mostly be remembered for the world-class deadpan he showed off in Airplane and the Naked Gun movies, but he had a long career before that….
The Advanced Basics chairperson looks like a perfect cross between pictures of Dick Cavett and Truman Capote.
Begin: Page 352 (“Gately’s biggest asset as an Ennet House live-in staffer…”) End: Page 398 (“…which audiences never even got to hate, for a-priori reasons.”)
Start Date: 11/26/10 Finish Date: 12/2/10
Note Profile: 18 notes, including one two-and-a-half pager
We’ve got some momentum now. Can you feel it? I’m feeling it.
According to my records, the great Mac Rebennack – better known to the world as Dr. John the Night Tripper – turns 70 today. I actually got to meet the Dr. a few years back when he and his band (including the wonderfully named Renard Poché) stayed at the hotel where I was posing as a desk clerk. He was very gracious and his people gave me free tickets to the shows; it was a real bright spot in an otherwise less than stellar period of my life.
In his honor, here’s an excerpt from his autobiography Under a Hoodoo Moon where he describes how he finally kicked heroin after many, many, many years. There’s something striking and poetic about it, if’n you ask me:
…that happened again and again during my halfhearted rehab attempts: I straightened up for a while , but sooner or later I ran into some Chang Moi rocks and it was off to the races, another four years of getting strung out like a fucking guinea pig. (more…)
His father knelt beside him on the ceiling in a well-rended sleeveless tee-, extolling the Red Sox of Rice and Lynn.
Begin: Page 312 (“The first birth of the Incandenzas’ second son was a surprise.”) End: Page 352 (“A certain Message had been Carried.”)
Start Date: 11/19/10 Finish Date: 11/25/10
Note Profile: 18 notes, all short except for a two-pager that looks to be involved but not especially crucial.
Keeping the page count slightly on the shorter side this week; hope that suits everyone’s sense of momentum. I’ve read ahead just a little and it looks like Wallace is starting to Get to the Point.
"See, Spiro Agnew here has two little arms: they point, they suggest."
Begin: Page 298 (“Poor Tony Krause had a seizure on the T.”) End: Page 312(“…the first tangible evidence of an anti-O.N.A.N. ill will way worse than anything aroused by plain old historical Separatism, up in Québec.”)
Start Date: 11/12/10 Finish Date: 11/18/10
Endnote Profile: 9 notes, including #110, a 16-pager with its own notes
This week I particularly envy those of you with iPads and such, as I am not relishing the prospect of 16 pages of tiny type. An audio version would be nice, but none seems to exist; how would that work, anyway, with the notes? Never mind, I’ll get through somehow. See you on the other side.