Oh my, I get to be first. Here's hoping that your move made it possible to find some things that were missing before.

On the home front, I received a contract for an ebook sequel that isn't complete yet. I guessed that was a hint that the ebook it's a sequel to was doing well in the publisher's eyes. Today the publisher posted a page at their site showing the ranking of their ebooks. That particular ebook was fifth out of just over 200 the ebook publisher has published. I just might have to retry approaching some print publishers since I still hold that right.

Are aliens stealing our sleep? I sometimes find myself wondering if it's just me, or is insomnia a growing "epidemic". I know I've got it fairly bad, but it seems like it spreads or something.

If this was rasff, you'd be deciding whether this:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Content/read.asp?ID=82

was real or not, and if it was real, whether the boy was mistreated or the school was poorly run.

Oh, and Marty Helgeson is going on about abortion again.

My post on wishbones has drifted without many answers. I saw a comic that had two people holding the wishbone with the two ends up. I've always held it with the two ends down. Y'all?

Thinkst thou that I who saw the face of Bhob and tasted the eternal joys of corflu am not tormented with ten thousand RASFFs at being once deprived?

Marilee:

1a) I'm inclined to think Bryan's situation is real, because of a combination of the pictures, and because I know my own school would have reacted that way. My high school days are not far behind me. I'm less confident that Bryan reacted as he reports. Few high school students are that cool, even with advance planning.

1b) I think Bryan is right on his free speech issue, and the school is disgusting. The signs are trash, I hardly need add in this company.

2) Wishbone ends down.

I think the same thing would have happened if he'd been posting left-leaning, anti-war posters -- because my brother did try to post some at his high school, and they got taken down too.

(At his school, they had a required stamp... This story makes me see the wisdom of that policy. Funny story: my brother photoshopped the stamp in, and the teacher told him she knew it was fake because it spelled the school's name incorrectly, "Hiil" for "Hill." But he'd scanned it from a real stamp, on another poster.)

Wish bone ends down, here too. And, ummm, held by pinkies.

For where we are is fandom, and where fans are, there must we ever be. If you're cool widdat.

Wishbone ends either up or down. I don't do it any set way.

On another topic, I wonder what people think about the piece in this morning's NY Times about the decline in American readership.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/08/books/08READ.html?th

One salient point from the article was that the number total number of readers has not changed in 20 years, but since the population has increased by 40 million people, the percentage of readers has dropped.

I've been quoting the interview PNH has online where he states that, despite all the cocktail talk, more people are reading than ever before.

Am I wrong in thinking these are contradictory studies? Maybe I'm missing something.

Just wondering what you think.

Marilee -- ends down, but held as close as possible to the branch point, because whoever holds the wishbone closes to the branch get the long piece. If you wish to avoid this and have a more random result, you should swap wishes so that whoever gets the short end wins.

Josh - I'd be happy to know what keeps happening to that 10 minutes between 8:05 am and 8:15 am.

One minute I'm eating my breakfast, the next I'm realizing I'm running late, and making a mad dash up the stairs to brush my teeth.

And may I just say, recent cereal + immediately brushing teeth = yuck.

As for the wishbone question, would you believe I've never held to that tradition?

I think we figured the cat would eat the bone and get it stuck in its throat if we left the bone out to dry. Or something.

I can understand the ends-up theory, though - horseshoes were believed to have all the luck run out if hung ends down, right?

For where we are is fandom, and where fans are, there must we ever be. If you're cool widdat.

The fans shoot the breeze that cools them.

Alice-- OJ + toothpaste = even worse.

Harry, along similar lines, I was disappointed that this year the National Science Foundation's biennial study of "public understanding of science" didn't continue their 2002 questions about science fiction.

Been meaning to write something about this, haven't gotten around to it.

They did take an interesting look at science books, though.

In a recent survey, most respondents (75 percent) said that their use of the Internet has not affected the amount of time they spend reading books, newspapers, and magazines. About 20 percent said they spend less time reading because of the Internet, and 6 percent said they actually spend more time reading because of the Internet. Books rival the Internet as a very or extremely important source of information: almost identical numbers of respondents, three of five, made this claim. In addition, books were second only to television as a very or extremely important source of entertainment.

I think the Internet has eaten seriously into my own book-readin' time in the past decade and a half, though.

Totally off topic, but I suppose that's what these threads are for, anyway.

I have a quote I've been unable to place, even with google. The terms are too general and I think I may be paraphrasing it, so I thought you good and literate people might be able to help me.

It's something like
"In the game of love the one who is loved wins."

And if no one here can place it, perhaps I can safely pretend to have made it up myself.

The Internet has stolen my tv-watching time, but not my reading time.

And here's a new link, for those of you with Quicktime on your computer and a fast connection:

http://playlist.yahoo.com/makeplaylist.dll?id=1277881&sdm=web&qtw=480&

Spider-Man vs. Doctor Octopus... in Legos.

Wishbone ends up, for my family. If we can be bothered. Not massively into wishing - more into wistful hoping.

Mice on Ice . . . the other, other white meat!

http://www.miceonice.com/homepage.html

Langston Hughes said, according to an essay by Arnold Rampersad in Voices & Visions: The Poet in America, ed. Helen Vendler [New York: Random House, 1987]:

"Then it was that books began to happen to me, and I began to believe in nothing but books and the wonderful world in books -- where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we did in Kansas."

One refreshing thing about Making Light (and my blog and domain) is that we keep referring from movies, TV, newspapers, and our interior worlds BACK to the world of books.

On the net, that is swimming against the tide.

I'm one of those whose use of computers for 38 years has resulted in less TV, and less sleep. But, almost surely, the internet has driven to me read more books, books of which I might othwerwise have remained ignorant.

Andy & Alice - there's an issue of sequence here.

Cereal just before toothpaste = yuck

Toothpaste just before OJ = yuck

So, for best results, watch your order of operations!

As far as that missing 10 minutes goes, I frequently have whole hours disappear!

Josh: I don't need aliens to steal my sleep. I have two three-month old kittens, they have the sleep theft thing down cold.

I've been waiting for an open thread for a while to ask for the collective wisdom of Making Light readers - I'm trying to put together a mix CD for a friend of mine who is hoping to visit New York next year. (His savings have been drained by needing to help support an elderly, ill aunt, else he would have gone long ago. He's a great guy, needless to say.) Can anyone offer relevant songs? I've got a few obvious ones - NYNY, NY state of mind, Fairytale of (in?) NY - but any other suggestions are warmly appreciated. Thanks.

Dorothy - "Autumn in New York" - my preference would be for the Singers Unlimited version, but I'm a close-harmony geek.

Bill Humphries - what, no photos of tiny sleep-thieves?

Well, let's see. Bernstein alone wrote three musicals about the city, though not every song is a "New York" lyric. There's "Ohio" ("Go home/Go west/Go back where you came from!") from "Wonderful Town" and "Come Up to My Place" from "On the Town" come to mind.

"Guys and Dolls," oddly enough, doesn't have a New York song as such in it -- "The Oldest Established" is the closest, though if you changed the lyric to ". . . crap game in East Lynne" it would still play about the same.

And there's "42nd Street," and of course "Lullaby of Broadway." "Take the A Train" (which is no longer subway-accurate, but who cares). "Birdland" (I like the Manhattan Transfer version, but that's me) is about a very NYC joint.

You might also include--if you don't mind a radical shift in tone and/or genre--Nena Hagen's "New York New York."

Oh! And I know where the time goes. It all drains out through a hole in the wall of an apartment down in the Village, at Bleecker and MacDougal.

My basic rule of fandom and such:

There ain't no such thing as a free weekend.

That's where the time goes....

Very minor glitch I've been meaning to ask about. When I click on the comments of a Making Light post, the comments will fully display for less than a second, and then end at the end of the adds on the left. Refresh doesn't fix this, but hitting the back button and clicking on the comments again does fix it. Following a link in the comments and returning via back restores the bad behavior, which is again fixed by popping up and down.

This doesn't seem to happen on Electrolite. I'm using Windows XP and Internet Explorer. Do other people see this behavior? Is there some setting I can change?

Having to use my workaround is a very minor annoyance, I'm mostly just curious.

Oh, love those New York medleys.

Let's see, you'd have to include something from "West Side Story".

"The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" from the good old days of Genesis.

"New York Groove" by Kiss. The Rolling Stones' "Shattered". Flash and the Pan's "Hey St. Peter".

That oughta wake 'em up.

Topic-hopping, I don't know about the American public at large, but more of my reading time has been stolen by driving than by the Internet. Until four years ago, I either lived within a 15-minute walk of work, or commuted by train and used the time to read.

The Internet doesn't take away from reading. The Internet IS reading. I don't know why people are calling it a competitor to books instead of a companion.

A public service announcement for anyone who can get BBC2: here's a link

Oh, and wishbone ends down.

Longtime lurker, thankful for the open thread.

Last night on the Daily Show, I caught a bit about retired military band members being called back into service, due to the large number of funerals. I was only half-paying attention, and thus missed all the info that would point me to the source.

Oh great Internet researchers, can you find the story for me?

Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed

I use IE and Win2k. My wierd symptom is when I click on the comments here, scroll-down will get stuck until I click the button to either maximize or un-maximize the window.

Wishbone ends down or sideways, never up -- that's just wrong. :)

Am I the only one who has been unable to understand the threads for the last week or so? Is anyone here making sense? Are you all commenting on bizarre posts on other threads or some grand inside joke?

I just want to be involved. That's all. Feel pity for me.

Another data point: the net has cut into my book reading time and pretty much eliminated my recorder-playing time.

I have two three-month old kittens

Did someone enrage or appall you with some news?

I'm pretty sure the wishbone ends went down in our family, but as there were six of us my parents suppressed the whole custom rather early, to avoid giving us another excuse to draw blood on one another. Also, if I recall correctly the allegedly-drying wishbone was soaked in vinegar as a joke one time, resulting in a rubbery wishbone that would have torn up the middle had the pullers been able to grip the slippery thing at all. The other six of us thought this was terribly funny, though my parents pretended to deplore it.

Dorothy - if you want a song that depicts what it's actually like to live here, "Another Hundred People" from Sondheim's Company can't be beat.

Hey ! For once I can stop lurking from the shadows and actually be useful: try Wake Up In New York by Craig Armstrong and Evan Dando, pretty nice one... maybe a bit mood problematic ?

Dorothy: 'New York' by Ryan Adams, off the Gold album. Lovely wry, elegaic alt.country. Never been to the city, but always imagined playing this as the plane comes in to land.

I suppose the net has cut into my book-reading time, but not nearly so much as the baby has; and if it weren't for the net, I would be going rapidly and noisily insane due to insufficient talking to other adult human beings who aren't my husband.

I think I'm still doing 3-5 books a week on average, so I'm okay. Right?

You can't beat "New York City" by They Might Be Giants.

I also like "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feeling Groovy)" and "Bleecker Street" by Simon and Garfunkel.

And "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard," which I have always thought of as a NY song.

Those with the IE problem: as PNH and TNH have noted, f11 twice (fullscreen/unfulscreen) generally solves it.

And, of course, one of the Oyster Band's versions of "New York Girls" is essential....

There's always "New York Minute," which was quite tastelessly played on store Muzak on 9/12/01. Not a cheery NY, that one.

I sang TMBG's "New York City" constantly when we were in the process of moving back from California. Only I had to change the lyrics a bit so that they rhymed with "Minneap'lis" instead of "New York City." "And everything looks beautiful when you're young and hapless" is probably less appealing than "young and pretty," but possibly more accurate.

I had a repertoire of actual home-going songs without substitute lyrics, but none of them made reference to the Cities. I also had many that made reference to getting out of California. Go figure. I haven't noticed a similar trend for NY songs. It's just California people sing about fleeing, mostly.

"You'd better go back to beautiful Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Georgia, Tennessee...."

Ann writes:

Last night on the Daily Show, I caught a bit about retired military band members being called back into service, due to the large number of funerals. I was only half-paying attention, and thus missed all the info that would point me to the source.

Asking Google News for "euphonium" should provide you what you need.

Surprised to be the first to mention this: Lou Reed's "NYC Man" (to pick out maybe the most obvious from his extensive ouvre).

Also, Jim Infantino's "Somewhere Over NYC," if you're lucky enough to find a copy of The World of Particulars.

in re internet and reading habits:

I find that I read just as many books but the internet replaces news papers and magazines. (I no longer buy on paper the newspapers I read on line)

This fact would be interesting to Jonathan Tasini and co. who are concerned with contract disputes about whether the Boston Globe will pay them again when it re-posts their writing as web content. (This is old news. I am not sure whether they have resolved the issue.)

That Spider-Man lego thing *rocks*. Thanks, Harry. :)

Those with the IE problem: as PNH and TNH have noted, f11 twice (fullscreen/unfulscreen) generally solves it.

I have the same problem. Actually, any change in the window size (not just maximize/restore) will do the trick.

But this doesn't help if you click on a link that points to a specific comment. In that case you only see the first few comments in the thread, rather than the specified one; changing the window size displays all the comments but leaves the window positioned where it was. There is no way to determine which of the comments the link was intended to point to. I'd really appreciate a fix!

Bill, I bow before your greatness.
I never even knew about google news. Thank you!

(Returning to lurkdom, as I clearly have more to learn...)

You can't beat "New York City" by They Might Be Giants.

You can get extra cred by using the Cub original, though.

The album Gravichords, Whirlies and Pyrophones (a compilation devoted to experimental musical instruments) has a version of "New York, New York" played entirely on car horns.

Godley & Creme, "An Englishman In New York"
East River Pipe, "Times Square Go-Go Boy" (or the very nice Alice Despard version--if you like the mp3 at that link as much as I do, you'll want the whole record)
Ferron, "Snowing In Brooklyn"
The Favorite Color, "Go Back To West New York"
Stew, "North Bronx French Marie"
Anything by the New York Dolls

Or go to allmusic.com, search for "New York" under Songs, and stand back.

And how could I forget:

Robert Fripp, "NYC3"

Surprised to be the first to mention this: Lou Reed's "NYC Man" (to pick out maybe the most obvious from his extensive ouvre).

Or "Romeo Had Juliette," with the cheery stanza:

"I'll take Manhattan in a garbage bag
with Latin written on it that says
'it's hard to give a shit these days'
Manhattan's sinking like a rock
into the filthy Hudson what a shock
they wrote a book about it
they said it was like ancient Rome."

"Dirty Blvd." is a real toe-tapper, too. My favorite Lou Reed reference to The City is probably in "HookyWooky," where he imagines throwing his girlfriend's exes off a roof "down into the streets to die/ Under the wheels of a car on Canal St." The last line is then picked up by a gospel-type chorus, and repeated a dozen or so times. It's brilliant, in its own twisted way.

Lou has some Issues.

There is also Ani DiFranco's "Cradle and All," which contains many NYC lyrics such as:

i live in new york, new york
the city that never shuts up

Dorothy--I like The Bowery and Harlem Nocturne. Separately. Together, they're like toothpaste and cereal.

There's also Sly & Robbie's New York, sung by Michael Rose, now that I think of it. And I'm pretty sure there's a Jef Gibson track about New York also, except he was creative enough not to put the name of the city anywhere near the title, so I can't remember it... Hope it still will help.

"The Only Living Boy In New York", either the original Simon & Garfunkel version or the cover by Everything But The Girl. Or both. Somewhat elegiac, perhaps, but it speaks of what the city has come to mean to me.

A quick iTunes library search for "New York" lists:
A Heart In New York - Simon & Garfunkel
Englishman In New York - Sting
Fairytale Of New York - The Pogues & Kirsty MacColl
New New York (Previously Unreleased) - The Cranberries
New York - U2
New York City - They Might Be Giants
New York Mining Disaster 1941 - Bee Gees
New York Minute - Don Henley
New York Minute (Live) - The Eagles
New York State of Mind - Billy Joel
The Boy From New York City - The Ad Libs
The Only Living Boy In New York - Everything But The Girl
The Only Living Boy In New York - Simon & Garfunkel

The U2 would be another one I would add to the mix disc.

The Spidey Lego thing can be downloaded too from the animators:

Spite Your Face Productions Ltd

(Have to watch it at home where I can get the sound to work--but even silent, it was fabulous!)

"Love Song/New York," Lucy Kaplanski
"Southern California Wants to Be Western New York," Dar Williams
"Englishman in New York," Sting

---L.

The first song I heard, on the first day upon moving from New York City to Los Angeles (well, Pasadena) at age 16 to start at Caltech had the opening lines:

"I used to live in New York City;
Everything there was dark and dirty.
Outside my window was a steeple
With a clock that always said twelve-thirty."

["Twelve Thirty", lyrics by John Phillips, by The Mamas And The Papas]

Then I looked at a clocktower, It was 12:30. I felt that I'd just stepped into the Twilight Zone.

Also hear:

"We can try to understand the New York Times' effect on man."
["Stayin' Alive" by The BeeGees]

"She's pure as New York snow. She's got Bette Davis eyes."
["Bette Davis Eyes" by Kim Carnes]

"New York, London, Paris, Munich, everybody talk about pop musik"
["Pop Muzik" by M]

"I've been walking Central Park, singing after dark"
["Miss You" by The Rolling Stones]

"Meet me baby down at 45th street, where the peppermint twisters meet."
["The Peppermint Twist" by Joey Dee and The Starliters]

"I laid a divorcée in New York City, I had to put up some kind of a fight"
["Honky Tonk Woman" by The Rolling Stones]

"I'm back, back in the New York groove "
["New York Groove" by Ace Frehley]

"We have problems on the North, South, East and West, New York City, Saint Louis, Philadelphia, Los Angeles"
["Elected" by Alice Cooper]
"Go ahead, bite the Big Apple, don't mind the maggots"
["Shattered" by The Rolling Stones]

"Where the New York City winters aren't bleeding me."
["The Boxer" by Simon and Garfunkel]

"And I dreamed I was flyin, far up above my eyes could clearly see The Statue of Liberty"
["American Tune" by Paul Simon]

"Manhattan Spiritual" by Reg Owens

"Boogaloo down Broadway. Everybody in your town is gonna be boogaloo and Broadway bound"
["Boogaloo Down Broadway" by Fantastic Johnny C]

"And he called out to a taxi cab take me down to Central Park."
["Fine Fine Day" by Tony Carey]

"The eyes of a New York woman,
are eyes that hold a man.
She swept me up off my feet,
Made my world seem so complete."
["Eyes Of A New York Woman" by B.J. Thomas]

"Zip code, make it get there better,
10036 on the letter,
it happened in New York City"
["Zip Code" by The Five Americans]

"There is a rose in Spanish Harlem.
A red rose grows up in Spanish Harlem"
["Spanish Harlem" by Aretha Franklin]

"All over Manhattan, and down Doheny Way."
["Surfin' USA" by The Beach Boys]

"They're dancin' in Chicago, down in New Orleans, up in New York City"
["Dancing In The Street" by Martha and The Vandellas]

"Last exit to Brooklyn, gonna keep these wheels of mine covering ground."
["Last Chance To Turn Around" by Gene Pitney]

"When you get caught between the moon and New York City, the best that you can do, is fall in love."
["Arthur's Theme" by Christopher Cross]

"From Central Park to Pasadena's such a long way, I feel so out of it walking down Broadway."
["New York's A Lonely Town" by The Tradewinds]

Today, Physics fans, there's an article entitled "Global Team Of Physicists Upends Standard Model With Discovery Of Neutrino Oscillation, Mass" on sciencedaily.com
which confirms the theory that neutrinos oscillate between electron-neutrino , muon-neutrino, and taon-neutrino. It's a big deal, confirmed by an international team of about 100 people, because the "Standard Model" in Physics insists that neutrinos have NO mass (per John Updike's famous poem), whereas only if they have mass can these oscillations take place. The "related" story on "electron fission" is interesting, too.

A little late to the New York party, but a couple more suggestions: "New York Shuffle", Graham Parker and the Rumour; practically anything by Luna, particularly "Chinatown," "Great Jones Street," and for general mood, all of Penthouse.

Gotta include "NYC" by Interpol. (Now I too shall return to lurking.)

Andy Perrin (Open Thread 24, July 08, 2004, 07:40 PM) made a very clever extended joke about Fibonacci Numbers and Phi (the Golden Ratio) which is only funny to people to whom it need not be explained. he also comments to me:

"JvP: I think people make too much of phi. It isn't nearly as special as people make out."

My reply is taken semisatanically from the updated mathworld.com page on "Beast Number":

Phi =
- [sin(666 degrees) + cos(6 x 6 x 6 degrees)]

(J. Recr. Math. 1994, Livio 2002, p. 23).

Fot the pure computer geeks on Making Light, that same page points out that:

"The number 666 can also be found in a number of words an [sic] phrases. For example, summing the ASCII character codes for INDONESIA gives 666."

And for John M. Ford and divers film fans, "666" is the combination of the mysterious suitcase in Quentin Tarantino's film Pulp Fiction.

It's the devil in me that makes me point to Fear's "New York's Alright, if You Like Saxophones"

Oh, Jim, no. If the devil were really in you then you would have said "NYC" from Annie.

OK people, I know there's a music thing going on right now, and that's fine. But there are over 60 posts now, and not ONE commenting on how adorable my son is! (Top billing in particles).

Well, anyway. Did anyone mention Leonard Cohen "First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin"

NYC songs--well, everyone else already mentioned most of the ones I was thinking of, but I haven't seen Lenny Kravitz's "Mr. Cab Driver" mentioned yet. IIRC, the only NYC-specific mention in it is something along the lines of "he thinks we're all 165ers", referring to cabbies passing by black men because they fear they'll have to take them to bad neighbourhoods. W165th has been getting better, though (again, IIRC).

Oh yeah, and Bernstein's "Times Square" from "On the Town" is just plain great.

I can't resist throwing in a few more New York song recommendations:

- "Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side" by the Magnetic Fields from _69 Love Songs, Vol. 1_

- "53rd and 3rd" by the Ramones from _Ramones_

- And, while I agree with Tom Whitmore's suggestion, I have to go with Steeleye Span's version of "New York Girls" from _Commoners Crown_, if only because it features Peter Sellers on the ukelele.

I also enthusiastically second the recommendation for Nina Hagen's "New York New York", particularly the German version. And, for an amusing variation on "The 59th Street Bridge Song", track down DJ Wally's "Feelin' Groovy" from his album _Genetic Flaw_, where he plays havoc with the original by relentlessly looping the line "I've come to watch your flowers growing" and adding a heavy beat. It's a hoot, and you can dance to it.

I add a vote for "Mary's Place", on Bruce Springsteen's album The Rising.

And another from da bruddas - "Sheena is a Punk Rocker".

"New York City really has it all. Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah".

Security flaw in Firefox for Windows XP, and its patch: http://mozilla.org/security/shell.html

Damn you Phil Lee. I knew there was a Magnetic Fields song with an oblique NY reference and I couldn't think what it was. BTW, I saw MF at the Lyric Hammersmith (London) last month, and it was the best live gig I've ever attended, and I am extraordinarily difficult to please. Travelled up from Cornwall, and it was well worth it. I'm currently trying to find a Rufus Wainwright song about New York - there must be one, surely.

By a strange coinkidink, my current fave things are the new David Sedaris book, the 'i' album by MF and 'Want One' by Rufus W. I'm not gay, and I've never been to New York, but clearly something over there is calling me....

Never heard anything by Nina Hagen, but will be looking out for her now.

Ooh! Ooh! Rufus Wainwright, I can do this one.

I've always assumed that "14th Street" is about, you know, that 14th Street; "11:11" is about NYC; "Poses" has that line about being 'drunk and wearing flip-flops on 5th Avenue'; and I've always assumed that "In A Graveyard" is about Green-Wood Cemetery although I can't prove it.

I bet there are others, too, but I'll stop there. Rufus is one of my big idols these days. And now you all know it, I guess.

And there are several cuts from Black 47 (Funky Ceilidh for one), but I don't have my copy of their first disk handy.

The happiest, craziest, most wonderful rendition of "New York, New York" has to be Wendy Mae Chambers playing the Car Horn Organ she created.

Fortunately, this is online here, so if the server is up and Real Player is working for you, you won't need to take my word for it.

I heard a tape of this at Phil Foglio's, who suscribed to Bart Hopkin's newsletter on weird musical instruments, many years before Gravikords, Whirlies, & Pyrophones came out. I still love it.

I see she's got a Christmas album out. Perfect gift for the weird-Xmas-tunes collector in my life.

Andy, I think the entire thing is faked, with staged pictures. Did you notice the person in the "history teacher" picture is also the person taking down the signs? That that person let him take pictures of her? I checked, and the edress he listed for the principal is valid, so I emailed to check last night. Haven't heard back.

Hmm, in addition for more props to the TMBG version of New York City, consider:

The Beastie Boys' No Sleep Till Brooklyn and
Soul Coughing's Janine and True Dreams of Wichita

Sean:
I don't know you from Adam, but your son is adorable! It was a bright spot in my day when I visited that fabulous gallery.

Jonathan,
Thanks! I'm a happy dad, pure baby geek.

Marilee, WRT the pictures, you might be right. On the other hand, many of the pictures are from the rear, and may not have been taken with permission. Or the teacher might have thought, "OK, let him take pictures. So what." Like with Tootsie Roll Pops, the world may never know. (As far as TRPs are concerned, research is ongoing.)

JvP: Thanks for the Satanic connection. As an engineer and Rocky Horror fan, I hope to study Satanic Mechanics.

Here is another fun fact about the Perrin-acci numbers (see my original post for many other astonishing properties, including their influence on pop culture).

If a rabbit, genetically engineered to be parthenogenetic, is placed on an island, and such rabbits reproduce once a year, then the total number of rabbits on the island after the nth year will be the (n+1)st Perrin-acci number! (No rabbits die, of course.)

My current favorite find of the day: syntactic foam.

It's apparently a fun variant of normal foam with favorable properties for many applications.

Syntactic sugar, now syntactic foam.

I'm astounded and grateful that someone else posted about Cub's "New York City" being the original. Thank you, Tim Walters.

New York songs: Nathan Lane singing "The King of Old Broadway" from The Producers comes to mind. Also from the same play, Matthew Broderick singing:

I wanna be a producer,
with a hit show on Broadway.
I wanna be a producer
lunch at Sardi's every day...

Also, has anyone mentioned Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue?" That's always sounded like New York to me.

There's also the Demics (Canadian punk band) with their one minor hit, "(I wanna go to) new york city". Great tune. Voted the best Canadian single of all time.

http://www.canoe.ca/JamMusicPopEncycloPagesD/demics.html

"New York City rain,
"I don't know if it's making me
"Dirtier or clean...."

from "American Jerusalem" [can't remember from whom]

"...
"Outside the dirty Harlem streets
"The dirty buy and sell..."

-- Jack Hardy [symmetry, I can't remember the name of the song

Debbie, "Rhapsody in Blue" always reminds me of Paris.

Randall: Much action has taken place elsewhere this week. I'm not sure I've got it all down myself. Here is my best reconstruction.

P+T's basement flooded. Lydia Nickerson posted on rec.arts.sf.fandom (rasff) about it. Much commenting ensued on both rasff and ML by people who frequent both. The effects of the flooding turned out to be less awful than initially feared. On the issue of rescuing wet paper, freeze drying was enthusiastically recommended, but abandoned in favor of paper towels. (This may offer insight on those who frequent ML and rasff.) T recovered enough to post again.

Has nobody mentioned "Lullaby of Broadway" yet? It's been stuck in my head all week.

Tom, the Black 47 songs would probably be "Rockin' the Bronx," "Banks of the Hudson," "40 Shades of Blue," "New York, NY 10009," "Sleep Tight in New York City / Her Dear Old Donegal," "Livin' in America," and definitely "Funky Ceili!"

"Fanatic Heart" mentions walking through New York "like a grey silhouette/trying hard to remember what I'm supposed to forget," too. Not a happy song, that one.

Oh, and somebody melted my brain back there with the phrase, "because it features Peter Sellers on the ukelele." Iiiiiy!

It has been claimed that Gershwin was inspired to write "Rhapsody in Blue" by the sounds of a subway ride. I can believe that, if "inspired" is not taken in too strong a sense.

Delurking for a moment to suggest that people interested in the RASFF thread might check it out through the new Google Groups beta. Already I like it a lot better than the old version.

All right, back into the shadows I go...

More for the NYC song catalog:

John Gorka's lovely, melodic "Stranger in My Driver's Seat" doubles as a useful cautionary tale about NYC auto theft.

Aimee Mann's "Fifty Years After the Fair" is from the point of view of somebody who grew up within sight of the old World's Fair grounds in the Bronx--the ones put to amusing use in Men in Black. Any connoisseur of classic science fiction can appreciate this ode to antiquated visions of the future. How beautiful it was tomorrow.

Ani DiFranco's "Rockabye," from one of her earliest albums when the whole show was just the girl and her guitar, follows a cheerful love triangle through NYC's subway system, with a refrain that's "in tune with the symphony of south Brooklyn."

Well, I would certainly include the Trade Winds and Fear, previously mentioned, as well as Lou Reed's "I'm Waiting for the Man" ("up to Lexington, 1-2-5/Feel sick and dirty, more dead than alive") and the Fugs' "Slum Goddess" ("from the Lower East Side"). Seems like there ought to be something by Bronx natives Dion & the Belmonts, and perhaps "The Bridge Is Over" or some other rap saga of the battle between Queens and the Bronx. I'd also probably include the lovely instrumental theme from "Midnight Cowboy," and perhaps a tune from legendary midtown street musician Moondog--but no one has mentioned what i consider the greatest NYC song of all time, Jackie Wilson's "No Pity in the Naked City" ("Millions will watch you as you fall down to the ground").
--Robert, on the LES

"Aimee Mann's 'Fifty Years After the Fair' is from the point of view of somebody who grew up within sight of the old World's Fair grounds in the Bronx--the ones put to amusing use in Men in Black."

The fairgrounds are in Queens (Flushing Meadows-Corona Park). And the pavilion used in "MiB" -- Philip Johnson's NY State "Tent of Tomorrow" -- is from the '64 Fair (on the same site as the '39).

--JMF, fair and exposition obsessive

So, has Marty been railing against all those Catholic politicians/judges (e.g. Scalia) who don't actively oppose capital punishment?

Didn't think so.

They Might Be Giants have a song called 'I'll sink Manhattan'.

Rhapsody in Blue specifically reminds me of New York because it's the music behind the first few minutes of Woody Allen's Manhattan.

"Chapter One: He adored New York City..."

Leah,

At first glimpse, my addled brain translated your quote from above as:

"In the game of love, the one who wins loves twins."

Which, upon further reflection, didn't sound like too bad of advice, actually ...

Best,

Joel

Mris:

I also had many that made reference to getting out of California. Go figure. I haven't noticed a similar trend for NY songs. It's just California people sing about fleeing, mostly.

I don't know if one song constitutes a trend, but there's always Jim Croce's "New York's Not My Home"...

"Although the streets are crowded
There's something strange about it
Lived here 'bout a year and I never once felt at home
Thought I'd make the big time,
I learned a lot of lessons awful quick, and now I'm telling you
That they were not the nice kind
It's been so long since I have felt fine

"That's the reason that I gotta get out of here
I'm so alone
Don't you know that I gotta get out of here
'cause New York's not my home"

Going from memory here, of course, so there may be some typos, inaccuracies, or just plain made-up shtuff.

And of course, on a related tangent, there's Neil Diamond's "I Am I Said": "L.A.'s fine, but it ain't home / New York's home but it ain't mine no more."

Oh, hey. RASFF related, maybe sorta kinda. Here's a story about something that ought to be science fiction, but increasingly turns out to be fact. I suppose I had better be careful which WIP that I take on my flight to Medford come August. Do we have this sort of trouble on trains now, too?

Re: Rhapsody in Blue. It was a train of some sort, if not a subway. The quote about hearing the middle section of the piece in the rattley-bang of the wheels on the rails used to be included in the notes for every recording and concert. My favorite recording will always be the Gershwin solo (overdubbed, apparently) piano roll.

I was thinking of a great NYC tune, but I can't come up with the particulars. It's part of a beer ad from the 50s, a local beer, and the stop-motion animation shows a parade of bottles marching past various named (and numbered) streets. I have it on a VHS tape of old commercials.

If we're quoting New York in lyrics, don't forget Erasure's You Surround Me, which goes like so:

I love you with all the joy of living
'Til the lights go down in New York City

So...until last August?

This is terribly late on the OJ side-topic but:

OJ (acid) + toothpaste (abrasive) = damaged enamel

So it's a better idea to:

OJ + .... + breakfast + toothpaste = sparkly whites

Josh - I misread your post as "are aliens stealing our sheep" and had a lovely few minutes thinking that if aliens wanted to guarantee widespread insomnia, the logical thing to do would be to steal all the imaginary sheep.

Patrick - thanks for the Semolina help a few open threads ago, great site, very happy now.

I've come to do more shameless cadging from the SF hive-brain that lurks in these shiny, non-scroll-downy pages. My friend has been given the job of updating (creating?) the science fiction section in her secondary school's library, because she teaches physics. However, she doesn't read science fiction, so she passed the job onto me. Now, if I could do the same to you, a beautiful reading list would suddenly materialize out of the ether. So: what do you think they should buy? School language restrictions please, same with explicit sex stuff.

Cheers.

It's an Open Thread, so...

next sobriquet:
Gag Order Gorge and his Jackals... [needs an adjective with the j sound instead of "his"...]

The Edmonds stuff is sickening--a judge,probably a Gag Order George and Abominable Ashcroft partisan, threw out Ms Edmonds' lawsuit on the basis that it would make public sensitive information--information that Ashcroft RETROACTIVELY classified.... She was fired from the FBI after refusing to accede to previous mistranslations and marking of documents as unwarranting of translation by a translator who it turns out had some VERY dubious associations, and instead kept reporting the situation higher and higher and being told to not make waves... There seem to be foreign interests being protected, against the interests of the integrity and well-being of the USA and its residents. One wonders just what country or countries were/are being shielded, organizations, and just -how- compromised the US Executive Branch is, anyway. I've been wondering that for many months now--Bush pulled an Executive Order which shielded the FBI from investigation just how far up the FBI chain went the corruption involving Whitey Bulger and Stephen "the Rifleman" Flemmi's licenses to kill and the FBI shielding them, even to the extent of allowing three men to be sentenced to death with the FBI KNOWING that Bulger and his associates, not the men sentenced to death row, were involved in committing the murder... [that stuff is all documented with on-line material that ran in the Boston newspapers. It's extremely ugly stuff. And Bulger is still on the loose. It wasn't until one of Bulger's former buddies decided he'd been stabbed in the back by Bulger and started singing for revenge, that any headway got made into investigating Bulger and his closets murderous buddies, and certain FBI people were out of the picture, either retired or deceased (from natural causes).

Just up on AP:

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Florida elections officials said Saturday they would not use a list of people believed to be convicted felons to purge voter rolls, acknowledging a flaw that left off some Hispanics.

The problem in compiling the list was unintentional, said Nicole de Lara, a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Glenda Hood.

"Nevertheless, Supervisors of Elections are required to uphold their constitutional obligation" and will find other ways to ensure felons are removed from the rolls, Hood said in a statement.

etcetera, etcetera...

In other news, th pentagon admitted "accidently" deleting the records that prove that G. W. Bush was guilty of dereliction of duty. "The problem in compiling the list was unintentional..."

And Rosemary Woods accidently deleted those 8 minutes from the Nixon tapes.

And the Library of Alexandrioa was 'accidently" burned...

Terry, Marty pretty much only argues about abortion. He's been told that the natural methods of contraception are better than artificial methods, but he doesn't know what the natural methods are.

Zoe, what *are* the secondary school language limits? And how explicit the sex? I know the kids in the local IB program read _A Hundred Years of Solitude_ and one parent has tried to keep any of them from reading it (there are alternate books his daughter could read).

The marching beer bottles:

"My beer is Rheingold, the dry beer . . ."

Rheingold had what was, for its time, excellent advertising (which means, by modern standards, it was brilliant).

One of these days I'd like to do a book/DVD on Great Television Commercials (it used to be a book/cassette, of course). First thing after my stuff is unpacked at Clavius Park West.

Marilee -- Rhapsody in Blue reminds me of An American in Paris, but that's different.

A few more NYC songs: Ellington/Strayhorn, "Take the 'A' Train;" The Drifters, "On Broadway;" Celtic Thunder, "When New York was Irish;" John Sebastian, "Summer in the City."

According to: Rheingold Theater (dramatic anthology):

Theme: "Rheingold Beer Jingle (theme, based upon Estudiantina Waltz)"
[aka: "Estudiantina Valse, Opus 191, No. 4 (The Students' Waltz)";

The Beer jingle with a lyric by an unknown ad agent, used
the melody of this famous light-classical waltz tune. The
lyric was, "My beer is Rheingold the dry beer. Think of
Rheingold whenever you buy beer. It's not bitter, not
sweet, it's the extra dry treat -- Won't you try extra
dry Rheingold beer?" The melody of this old European
waltz tune was the memorable part used as the TV THEME...

Ironic that this melody, which some may remember as the
quintessential German Beer Hall tune (images of people with
swaying cups all singing in unison) is actually of FRENCH,
rather than German, origin; and was known as a French student
song at first, then became famous as a piano duet, before
it ever was heard in its now-familiar orchestral setting;

The tune was composed by a pair of obscure French composers,
but is often incorrectly attributed to the man who arranged
it in a rollicking Strauss-like arrangement for two pianos --
named Emile ("Emil") Waldteufel;

Waldteufel included it in a set of tunes arranged for 2 pianos,
published under his own opus number, which blurred the issue
of authorship right down to the present day;

Waldteufel's arrangement was later orchestrated, and it is in
that form, that it is most well known to modern ears -- often
played on pop symphony orchestra concerts.]

Composers: music by Paul Lacome (1838 - 1920) [not affiliated]
French lyric by J. de Lau Lusignan [not affiliated]

2-piano Adapter/Arranger: Emile Charles ("Emil") Waldteufel
(1837 - 1915) [not affiliated]

Orig. Publisher: Enoch Frères et Costallat, Paris, France

2001 Publishers: [in the Public Domain]

Original French Copyright Date [by Lacome & de La Lusignan]:
Dec. 22, 1881

2-piano French Copyright Date [by Waldteufel]: April 14, 1883

---------

My favorite jingles, as a poet, also include: "Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun," with its punning ending "Buy Beechnut, by gum!"

Jayne and Joan Boyd of Hammond, Indiana, were two identical twin spokes-models who appeared in a series of 12 Doublemint Chewing Gum commercials from 1959 through 1963 playing tennis, riding bicycles, and sliding on toboggans as they touted the company's jingle "Double your Pleasure, Double Your Fun With Doublemint Gum." When Joan became pregnant in 1963, the Boyd Twins were dropped from the W. M. Wrigley Jr. Company advertising campaign. In later years Joan worked as a receptionist in Chicago, while Jayne lived in Beverly Hills with her TV producer husband, Al Schwartz. [People Weekly 21 July 1997, p. 95]

and, best of all (though local to New York):

"Who was the first to conquer space?
It's incontravertible

that the first to conquer living space
is Castro Convertible.

It conquers space with fine design
and saves you money every time

It's top in the convertible line,
Castro Convertable."

One of my short stories deals with a smart child confused by the assumption that Fidel Castro was involved in the space race...

I remember thinking that "the first to conquer space" ought not to have been a sofa. I can still sing the darn song, though, and it's a fine earworm that I'll be hearing for a while. I understand Rheingold is back, with some non-PC, anti-Bloomberg ads; I don't get the NY stations, so I wonder if they have revived the jingle, with its eminently singable tune.

One more NYC song: the ancient classic, "The Bowery."

The short story I referred to with the Lyrics of the Castro Convertible song:

When I Grow Up

As to the Castro of Castro Convertible, there's a Horatio Alger story behind the name:
Bernard Castro
"Bernard Castro, an Italian immigrant, arrived in this country in 1919 at age fifteen. Although he knew no English and was a stranger in a new world, he had ambition and energy. He went to night school to learn English. He spent laborious hours working as an apprentice upholsterer and through studying in his spare time, he learned the secrets of furniture design. In the midst of the Depression, he borrowed $300 and launched his own business. Building this business was difficult but his determination and skill enabled him to conquer all problems. In 1963, Castro was the world’s largest manufacturer of convertible furniture selling directly to the consumer. The company had 46 showrooms located between Massachusetts and Florida and six gigantic factories."

For Andy Perrin et al.:

another math joke that's only funny if you don't have to explain it:

"The penchant for formulas and bounds containing a profusion of nested logarithms has led to the following joke. What sound does a drowning analytic number theorist make?
A: log log log log..."

[Havil, J. Gamma: Exploring Euler's Constant. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003, p. 115.]

Eric W. Weisstein. "Nested Logarithm." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Web Resource. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/NestedLogarithm.html

Indie movie to watch out for:

_Napolean Dynamite_.

I'd call it a "loveable nerds versus shallow beautiful people" film set in a small city in rural Idaho, but the lead is an abrasive, talentless, socially clueless dork who is far from loveable.

Jon Heder is just wonderful as Napolean; he's either genuinely aspergerish or a great actor.

Dan, that's what makes me think of Paris for "Rhapsody in Blue," too. If you want New York, you want _On the Town_ (also starring Gene Kelly).

Jonathan Vos Post should realize that the Beach Boys were singing about Manhattan Beach, California, not the island in New York.

For extra points, can anyone point out the science fiction connection to Doheny Drive?

Allan Beatty:

Larry Niven is heir to the Doheny fortune, you know, the family that caused the Teapot Dome scandal...

You're right about Manhattan, of course.

Good secondary school SF, with no bad language that I can recall:

Steven Gould's _Wildside_.
John Cramer's _Twistor_.
The Philip Pullman _His Dark Materials_ trilogy is arguably SF.
Diane Duane's _Young Wizards_ series -- again, arguably SF because she has a real-physics background for much of what happens.
Hal Clement's a bit dated, but safe on both science and sex -- and I have a great fondness for his storytelling.
Eric Frank Russell is safe on sex, deadly on politics.
James Schmitz ditto. _The Witches of Karres_ is incredibly readable, subversive, and recently reprinted in hardback (though I have not checked whether Eric Flint's revision has eviscerated it as I fear it might -- there's no reason to revise classics!).
I'm quite high on Benjamin Oppel's _Airborn_ (another mix of fantasy and SF: if the kids can figure out the major physics hole I noticed about bouyancy, they've learned more physics than either the Brit or US editor!) and Philip Reeve's _Mortal Engines_ (Priest's _Inverted World_ for a younger audience).

And that's the short version, without feedback or looking at what we have on the shelves at OCH, and avoiding fantasy that has no physics at all. This is at least a two-hour conversation, with feedback.

The Pullman books are safe enough in terms of language and graphic sex, but by the standards of itchy conservative parents, the theology is incendiary. A fundamentalist Christian parent on the lookout for books to censor would probably find many passages highly objectionable. If the librarian in question is hoping to start the collection with controversy-free books, she might want to wait before acquiring His Dark Materials.

Zoe--by secondary school, do you mean about 6th grade to 8th grade? (about 11 or so to about 14 or so)? My daughter just finished 9th grade, I'm reading a lot from the library.

The tone of Diane Duane is about right for this age group, a bit juvenile for the grades 9-12 (who are moving into reading adult literature)

Anything published before about 1965 would probably be OK in language and sex content.

OK, science fiction as opposed to fantasy

Cherryh's "Foreigner" series (linguistics, release of tech, ethnography). Interspecies sex, but no details--less racy than the average "Friends" episode.

Brunner's "Stand on Zanzibar"--comments on the science?

I devoured Heinlein's young adult fiction in 7th grade, and (though I haven't reread it in the last decade) some may stand up well. Podkayne of Mars, for example. (more reviews here:
http://tatooine.fortunecity.com/leguin/405/pz/roberth2.html)

House of The Scorpion--Nancy Farmer (I think, can't find it)
Lois Lowry's The Giver and Gathering Blue
Ender's Game-Orson Scott Card

For younger children (5th-6th grades) The Silver Crown Robert O'Brien--it has really stuck with me in a mysterious way, although it may flunk the science test.

I suppose in this day and age it's no longer fashionable, but I still like Billy Joel's "Miami 2017." (A New York song, in spite of the title).

As for kids' books, Cooper's The Dark is Rising trilogy is good (fantasy, though). I'll happily second the Diane Duane recommendation--I started reading it as an adult and still love it. I love most of the Heinlein juveniles, but Podkayne is one of the few books I would consider preventing a kid of mine from reading (realistically, I'd let them but sit them down for a serious talk afterwards). I think I actually did throw that one across the room. Have Spacesuit Will Travel, or The Rolling Stones, I'd put forward as much better alternatives.

I got to the NYC songfest late, but I dee no-one's mentioned Elton John's "Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters" or "Empty Garden" yet, nor Leonard Cohen's "Chelsea Hotel."

Well, Ashni, fashionable or not, I like "Miami 2017" a whole lot. It's just gone from being SF to alternate future history. (For those wondering what the heck we're talking about, the song is better known as "Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway.")

When I lived in NYC, I was once walking through the long subway concourse around Rockefeller Center, just faintly humming that to myself -- not loud enough for anyone else to hear -- and realized that the person approaching me was also humming it, out loud.

This may be significant of something, but I hope not.

Zoe:

This is going to be a more fantasy-skewed list, but I used to run kids/SF section in Canterbury bookshop in UK. Fave part of my day was when teachers would come in and say 'the kids love Harry Potter - have you got anything in a similar vein?' (never been a Potter fan, but it leads kids onto some brilliant writers). Assuming this is the same age group (9-14ish) here's a few I always recommended:

Wyrd Sisters/Terry Pratchett (particularly good if they're also looking at Shakespeare)
Charmed Life/Dina Wynne Jones (Chrestomanci being the coolest, most English wizard there has ever been, and thus a fabulous role model)
Neverwhere/Neil Gaiman (Not a children's book per se, but nowt rude in it, and a rollicking adventure for the older kids)
Weetzie Bat - Francesca Lia Block (plenty in series and great for any kids who wears just a bit too much black)

More SF-ish:

Only You Can Save Mankind/ Terry Pratchett again - great for kids who practically live inside their PS2s.
Hitchiker's guide to the Universe series/Douglas Adams
Dune/Frank Herbert

Apologies if most of these are pretty obvious, but always got glowing reports back on each one. Obviously I loved these books, or I never would have recommended them. Managed to arrange reading events with some of the above authors as well, which reminds me that on some days, I had the coolest job in the world...

"He's been told that