Friday, June 25, 2004

My Son, the CD Reissue

From the first time I heard My Son, The Folk Singer, I was a huge fan of Allan Sherman. Huge fan. I can probably quote the lyrics to about two-thirds of all his song parodies, even some of the obscure ones that never made it onto vinyl. At the moment, none of his nine great albums have made it in full onto CD. He is represented in that format only by a well-chosen compilation called The Best of Allan Sherman (that's an Amazon link) and his appearance on a few Dr. Demento anthologies.

However, this glaring omission is about to change. Perhaps because it was the only record he made that was not for Warner Brothers Records, Collectors' Choice Music will soon be releasing a CD of Peter and the Commissar, a 1964 album he made with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra. The title piece is his rewrite of Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf," which not only changes the entire storyline but interpolates a Dixieland rendition of the grand march from "Aida," a rock 'n' roll arrangement of "Brahms' Lullaby" and other classical aberrations, including "Beethoven's Fifth Cha-Cha-Cha."

I thought it was wonderful, though I was less taken with the two other offerings — "Variations on 'How Dry I Am,'" and "The End of a Symphony." The latter is a look at how most of the great pieces of music just go on too long...and Sherman's version just goes on too long. But I recommend this CD if only for the main piece and for one moment in the "How Dry I Am" number. Sherman, who was a musical illiterate, functioned as conductor for it, while the aged, revered Mr. Fiedler performed as "guest soloist." Fiedler performs a hiccup and gets what may be the longest laugh ever heard on a comedy record.

This release is apparently an exclusive of C.C.M., meaning you can purchase it only from them. I therefore do not make a commission on it but, hell, it's too much a treat not to link to...so here you go. While you're at their site, you might want to browse around and check out some of their other exclusives. They have most of Shelley Berman's albums on CD, for instance...and Robert Klein's three terrific records. If you've never heard the latter, spend the twelve bucks and order Child of the Fifties. You will not regret it.

• Posted at 8:21 PM · LINK

Pants on Fire

Here's someone's homemade video clip (you'll need RealPlayer) of a recent segment from The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. If you think Dick Cheney has a severe credibility problem, you'll enjoy it. If you don't, this clip might make you understand why a lot of people do. It runs around five and a half minutes.

• Posted at 2:16 PM · LINK

Correction

The documentary I recommended — Breaking Vegas — is on The History Channel this evening, not The Discovery Channel. This is an easy mistake to make and I made it.

It was caught by David Feldman. Show your appreciation by buying one of David's wonderful "Imponderables" books like this one or this one or even this one.

• Posted at 12:21 AM · LINK

Gee, Mail!

GMail is a new online webmail service from the Google folks. It's free and it gives you a staggering amount of online storage space (1000 megabytes) and it has an easy-to-use user interface and I don't think I'll be making much use of it. That's my conclusion after a month or so of fiddling around with an account.

My problem with it does not relate to its privacy/advertising policy. They're not there at the moment but at times, the "price" for your free e-mail account is that little ads will appear in the margins, much like those that appear on the wonderful Google search engine page. Google has its computers scan your e-mail for keywords and then select advertising that it thinks will be relevant to you. This panics some folks (like this guy) and I don't know quite why. I mean, when you sign up for an e-mail service, you accept that your correspondence will be sitting on file servers owned and controlled by total strangers. They could easily be reading it or scanning it for certain content...and you'd have no way of knowing. Why is it so obtrusive when they tell you that anonymous bots will be looking to see if you seem like a good candidate for Viagra ads?

So that doesn't bother me. One thing that does is the whole idea of webmail, especially the way GMail operates, which is to encourage you to keep all your mail on their servers and never delete anything. When you go to do so, a little message reminds you that you have tons of storage space so there's no need to delete...and they make doing so a two-step process. (You have to move the message to the Trash folder and then mark it in the Trash folder and flush it.) I don't like the idea of leaving all my mail on someone else's computer...especially someone who could be subpoenaed in the Era of Ashcroft. Moreover, GMail will delete your account — and therefore all the mail they've encouraged you to store there — if you don't log in for nine months.

Which brings me to another thing I don't like about sending and receiving e-mail online. They say they may add POP3 access at a later date, possibly for a fee, but at the moment there's no easy way to download the whole database to your home computer. I'm not particularly worried about Google and GMail going out of business and disappearing with all my mail but I also don't think it's a bad idea to keep your own mail on your own computer.

Lastly — and this is the thing that drove me to write this message — GMail's Spam filters aren't working well, at least for me. Quite a few legit messages are getting bumped over to the Spam folder along with all the ads for cheap mortgages and cheaper women. An occasional error is understandable but their batting average is just too low.

So is GMail good for anything? Absolutely. It's great for a "junk mail" account...you know, for when some site makes you sign up for access and you don't want your real mailbox cluttered with any mail that site might send. One way I've reduced the amount of Spam through which I have to wade is to have a couple of different e-mail addresses. I don't use my main one for most sign-ups. You might find a GMail account handy to maintain a separate identity.

But you can't just go sign up for one. Eventually, that will be possible...but right now, someone who's already had a GMail account for some time (or is in tight with Google) has to invite you. In the next few weeks, someone probably will. I suggest you take them up on the invite...but not that you use it for your important correspondence.

• Posted at 12:10 AM · LINK