Month: June 2014

And Called It… Macaroni?

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Yes, even in Canada we know the Yankee Doodle song. But like everyone else, as kids we giggle and find that last line in the first verse: Yankee Doodle went to town Riding on a pony; He stuck a feather in his hat, And called it macaroni… Who the hell sticks a feather in his hat and then calls it “macaroni”? What in the hell is that about? Maybe everyone else knows, but I sure didn’t. Not till the other day, anyway. The answer, as for so much around here lately, lies in Georgian England.

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Two Comets: H.G. Wells and W.E.B. Du Bois

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I mentioned the other day that I’ve been writing a couple of short stories, just to give myself a breather on the novel I’m working on. One of those stories, the one I discussed in connection with the 1960 Newport Jazz Festival, is kind of response to two interesting “comet” SF stories I read back in 2010, and have been thinking about ever since: In the Days of the Comet by H.G. Wells, “The Comet” by W.E.B. Du Bois (which was collected in the first of Sheree Renée Thomas’ Dark Matter anthologies, but it’s also available in the public domain, as part Du Bois’ …

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Newport Jazz Festival, 1960:The Year They Called the National Guard

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You won’t catch me hating on the Newport Jazz Festival, of course! When I was a teenager, the festival on Rhode Island had a kind of magical aura of importance: on PBS I’d seen footage of Gil Evans playing there with Art Farmer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlgKLwhoVgI … and listened time and again to John Coltrane and Archie Shepp’s New Thing at Newport: … and Dizzy Gillespie’s big band recording At Newport: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJF7075fvg4 … dozens and dozens of times. (Seriously, in high school, I was baffled by how everyone was into music we all knew nobody would be listening to by 2002. My jam …

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The Beggar’s Opera by John Gay

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(Note: This is a longish post. I apologize that I could not shorten it further, but I haven’t the time.) Those in the know will note that I specified only John Gay, and not the composer Pepusch: I’m working on getting hold of a copy of the opera–the 1983 staging, supposedly with the original music, aired by the BBC–but for the moment I just have the public domain etext from Project Gutenberg. It’d be an understatement to say that The Beggar’s Opera was kind of a big deal during and after its first staging in Haymarket back in 1728. Better to …

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Steam-Powered Brewing and Gibson & Sterling’s The Difference Engine, or, Research vs. That Other Thing

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I mentioned a while back that I’m listening to an audiobook of The Difference Engine. Well, I’m pretty close to the end now, and enjoying the hell out of it. One phrase that comes to mind is how Edward Said described the novel as a form (in the process of explaining why understanding novels were useful to understanding imperialism), in Culture and Imperialism: Note the highlight: “an incorporative, quasi-encyclopedic cultural form.” That is not only something I aspire to in my own fiction writing, but it most definitely is true of The Difference Engine, except it’s sort of a weirdcyclopedia, …

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