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The Hersch

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  1. The Hersch
    Pacific Dover Sole is indeed an entirely different species from the true Dover or common sole, also known as channel sole. In fact, the American soles are not only in a different genera, but a different family as well. The so-called Pacific Dover sole is held in such high esteem that it is sometimes referred to as the "slime sole". You'd think the American equivalent of the Trades Descriptions Act would preclude any purveyor of fish calling the Pacific fish simply "Dover sole". Go to any restaurant in France. If they have sole on the menu it's likely to be the single most expensive dish they offer.
  2. The Hersch
    How do you think this 'gaffe' stacks up against Chief Justice Roberts' flubbing the oath of office (written into the U.S. Constitution) at Barack Obama' first inauguration?
  3. The Hersch
    You say you're willing to travel, but you don't say how far. In DC proper, you could do a lot worse than Tosca, downtown, or Osteria Morini in near Southwest. I haven't eaten at Tosca in a number of years, so I can't really vouch for the food, but the service was always impeccable, and I doubt that's changed. Osteria Morini is far more casual, but the food is excellent and the staff in the dining room are cheerful and pleasant. Farther afield, I can't say enough good things about Villa Mozart in Fairfax City. Both food and service are invariably beyond reproach, and they even have a semi-private room that would be great for a group dinner
  4. The Hersch
    It's amazing how many character actors you become familiar with over time - in this movie is someone I've encountered several times recently: "The Maytag Repairman," Jesse White, not credited in this film, but pictured here to the left of Glenn Ford (our right). White was in so many things I've seen lately that I'm thinking of giving him his own thread: --- I've always loved Jesse White. I remember him first, I think, playing the character Oscar Pudney, perennial nuisance, on The Ann Sothern Show, which I watched in reruns on afternoons in the 1960s. He was also in a bunch of Perry Mason episodes, as different characters, at least one of which was the murderer. However, while there are a lot of uncredited appearances in Blackboard Jungle, I don't think the fellow in your picture is Jesse White. Roughly the same physical type, but the nose, among other things, is all wrong. IMDb is very good about including uncredited appearances, and doesn't list Jesse White in this movie, while listing dozens of others. I'd certainly be more than happy to be proved wrong. I totally agree with you about "Rock around the Clock"-- a shit song that I hope never to hear again, although I know that I will.
  5. The Hersch
    I'm not sure it's a good thing; perhaps it is. I think "Hill Street Blues" must have been the most influential drama series in American television. Practically every dramatic program since has tried in some ways to be it. I didn't even like it all that much, compared with some of its progeny, such as "The Wire" and "The Sopranos".
  6. The Hersch
    What is this "Super Bowl" of which you speak? Some sort of gigantic toilet?
  7. The Hersch
    Or will be happily feasting on the boys in the "houses with boys" in Amsterdam. Yeah, Indonesian food for sure!!
  8. The Hersch
    Silly, we import apples from New Zealand. (Why do we do this?)
  9. The Hersch
    When I was in Munich in December, there was a Uyghur restaurant called Taklamakan in the next block from my hotel on Bayerstrasse, but it looked like too much of a dump for me to walk in.
  10. The Hersch
    I love this film, and have probably watched it five times and could easily watch it another five. Laurence Harvey was not a very good actor, but his performance in this just totally clicked. The always-underappreciated James Gregory (as Sen. Iselin), a fixture on 50s and 60s television, gave a typically workman-like, canny performance in what was ostensibly the title role, obviously based on Joe McCarthy, and the perhaps equally always-underappreciated John McGiver gave an endearing, wonderfully conceived performance as Senator Jordan, based on I don't know who. I never really liked Sinatra as a film actor, but you couldn't ask for much better than he gave here. The real puzzle is what the hell was Janet Leigh doing in this movie? Anyway, a great script, beautifully realized, maybe one of my favorite movies.
  11. The Hersch
    Back during the run of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" it was usually the high point of my week. I used to get together with my oldest friend every Saturday night to watch it. Rob Sheffield has a nice appreciation in Rolling Stone.
  12. The Hersch
    I generally agree with your assessment of this film, but the original cut was already WAY too long; to add another hour to it is inhuman.
  13. The Hersch
    The Australian series 'Rake'. The New Zealand show 'Brokenwood Mysteries'. The British show 'Fresh Meat', which sometimes is as funny as it gets. 'Peep Show', from many of the same creative team, not to be missed.+
  14. The Hersch
    I'm afraid I must leave that assignment for others. I never, ever eat that sort of thing
  15. The Hersch
    Warren and Shirley's parents, who spelled their last name Beaty, were still living in Arlington somewhere in the mid-70s. I delivered their mail once. I went to TJ junior high, but I never heard that tidbit about Shirley before. (It may be interesting that I posted my previous comment in a train from Prague to Vienna, and am now sitting in a tiny room in a Vienna hotel where I stayed once before, about 25 years ago. Oh, and this building is where Franz Grillparzer was born in 1791.)
  16. The Hersch
    Ned Beatty was a member of the resident company at Arena Stage in the late 60s. I saw him play Hickey in The Iceman Cometh, among other things.
  17. The Hersch
    Funnily enough, I did watch the pilot and I did note the pronunciation of Petrie just a couple of days ago. Actually, I bailed about ten or twelve minutes in because it was shockingly bad. I only stumbled on it because Netflix inexplicably has it as an episode of season 1, and not the first episode either.
  18. The Hersch
    Ah, you mean the characters that these actors played were introduced in the first episode. I really didn't follow you. Mary Richards was introduced; Mary Tyler Moore had already played a starring role in the best American sit-com of the 1960s.
  19. The Hersch
    Introducing? Mary Tyler Moore? Cloris Leachman? In what sense?
  20. The Hersch
    I certainly agree that gospel music has lots of falsetto singing, which it passed along to soul and rock 'n' roll. I can't seem to call to mind a lot of falsetto in the blues. As to country, you can't forget Slim Whitman, surely:
  21. The Hersch
    Del Shannon. The strange organ-like instrument in the break is a Musitron, invented by the guy playing it on this record, Max Crook. A very interesting article. Thanks. Quite a few years ago, I attended a performance at Wolf Trap of Handel's opera Serse (Xerxes) in which the title role was sung by the remarkable male soprano Michael Maniaci, who can sing in a very high soprano register without employing falsetto, achieving the kind of power and vocal agility pretty much unavailable to countertenors. He was very impressive. I'm still at a loss to account for the revival of Baroque opera, which I find almost uniformly tedious. One exception is Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, which I love unreservedly, although that could have something to do with its being only about 45 minutes long.
  22. The Hersch
    I've always liked the Tokens' "Lion Sleeps Tonight," despite its being something of a travesty, based largely on the Weavers' recording of "Wimoweh", a song originally by a Zulu songwriter named Solomon Linda in the 1920s (the song has a long and tangled history). The lyrics provided for the Tokens' version are pretty silly (spoiler: lions don't sleep in jungles). It should be noted that the really, REALLY high voice in their recording was not a male falsetto, but the soprano Anita Darian doing something of an imitation of Yma Sumac's 1952 recording of "Wimoweh". I would provide links for all of this, but it's past my bedtime.
  23. The Hersch
    There was a great vogue for high voices in the baroque and classical periods in European music, which included male singers castrated before their voices changed, but I don't know what that has to do with falsetto singing in modern pop music. But how could I have omitted this irresistible piece by the Newbeats, which may well be the silliest song ever written:
  24. The Hersch
    Why has falsetto singing had such a major role in American pop music? (And perhaps non-American pop music?) Here are a few examples. That's Russell Thompkins, Jr. singing falsetto. I saw the Stylistics live at the Sugar Shack in Boston in 1974. They were terrific, even without all the studio production stuff in their recordings. This song was a sort of "our song" for me and someone I was having a rather tempestuous relationship with at the time. I never saw Bobby Vinton live, but I remember this song, "Mr. Lonely", vividly from top-40 radio when it was newly released in late 1964: I didn't realize until putting this post together that Mr. Vinton was still living. The great (and I mean really great) Smokey Robinson: One of the best, not just as a singer but as a songwriter. I seem to recall a recent Nobel laureate calling Robinson our greatest living poet, or words to that effect. It's sometimes hard to tell if Michael Jackson was singing falsetto or was just a soprano, but there's no denying his appeal: There are obviously lots of others, from Prince to Justin Timberlake to the Beatles (occasionally). Then there's my favorite falsetto of all, Frankie Valli: What accounts for the popularity of falsetto singing in pop music? In modern times it seems to have started after the Second World War, although I could be mistaken about that. I know why I like it--when well done, it just sounds fucking cool. Am I just like everyone else in this?
  25. The Hersch
    Don, I think you misunderstood what I was saying. Yiddish, including the variety that was spoken in Russia, descends from Middle High German. The Russian language does not, although they have a common ancestor, Indo-European. Neither German nor Russian descends from Latin.
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