GASLIGHT PHANTOM

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, August 31st 2006 at 6:54

    Thursday has arrived, and with it my last contribution to the Tucson Weekly before I abscond to Italy for two weeks. (The Weekly will have a three-issue break from me, because even though it’s a two-week vacation, I’ll be gone for three theater weekends.) So if I become ...

THE CRITIC BITES

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, August 30th 2006 at 7:45

    Via ArtsJournal, here’s a link to a Philadelphia Magazine article about perhaps the nastiest theater critic since John Simon, the locally (but not universally) reviled Toby Zinman of the Philadelphia Inquirer. I’d never heard of Zinman, but from what I’ve read of her own work and of ...

PLUCKED FROM THE JAWS OF DEATH

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, August 29th 2006 at 7:08

    I saw a summary of a New York Times article about a study at New Jersey's Morristown Memorial Hospital, where a harpist is stationed in the recovery room; the study is looking into the effectiveness of harp music as a healing aid for heart-surgery patients. First thing I thought ...

PLUTO REVISITED

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, August 28th 2006 at 6:28

    David Hurwitz issues this dispatch on the musical to-do over the de-planetization of Pluto. Hint: Don’t take any of it seriously, except for the sentiment expressed in the last paragraph.

CREDIT TO THE CREDIT READER

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, August 25th 2006 at 6:53

    Apropos of my recent post about the odd NPR funding credit, KUAT news guy Robert Rappaport has reactivated his own blog and revealed the identity of the voice of NPR underwriting. His name is Frank Tavares, and you can read about him here. Robert also provides a link to an ...

FOREVER ENGLAND

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, August 25th 2006 at 6:33

    English music critic Jessica Duchen, who is married to a London Philharmonic violinist, rightly decries the idiotic British prohibition of carrying one’s valuable musical instruments into the passenger cabin of an airplane. But she makes one curious statement:

If we are now going to turn into a xenophobic, paranoic ...

ORDINAL

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, August 24th 2006 at 9:13

    This morning, the guy who reads the underwriting credits for NPR newscasts has been promoting a TV show about a famous queen of England; he calls it "Elizabeth One." I suppose it could be the first in an unimaginatively titled series ("Elizabeth Two," "Elizabeth Three"), but really, shouldn't we ...

STAGE ROYALTY

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, August 24th 2006 at 6:30

    One of the Lion King touring companies has come to town, and, surprise, even though it’s a commercial musical, I like it:

Everything you've heard about it for the past nine years is true: The Lion King is a tremendously inventive, visually arresting and often musically compelling stage ...

UNASKED QUESTIONS 2

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, August 22nd 2006 at 6:54

    Arizona Daily Star reporters and their editors continue to parrot press releases instead of digging up facts independently. Example: Monday’s article announcing that “Animal care officials hope new rules will put an end to the breeding of wolf-dog hybrids in Pima County.”
    The proposed rules—at this writing, the ...

STREAMERS

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, August 21st 2006 at 6:48

    Burt Schneider, afternoon host over at KUAZ-FM, files this report:

Alan Campbell [a former KUAT-FM morning announcer] checked in the other day. He's programming five streaming stations on the internet from his hideout in Monterrey, Mexico. He says one of his stations has just passed the 10,000 listener ...

REPUTATIONS

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, August 21st 2006 at 6:47

    A couple of weeks ago I tweaked Terry Teachout for letting Elisabeth Schwarzkopf’s affiliation with Nazism color his opinion of her artistic work. I’m happy to report that Terry has now laid out a quite sensible guide to evaluating the sins of artists. Here’s his first point ...

HEAR HIM ROAR

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, August 17th 2006 at 5:58

    In the latest Tucson Weekly, I go to the trouble of previewing a show you probably already know whether you want to see or not:

    Nathaniel Stampley is the king of the jungle, and he is a just and noble king, so he thinks you should be warned about a ...

PLUTO

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, August 16th 2006 at 6:49

    If the new definition of “planet” just devised by the International Astronomy Union (IAU) is ratified next week, Pluto will retain its status as a planet after all. A diminutive planet, though; a new category, “pluton,” is being created for Pluto and three other bodies in the solar system that ...

UNASKED QUESTION

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, August 15th 2006 at 7:07

    I should turn this into a recurring feature: What important question has a reporter failed to ask? Here’s the latest example.
    The story of the poor dog found stuck up to his neck in a muddy wash after the recent heavy rains has ended sadly. The dog, called Clay ...

DRESSED DOWN

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, August 15th 2006 at 7:04

    The Tucson Symphony has sent its subscribers some pointers on concert deportment. One item:

Concert Dress: Wear what makes you feel comfortable! According to a recent survey, 70% of men wear open shirt and slacks, 30% wear a jacket and tie. Of the women surveyed, 60% wear dresses and 40 ...

THE PLOT THINS?

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, August 11th 2006 at 6:58

    The only amusing thing about yesterday’s rout of two dozen people accused of planning to blow up airliners headed for America is that newscasters refer to an “alleged plot.” OK—journalists are trained not to prejudice a case in their reporting; news reports should not refer to “perpetrators” or ...

SCREENWRITING 101

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, August 10th 2006 at 6:49

    In today’s Tucson Weekly, I interview Blake Snyder, author of the latest book that tells you how to write a commercially successful Hollywood screenplay. He seems like an exceptionally nice guy, but I fear my inner snark emerged once or twice early in the article. Here’s the beginning ...

GLASS HOUSES

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, August 9th 2006 at 7:21

    The Big Boss here at KUAT is campaigning to beautify and professionalize the appearance of the spaces where civilians are likely to pass by, including the corridor that skirts the KUAT-FM booth and the radio newsroom. As of yesterday, beautification and professionalization have come to mean, in part, opening the ...

THE HAUTE 100 & THE HOTBOT 25

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, August 8th 2006 at 5:59

    The current to-do over AOL’s release of search terms to researchers, seen as a privacy breach, reminds me that I wrote about a much more harmless and fun release of search data several years ago. Way back in the summer of 1999, the search site HotBot compared its queries to a list of top authors that had just been issued by the Modern Library. This is what I had to say about that publicity stunt …

PRONOUNCEMENTS ON HEZBOLLAH

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, August 4th 2006 at 8:27

    Burning issue of the day for radio people: How, exactly, do you pronounce “Hezbollah”? On NPR and PRI programs I’ve heard HEZ-bo-lah, hez-BOH-lah (from a Lebanese-American) and hez-bo-LAH, which covers all the bases. Here’s the official position of the BBC: hez-buul-AA. (Note not just the final-syllable stress, but ...

SCHWARZKOPF

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, August 4th 2006 at 6:49

    Soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf died Thursday; news services assiduously tell us that “no cause of death was reported,” but she was 90, for crying out loud. What’s more important than the cause of death was the career, which was thoroughly documented via recordings, which you should hear without delay, particularly ...

THEATER DOLDRUMS

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, August 3rd 2006 at 6:33

    This being Thursday, I don’t have to come up with something original to blog about; I need only point you to my latest opus in the Tucson Weekly, which this time is about the pesky little money troubles of local theater groups:

Some of Tucson's best-established theater companies ...

RESALE

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, August 1st 2006 at 7:26

    Patty Mitchell finds a “new” (not archived) article online that looks like something she read months ago, and wonders how this sort of thing happens. Here’s how it works.
    One of the best ways for a freelance writer to make money is to sell essentially the same story to ...

REVIVAL

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, August 1st 2006 at 6:59

    It looks like former blogger Rich Russell broke his silence a couple of weeks ago. If he keeps posting, I’ll have to return him to the blogroll.