Category: This ‘n’ That

miscellanea

Hoisted By My Own Petard

I received the following email from someone who calls himself my friend:

One of the gimmicks I detest most is the “$99 value, yours for only $24.99,”…

vs.

Men, Women, and Girl Singers
Retail Price: $14.95
Online Sale Price: $13.46

That’s all it said, and the subject line was “LOL”

It had me scratching my head for a minute or three. The detested gimmick part came from my post on Friday, but $13.46? Where did that come from? I sell a few copies of my own book from time to time, but I don’t sell at a discount. I called my friend. “Where’d you find that?” I asked. Now he really was laughing out loud. “You posted the link on your site.”

DUH.

After kicking myself three times and wishing for home, I tried to wiggle out of culpability – after all, I didn’t come up with the price; that was my friends at ejazzlines.

“You cash the checks?” he asked.

Hoisted by my own petard.

It’s a clichéd phrase, and we know what it means, but do we really use the expression correctly? And what, exactly, is a petard?

The word: I have always assumed that a petard was a rope. I fantasized that it was a nautical term, imagining a hanging by pirates at sea — I don’t know where I got that idea. I thought that to be hoisted by ones own petard was akin to being given enough rope to hang oneself. But a petard is not a rope, it’s a bomb. My Visual Thesaurus by ThinkMap says that a petard is an explosive device from Medieval days (sometime between 300 and 1500 AD) used to break down as gate or wall. My Oxford English Dictionary on CD-ROM is more specific, defining it as “A small bomb made of a metal or wooden box filled with powder, used to blow in a door etc. or to make a hole in a wall,” and citing first use as mid sixteenth century (specifically between 1530 and 1569). The derivation? Péter meaning “break wind.”

The expression: “Hoist with one’s own petard” was coined by Shakespeare in Hamlet (sometime between 1600 and 1602) A Wikipedia entry explains

The phrase is usually misquoted as “see the engineer hoist by his own petard” and is taken to mean “the hangman hanged with his own rope,”… Hamlet’s actual meaning is “cause the bomb maker to be blown into the air with his own bomb,” metaphorically turning the tables on Claudius, whose messengers are killed instead of Hamlet.

Wikipedia also asserts that “a petard was a 19th Century animal trap, consisting of a rope and a bent branch that caught the desired beast by one leg as it stepped into a loop in the rope and pulled it up into the air.” However, I can not find any corroboration for this other than some online chatter that seems to have proliferated the aforementioned definition intact. There is no such mention in any of my reference books.

In any case, the gist is being ruined by one’s own devices, whatever that device may be…bomb, rope, or poison pen.

Am I A Shameless Marketer?

A friend sent me a link to a web site called and that rekindled my ongoing ever-simmering debate about how and why I do what I do. Usually this is an internal trialogue amongst me, myself, and I, but occasionally it gets aired and argued with friends, family, and/or colleagues. In global terms the opposing forces are art and commerce, or altruism and commerce.

I followed the link my friend sent and found for sale the secrets of successful blogging and simple steps that will lead you to profitability. I imagine that plenty of people will buy this, but I’m not one of them. I don’t respond well to hard sell, and gimmicks turn me off. One of the gimmicks I detest most is the “$99 value, yours for only $24.99,” but I think what bothered me most in this case relates more to the content than the sales hype.

First of all, there is lots of free information about blogging and how to do it. Second, it offends my sensibilities as a blogger because there is a blogging community and we help one another, advise one another, and promote one another…for free. (I’d even bet that soliciting cross promotion is one of the “secrets” being sold.) On the other hand, I admire this person’s salesmanship and marketing savvy. But as I told my friend, “I can’t go that route. I guess this is why I will always be a starving artist.”

My friend wrote back:

The interesting thing about blogging is how it can be seen by some as a marketing opportunity, while the concept itself is about as far from commercial as you can get. [A mutual friend of ours] put together a blog on investing a couple of month ago, which he abandoned shortly thereafter because “nobody was reading it on a regular basis.” For him, it apparently was blog=audience. For [the blogging secrets guru], it is more blatantly blog=list (revenue).

I replied:

Don’t get me wrong, I do see blogging as a marketing opportunity, but for me it is one of pr, exposure, building “a fan base” … (eee gad, I’m speaking marketese) For my sensibilities, blogs-as-sales-tools should be more subtle, with an eye toward potential cash in the future for products that my “fans” will buy because they are interested in that product/subject/book, not cash from the blog itself — I hope never to sell ad space on my blog and always to give content that is interesting to my readers (which by my definition means only occasionally may I post a hard sell of my own — i.e. “click here to buy my book“)

My friend says, “You shameless marketeer, you.” What do you say?

Brain Overload

Research for the Luther Henderson biography is in high gear. In addition to my trip to the Juilliard School of Music archives last week, during the last ten days I have conducted more than 30 hours of interviews with 12 people:

    Andr̩ De Shields Рactor
    Mercedes Ellington choeographer and grandaughter of Duke Ellington
    Duane Grant – Luther’s musical assistant and step-son
    Billie Allen Henderson, actress, director, and Luther’s widow
    Fred Howard – longtime friend of Luther’s
    Sy Johnson – arranger
    Pam Koslow Hines – co-producer of Jelly’s Last Jam
    Joe Lovano – jazz saxophonist
    Richard Maltby – writer/producer of Ain’t Misbehavin’
    Ruben Santiago-Hudson – actor
    George C Wolfe – playwrite, director, creator and diector of Jelly’s Last Jam
    Gene Watts – trombonist, Canadian Brass

My head is swimming with thoughts and ideas, leaving me little psychic or physical energy to blog. What to write? What to say? The solution came to me via About Last Night where Terry Teachout posted his answers to a questionaire someone sent him

• What time did you get up this morning? 6 AM

• Diamonds or pearls? Combo, please. My husband had a most beautiful diamond and pearl pendant made for me for my 50th birthday.

• What was the last film you saw at the cinema? Mrs. Henderson starring one of my favorite actresses, Dame Judy Dench

• What is your favorite TV show? The Medium and Grey’s Anatomy

• What did you have for breakfast? Oatmeal.

• What is your middle name? Well, now that I go by Devra Hall Levy, I guess you could say that Hall has become my middle name

• What is your favorite cuisine? French.

• What food do you dislike? Yogurt smoothies.

• What is your favorite potato chip? Sour cream and onion.

• What is your favorite CD at the moment? Carmen McRae’s I Am Music — but I’m not sure if it’s been reissued on CD.

• What kind of car do you drive? VW Passat (but I want a Prius)

• Favorite sandwich? Grilled munster cheese with tomatoes.

• What characteristics do you despise? Cruelty – physical or emotional.

• What are your favorite clothes? Depends on my mood – but whatever it is has got to be comfortable.

• If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would you go? A villa, please, in the south of France.

• What color is your bathroom? Beige with brown, gold, maroon and blue.

• Favorite brand of clothing? I’m not into labels.

• Where would you want to retire to? I prefer warm climates, but I will never retire.

• Favorite time of day? Crépuscule.

• Where were you born? New York City.

• Favorite sport to watch? I don’t like to watch.

• Who do you least expect to send this back? I’m not going to send it to anyone.

• Who will be the first to respond? N/A

• Coke or Pepsi? I don’t drink soda (unless maybe an occassional rum and coke)

• Are you a morning person or night owl? Morning glory.

• Any new and exciting news you’d like to share with everyone? Life is grand.

• What did you want to be when you were little? I don’t remember.

• What is a favorite childhood memory? Sometimes alone, but usually with a friend, bike rides from Greenwich Village down to the Staten Island Ferry (route travelled was underneath the West Side Highway), across on the Ferry, around the island, and back home. Last May I posted some other memoir thoughts.

• What are the different jobs you have had in your life? Secretary, radio disc jockey, computer programmer, mainframe systems designer, publicist, educator and curriculum designer, vice president of corporate communications for a software company, personal manager, writer, and editor.

• Nicknames? None that I choose to share.

• Any piercings? Ears.

• Eye color? Brown.

• Ever been to Africa? No.

• Ever been toilet papering? No.

• Been in a car accident? Yes.

• Favorite day of the week? Tomorrow.

• Favorite restaurant? Pierre’s, but it no longer exists.

• Favorite flower? Don’t have a favorite.

• Favorite ice cream? Mint chocolate chip.

• Favorite fast food restaurant? KFC

• Which store would you choose to max out your credit card?

• Bedtime? Around 11:30, if I can stay awake through the news.

• Who are you most curious about their responses to this questionnaire? No one.

• Last person(s) you went to dinner with? Donna.

• What are you listening to right now? The hum of my laptop.

• What is your favorite color? Earth tones.

• How many tattoos do you have? None.

• Who was the last e-mail you got before this one? Junk mail.

• How many people are you sending this e-mail to? Posting to blog – hoping for many readers.

• What time did you finish this e-mail? Posting to blog close to 7:30 PM Eastern, 4:30 PM Pacific.

Survival Among Friends

Three members of the survivor’s club met for lunch yesterday. Terry Teachout, Bill Kirchner and I have surmounted serious medical challenges (“can’t kill us”), but after a brief homage to the benefits and boredom of daily workouts, our conversation focused on staying afloat professionally, navigating the barrage of information that floods our world daily, balancing demands on our time, and assessing/predicting current/future cultural trends. (TT is very savvy about such things – if you are not a regular reader of his blog, you should be).

Kirchner, a consummate musician, radio host and jazz historian, is also a teacher at The New School (lucky are the jazz students in his classes). I was invited to stop by his class before our lunch to watch a video of the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra taped for Ralph Gleason’s “Jazz Casual” program. It was a late 1960s broadcast featuring, in addition to Thad and Mel, Bob Brookmeyer, Snooky Young, Jerome Richardson, and Roland Hanna. I’m going to have to buy the DVD (also includes the Modern Jazz Quartet and Dave Brubeck Quartet and Paul Desmond). Anyway, Bill sent an email later in the day —

Re our conversation today, I’m reminded of something a friend of mine, composer-arranger-producer Bob Belden, said to me a few years ago: “Most people have to reinvent themselves a few times in a lifetime. Jazz people have to do it every few years.”

I guess that’s the price we pay for not being downsized, outsourced, or otherwise devalued. Or as another colleague put it: “It’s lonely down here at the top.”

Speaking of friends and survival, another email yesterday informed me that two of my good friends/neighbors, were in a horrific car accident yesterday and, happily, got away without any apparent major injuries. Here’s the description another friend/neighbor sent. (Not knowing what legal machinations might be involved, I thought it best to not mention any names)

[They] were taking their bass boat to the boat shop for its annual check-up when a testosterone-poisoned male in his early/mid twenties tried to dart his souped-up off-road SUV across their lane, behind their truck. Being of insufficient mental facility to “look both ways”, the young man failed to note the 20 foot long bass boat and trailer behind the truck, and slammed into the trailer at approximately 50-60 mph.. The impact of the SUV spun the trailer, and the truck pulling it, several 360-degree revolutions in the direction the truck was traveling. The boat broke loose from the trailer and flew *over* [their] truck, skidding approximately 300 feet down the freeway before coming to rest across two traffic lanes.

The SUV jumped the trailer and rolled several times before coming to rest across two other lanes, as the truck pulling the boat, and carrying [them], skidded to a stop in the middle of the freeway. It appears [his] expertise in handling the skidding vehicle, and his ability to regain control of the vehicle, prevented the truck from rolling over or careening at high speed into the concrete center divider.

[They] were… treated for numerous aches and pains, sore backs, and necks and released [from the hospital] with no apparent major injuries. The male driver of the SUV accompanied the tow truck and his crumpled vehicle away from the scene without requiring medical treatment. The trailer and bass boat were destroyed, and [their] truck sustained significant rear-end damage.

Talk about survival! I am very happy to hear that they’re okay. We live on a wonderful block where our immediate neighbors are truly good friends who can be counted upon in good times and bad. I may not be very religious in a formal sense, but I am blessed to have great friends, near and far.

Big Brother

I received an email yesterday from amazon.com.

Devra Hall, Amazon.com has new recommendations for you based on 169 items you purchased or told us you own.

I don’t keep track of how many books and CDs I buy from amazon, let alone which titles, but they do. Still, unless they read DevraDoWrite (which I doubt), they have no idea what “items” I own beyond those that I purchase from them. And I don’t even own all of those — many were bought as gifts. They don’t seem to differentiate between books that were shipped to me and books shipped elsewhere. Nor, I suspect, do they weigh when the purchase was made. A topic of interest to me few years ago may no longer be on my mind.
Here are a few of the titles that they recommended for me:

  • Writing for a Good Cause: The Complete Guide to Crafting Proposals and Other Persuasive Pieces for Nonprofit
  • Fall Down, Laughing : How Squiggy Caught Multiple Sclerosis and Didn’t Tell Nobody
  • Love and Its Place in Nature : A Philosophical Interpretation of Freudian Psychoanalysis
  • Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life (The Tanner Lectures on Human Values)
  • Strange Pilgrims: Twelve Stories (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)
  • The Cornish Trilogy
  • Fat Pig : A Play
  • The First Year-Multiple Sclerosis: An Essential Guide for the Newly Diagnosed (The First Year Series)
  • Base Instincts: What Makes Killers Kill?
  • Make a Real Living as a Freelance Writer: How to Win Top Writing Assignments
  • Doubt (a play)
  • The Well-Fed Writer: Financial Self-Sufficiency As a Freelance Writer in Six Months or Less
  • The Pillowman: A Play
  • Lives of Extraordinary Women: Rulers, Rebels (and What the Neighbors Thought)
  • Demystifying Grant Seeking: What You REALLY Need to Do to Get Grants
  • Bartok: The Piano Concertos ~ Pierre Boulez
  • The Kite Runner

    • While many of their suggestions were obvious — I recently bought a book on grant writing, hence suggestion #1, and I’m sure I bought a book about MS when I was first diagnosed back in 1999 — the basis for other suggestions mystified me. I finally figured out that the play recommendations stemmed from a purchase I made for someone else — I bought a copy of Frozen for a friend and apparently other people who bought that play also bought Fat Pig and The Pillowman, or maybe they just figure a play is a play is a play.

    Today I got another amazon email with a recommendation that makes no sense to me:

    We’ve noticed that customers who have purchased The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon also purchased books by Patrick McMullan.

    I had purchased Zafon’s book last summer at the recommendation of Rifftides and enjoyed it very much, but what that novel about the son of a widowed bookstore owner in 1950s Barcelona has in common with Patrick McMullan’s “collection of more than 1000 photographs of the quintessential human act—the kiss…” I cannot fathom. I guess I’ll just have to take it at face value — a couple of people happened to buy both titles.

    Why am I boring you with all of this? So we can all think about the double-edged swords also known as technological innovations. Is it a lovely convenience to have someone (something?) keep track of your tastes and sift through the onslaught of incoming information, or not?

    Fatal Error?

    Fatal Error M1004 — that’s what my computer says when I turn it on.
    Power up, two beeps to get my attention, then with some old DOS based messages about the hardware it encountered and system stuff, it stops with that Fatal Error message and give me a choiuce of F1 to continue or F2 to go into set up. The first time I picked continue, and was able to get running, but not without some glitches which may or may not be related; worst among them being my email program that gives me wierd messages about being unable to get my mail because it is busy processing my folders. Now that could just be a coincidence of timing — I am an electronic packrat and have years worth of saved email, so it just could be that I hit some measure of “full” simultaneous with these other as-yet-unknown issues….we’ll see.

    Anyway, I did get onto the Internet where it seems that Fatal Error M1004 may have somethoing to do with the Flash BIOS. I read up on it, downloaded the latest version and tied to install only to find that my current Flash BIOS is already up-to-date. So it’s not that.

    There’s another fix they recommend – unplugging the computer, removing the battery, then holding the power on/off button for a whole minute, something about resetting the memory??? I may try that later, but maybe I’ll get some writable CDs first and save some crucial data first — just in case.

    Until I get this handled, in between a bunch of scheduled interviews for the Luther Henderson book, blogging may continue to be lite. Noon today I’ll be visiting with Mercedes Ellington, Duke’s grandaughter. So, please check back tomorrow. I will have much to tell you about.

    Mis(s)Information

    I got it wrong – Gene Di Novi’s concert is tomorrow night, Tuesday the 28th. Not tonight. It’s a good thing he just called, because I was about to head out in the pouring rain to see/hear him. So, my husband wants to know, “don’t you know what day it is?” I am picturing the Jazz Bakery calendar in my mind and Di Novi is clearly in the second box. So I go to the web site and sure enough, there it is, second box…but wait! Aren’t calendars supposed to show the weeks starting with Sunday? Isn’t that standard? Normal? My friends (husband, too) may well ask who am I to lean toward “normal”? And hasn’t Ruth been starting her Jazz Bakery calendars with Mondays all along? Well, yes. And I am sure that there are precedents for this alternate structure — that it must be normal to some culture or subculture somewhere. Again, something to be researched, but not right now. Right now I have to become a domestic goddess and cook dinner.

    Perfection

    Terry Teachout posted a great quote today that is particularly relevant to recent postings (here and here) and to Just Muttering‘s addendum here.

    Not only do I love the quote, but because of it my musical world has expanded to include George Enescu, a Roumanian composer and violinist with whom I was not familiar, at least not by name. These chance discoveries are what I love about blogs! Thanks TT.

    Thoughts TK

    Maria Schneider Orchestra played a wonderful concert at Disney Hall last night, about which I plan to tell you in detail, but not tonight. I will tell you now that Esa-Pekka Salonen was in the audience, as was Dianne Reeves (straight from her Grammy win — congrats to you Dianne), Don Grusin, Peter Sellers and lots of other wonderfully creative folks. The orchestra was well-received, two standing O’s and an encore. Anyway, more later. My mother is in town visiting for a long weekend, so bloging may be light for the next day or three.

    If you don’t know what TK means, read this and this.

    Rescued

    Some days I can whip off a blog post, no sweat; other days seem crammed full of demands leaving me with little if any time to think, let alone blog. [Hmmm, blog as a verb? Funny think how quickly nouns become verbs these days — something I have been known to abhor in days past.]

    Anyway, I have at least two more posts in mind to wrap up my account of our New York trip, but haven’t written them as of yet. To tide you over, pianist George Ziskind has come to my rescue, providing me with a brief account of the Sonny Rollins event that I, and hundreds of others, missed out on. According to a bio blurb I read, George is “an ex-Chicagoan, pianist, and child of the bebop age, who has lived in New York City since the mid-’60s. He was one of Lennie Tristano’s first students and notes that, “The low point of my career was a month spent as musical director for Brenda Lee. The high point is yet to come.” He believes in: “God, Country, and Art Tatum (not necessarily in that order).” You can read his I Remember Tadd [Dameron] on the Jazz Institute of Chicago web site. Here’s his IAJE Rollins Report:

    In a room holding about 2000 people who began taking the best seats more than an hour before hit time, a smallish area at one end was set up as a stage. Props were minimal: two armchairs bisected by a small table holding a couple bottled waters and glasses. The pre-event buzz in the room was electric and palpable. We were all waiting for the chairs to be filled with Sonny Rollins and Ira Gitler, the former to be interviewed by the latter.

    This was more than one of the deans of jazz journalism talking to the premier living tenor player. Ira actually produced Sonny’s first date as a leader, over 55 years ago. They are as connected as (with apologies to the Bergmans) two branches on a vine. They are surely two bebop emblems.

    At long last, out walked Ira, and then – Sonny, followed by instant standing ovation. (Not one of those “I’d better stand up because everyone else is standing up” ovations; rather, the whole room rose en masse, as if on cue. The joint levitated.)

    Sonny was togged out in Full Icon mode. Navy blue suit, white shirt with that dressiest of accoutrements, a white four-in-hand. This was topped off with shades and a rakishly-angled beret. He looked downright magisterial.

    For more than 75 minutes, Ira would throw out a topic or an event; Sonny then grabbed the ball and expounded. A few of the many topics:

    – 1949, a seminal year that found Sonny recording with the likes of J.J., Bud, Fats, Kenny Dorham, John Lewis, and on and on;

    – vibrant Harlem in his growing-up years of the ’30s and ’40s, having neighbors like Jackie McLean and Bud Powell;

    – drugs, during which Sonny spoke in slow, measured words. He told how many who got caught up in drugs were loathe to talk about it later on, but how his late wife Lucille told him “Sonny, you have overcome drugs so you have no reason to hide this fact”;

    – Ira pointed out Sonny’s ability to go on and on with a tune, draining every possible drop of improv from it, until the crowd would erupt in applause. At which, Sonny would plow back into the meat of the tune and deliver yet another 15 minutes of even more intense improv. At hearing this, Sonny did a piece of rare-for-him schtick: he put on an accusatory look and said to Ira, “Oh – so you’re calling me a ham?” The room erupted in laughter.

    No breaking news was divulged; rather, just two guys chewing the fat. But, two guys who are surely beentheredonethat in what A.B. Spellman called “the bebop business.”

    I know in years past that some IAJE events were audio taped and made available for purchase. If they are available, I plan to buy a copy of the interviews with Sonny, Clark Terry, and Billy Taylor. I haven’t yet found a link for same on the IAJE web site, but I have a call in to the powers that be asking about this and will post the info when I receive a response.