Recent Comments

1. about 14 hours ago on Pearls Before Swine

   Where on earth is that? And how do the people there manage to handle bills and coins faster than they can tap or swipe? The sheer manual dexterity in these places must be mind-boggling.

2. 2 days ago on That is Priceless

   The painting is at the Met. Here are their notes: “This painting, which reflects the Parisian vogue for Spanish art and culture during the Second Empire, won Manet his first popular and critical success in his debut at the Salon of 1861. Though the picture was admired for its realistic detail, Manet did not disguise the fact that it was composed in a studio using a model and props. The left-handed singer holds a guitar strung for a right-handed player, and his fingering suggests that he was unfamiliar with the instrument. His outfit was fashioned from costumes that Manet kept on hand; several accessories reappear in paintings in this gallery.”

3. 2 days ago on That is Priceless

   As folks have pointed out, in this image the musician is playing a right-handed guitar left-handed. That’s how Elizabeth Cotton used to do it, among others. The other interesting thing is that if you look for versions of this (I simply used the title, “The Spanish Singer”, as my search key) you’ll find he did sketches and prints with the guitarist right-handed, still with the right-handed guitar. That suggests to my mind that he had some idea in mind about it, but all I can do is wonder what it might have been. The third interesting thing is that in the left-handed versions, the singer is fingering a chord the way one would probably do it playing right-handed; his fingers are on the bass strings, which aren’t often chorded that way. That suggests to me that Manet did indeed know something about guitarists and guitars, but not such that one might suppose him to have been a player himself.

4. 2 days ago on In the Bleachers

   It’s such a pain when they get there first.

5. 3 days ago on Peanuts

   Dang! Now I’m hungry.

6. 3 days ago on B.C.

   Of course not. If I did, I’d be single! At least according to Clumsy Carp. But I will say that somebody who doesn’t know enough about marriage to be able to get married and stay that way isn’t likely to be much of an expert—except, of course, in their own mind.

7. 4 days ago on B.C.

   That is profoundly untrue. Married to the same woman since 1977 and wouldn’t have it any other way.

8. 5 days ago on Pearls Before Swine

   Back in the early days of online search, you could not research the band name “The Who” because both of those words were stopwords—words so common that the search software would automatically discard them. There were workarounds, of course.

9. 5 days ago on Pearls Before Swine

   Guess Who were on first? The Who was on second? (1962 and 1964).

10. 5 days ago on Over the Hedge

    That’s really good science-babble!