jasoncrane.org

Here’s a 94-year-old writer who started in the union back when he was writing for radio. (He worked on the classic Life of Riley show, among others.) This cat is hip, man!

My friend Mara Ahmed sent me this today:

Rally to support restoration of judiciary and civil liberties in Pakistan

Date: Sunday November 18, 2007
Time: 2.00pm - 3.30pm
Place: Twelve Corners in Brighton

SOLIDARITY

PLEASE JOIN THE PAKISTANI AMERICAN COMMUNITY IN UPSTATE NEW YORK IN A DEMONSTRATION OF SOLIDARITY WITH THE PEOPLE OF PAKISTAN IN THEIR STRUGGLE FOR THE RULE OF LAW.

WE WILL HOLD A DEMONSTRATION ON SUNDAY NOVEMBER 18 FROM 2:00 PM TO 3:30 PM AT TWELVE CORNERS IN BRIGHTON.

THE PUROPOSE OF THE DEMONSTRTATION IS TO EXPRESS OUR DESIRE TO PRESERVE THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE JUDICIARY AND TO RESTORE THE RULE OF LAW AND THE CONSTITUTION OF PAKISTAN .

IF YOU CHERISH FREEDOM, LIBERTY , CIVIL RIGHTS AND DEMOCARACY JOIN US TO SHOW OUR RESOLVE TO THE WORLD THAT WE WILL NO LONGER ACCEPT TRAMPLING OVER CIVIL LIBERTIES AND OVER JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE IN OUR HOME COUNTRY.

AS A SIGN OF UNITY WITH THE LAWYERS WHO ARE SPEARHEADING THE STRUGGLE IN PAKISTAN PLEASE WEAR BLACK AND WHITE WHEN YOU COME.

THE JAZZ SESSION #32: TORD GUSTAVSEN: Jason Crane interviews pianist and composer Tord Gustavsen. His most recent recording, Being There (ECM, 2007), is part of a trilogy of records exploring the intimate territory traversed by the pianist and his trio. With bassist Harald Johnsen and drummer Jarle Vespestad, Gustavsen delves deeply into the rich musics of the world, filtering the results through a contemplative lens. Being There is an album that rewards repeated listening, and the interview makes it clear that a lot of thought and passion has gone into the music.

• LISTEN

THE JAZZ SESSION #33: KATE MCGARRY: Jason Crane interviews vocalist Kate McGarry about her new album, The Target (Palmetto, 2007). It’s yet another stellar album in a career that has seen her working with everyone from Fred Hersch to Maria Schneider. On The Target, McGarry is joined by her husband Keith Ganz on guitar, Gary Versace on organ and piano, Reuben Rogers on bass and Greg Hutchinson on drums, along with guest appearances from saxophonist Donny McCaslin and Theo Bleckman on voice loops. On both American songbook classics and impressive new compositions, the band finds an organic chemistry that brings something new to the old tunes and makes the new tunes sound familiar.

• LISTEN

Here’s a video that was put together by the WGA to help explain why the writers are on strike. After you watch it, you’ll probably want to read this short Q&A at Mark Evanier’s site.

SPOILER ALERT! If you’ve never read Don Quixote, be warned: This post will probably give away plot points.

A few minutes ago, I finished reading Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes for the first time.

Don Quixote by Jason Crane

All I knew about it before reading it was that it involved a crazy man who thinks he’s a knight and attacks windmills. In fact, I thought the entire book was about Don Quixote attacking various windmills. It’s one of those books that has entered the cultural consciousness even if most folks have never read it. Fess up, did you think, when you were a kid, that the book was called Donkey Hotee? I did, and I always assumed it was because he rode a donkey. Which, it turns out, he doesn’t.

Little did I know — and even less did I expect — what an amazing work it is. It’s beautiful, comical and tragic all at once. It’s a history lesson, a visionary look at the art of the novel, and a gripping story, too.

In many ways, Don Quixote reminded me of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a work so large and full of so much of the human experience that it’s amazing to consider one person having written it. How could Cervantes and Shakespeare fit so much into a single work? And who were these men that they themselves contained so much wisdom and insight, coupled with the literary talent to set it down in works that will live as long as language? It makes blogging look a bit ridiculous, for one thing. (Hamlet and the first book of Don Quixote were published almost simultaneously. The early 1600s must have been one heck of a time in which to live and read!)

While I was reading the book, I also picked up a few critical studies to read afterward, including Lectures on Don Quixote by Vladimir Nabokov; Meditations on Quixote by Juan Ortega y Gasset; and The Western Canon by Harold Bloom.

The book seems on its face to be a comedy about a crazy man, but to me it was an indictment of a society that had forgotten its values and lost its honor. The duke and duchess who torment Don Quixote and Sancho throughout much of Book Two are villians, as far as I can tell. You’d have to be callous and sadistic to find their “jests” funny rather than cruel. However, my interpretation of the book is through my own cultural lens, and Cervantes may have been in favor of the purges of Jews and Moors that he describes, even though a modern reader can see his commentary as criticism.

In fact, Don Quixote and Sancho maintain their dignity throughout the book, and even if that dignity’s foundation can be called into question, they still come off as more honorable and worthwhile human beings than most of the major characters who try to trick or cure them.

To be continued…

Oh. My. Holy. God.

I’ve never actually read Dante’s Inferno, but I’m pretty sure I remember hearing that in it, Hell has nine levels. I think maybe Judas Iscariot is at the bottom, frozen in ice or something like that. According to British comedian Ben Elton, right below Judas is an editor from the British tabloid The Sun. Well, tonight I discovered who’s right below him, and this is what he looks like:

Today is Bernie’s fifth birthday. We had a party this afternoon at our house for the kids from the neighborhood plus a few of our good friends from nearby. It was a great party — games, ice cream cake, a pinata and more. Everybody had a great time and went away happy.

Then we went to Chuck E. Cheese’s for a party with three kids from Bernie’s class. And now I know where John Milton got his ideas.

When I was a kid, Chuck E. Cheese’s was a video arcade with skeeball and a ball crawl. Now it’s like a torture scene from A Clockwork Orange. As soon as you walk in, a teenaged employee jams some hooks onto your eyelids to prevent you from blocking out the horrible fact that every surface in the place is either glowing, flashing or both.

Every object in the restaurant makes some sort of noise, from the games to the screeching children hopped up on soda and some of the worst pizza I’ve ever eaten. In fact, I may need to pause while writing this post so I can run and be physically sick.

When we lived in Tokyo, I often felt overwhelmed walking through the larger train stations or across busy intersections. The crush of people is like nothing you experience in any city in the United States, and I found it hard to process. Well, I’d rather run through the main shopping district in Shibuya wearing 3-D binoculars and listening to GWAR then spend one more minute of my life in a Chuck E. Cheese’s franchise.

Just finding Bernie’s three friends was a challenge. There were so many hip-high children in the place that it was next to impossible to gather the gang together, and completely impossible to keep track of them afterward, even with four of the five parents (including Jen and me) working every moment of the two — or was it 12? — hours to find them.

One tiny positive innovation is that everyone in a family gets the same infrared number stamped on his or her left hand at the entrance, meaning no child can leave without an adult who has the same number. So we were reasonably certain that none of the kids would turn up missing. We were less assured that none of them would turn up blubbering and bleeding from the eyes, clutching a token and murmuring “Insert coin to continue … Insert coin to continue…”

I think it was Woody Allen who used to tell the joke about “the food was terrible, and the portions were too small.” Well, as much as Chuck’s House of Horrors stunk on the face of it, it was made even worse by the absence of good video games. When I was a kid, there was Tron, Pac Man, Galaga, Defender, Star Wars, Q-bert, Donkey Kong, Mr. Rogers vs Chuck Norris, and many others. All those cool games are gone, replaced by car races featuring characters from Sponge Bob and NASCAR. (Not in the same game, which was too bad.) There were a few first-person shooters, but nothing good. And then about 8 million different ways to sucker you into exchanging money for prize tickets.

By the end of the evening, I was sobbing softly at our table, holding my security cupcake and wading through wrapping paper and Spider-Man-themed gifts. (We sent Spider-Man invitation to the kids, who otherwise know nothing about Bernie, so we got exclusively Spider-Man-themed gifts. Pretty hip, actually.)

I’ve shot my wad here. Let me just echo the words of the shortest Rolling Stone review ever published (for the first album by the band Chase):

“Flee.”