Jazzing Up The Holidays
The local radio stations started playing Christmas music just after Halloween this year. I’m starting a drive to revise the Ohio state constitution to prohibit this in coming years. From my perspective, no Christmas music should be played until after Santa Claus arrives during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.
But setting politics aside, I do have my favorites. I’m particularly enjoying Wynton Marsalis’s latest, “Christmas Jazz Jam”. It’s his second Christmas album, twenty years after “Crescent City Christmas Card,” another of my favorites. And I particularly like the boozy rendition of “Blue Christmas” on the new album. Imagine yourself walking down the streets of New Orleans on a late December night and hearing the sound of a house band after a long night of playing and drinking. Unlike the tired Elvis Presley version, this one sounds like that moment of acceptance after a painful breakup. Slow and alcohol soaked, “You’ll be doing all right, with your Christmas of white, but I’ll have a blue, blue Christmas.” Heavenly.
Here are some of my other jazz and swing Christmas favorites:
- A Dave Brubeck Christmas This wonderful piano solo work is hypnotic. Imagine this jazz master at your holiday party, alone at the piano. It is a complete short story of a party and absolutely wonderful
- Aaron Neville’s Soulful Christmas Wonderful all around, especially “Louisiana Christmas Day.”
- Harry Connick Jr.’s When My Heart Finds Christmas. Love that swing of “Sleigh Ride.” Big Band lives!
- Louis Armstrong What a wonderful Christmas The full album isn’t available – a partial one is on iTunes. But it’s worth it to get at least Armstrong’s “Cool Yule.’
- And although my jazz authority daughter doesn’t agree, I love a little Mel Torme, especially “It Happened In Sun Valley”.
Enjoy and Happy Holidays
Three Tools Every Writer Should Own – And Use!
As much as I lead an online life, I still find three basic references in book form essential to writing well. There are many others, but you should have at least these three:
- A dictionary. Sure, you can look up words online, but there’s an opportunity for that special magic of serendipity when using the physical item. I use the American Heritage College Dictionary – it’s nicely portable and can be supplemented by online resources when you need more depth. If you want to haul out the big guns, you’ll need this: The Compact Edition of The Oxford English Dictionary: Complete text reproduced micrographically (in slipcase with reading glass).
- A thesaurus. Not only is it useful, but it’s fun! I use Roget’s Internatinal Thesarus, but I don’t have a strong preference.
- The Elements of Style – also known as “Strunk and White” or “the little book.” Not only is this short guide an essential book on good writing, but it is delightful to read. It’s now in its 50th anniversary edition. You really should own your own copy.
There are many other excellent resources, but start with those three. Spend a bit of time in The Elements of Style chewing over Rule 17, “Omit needless words!”
If you need any further encouragement, remember that the “White” of “Strunk and White” is E. B. White, writer of “Charlotte’s Web” and one of the writers, along with James Thurber and Harold Ross, who shaped The New Yorker from a little humor magazine into one of the pillars of great writing and journalism (and still damn funny). If you have any childhood fondness for Charlotte’s Web or Stuart Little, you’ll find that same wise and gentle voice in The Elements of Style.
Equip yourself with good tools! If you’re going to write and think like a writer, have these three within reach. Having them there is also a reminder of your goal and task. Let them remind you that you’ve set out to write and communicate. You need all of the help you can get.
Off-Topic Friday: Gripmaster Review
In May of this year I took a bad fall while working out and broke the little finger on my left hand. Doesn’t sound so bad, does it? You’d be surprised. I didn’t just fracture it. I literally BROKE IT OFF at the base. It required surgery, pins, weeks in a splint up to my elbow, and then weeks of occupational therapy. It was a big pain in the, well, hand.
During therapy I used all sorts of tools from putty to rubber bands, but one of my favorites was the Gripmaster. I ended up buying one for myself and keep it on my desk within reach of my left hand. Several times a day I pick it up and use it to strengthen my hand, which still gives me trouble, now months later. And it’s a great little physical exercise – something to do when I push away from the keyboard for a bit and look at what I’ve just written. I’m doing it now as I edit this piece.
I highly recommend it for everyone, especially if you’re a musician or play sports and require a strong grip. What I like about this device is the separated “buttons” that make you work each finger independently. It would be too easy to let your stronger fingers do the work in a traditional one-piece grip strengthener.
They come in many different strengths. I use the nine-pound version, shown here, but you might want to work up to that.
My hand and fingers really do feel better after using it. Consider getting one to put next to your keyboard. It works much better than that little stress ball that’s probably sitting there now.
Publishers Delay E-Book Versions – Another Sign They Just Don’t Get It
Simon & Schuster and Lagardere SCA’s Hachette Book Group have decided they are going to fight this whole e-book thing. It’s probably just a fad, anyway. They’re planning to delay the release of e-book versions of their titles for four months or more after the release of the hardback version.
Brilliant. Just brilliant.
It’s as if they were toddlers pressing their hands to their ears and screaming, “I can’t hear you!” They fear the demise of their industry and believe that they can force people to go ahead and buy the physical book rather than wait for the e-book.
Guess what? I rarely buy the book within the first six months of publication anyway. I’m the same way with movies. I’m just fine waiting for the DVD.
And once again, they miss the point: they need to go electronic, go VERY inexpensive, and reap much higher profits.
“We’re doing this to preserve our industry,” David Young said. “I can’t sit back and watch years of building authors sold off at bargain-basement prices. It’s about the future of the business.”
Too late, Mr. Young. You can’t protect the publishing industry. You could get creative and try a hundred experiments, discover how to become the new publishing industry. But instead, you’re turning your back on opportunity and hoping all of this will just go away.
What do I expect to happen from this? I expect the top authors to start dropping their publishers and going on their own, taking the bigger share of sales. And I expect others to start including provisions in their contracts that insist on immediate electronic publication and higher profit participation on those sales.
It use to be hardback, then paperback, after a long and profitable delay. But those are both physical books and fit an industry model that’s quickly changing. The people that own e-book readers today are early adopters and are primed to buy books. Why punish them? Why withhold the goods from your locked-in customers?
My Affair With The Mac Part 5
One of my favorite novels is Virtual Light by William Gibson. In it, a pair of sunglasses is the MacGuffin that helps drive the story forward. But these are more than just ordinary sunglasses. If you put them on and activate them, they project into your eyes a screen, and anything can be displayed. You can overlay and move around in a virtual environment. Or you can access information, watch movies (with accompanying ear buds). You can do virtually anything.
I look forward to the day when I don’t have to carry any obvious technology. No phones, no music players, and certainly no computers. But I want access to EVERYTHING. And I think the Apple is the company that will be the most likely to get us to that glorious state. Forget about ebook readers. The future’s so bright I hafta wear shades.
I don’t ask for much. I only want access to every book ever printed. Every magazine, too. Let’s throw in every movie ever made and every song ever recorded. Let’s just say every work of art ever created. And I want to see them are as if I’m standing there before them, not as tiny pictures in a book or on a screen.
I’m not saying I want it for free, but I’d like to have access to it. And I don’t want to have to be a licensed technician to gain that access to it all.
I’m a writer, so I know the value of tools. I could work on a typewriter or with a pen and a yellow legal pad. But I use my Mac as my main writing tool. In the future I want it to be even more basic, more unobtrusive to my writing process. When I want powerful editing tools, I want them instantly there, but when I’m in the flow and creating, I want NOTHING to disturb or interrupt me. I have a terrific writing setup now, but I can see plenty of room for improvement. And I think this approach applies to virtually every aspect of personal computing.
So if you see me sometime in the future wearing my virtual light sunglasses, sitting beneath a tree in some sunny park, gazing off into the distance, consult your own sunglasses before calling out to me. They’ll let you know if I’m available and would welcome the interruption or if I’m deep into writing the next great American novel. And I bet if you check out that logo at the temple of your pair you’ll find a little silver apple.
My Affair With The Mac Part 4
I am by no means a stock market genius. And please, don’t take anything you read here as investing advice.
But I will tell you this: my retirement is a great deal more secure because I invested in Apple.
In fact, my wife, who is completely agnostic when it comes to Macs or PCs, completely supports my home Mac purchases – largely because I’ve made far more money than I’ve spent.
Several years ago, just before the introduction of the Newton in the early 90’s, I made my first investment. I thought that the Newton was going to revolutionize the computing market. I was wrong about that, but I was right about Apple. And ever since Steve Jobs returned to the company, the stock performance has been amazing.
I follow Warren Buffet’s investing advice: only invest in companies you deeply understand. So I’ve been comfortable buying and holding Apple stock, while I’ve been puzzled about other companies and their plans, including previous tech titans like HP and IBM.
I have no idea where the economy as a whole is going, but I think there’s strong evidence that Apple will continue to dominate and innovate in the personal technology space. I think that while Jobs is at the helm and in the years to follow without him, the company will continue to produce revolutionary and positively disruptive products, ones that make technology a more natural part of our lives. Over the next few years I expect to see dramatic changes in television, book and magazine publishing, and portable computing. And I expect Apple to be at the forefront of it all.
I can’t promise I’ll hold their stock all along the way, but I’ve certainly benefited up till now. And I still think there’s an opportunity to make money on the stock.
Tomorrow: what the future holds for Apple and us all.
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