02/20/2015

“If you’ve got a person that’s raped because you wouldn’t let them carry a firearm to defend themselves, I think you’re responsible,” State Representative Dennis K. Baxley of Florida said during debate in a House subcommittee last month. The bill passed.   The passage excerpted above is from an article titled ‘A Bid For Guns on Campuses to Deter Rape’ in the Wednesday, February 18, edition of the New York Times. This nugget of wisdom from the esteemed Rep. Baxley is followed by another gem from Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore: “If these young, hot little girls on campus have a firearm, I wonder how many men will want to assault them. The sexual assaults that are occurring would go down once these sexual predators get a bullet in their head.”   Gentle Reader(s), I know not quite where to begin. But begin I must.
01/27/2015

I can’t hear any at the moment, most likely because it snowed last night, but on just about any other day they’re out there making their uniquely grating racket. No, not Republicans—sadly, I can still hear them—I am speaking of leaf blowers, genus petrolius facultas to be precise. Why, Gentle Reader(s), you may well ask, is Your Humble Narrator clogging up the intrablogosphere with questionable grumbleisms about something as seemingly innocuous as the lowly leaf blower? Indeed. Allow me to elucidate.
01/01/2015

A lot of people have cherished rituals that, whether handed down through generations or of more recent provenance, are central to their observation and enjoyment of the holiday season. I’m not much of a holiday person—I’m typically somewhat more of a bemused observer than an actual participant—but one holiday season ritual of which I have become quite fond is watching ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ on NBC on Christmas Eve.
12/22/2014

Alas, Gentle Reader(s), it saddens me that it is tribute time once again at inkyinkinc.com. As I have noted previously, there has been a steady string of tributes this year for the recently departed and they seem to be coming with increasing regularity. On this occasion I come to you to pay homage to the late, great Joe Cocker. Joe Cocker was not an acclaimed songwriter or a notable instrumentalist. His particular distinction was to be what, in an earlier era, was known as a song stylist—a distinctive interpreter of other peoples’ material. Cocker never had any pretentions otherwise: He referred to the process of putting his unique stamp on a song as giving it ‘the treatment.’ At its best, the Cocker ‘treatment’ was extraordinarily effective, such that his versions of certain songs—notable among them, the Beatles’ ‘A Little Help From My Friends,’ the Box Tops’ ‘The Letter,’ and Dave Mason’s ‘Feelin’ Alright’—became the definitive versions of those songs. Good though the originals may be, they all seem pale in comparison to Joe’s volcanically soulful renditions.
11/18/2014

He was good. He was very very good—quite possibly the best in the opinion of more than a few people who were well placed to know.   Despite an eclectic five-decade-plus career in music, most people’s awareness of John Symon Asher Bruce extends from his two-year tenure as the bassist/lead singer of Cream. You had to be good to be in Cream—the best, in fact. That’s why the group was called Cream (and, thankfully, not Sweet n’ Sour Rock n’ Roll—a wisely rejected alternative moniker). You had to be able to hold your own with Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker—not an assignment for the faint of heart nor tenuous of talent. Baker, who would, on occasion, assault and threaten to kill Bruce, said of him “He’s a fucking brilliant player—there’s no doubt about that.”
10/26/2014

On February 21, 1978, a concert was held at McAlister Auditorium on the campus of Tulane University in New Orleans. The crowd was a mix of rockers, proto-punks, hippies, hipsters and the plain curious. The opening act was the Runaways—all still genuine teenagers at the time—and the headliners were the Ramones. I was one of several hundred in attendance—not a punk (proto or otherwise), definitely not a hippie, somewhat of a rocker, and probably more hipster/curious than anything.
05/02/2014

Springtime means a variety of different things to a variety of people, but one central element in Your Humble Narrator's personal observation of the season is watching 'The Ten Commandments' on television.
01/28/2014

This man was my hero. He was, in fact, my first hero. When I was a very young kid a colleague of my mother’s had the album ‘The Weavers at Carnegie Hall’ at her house. I used to listen to the record every time I visited and eventually the album was given to me. I still have it.
01/21/2014

I was never a huge Smiths fan—my first Smiths CD was not acquired until over 20 years after the band had broken up. I found Morrissey interesting, however. His resolutely obtuse public persona and the band’s visual presentation were intriguing to me. I went to see Morrissey in concert in 2011 and he was in excellent voice and put on a great show. Enjoyable though it was, it was not sufficient to inspire me to dive into the extensive Smiths/Morrissey back catalog, remorseful over remembrance of fandom lost.
01/01/2014

What can I say that might be adequate to the task of expressing the depth of my feeling and respect for Clark Vreeland? I don’t have the words. But I’ll try anyway.