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Weekend Butler: Did the Eiffel Tower inspire Van Gogh? Italian nuns take a selfie at Michelangelo’s David. Paul Simon finds no bridge over troubled water. A week early: the Holiday Ham recipe. And more.
Published: Mar 30, 2023
Category:
Weekend
BEAUTY BEYOND CLASSIFICATION
Long ago, we liked to have dinner downtown in warm weather and drive home on deserted Madison Avenue with the radio on and the sunroof open.. One night WFUV played a 9-minute song, “Thin Blue Flame,” by Josh Ritter, a singer-songwriter we didn’t know. Long before it ended, I knew I needed to meet Josh.
Josh and I had some mail. We decided to meet for coffee. I brought him a CD I was sure he hadn’t heard. It was “Dimanche a Bamako,” by Amadou and Mariam. Josh laughed. “When I was in Paris, in cab after cab, this was the music they were listening to.”
Amadou and Mariam are blind. They’re from Mali, they now live in Paris. They rarely tour. They last performed in New York a decade ago. It was a great concert, easily the best I saw that year.
A week ago, they returned to New York. Another rare visit, another legendary concert, certainly the greatest evening I’ve spent leaning against a wall and nursing a fractured ankle. There was much taping, but nothing has surfaced on YouTube.
Instead of my superlatives, let me invite you to watch the video of “La réalité,” the song that had everyone dancing and singing and screaming.
And then, in another mood, watch the video of Mariam’s haunting “Sabali,” which had us near tears.
These are hard days, with every news cycle delivering fresh sadness. Amadou and Mariam and Josh Ritter and a dozen others are like gold coins in my pocket, reminders that beauty survives, and that when we most need it we can reach for it and hold it tight.
DID THE EIFFEL TOWER INSPIRE VAN GOGH?
From May 22 to August 27, the Metropolitan Museum will present Van Gogh’s Cypresses, the first exhibition to focus on Van Gogh’s trees. “Starry Night” is the image above; painted when he was in the asylum, it’s among his best known painting. There is a valley and a town. The trees dominate. Why?
From The Guardian:
Art experts have long struggled to explain the inspiration behind Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night, in which towering cypress trees are depicted against a swirling night sky over a hillside village. Created during his incarceration in an asylum near Saint-Rémy in the south of France, it is one of a series of paintings of cypress trees interpreted as an exploration of abstraction or a mystical evocation of nature.
Now the art historian Prof James Hall, a former Guardian art critic, has a new theory to explain Van Gogh’s fascination with these colossal evergreens: the Eiffel Tower.
He argues that the artist began this series in June 1889, shortly after the Eiffel Tower was unveiled as the star attraction of the International Exposition, whose opening was accompanied by a spectacular late-night show of pyrotechnics, electric light and explosions that he says are repeated in the “pyrotechnical music of the stars, sky and clouds” of Van Gogh’s painting.
Hall said: “For Van Gogh, the cypress tree is a natural alternative to the Eiffel Tower, the centrepiece of the exhibition. Starry Night is a rural and cosmic counterpart to the light show that marked the opening of the exhibition.”
ITALIAN NUNS TAKING A SELFIE OF MICHELANGELO’S STATUE OF DAVID
While nuns in Italy took a selfie in front of Michelangelo’s statue of David, a Florida principal was forced to resign after students were shown pictures of the statue, now considered “pornography.” If you dare to watch the nuns watch the statue, click here.
NO BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER: Or maybe a very low bridge that hit Paul Simon on the head. Click here.
THE WEEKEND POEM: from the greatest Muslim poet, Rumi (1207-1273.) For my review, click here.
No matter how fast you run,
your shadow more than keeps up.
Sometimes it’s in front.
Only full, overhead sun diminishes your shadow.
But that shadow has been serving you!
What hurts you, blesses you.
Darkness is your candle.
Your boundaries are your quest.
JACK NICHOLSON: Richard Dreyfuss had just won the Oscar. Clutching his trophy, he gets in an elevator with a few other actors, and, in back, Jack Nicholson, adjusting his shades, saying nothing. Just before the doors open, he moves closer to Dreyfuss and says, “Bet you’re glad I didn’t make a film this year.”
“RAPE! MURDER! IT’S JUST A SHOT AWAY! IT’S JUST A KISS AWAY!”
Merry Clayton chilled the blood as a background vocalist for the Rolling Stones on “Gimme Shelter.” She got out of bed at midnight to give a legendary performance. Here’s her story… and the blood-curdling vocal.
WEEKEND RECIPE: HEAD BUTLER’S RIDICULOUSLY SIMPLE, ALWAYS THRILLING HOLIDAY HAM
Easter is April 9, a quick week away. If you’re thinking of serving ham, I’m running this early. A public service for the holiday? Really, a public service for any occasion. This recipe has been a holiday favorite of two wives, which is more than I can always say about myself. It comes from a long-departed friend, Gene Hovis, a dazzling cook and exceptional human who made it all the way from a small town in North Carolina to the Best Dressed List.
Don’t worry if you don’t have a dozen people coming to dinner — you’ll want these leftovers.
One caution: If you buy a pre-sliced ham, no one will be happy.
Prep time: 5 minutes. 6 basic ingredients. Insanely good.
Cooking tip: set the ham in a tin foil pan. Or, better, two. It’s so much easier to dispose of a sticky foil pan than spend fifteen minutes scouring one you value.
serves 10-12
16-18 pound ready-to-eat ham, pre-cooked, with bone in (A smoked ham is okay; an unsmoked ham is better. But do NOT get a spiral-cut ham — the edges will overcook.)
l box dark brown sugar
l/2 cup Gulden’s mustard
l/2 cup bourbon
l/2 cup fresh bread crumbs
l cup honey
2 tablespoons ground cloves
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
Mix ingredients. Pour over ham.
Cook in oven for 2-3 hours.
Baste constantly after first half hour
To buy “Gene Hovis’s Uptown Downtown Cookbook” from Amazon, click here.
