Thom's Link Emporium - 27 February 2022
Links
Men have no friends and women bear the burden. I recognise a lot of this in myself - a tendency to rely on partners for all emotional needs, and to let friendships wither in the process.
Great GQ interview with Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola’s such an intriguing man. He makes The Godfather I and II, The Conversation and Apocalypse now all within one single decade and then never did anything approaching those masterworks for the rest of his career. This sheds a little light on why, but it will be interesting to see if his new project is a return to form.
Corridors were invented in 1597. I’m sure there are some historians who could argue about the particular date, but the fundamental idea that we didn’t have corridors in houses for a long time remains true.
The appendix of 1984 seems to suggest that that Oceania's regime finished before 2050. I found this thread reasonably convincing, and an interesting angle on Orwell’s own thoughts on the cultures in 1984.
Program / Menu from the Cotton Club. The Cotton Club was a nightclub in New York in between the wars. It was famous for where Duke Ellington and his band played until 1930 when, as this menu shows, Cab Calloway (who many will know from Betty Boop cartoons) took over. It suffered from the segregation of the era where the performers were all black, and the crowd all white. Langston Hughes referred to it as “a Jim Crow club for gangsters and monied whites” and that its very presence caused the closure of other Harlem jazz clubs. Francis Ford Coppola made a film about the Cotton Club in 1984.
I share Josh Spero’s sense of humour about the Royal Opera House using the “this much of a donation will mean we can do this” model of fund raising. It means that you get to compare one charity to another and I’ll be honest, Unicef’s claim that they can protect 100 children from polio sounds a bit more impressive than a kilo of fake snow, important though culture and opera in particular are.
Nick Offerman (Ron from Parks and Recreation) has a newsletter. He’s a delight.
Listening
Pete Paphides tweeted about Tom Moulton’s remix of The Supremes’s Stoned Love. (Spotify, Music, YouTube) which led me off on an exploration of Tom Moulton’s other mixes. He’s done a huge number of 12”-style remixes of tons of soul classics, and this collection on Philadelphia International Records is an excellent intro (Spotify, Music)
Reading
I’ve been reading Bob Mortimer’s memoir “And Away”. It’s a really sweet book where Mortimer’s wonderful character shines through on every page. I’d recommend checking out the audiobook read by the man himself as well.
Watching
I watched The Duke this week. Broadbent and Mirren are both excellent, and although the main character, Kempton Bunton, is insufferable, the film doesn’t outstay its welcome. It’s quite interesting to see a period of time in which the elderly seemed some of the most marginalised people in society.
Quote
Because here we are. This, right here, is what we have been looking for all the time. It was right here.
Alan Watts, Eastern Wisdom, Modern Life