Category Archives: Commentary

Opinion or analysis concerning whatever’s on my mind.

Robert Johnson

Posted on December 10, 2019 by JMN

It was in… popular juke joints — segregated stores or private houses that doubled, after hours, as recreational places — that his now legendary music career began… The young musician had trained on a diddley bow — one or more … Continue reading →

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“Do Not Erase”

Posted on December 9, 2019 by JMN

For the last year, Jessica Wynne, a photographer and professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, has been photographing mathematicians’ blackboards, finding art in the swirling gangs of symbols sketched in the heat of imagination, argument and … Continue reading →

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Random Woke Affect & Filth Squirting

Posted on December 8, 2019 by JMN

A phrase from the past has pungent currency today. In 1896, an editorial in the Guardian mentioned a derogatory rumor about Lord Rosebery. Quoth the lord: “… The allusion in the Guardian… gave me the opportunity that I had long … Continue reading →

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Exquisite Vapors

Posted on November 30, 2019 by JMN

These are voices echoed by Spencer Bokat-Lindell recently in the NYTimes. Some of [Buttigieg’s] ideas… don’t fall neatly on the ideological spectrum… Mr. Buttigieg’s triangulations are more banal… Displays a facility with rhetoric … His appeal, in aesthetic terms, is … Continue reading →

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Glitter Jitters

Posted on November 29, 2019 by JMN

Here are nuggets tweezered from a story about heartburn in the high-dollar art market. This time around, there are few museum-quality works by the most famous artists to tempt billionaires — no painting or sculpture is estimated to sell for … Continue reading →

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Hoodie Apocalypse

Posted on November 26, 2019 by JMN

Tyler, the Creator, 28, started the Camp Flog Gnaw Festival eight years ago in the parking lot of LA’s Nokia Theater. Music is performed, but I found the fashion statements “culturally interesting.” Overall, Camp Flog Gnaw found a way to … Continue reading →

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Elderly Rubbish

Posted on November 26, 2019 by JMN

Exiled Thucydides knew All that a speech can say About democracy, And what dictators do, The elderly rubbish they talk To an apathetic grave; … (W. H. Auden, “September 1, 1939”) Do dictators skew elderly? In 1939: Stalin 61; Mussolini … Continue reading →

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Magamobile

Posted on November 25, 2019 by JMN

1910 Ford Model T, 20 horsepower, top speed 40 mph — in any color, as long as it’s white. Henry Ford famously said “black”; however, things are rarely black-and-white except in Magaville. A Wiki-dip discloses the following: In his autobiography, … Continue reading →

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De Niro Sr., Artist

Posted on November 25, 2019 by JMN

I did not know, until encountering this article in The Guardian, that actor Robert De Niro’s father was a professional painter. Born in Syracuse, New York, into an Irish-Italian household, De Niro Sr was a child prodigy. In 1933, aged … Continue reading →

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Accents

Posted on November 24, 2019 by JMN

Roger Cohen writes opinion for the NYTimes, is a naturalized American citizen raised in Britain, and in his own words “a Jew, the son of South African immigrants.” Cohen writes about another naturalized American, Fiona Hill, who emigrated from County … Continue reading →

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