April 21

The idea of Matt Damon and Keira Knightley starring in a new film version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's gorgeous novel Tender Is the Night strikes me as promising:

http://theplaylist.blogspot.com/2010/04/matt-damon-and-keira-knighley-to-lead.html

The novel has been adapted for the screen twice before; as a feature film in 1962, with Jason Robards and Jennifer Jones as Fitzgerald's doomed glamor couple Dick and Nicole Diver; and as a cable mini-series in 1985, with Peter Strauss and Mary Steenburgen. I've seen neither adaptation, but the latter sounds more promising, both for the extra length (useful in capturing the subtleties of a novel) and for the spot-on Strauss/Steenburgen casting. I expect that Matt Damon would be every bit as good a Dick Diver as I picture Peter Strauss being.

Johnny D. Boggs at True West magazine compiled an enterprising list of "The Top 10 Western Movies You've Never Heard Of," many of them with a noir coloring:

http://www.truewestmagazine.com/stories/the_top_10_western_movies/1429/

Another nice list is Michael Foley's grouping of "absurd classics," in which Albert Camus and Samuel Beckett rub up against David Foster Wallace and The Bible:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/apr/20/michael-foley-top-10-absurd-classics

A world literary classic that incorporates plenty of absurdity -- and plenty of everything else -- is the 8,000 page Urdu Tilism-e Hoshruba, which is beginning to appear in an English translation that will eventually extend to many volumes:

http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/04/technologies-of-the-imagination-a-review-of-tilisme-hoshruba-in-translation.html

http://mafarooqi.com/hoshruba/index.html

More octogenarian jazzmen: Pianist and bandleader Randy Weston celebrated his 84th birthday last week, and is going strong:

http://www.wbgo.org/thecheckout/?p=2245

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Weston

In The Checkout podcast, Weston has a lot to say about Africa and its music; he visits the continent regularly. This Atlantic essay describes the huge presence of China in the contemporary African economy:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/05/the-next-empire/8018 

Baseball reporting for the brand-new season has emphasized the absence of fans in the stands, with a number of stadiums setting record lows for single-game attendance:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100416/ap_on_sp_ba_ne/bbo_empty_seats

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_league_stew/post/Good-seats-available-MLB-setting-record-lows-in?urn=mlb,235390

Hello, Major League Baseball! The economy has finally caught up with you! Although, really, the cost of going to any major league sports event has been a scandal for a while, and for the average financially challenged American family has become an infrequent treat at best. Those who have minor league baseball or hockey teams nearby, as I did in Northeast Wisconsin, can know the pleasure of going to games often, having a good time and eating and drinking well, for a fraction of the cost; their kids will be catered to by stadium staff and have much better access to players, as well. 

Photographer Eirik Johnson captures a certain melancholy that I associate with the Pacific Northwest. The slideshows at Johnson's own website are excellent:

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=37526

http://www.aperture.org/gallery/

http://www.eirikjohnson.com/

Among notables born on this date are novelist Charlotte Bronte, crime novelist John Mortimer, sociologist Max Weber, ecologists John Muir and Garrett Hardin, philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts, Queen Eliabeth II, politician Thomas Kean, comedian Elaine May, film director Edwin S. Porter, rocker Iggy Pop, and actors Andie MacDowell, Patti LuPone, Charles Grodin, and Anthony Quinn. Moderate Republican Tom Kean was a phenomenally popular Governor in my liberal-leaning home state of New Jersey; he won re-election to a second term in 1985 by the incredible margin of 71%-24%. His manners were naturally patrician and preppy, but he was utterly without fakery, and people responded strongly to that. He later served as the President of New Jersey's Drew University, a beautiful little school that grew in stature under his leadership. Kean, like one-time Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld (who won his 1994 re-election by a similar margin, 71%-28%), serves as a wonderful example that moderate Republicans can command real devotion in essentially Democratic states, a lesson that the current incarnation of the GOP seems utterly uninterested in.