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If you watched The Daily Show last night, you saw Demetri Martin do a bit on the SATs. If you were watching carefully, you saw the home page for Princeton Review podcasts flash on screen for a full three seconds! During which time, if you were really paying attention, you would have seen the title of the podcast I create for the Princeton Review right up there on national television!

Don't believe me? Hit The Daily Show link above and scroll down through the videos until you find the title Martin-The SAT. Click it and let the video stream begin! My moment of fame arrives at 1:08 and lasts clear through 1:10.

I have dropped Mr. Martin the appropriate thank you note via his my space page. I promised him I would mention him next time I'm on television, which seems only fair.

Is this the beginning of a Vocab Minute media blitz? My Warholian clock is ticking.

Dick Cheney's Day of Sport

Dick Cheney visited an exclusive hunting club in Dutchess County today. From the New York Daily News:

Farm-bred pheasants were released on the preserve 24 hours before Cheney arrived, making them easy targets for the hunting party.

"The way they hunt, I'm not fond of," said Linda Smith, 52, who runs a local preschool. "It's not what I would call a real sportsmanlike activity."

After the hunt, Mr. Cheney and his party repaired to Winged Foot Country Club for a round of golf. In preparation for Mr. Cheney's visit, several modifications to the course were made:

•Holes were widened to a 6-foot diameter
•50-foot tall barricades were erected along the fairways to prevent errant shots from entering the rough, woods, creeks, etc.
•Each tee was moved to a distance of 100 yards from the green
•A "maximum score of one stroke per hole" rule was enacted

The vice president reportedly shot an 18, although White House sources would neither confirm nor deny that. "The vice president's score," said to a spokesperson who asked not to be identified, "is classified."

Live or Let Die?

This is my car. Its name is Donnie. Donnie is named after Steve Buscemi's character in The Big Lebowski.



Donnie and I have a special relationship. Owing to the fact that I was a miserable and dangerous driver in high school who was fortuitously relieved of his license almost as soon as he got it; and to the fact that I moved to New York City when I was 18 and stayed there until I was nearly 40; owing to these circumstances, Donnie was the first car I ever bought.

Donnie is a 2001 Ford Focus. He's not that old in car years, but he's definitely been through the wars. Between numerous family visits (Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Atlanta) and even more vacations (western North Carolina, the Carolina coast, the Delaware Coast, New York City), Donnie has logged some serious miles. It won't be long before Donnie logs his 130,000th mile, in fact.

Donnie still drives great. He has plenty of get up and go both from a dead stop and on highway onramps, he gets great mileage (about 36 mpg on the highway), and he still handles great in turns. He is as fun to drive as any reasonable person can expect an inexpensive sedan to be. However, Donnie is a Ford, which means that he is an American car, which means that before he was built someone somewhere in an office in Detroit spent a lot of time figuring out how to take this perfectly well designed car (the Focus got its start in Europe) and f##k it up. That someone decided to skimp on some peripherals, no doubt calculating that the resulting savings of $.057 per car might ultimately cover his salary while simultaneously making millions of people like myself very, very angry at Ford, so angry that we swear we will never buy another Ford as long as we live, nor in any subsequent lives we may live, should we be reincarnated.

For instance, a seal on the right side of my windshield failed some time around mile 90,000; this caused the footwell of the front passenger seat to fill with water whenever it rained. Search the net for the terms FOCUS, PASSENGER, FOOTWELL, and BUCKETS OF WATER and you will learn this has happened to nearly every Ford Focus, yet there was never a recall. The dealer knew exactly what my problem was when I called to complain, and how much it would cost me to have it repaired. The question "Why should I have to pay for it?" elicited a shrug and a "Whaddayagonnado?" response I hadn't heard since leaving New York.

Another place where Ford skimped was in a plastic clip that holds the power windows in place. Again, seach the net and you will learn just how many people have had the unhappy surprise of opening their power windows, hearing the bright snap of plastic, and realizing that that window will never close properly again. Again, no recall. Here is a picture of Donnie's rear passenger window.



Recently, Donnie and I reached a crossroads. As previously mentioned, Donnie is approaching 130,000 miles. That means he was very much in need of a new timing belt ($220). He also needed a new set of tires ($360). Making these repairs basically meant committing to another three years with Donnie, begging the question "Should I get that broken power window fixed?" ($300). And what about the other rear passenger window, which, if it's like the rear window on so many other 2001 Ford Focuses, is soon about to snap its clip and descend into the door? Am I ready to sink a pile of cash into a car with 130,000 miles on it?

The decision, it turns out, wasn't such a difficult one. Donnie and I, we're buds. I'm not going to abandon him. Not until I can afford a really pimped out Mini Cooper, anyway, which I currently cannot. So Donnie got a new timing belt and a new set of tires to go with his new clutch (at 120,000 miles). We (Donnie and I, that is) decided that the duct-taped window was "cool," so that remains unrepaired. Soon it will have a parallel twin, no doubt.

Nefarious Ford man in your office somewhere, Donnie and I await the inevitable result of your other niggardly decisions. Fortunately you appear to have had nothing to do with designing engines and drivetrains, so while all your knickknacks and gewgaws break, degrade, disintegrate, and explode, Donnie and I will continue choogling on down the road.

At least until I can afford that Mini.

Monkin' Around

This past October 10 would have been the 90th birthday of Thelonious Monk, jazz pianist, composer, and eccentric extraordinaire. My adoptive home state of North Carolina lays some claim to this musical giant, as he was born in Rocky Mount. The fact that he moved to New York City at the age of five and thereafter made that grand city his home has not deterred us Tar Heels in the slightest; on the contrary, our six-week, eighteen-event Following Monk celebration has to be one of the more impressive homages to Monk ever mounted.

For my money, the one 'don't miss' event of the festival was last night's recreation of Monk's famous ten-piece 1959 Town Hall concert, performed by the Charles Tolliver Orchestra. The missus and I were so stoked for the event that we made sure to attend a Stanley Crouch lecture the previous night, anxious to gain some valuable insight into the music we'd be hearing. We had reason to be hopeful; Crouch is a heavyweight jazz critic, and the subject of the lecture was indeed supposed to be the Town Hall concert. Alas, someone must have failed to inform Crouch, because while he spoke entertainingly (and sometimes informatively) on subjects ranging from Shakespeare's genius to Louis Armstrong's genius to the differences between blacks and whites to the fact that even light-skinned blacks are a little put off by dark-skinned blacks to the superiority of live music to recorded music to the names of perhaps every famous musician and writer he has ever met, he never really got around to the Town Hall concert. He was considerate enough to circle around to the subject of Monk every so often, for which those of us who remembered that we were attending a Following Monk event were very grateful. The lecture was free, and the dictum 'you get what you pay for' was evinced.

Fortunately, it cost good money to see the concert, so we had cause to expect value, and we got plenty of it. Pianist Stanley Cowell got things started with a fluid reading of "In Walked Bud," then was joined by the rhythm section for a lovely, lazily swinging "Blue Monk." Tenor saxophonist Craig Handy joined them for "Rhythm-a-Ning," demonstrating some very impressive chops and exquisite control of the tone of his instrument; he deftly went from sweet to flattened out to honking in his pursuit of some ugly beauty, and it was all good. Over the course of the night he would continue to impress, a vexing occasional tendency to showboat notwithstanding.

After that, the full band hit the stage to perform the set heard on Thelonious Monk Orchestra at Town Hall. The solos were different, of course, but the arrangements were pretty much dead on; Tolliver reportedly had access to some of Monk's rehearsal tapes for the original show and that helped him get the transcriptions right. The section playing, especially on up-tempo numbers like "Little Rootie Tootie" and "Friday the 13th," was in itself worth the price of admission. Everyone in the band was a player; my favorite was alto saxophonist Todd Bashore, who did a great job of weaving the melody of the tunes into his improvisations.

It didn't hurt that the Town Hall concert contains a few of my favorite Monk compositions: "Blue Monk," the glorious ballad "Monk's Mood" (although, truth be told, I much prefer the Monk/Coltane duet version of the song to this orchestrated version), and "Thelonious," an incredibly catchy melody that for vast stretches consists of a single note. The last of these is especially well suited to a big-band setting; you could easily imagine the Basie or Ellington bands tearing it up on that one.

Throughout the event it was clear—as it always is when you hear Monk's music—that Thelonious Monk was a truly singular artist, someone so unique in his approach to his art that it's very difficult to be influenced by him without coming across as an imitator. I'm trying to think of others who fit that description: Vincent Van Gogh and the Beatles spring immediately to mind, but after that I'm drawing a blank. It's a little sobering to realize that two of those three were batsh!t crazy. In one of his rare moments of focus on the topic at hand, Stanley Crouch answered a question about whether he thought Monk might have been slightly autistic. "Oh, no!" Crouch said animatedly, and then, after a pause that showed some serious comic timing, added "He was a paranoid schizophrenic! [another comic pause] But he wasn't autistic." He wasn't much of a Tar Heel, either, but last night at least I was glad we Carolinians don't sweat such details.

metube, part 3

Here's an email I received via The Princeton Review a few weeks back:

I am a teacher for the School District of Palm Beach County, FL. I am participating in a technology seminar wherein we are expected to produce an enhanced podcast. I found your wonderful vocabulary songs, and illustrated one with video and text for my students (8th grade language arts).... I am attaching a copy for you to review.

Thanks!

Tom Felt
Bak Middle School of the Arts

And now I, likewise, am attaching a copy for your review, dear reader. Check it out!


PS Many thanks to Tom Felt for his excellent work on this!