Newspaper Matters: The New York Review of Books Classifieds

Craigslist.org has replaced the newspaper classifieds as the go to place to seek and find private transactions but The New York Review of Books (NYRB) still provides their readers a forum to connect with their fellow readers. Here's a sample of what you'll find if you stumble upon the NYRB personals: 

VERY PRETTY, smart and accomplished and much more too: gracious, warm and slender with lots of heart, quick laugh and easygoing adventurous streak. E-Commerce CEO reinvented as public speaker, mentor to young entrepreneurs. Passion for travel (Paris/Provence, Italy, NY theatre, hiking Yosemite), music, learning, art, Giants especially when they’re winning, Pilates. Healthy dash of irreverence, considered very easy on the eyes. Featured in HBS case studies but never takes herself too seriously. As likely to be flying to London for meetings as stumbling through tango class here in San Francisco or walking along the Bay. Seeks accomplished, nice-looking, kind and thoughtful man 56-70—curious mind, enthusiastic about life. (415) 819-4324.Camille7711@yahoo.com. (Note: This particular ad is no longer on the live classifieds page)

Right off the bat you'll notice a few things that you'll rarely find on Craigslist, i.e,, loads and loads of personally identifiable information. Not only is there a phone number and personal email address, there are details that any decent googler could use to find out exactly who this person is, what she looks like and where she lives. How many e-commerce CEOs turned public-speakers are there that are featured in the Harvard Business Review, spell theater with an "re," are VERY PRETTY and live in San Francisco? Maybe three (extra points to the reader who finds out)? The point here is that this woman has an extremely high-level of confidence (robust personal security detail?) that she will not be trolled by low-lifes.

Secondly, this women paid between $4.60 to $5.85 per word (an email address is two words) or between $510.30 and $649.35 to run this ad. To put that in perspective, Match.com is $203.88 a year and eHarmony Premium is about $500 a year. So there must be a perception that one ad in NYRB is far more effective than being matched in 23 personality dimensions.

Finally, she's rather cliched about the sort of man she's looking for, except for the age range. There is no doubt that this sort of message, delivered in a print publication as erudite as NYRB, should mostly reach men who are squarely in this demographic. The question is, do these men still flip to the back pages of newspapers to find love or are they swiping right on Tinder?

Music Matters: Introducting C O M M A N D

C O M M A N D - Watermouth, Unique Bias Records
Download Now - "I Wonder"

I usually post this sort of thing on my Tumblr, My Family Album, because it pertains to the work of one my talented family members, in this case, my ultra cool younger brother, Joesph Mosby. But not every Entertainment Matters' reader has been introduced to that site and that's no reason to deprive you of this heart-breaking work of staggering genius.

You may remember Joesph as Jacobi Red or as a founding member of the Electives. Through these personae Joesph has transformed from a precocious teenager to a self-assured young man who's tasted the bitter pill of heartbreak and the tedious grid of higher education. In his new skin, C O M M A N D, he displays -- just that-- on every level in his debut album, Watermouth. From the bold scintillating album art to the genre-bending undulations of each track, one can detect a mastery that is shocking given the fact that he's only 22. In "I Wonder," the orchestration is a hyppnotic mix of live instruments and electonica elements that creates a sort of dreamscape that maps perfectly to lyrical exploration a relationship that can't survive a geographical separation. C O M M A N D infuses elements of rap, dream pop, electronica, classic R & B in songs of love, loss and remembrance that will leave you salivating for more. 

Music Matters: The William and Mary Choir

The back rubs.

Movie Matters: Aladdin: More Othello than Hamlet

"This is no ordinary lamp," our narrator exclaims, "It once changed the course of a young man's life. A young man, who, like this lamp, was more than what he seemed. A diamond in the rough."

This opening suggests that this is a story about Aladdin. There are many great arguments for that particular reading of the film. After all, we meet Aladdin, we follow him through his trials, tribulations, reconciliations and we revel in his joy and wish fulfillment. But there are parts of the Aladdin character that are not fully formed. The crux of his character arc is that he starts off as a thief with a heart of gold. Then, through magic, he becomes a prince. During the second act of the film, he struggles with reconciling his new found royalty with his humble past. While this is somewhat compelling, Aladdin's realization that he should just be the great guy that he's always been, is a somewhat hollow epiphany.

What makes Aladdin such a great film is the Jafar story. Jafar is always the smartest guy in the room. He's ambitious and cunning. He is much more than your average cartoon villain painted merely to accentuate the purity of the hero.

The Sultanate of Agrabah is in shambles. Orphans go hungry and often resort to crime in order to live, yet the Sultan spends his days playing with toys. The future of the kingdom rests in the hands of the man who can win the heart of a spoiled princess who feels trapped in her palace fantasy land and doesn't like princes who've come calling. In context, Jafar's choice to take the throne, by means suited to his understanding of the dark arts, seems somewhat rational. He is a man of great intellect and motivation. He defiantly has the stuff of an effective leader. And as the clip above shows, he is wittier and more ruthless than his foes.

We can quibble over the cruelty Jafar inflicts on the Sultan and Jasmain, but suffice to say, and the end of the movie proves, given a similar option, the "good guys" treat him the same way (as Queen Cersei Lannister would say, "In the game of thrones, you either win or you die."). Where Jafar does fail, is in his pride that he, alone, should weld ultimate power. Blind to any danger in gaining more, he is goaded by Aladdin to wish to become a genie. He ascends to that zenith of power but fails to realize a simple and universal truth said rather eloquently by Jesus in the gospel of Mark, "If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all." 

Poetry Matters: On the Occasion of the 125th Anniversary of Poet Lore

O.B. Hardison Poetry Series 
Poet Lore Celebrates 125 Years of Literary Discovery 
September 15, 2014 
Folger Elizabethan Theatre

On the Occasion of the 125th Anniversary of Poet Lore

Our pens rest quietly atop shuddered Moleskins

As Jody Bolz encounters kindred spirits in ancient volumes 

And Ethelbert Miller extols the nourishment of editing

And Traci Brimhall conjures a forgotten heteronym

And Terrance Hayes dances with James Brown

And Cornelius Eady guards a soggy couch

And Linda Pastan charts a safe path towards death

I should be taking notes 

But the syncopation and the staccato 

Of the music floating from the podium

Eludes notation 

There, a quotation I want to remember

There, a stanza I want to ponder

There, an anecdote I want to re-render

But like a hummingbird hovering at petal's edge 

Each phrase arrests movement

And the surfeited fairy escapes uncaptured