http://www.nancynall.com/ every weekday. -- N.]]> en-us 2004-04-02T09:18:41-05:00 http://www.nancynall.com/archives/000460.html So what's the rule on clever references to song lyrics in a newspaper editorial about a music company? Use them sparingly. Oh, so very sparingly. Is it possible to go overboard? Why, yes.... Nancy Derringer 2004-04-02T09:18:41-05:00 http://www.nancynall.com/archives/000459.html Another day, another mixed grill of AA culture. In the morning: A spotlit stage, a lion in winter, a flattering interlocutor, two chairs and two glasses of water. Yes, it's a celebration of Arthur Miller here at his alma mater. The tickets were free and I can't complain too much, but after it was all over it occurred to me that there must be better ways to celebrate a titan of the American theater than to put him on stage and lob cotton-candy softballs at him. But this is the... Nancy Derringer 2004-04-01T21:47:59-05:00 http://www.nancynall.com/archives/000458.html The WashPost's Joel Achenbach's a great writer. Today's wish-that-were-my-byline piece is "Numb Nation." Maybe we should have been tipped off by the detached heads. In Jack Kelley's amazing eyewitness account in USA Today of a suicide bombing in Israel, he described three men thrown into the air. When they hit the ground, "their heads separated from their bodies and rolled down the street." This is a movie script detail. You can imagine it perfectly because you've seen it before, while eating popcorn. As the heads bound along, they preferentially face... Nancy Derringer 2004-04-01T09:11:24-05:00 http://www.nancynall.com/archives/000457.html I may be pushing an inside joke too far with this, but: It's worth sitting through the fleeting commercial to read this Salon piece on my favorite cinematic guilty pleasure, "The Ten Commandments," scheduled for its annual airing this Sunday. Back in the Fort, back in the day, I and my friends Adrianne and David, when this special time of year rolled around, liked to make dinner and then sit down to watch as much of Cecil B. DeMille's four-hour epic as we could stand. "Has he turned the river... Nancy Derringer 2004-04-01T08:09:02-05:00 http://www.nancynall.com/archives/000456.html This U.S. history class I drop in on from time to time moves terrifyingly fast. The lecturer is a pro with a commanding stage presence, a West Pointer whose withering glance alone should be enough to change all cell phones to "vibrate," although alas some people still don't get the message. The little twerp who got the last call to come during class time failed to wither, and actually sat in his seat when class ended and returned the call. "Some men you just can't teach." -- the Captain, "Cool... Nancy Derringer 2004-03-31T22:10:23-05:00 http://www.nancynall.com/archives/000455.html It's a truism in journalism that morning newspapers are edited with the delicate sensibilities of morning bagel-eaters in mind, but in my experience, this argument is used selectively. Surely, if it were applied across the board, someone might have balked at the full-page ad with a giant headline reading, "CONSTIPATED? BLOATED? IRRITABLE BOWELS? Amazing new herbal cleansing formula flushes out the harmful, energy-draining fecal matter decaying inside your body." Just as your thoughts turn to the question of whether your bowels are full of harmful, energy-draining fecal matter, there's the... Nancy Derringer 2004-03-30T07:57:16-05:00 http://www.nancynall.com/archives/000454.html There was a Fellows' outing Sunday night, to a jazz club in Detroit. I didn't go. Normally, when there's a choice between something fun to do in the outside world and something fun to watch on television, you should always opt for the former; it's why they make videotape after all. And apparently this jazz club is quite hospitable to Fellows -- last time they announced Yavuz from the stage several times. ("We have a visitor from Turkey here tonight...Let's give it up for our Turkish journalist friend...") That would... Nancy Derringer 2004-03-29T16:45:30-05:00 http://www.nancynall.com/archives/000453.html I love TurboTax. How do I love TurboTax? Many, many ways. Don't try to outsmart it, let it do its job, and oh what an easy time of tax season you'll have. Unless, like me, you input the wrong numbers from the wrong column on the right form, and suddenly find yourself confronting a Schedule D full of huge capital losses that you know were anything but. And so you have to redo everything. And then when you redo everything, you forget to enter your mortgage interest, not an insignificant... Nancy Derringer 2004-03-28T17:10:33-05:00 http://www.nancynall.com/archives/000452.html If you're the sort of person who keeps notebooks of amusing quotations, and if you're a journalist, you'll want to jot this one down, from A.J. Liebling, quoted in a New Yorker piece on the late journalist: "The pattern of a newspaperman's life is like the plot of 'Black Beauty.' Sometimes he finds a kind master who gives him a dry stall and an occasional bran mash in the form of a Christmas bonus, sometimes he falls into the hands of a mean owner who drives him in spite of... Nancy Derringer 2004-03-27T14:27:58-05:00 http://www.nancynall.com/archives/000451.html The Free Press' second-day story on the near-fisticuffs at Detroit City Council is thorough, and a wider look at what's apparently a problem not limited to the Motor City. In nearby Warren, ...it has not been unusual for council members to clip their nails, eat potato chips, read the newspaper or tap their pencils loudly when a colleague they didn't support was speaking. ...The council meetings are so infamous that former Warren residents who have moved to Florida or the Upper Peninsula have been known to request video copies of... Nancy Derringer 2004-03-26T09:15:02-05:00 http://www.nancynall.com/archives/000450.html After a few false starts, it's bicycle season again. I rode to class today, miraculously remembering everything I was supposed to -- water, iPod, lock, bookbag. (What I forgot: to oil my chain, something it desperately needs. Fortunately the iPod, in addition to providing encouragement on the long hill home, can be adjusted to cover the noise.) There are lots of bikes in A2, with more year-round cyclists than you'd think, in a climate like this. After the hell of Fort Wayne cycling, it first seemed like heaven to be... Nancy Derringer 2004-03-25T22:23:02-05:00 http://www.nancynall.com/archives/000448.html "Please be quiet. Please don't tell me what to do." "You're not doing it, so somebody's got to tell you what to do." "I mean it, I'll cut the doggone cameras off and we will go for it right here. If you keep talking to me you're going to see me from the east side of Detroit." Two Detroit city council members go straight playground on each other. The punchline: They're women.... Nancy Derringer 2004-03-25T07:54:59-05:00 http://www.nancynall.com/archives/000447.html I am so there: A Canadian documentary about one of the most influential radio stations of my young life -- Windsor's legendary CKLW (Motor City rock!). More here. Great detail: Key to the story of the station and McNamara's documentary is Rosalie Trombley, the former switchboard operator who became one of radio's most powerful behind-the-scenes influences. She and her staff painstakingly researched request lines and record store sales to see what kids were listening to, compiling the information into the Top 30 chart that was published weekly and distributed to... Nancy Derringer 2004-03-24T09:30:34-05:00 http://www.nancynall.com/archives/000446.html An oddly poignant piece by a man confronting the end of his sex life. His conclusion: What a relief. Recommended.... Nancy Derringer 2004-03-23T22:43:53-05:00 http://www.nancynall.com/archives/000445.html Why? Because he's the swellest, that's why. Tonight at our seminar he passed out gifts for all -- photo CDs packed with scenes of our wonderful year, each one customized. I am -- we all are -- overwhelmed. Above, a scene from September, when we visited the Detroit Institute of Arts. This is the room with the fabulous Diego Rivera murals. I'd crop it to make the details pop a bit more, but today, it doesn't seem right to alter the master's vision, you know?... Nancy Derringer 2004-03-23T22:28:27-05:00