WATCH THIS SPACE posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, June 24th 2009 at 7:30

First I was waiting for the Web guys to contrive a way for me to re-establish the blogroll, which fell by the wayside when we switched to this "improved" system. Then I was busy with various projects related to KUAT and otherwise. Now I'm about ready to resume blogging, but not quite yet. I expect that tomorrow the stream of brilliant apercus will resume, complete with standing links to the outside world. Stand by.

MASS UNAPPEAL posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, April 7th 2009 at 7:33

Douglas McLennan’s recent blog post on the failings of CNN and other cable news purveyors leads to a comment on where newspapers have gone wrong ...

MIDDLEBROW ADVOCACY posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, April 1st 2009 at 8:47

Greg Sandow expresses my sentiments exactly ...

THE BOO BOX posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, March 23rd 2009 at 10:26

In the Wall Street Journal, Terry Teachout offers this proposal for audiences wishing to express themselves more assertively in this era of obligatory standing ovations ...

TICKETMASTER: SORDID DETAILS posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, March 23rd 2009 at 10:23

Douglas McLennan has looked into the gaping maw of Ticketmaster and its proposed merger with another company, and reports what he has found here. This is what interests me the most ...

TUCSON CITIZEN: A PLUG UNPULLED posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, March 18th 2009 at 9:12

Contrary to expectations, the Tucson Citizen is not dead yet. With all due respect to the journalists who are now working there on a day-to-day basis, do we really need the Citizen? ...

THE FUTURE (?) OF ARTS JOURNALISM posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, March 17th 2009 at 8:40

Here’s an interesting article about the future of arts journalism—that is, how the arts will be reported on and reviewed in a society in which newspapers either don’t care about such things or don’t exist at all ...

HARVEST posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, March 5th 2009 at 7:33

With apologies for the lack of blogging recently—I’m involved in too many projects, and trying to work ahead a little so I can take next week off from KUAT—here is my weekly link to my weekly contribution to the Tucson Weekly. This time, it’s only a restaurant review, but a highly positive one ...

A NON-CLASSICAL MUSICAL OBSESSION posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, February 25th 2009 at 11:05

At another blog, I stumbled upon a video of Jacques Brel singing his terrific song “Ne me quitte pas.” As you’d expect, Brel superbly brings out many of the song’s dark elements—but there’s a version by someone else I’ve always liked even more ...

"PROCESS OF DISESTABLISHMENT HAS BEGUN" posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, February 13th 2009 at 7:56

A friend of mine, a professional musician, has been saying that given the legislature-imposed budget crisis in the state university system, the separate music programs at the UA and ASU should be consolidated into a single, world-class program, probably at ASU, which he thinks has better performance facilities and is in a much larger metropolitan center. But now I learn via Patty Mitchell’s blog oboeinsight that ASU is in the process of huge chunks of “disestablishing” its arts programs, particularly at the graduate level. You can learn what’s going to be eliminated here (scroll down to “Herberger College of the Arts"). Meanwhile, the UA, which is usually underfunded compared to ASU, is slower to announce its own cuts. We’ll have to wait and see what happens here.

ARTS BAILOUTS? posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, February 10th 2009 at 7:29

Greg Sandow has posted two thoughtful, challenging entries regarding arts bailouts/stimuli in the current economic climate—how there are problems with the very idea, and how arguing for the economic importance of the arts isn’t sufficient. Read what Greg has to say, then perhaps take a look at a piece I wrote for the Tucson Weekly in 2004 about the dangers of commodifying culture.

WHOSE LIFE IS IT, ANYWAY? posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, February 9th 2009 at 8:44

Apropos of nothing except that it would be nice if I blogged more substantially than has been my recent norm, here's an essay I wrote 10 years ago when I was doing a monthly literary column for an e-zine called The Whole Wired World (TW3). Yes, it's dated, but on the Internet, everything lives forever...

THE LUMPENPROLETARIAT BEGS THE QUESTION posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, January 28th 2009 at 8:19

Misused terms seem to come in little epidemics. This week, in the course of filling in again as editor of the Tucson Weekly, I’ve seen three writers get “begs the question” wrong, and online I’ve seen two highly questionable uses of “lumpen.” ...

LIT SERVICE posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, December 16th 2008 at 9:42

I admit it: I have friends and acquaintances in literature studies (English, German and French), and I myself have a lit-oriented bachelor’s degree (French). But I have long complained that, especially at the graduate level, lit studies have been so consumed by competing critical theories that the programs are now concerned almost exclusively with theory, not literature ...

LOCKED AWAY posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, December 15th 2008 at 8:18

A wine blogger I follow is saddened by the notion that a remarkable French collector of 18th-, 19th- and 20th-century wines wants to place his 20,000 bottles in a museum. That means 20,000 corks that will never be popped (not that all that wine is drinkable anymore, anyway); thousands of fantastic wines, now difficult to obtain, will never be tasted...

WHY MANAGERS LOOK LIKE VILLAINS posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, November 26th 2008 at 8:20

According to this news item, the principal cellist of the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra has been fired for the second time in a year. I have no idea what this is about, but the orchestra’s top manager is almost forcing us to take the cellist’s side with this kind of babble: “I do not consider it to be a firing. I consider it to be a termination.” What does that mean? It looks like obfuscation, and even if the management has good cause to dump the cellist, junk language like that is bound to make ordinary people suspicious.

ALT WEEKLIES THRIVE EVEN WITHOUT ME posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, November 13th 2008 at 8:28

Hi! Remember me? Don’t tell me you didn’t notice I was gone. I took a long weekend to spirit my wife away to California to visit friends and guzzle Napa Valley wine. Now I’m back and settled in, but because I was away I didn’t contribute anything to the latest Tucson Weekly, so I won’t even post a link to that publication because why would you want to read it if I’m not in it?

More seriously ...

SHELKO VS STAR posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, November 4th 2008 at 8:07

The Arizona Daily Star has been slamming the Rio Nuevo project pretty heavily this year, documenting huge expenditures with few results. Now Greg Shelko, the director of the project, is fighting back with a response to the most recent Star article (now gone from the free part of the Web site). I don't know how much play Shelko's response will get, so I'll post it here (distributed by Ward 1 City Council member Regina Romero) ...

WHY I'M A MAC posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, October 28th 2008 at 7:43

This has nothing to do with the blog’s usual subjects, except perhaps its broadcasting connection, but this article from that most indispensable publication, The Onion, reports that Microsoft’s notorious bugginess is reaching ever farther ...

NEGATIVE REVIEWS posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, October 28th 2008 at 7:32

The proprietor of Vineography, a wine blog I read, has explained why he rarely writes negative reviews. The world of wine criticism is rather different from that of performing-arts criticism, but there are times when I elect not to review something if the evaluation is going to be negative ...

LOIN GIRDING posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, October 22nd 2008 at 7:32

When I was writing material for a yet-unpublished issue of Fanfare, a few weeks ago, I concluded a review of Cameron Carpenter’s new organ CD with the expression “gird your loins.” Coincidentally, Joe Biden dredged up that archaic turn of phrase in a speech this past weekend. In case you’re curious about the mechanics of loin girding, this article will explain it all to you.

A MODEST PROPOSAL posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, October 7th 2008 at 7:42

In the hallway outside my radio studio, there’s a big TV screen that displays six—count ’em, six—different KUAT/Arizona Public Media video feeds. One of them is devoted entirely to children’s programming, and the main broadcast channel devotes most of the morning to PBS kiddie shows. There are lots of non-PBS children’s shows on various cable channels, and as far as I know the commercial networks still devote Saturday mornings to cartoons.

Why? ...

WHAT'S COOKIN'? posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, September 26th 2008 at 9:37

After many failed efforts, I have given up trying to get dinner or lunch reservations at The French Laundry. I became interested in that fabled California restaurant after reading about it and its owner-chef, Thomas Keller, in Michael Ruhlman’s book The Soul of a Chef ...

THE DREAMS OF THEATER CRITICS posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, September 24th 2008 at 7:56

Last night I dreamed that I met with an actress I know to interview her about her next production, but she was still despondent about how her last show had turned out and wanted to put our interview off a few hours so she could prepare to do it in character. I agreed, which may not have been a good idea, because she was going to play a serial killer …

MEMORY LAPSE posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, September 15th 2008 at 6:32

Over the weekend, the Arizona Daily Star carried a pathetically short blurb noting the suicide of David Foster Wallace, an important and very well-known novelist. Nobody at that uncultured and anti-intellectual newspaper seems to realize that Wallace obtained his MFA from the University of Arizona in the early 1980s ...

WHY PHOENIX SUCKS, CHAPTER 134 posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, September 8th 2008 at 8:02

An Arizona Republic columnist rightly complains about low architectural standards in the Valley of the Sun. Very true, but I wonder how smug we can be here in Tucson? The public buildings aren’t uniformly horrible, but the real travesty is the expanse of indistinguishable, cheaply built, overpriced stucco hutches metastasizing through the suburbs. It wasn’t always thus; Tucson once boasted at least one distinctive domestic and commercial architect.

I WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, September 2nd 2008 at 8:08

A nasty cold kept me off the air and out of the blogosphere for most of last week, and even caused me to hand my weekend reviewing duties over to somebody else. At least I got lots of rest, worked on my 18-month backlog of the New Yorker, got well into Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica and made excellent headway in Carl Schorske’s Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture, which I borrowed a couple of years ago from my friend the former head of the UA German studies department, but neglected to finish before I actually went to Vienna; over the weekend I started over, and will now make my way to the end, I swear.

Meanwhile, I appeared in the Tucson Weekly without warning you. Here’s what I contributed to the Aug. 28 issue ...

MUSICAL POLITICS posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, August 22nd 2008 at 8:26

The Democratic National Convention has a composer in residence, David Amram. No word on whether the Republicans will follow suit ...

MEMORABLE TV MOMENTS? posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, August 20th 2008 at 8:11

I was curious about the nominees for television's "most memorable moments," and disappointed. I didn’t watch all the clips, but I’m not sure that even those from shows I have watched really constitute “most memorable moments.” ...

THE POST OFFICE IS KILLING OUR MAGAZINES posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, August 15th 2008 at 8:55

Magazines are in financial trouble, and part of the situation—but only part of it—is described in an Associated Press article that includes this information ...

ANTHEMS posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, August 11th 2008 at 8:02

Alex Marshall of The Guardian girded his loins and listened to the national anthem of every country represented at the Olympics right now ...

SPOKE AND BOW posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, August 4th 2008 at 7:45

Oregon Symphony violist Charles Noble has produced a blog entry that intertwines two interests of mine, music and cycling ...

FRIENDS posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, July 25th 2008 at 9:44

Although some Tucson theater people would surely like to see me drawn and quartered, I am on friendly terms with several local actors, writers and directors. I try not to get into true friendships with them, unless I knew them before I got into the theater-criticism racket, because that could lead to all sorts of conflict of interest issues, real or perceived ...

LIKE NIGHT AND DAY posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, July 18th 2008 at 8:47

I’m teaching a four-session course on the history of the American musical theater for the Arizona Senior Academy this month, and boy, did I get lucky with my content this past Wednesday ...

WORK-AVOIDANCE PROJECT posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, July 16th 2008 at 7:25

Via the Face of the Future photo transformer, here’s what I’d look like as painted by Modigliani and El Greco ...

BOY HOWDY posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, June 30th 2008 at 8:23

When I arrived a few mornings ago, the computer desktop confronted me with an alarming image ...

KILLING ME SOFTLY WITH HIS SONG posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, June 20th 2008 at 6:33

First there was Joshua’s horn at the walls of Jericho, then Mozart employed to scare teenage loiterers away from convenience stores and subway stations. Now American interrogators are using a wide array of music to break their prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Of particular interest to PBS viewers is this nugget from an article in the Guardian...

OVER THE WASH AND THROUGH THE TUNNEL posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, December 27th 2007 at 7:09

    This being Christmas week, I had absolutely nothing to write about on the arts beat for the Tucson Weekly (but other contributors were more creative, as you’ll discover here). But I did contribute a restaurant review, after a long journey north and a deep dip into the expense account ...

FREUDIAN SLIP OF THE YEAR posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, December 26th 2007 at 6:34

    This morning, a newscaster reading a story about a post-Christmas gift exchange, accidentally called it a program "for returning unwanted presidents." If only it were that simple.

BLOODBATH posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, December 6th 2007 at 7:24

    Yesterday, managers at the Arizona Daily Star fired 11 newsroom employees. Merry friggin’ Christmas.
    Publisher John Humenik, according to an article in today’s business section, blamed the firings on “slumping advertising sales and the real estate downturn.” According to the article, Humenik "declined to identify the employees but said ...

SPARKS posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, November 28th 2007 at 6:45

    Last week, upon Amozon.com’s release of Kindle, its new e-book reader, I sent you to an old essay of mine about e-books, as well as Farhad Manjoo’s previews of the new device. Now Manjoo has a full-fledged review of it; here’s the gist:

    If you're ...

ALL IN THE FAMILY posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, November 26th 2007 at 7:26

    Last night I had dinner with actress Talia Shire (and nine other people). Toward the end of the meal, her son, actor Jason Schwartzman, called to find out how she’d done in that afternoon’s Chamber Music Plus Southwest show, in which she’d portrayed Fanny Mendelssohn (she was ...

KINDLING posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, November 20th 2007 at 7:37

    Amazon.com has unveiled an e-book reader called Kindle, which may finally be the commercially successful non-book book device that has been promised us by various seers and manufacturers for at least 10 years. You can see what Farhad Manjoo has to say about it here and here, although he ...

MOMADAY'S DAY posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, November 19th 2007 at 7:31

    N. Scott Momaday, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for his novel House Made of Dawn, is one of the recipients of the 2007 National Medal of Arts, presented last Thursday. Momaday is currently the poet laureate of Oklahoma, where he has a home; he also resides part-time in ...

WHY MINE IS A PAPERLESS OFFICE posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, November 16th 2007 at 7:15

    Without further comment, I advise you to read Douglas McLennan’s concise explanation of how newspapers have gotten so dumbed down.

FOUND IN TRANSLATION posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, November 14th 2007 at 7:35

    Join me on a journey into my archives, to save me the trouble of coming up with something new to write. Here's another of those essays I wrote for a literary e-zine nearly 10 years ago, so remember that anything I claim to be "current" or "recent" isn't ...

QUINZAINES DE PELERINAGE: SUISSE posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, November 6th 2007 at 10:56

    Back to work for me, after two weeks in Switzerland (off season, but still pricey). There, I trod upon a glacier, dined with an official from the Swiss ministry of culture, looked at books that are more than a thousand years old in a beautiful old library, and ate more ...

DEPARTURE LOUNGE posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, October 19th 2007 at 7:11

After my morning shift on KUAT-FM and an afternoon of fund-raising on KUAZ, I’m going home for some last-minute packing, then departing tomorrow morning for two weeks in Switzerland. Yes, it’s a strange time to mingle with the Swiss; the weather won’t be especially good, but it ...

LEFT VS RIGHT posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, October 15th 2007 at 7:33

    Via the blog oboeinsight, I happened upon this simple visual test to determine whether one primarily uses the left or right side of the brain. I distinctly see the dancer twirling clockwise, which supposedly makes me a righty, and that's a big surprise to me; the list of attributes ...

TENSE CASE posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, October 3rd 2007 at 8:44

    Does the Arizona Daily Star employ copy editors anymore? Here’s the lede from a wire story in today’s edition:

An elderly man is struck by a hit-and-run driver and as he lie there dying, thieves were making off with his groceries.