From whiskey river’s commonplace book: The whale moves in a sea of sound: shrimps snap, plankton seethes, fish croak, gulp, drum their air-bladders, and are scrutinized by echo-location, a light massage of sound touching the skin. The small, toothed whales use high frequencies: Finely tuned and focused sound-beams, intense salvoes of bouncing clicks, a thousand [...]

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[This is another in an occasional series on popular songs with long histories. Part 1 -- which focused on the song's composition and lyrics -- appeared on Wednesday.] How many times and by which performers has “Begin the Beguine” been covered? It is to laugh. The most comprehensive list I’ve seen was on the page [...]

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[Cole Porter at the piano, sometime in the 1930s. For me, it's easy to see in him, from this photo, the song "Begin the Beguine" -- but not the beguine itself.] [This is another in an occasional series on popular songs with appeal across the generations. This post will be broken into two parts; Part [...]

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[Above, the trailer for the short film Lost and Found, an adaptation of the children's book of the same name by Oliver Jeffers. For stills from the movie, visit the Cartoon Brew link above, and STUDIO aka.] From whiskey river: Recipe for an Ocean in the Absence of the Sea You have the ingredients on [...]

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From whiskey river: September: it was the most beautiful of words, he’d always felt, evoking orange-flowers, swallows, and regret. (Alexander Theroux) For summer there, bear in mind, is a loitering gossip, that only begins to talk of leaving when September rises to go. (George Washington Cable) …and: If we were not beings who pass quickly [...]

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[Entry from William Shakespeare's recently discovered blog, "Honour'd in the Breach"] Well now I’m not so sure workshopping Shrew was such a great idea. Like I said the other day, I was really looking forward to the new group. I’d been working with the others for like SO LONG that we were all starting to [...]

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You know what driver’s-ed classes don’t teach you? They don’t teach you how complicated it is to make your way through a busy intersection of more than two streets, especially when there are no traffic signals. I thought about this failure today, in connection with the 1972 film of the musical 1776. Until last night, [...]

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Scary question? It depends on the answer. A young actress, Ashley Brown of Broadway’s Mary Poppins revival, provides her take on it: Not so scary, hmm?

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