Via Terry Teachout, I see that Artie Shaw is dead. His post collects the relevant links. I have a lot of Christmas jazz CDs to digest at the moment (three brilliant compillations that arrive via my sister, Jacques Loussier's Goldberg Variations, Milestones, My Favorite Things, and The Birth of the Cool), but nonetheless I shall take a moment to listen to "Star Dust".

For all those who have attempted to contact me lately-- my University of Chicago email is dying fast, so please do not address any more emails there, as I may never see them. I can be reached at the blog email address listed here, and also at baude at alumni dot uchicago dot edu.

There are new posts on both Belle de Jour's blog and Mediocrity's Co-Pilot. Further posts should ensue at the latter, if not the former.

From Nick Hornby's The Polysyllabic Spree:

Books are, let's face it, better than everything else. If we played Cultural Fantasy Boxing LEague, and made books go fifteen rounds in the ring against the best that any other art form had to offer, then books would win pretty much every time. Go on, try it.

Many many folks whose blogs I read are coming out of the woodwork to condemn Jeremy Blachman's recent blessing of fame. Former guest-Crescatter Milbarge rounds up numerous links and provides a defense of sorts.

See, especially, this post and attached comments by Soupie of the BBQ Daycare, which features, among other things, Soupie announcing himself to be "pissed" and "nauseated" by the fact that other people find Jeremy Blachman extremely funny, regular guest-Crescatter Toby Stern announcing that he doesn't find Jeremy funny "in the slightest," Scott of Life, Law, and Libido announcing that Crescat is "a pretentious load of doo-doo", the Slithery D revealing that his mind is blown by anybody who finds co-Crescatter Heidi Bond's posts readable, and much more.

I must admit at the outset that this kind of complaining has always struck me as a trifle strange-- I am not sure why it bothers Soupie et.al. that other people derive pleasure from reading things written by still other people, even when Soupie himself fails to find them funny. Still, if blogging is for nothing else, it for revealing one's own inner thoughts even when they are a trifle strange.

As to the charges that Crescat is pretentious or doo-doo, there is little I can do to address them as such. People with concrete complaints, comments, thoughts, reflections, or emotive outpourings are always welcome to send them here. People who are simply annoyed that I or the other bloggers here are intrigued, interested, or impressed by things other than those that entertain them should probably be spending their time doing something else; hopefully they are.

[And thanks to Amber Taylor for pointing out that my own tastes range from Spider-Man 2 and Lemony Snicket to Turandot and Ada.]

Incidentally, as to the charge of pretension, very little on this blog is pretend. Your tastes may (and hopefully do) differ on some scores, but I, at least, make no special claim to importance.

One last note: I should be candid and admit that I do not find all of Jeremy Blachman's posts funny either, although some of them are a riot. But it amazes me how apopleptic some people become when other people find things funny that they (the first people) disapprove of. To argue that X isn't funny is one thing; to simply fulminate and fume sans argument is unproductive and (to my mind) bizarre.

UPDATE: And thanks to Dan Moore (!), perhaps the most vociferous critic of this blog these days, for coming to Crescat's (qualified) defense.

Hours spent today in airports and airplanes: 11.5
Books read (cover to cover!) in that time: 2
Hours to go before I sleep?: Hours to go before I sleep.