Book Report: Love it All

"What are standards?"

"You Get to Live When You are Living"

Orchids and royalty in Mrs. Post's front hall

The end of another week, elhamdulileh, and a busy one it's been, too, with some odd and unexpected ups and downs.

Red Shoe Diary

Oh I used to be disgusted
and now I try to be amused.
But since their wings have got rusted,
you know, the angels wanna wear my red shoes.
But when they told me 'bout their side of the bargain,
that's when I knew that I could not refuse.
And I won't get any older, now the angels wanna wear my red shoes...

- Elvis Costello

I can't say I'm too broken up about the imminent departure of the Nazi hobbit, the world's best-known old gentleman in eyelet lace and scarlet pumps since the heyday of Milton Berle.  I do find it interesting that he's heading down the trail blazed by Queen Beatrix rather than showing the lifelong stamina that has characterized his predecessors since the late thirteenth century.  It's probably too much to hope that we'll get something better on the day the white smoke flutters out of that Italian chimney, but let's try.

In the meantime, of all the richness of inappropriate choices, at least today's surprise announcement gives me a reason to remind the world of my single favorite photo of @Pontifex, ever.

Chapter One

It's not every video that can deliver classic pop, a dose of Valentino, and an all-too-telling glimpse into a onetime fairytale marriage, but Elvis Costello manages it in 1983's "I Write the Book," which also features deeply cool backup singers and a lead vocalist looking several decades younger than I ever remember seeing him. Or maybe it's just that the rest of us have grown a couple of decades older...

Birthday Artistes

Here's another fairly amazing Birthday Trifecta. The only common thread I can see is a certain talent to amuse, although I suppose it's possible, however unlikely, that they all slept with Al Jolson.

Ladies first, and Ruby Keeler certainly did; she even went the extra mile and married him.


It almost ruined her, even as it made her a national name, and in later interviews she preferred not mentioning him. Sometimes I think it's too bad she's most remembered for her dated tapping and appealingly awkward emoting ("Gee, Mr. Kent - That'd be swell!") on film. She was a stage star, first and last, and tapped her way through her last triumph, in 1971's No, No, Nanette revival.

Next up: Elvis. Costello, that is. To those of us who came of age in 1980 or so, the Real Elvis.

I suppose he shares some of Ruby's geeky charm, but from angry young Attractions frontman to Mr. Diana Krall, he's kept moving on. Madonna gets the all credit for continually reinventing herself, but Costello does it without the hoopla, and in ways that are actually artistically invigorating, meaning he's always This Year's Model.

His collaboration with the divine Anne Sofie von Otter, For the Stars, redeems the whole idea of pop-classical crossover. Buy it now.

And last, the Great American Artist.

No snark possible; Leonard Bernstein was the real deal, and even, as here, in his seventies, a not inconsiderable Attraction himself.

"Polymath" hardly starts to describe a man who was a teacher, composer, conductor, author, activist, philanthropist, and lifelong enfant terrible. Nor does something reductive like "man of contradictions" adequately sum someone so egocentric and all-embracing, so joyous and so dark, so profoundly (and in the best way) moral and so hedonistic.

And no, I don't really think he slept with Al Jolson. Although, God knows, it would have been an interesting night...