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A Memory of Marvin Hamlisch

I had the great honor of meeting SuperGenius composer Marvin Hamlisch many years ago when I first left Nebraska and lived in Washington D.C. for awhile on my way to graduate school in New York City.  I was stunned to learn Marvin died yesterday at the incredibly young age of 68.

In my January 11, 2010 United Stage article  — A Final Walk with Jim Brady — I mentioned Marvin’s kindness to me as a young student of the theatre:

The Victory Awards were intended to honor achievements of the human spirit. The show was hosted by Frank Langella and Marvin Hamlisch was the musical director.

Frank did not speak to any of the workers on the show while Marvin Hamlisch struck up a conversation with me backstage — I was a new transplant from Nebraska to D.C. — and he told me we’d one day “write a musical together” because “that’s just how things happen.”

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The Greplin Effect

Yesterday, we published a Greplin review in our Panopticonic blog, and the surge in traffic for that review was incredible.  We had 1,102 views for that review alone.  I call that massive influx of readers “The Greplin Effect.”  Here’s a comparison chart over time that shows you the massive Greplin bump we experienced yesterday and today:

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No Sympathy for Amy Winehouse

Amy Winehouse is dead.  Is anyone surprised?  Or did we all sense the inevitability of it all across the arc of her short, and tortured, wasted, life?  Does it matter that she’s now a member of the 27 Club?  Or that she becomes yet another exemplar of the Mozart Syndrome?

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My Successful Stellar Upgrade to OS X Lion

I started out my online life as a Windows fanatic.  Then, a few years ago, I became a Mac Fanboi.  I have given over my entire technological life to SuperGenius SuperStar Steve Jobs — not Apple, Steve Jobs — and he controls my iPad and iPhone and AirPort and MacBook, and my daily happiness by default, and I just sit idly by and enjoy the fruit of his labor.  I do worry about his demise, though, because I think Apple is Steve Jobs, not the other way around.  Yesterday, I dutifully took the $30.00USD plunge and upgraded my 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook to OS X Lion, and the process was clean, transparent and simple.  I love my Mac!

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Spader Owns the Office

Yesterday, good news broke that the brilliant and SuperGenius actor James Spader will be taking a major role on The Office to help replace the “loss” of the awful Steve Carell.  Carell played a bully role into a miasmatic “We’ll Miss You Forever, Michael!” character — destroying all the rotten goodness of the entire premise of the show.  With Spader in tow, the show can finally revert to its original needles and pins premise of working for a slightly creepy wacko.

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Pat Metheny's What's It All About Review

Pat Metheny is a magnificent musician who just happened to make his fame by playing a rousing Jazz guitar.  Metheny’s long career in Jazz has been vibrant and punching.  He always takes you on a rapid, breathless, journey and then plunks you back to earth.  Metheny’s new album — What’s It All About — dropped today, and the album consists of a curious, non-Jazzy, covers of several classics.

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Tedeschi Trucks Band: Revelator Review

Derek Trucks is a guitar player in the Allman Brothers Band with Warren Haynes.  Derek is also the nephew of Allman Brothers Band drummer Butch Trucks.  Derek Trucks is a SuperGenius musician.  Hey may not have an effervescent facial expression on stage, but his magnificent fingers prove the magic and the methodology of his work.  Derek is married to singer Susan Tedeschi and, together, they have formed the Tedeschi Trucks Band and their first album released dropped yesterday: Revelator.

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Eddie Lang: The Father of Jazz Guitar Review

Eddie Lang is the greatest Jazz guitar player you have probably never heard of before today.  Eddie Lang died in 1933 at the age of 30 after a botched tonsillectomy that Bing Crosby urged him to have so Eddie could have speaking roles, in addition to playing the guitar, in Bing’s movies.  Today, a new Eddie Lang album dropped — The Father of Jazz Guitar — and it is a delightful experience to hear Eddie’s archtop guitar sound so round and rich and full and warm 80 years after he first recorded the songs.

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Jerzy Kosinski and a Blank Piece of Paper

The great SuperGenius Howard Stein and I were recently discussing the writing process when I reminded him of his unforgettable advice to writers — found in the Secret of Good Writing — and we both shared a laugh.  Then, Howard told me a story about Jerzy Kosinski and writing.

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The Amazing Cyclotrope

There is nothing quite like discovering the SuperGenius mind exposed in action.  Today, I introduce you to Tim Wheatley — a student at University College Falmouth studying Digital Animation — and his Amazing, real life, Cyclotrope!

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