Why Am I So Thirsty?

Trashy tabloid Sunday...

From the U.K.'s Daily Mail:

Hugh Grant has confessed he was drunk when he bought a painting of Elizabeth Taylor that later made him an £11million profit.

The actor was lauded as an art connoisseur when he bought the work by Andy Warhol for £2million.

And he was praised as a master of timing when he sold it six years later for £13million.

But the star has now admitted that his windfall had little to do with an eye for art.

Grant, 49, had been on a two-day drinking spree when he ordered an assistant to bid for the painting at an auction in New York.

He said: 'And to my horror, she did, and even worse, got it.'

He added: 'It all began with drink. I'd been having a drunken dinner with my father the night before, and I said, "We ought to go see my brother Jamie. You know, the Concorde's amazing."

'And he said, "I hear it is.'' So I bought him a Concorde ticket and we went. We had lunch, drank a lot of beer.

'And I was thinking about some stuff in the Sotheby's auction and I saw the Liz Taylor. I slightly regret selling it now, even though it made me rich.'

Wow. Guinness really is good for you.

Pick It Up: Marianne Faithfull--"Easy Come Easy Go."

I read a concert review the other day about a recent Marianne Faithfull show. I've been a fan since sometime around "Broken English." Faithfull brings to mind a tough-yet-tender late-night chanteuse, and she would be on my short list of people with whom I'd like to share a closing time drink. Today her tipple would likely be sparkling water; I'd stick with my usual.

Anyway, the reviewer mentioned her most recent album, "Easy Come Easy Go," which reminded me to pick it up. I had downloaded a single track last spring--"Sing Me Back Home" (sung with old friend Keith Richards)--and I meant to buy the whole thing then. It's moody and atmospheric and colored by some killer arrangements and that wizened voice of debauchery and survival.

Here's an excerpt from a piece on MSNBC.msn.com:

"The first party I went to in London where I was discovered by Andrew Oldham — all the Beatles were there and the Stones were there too," says Faithfull. Soon after, Oldham brought the soprano with an angelic voice into the studio to record the melancholy "As Tears Go By," the first song co-written by Keith Richards and her soon-to-be boyfriend Mick Jagger.

"It's a strange song to get a 17-year-old to sing. It's all about a woman looking back on her youth, not participating, I couldn't really feel it. ... But now I can really feel it and it's very beautiful... I got to the right age where the woman in the song is," says Faithfull, who now sings the song in her world-weary contralto voice roughened by too much tobacco and booze in her colorful past.

But Faithfull has little in common with the song's protagonist who is content "to sit and watch" as her life goes by. She has gone from singing light folk-rock in the '60s to becoming a leading interpreter of the dark pre-World War II Berlin theatrical music of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill.

Faithfull is proud of her role as muse to the Rolling Stones in their early years, inspiring such songs as "You Can't Always Get What You Want," "Wild Horses, and "Sister Morphine" (for which she belatedly received credit for writing the lyrics). And she was a muse to the Beats — Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughts and Gregory Corso — in their later years.

The latest script is her new album "Easy Come, Easy Go," on which she interprets songs spanning nearly a century of popular music from Duke Ellington and Dolly Parton to Neko Case and the Decembrists. It has a contemporary feel thanks to collaborations with younger musicians such as Chan Marshall, known as Cat Power, and two children of her musician friends, Rufus Wainwright and Sean Lennon.

"It's not just an old person singing covers, no, thank God," she says, distinguishing it from albums by contemporaries like Rod Stewart. It's also stylistically eclectic — a mix of jazz, blues, country, folk and rock — because she explains "nobody listens to one style of music, nor do I."

Faithfull credits Richards for inspiring the album through bootleg recordings he made of his favorite songs in the '60s.

The album closes poignantly with Faithfull and Richards joining voices on Merle Haggard's death row ballad "Sing Me Back Home," a tune she first heard the Stones' guitarist play with Gram Parsons in the '60s. The two longtime friends sing lyrics like "Make my old memories come alive."

Here's the standard track list (there's also an import version with a second CD.)

Pick it up:

"Down from Dover", (originally by Dolly Parton)

"Hold On, Hold On", with Cat Power (originally by Neko Case)

"Solitude" (originally by Duke Ellington & Eddie DeLange)

"The Crane Wife 3", with Nick Cave (originally by The Decemberists)

"Easy Come, Easy Go" (originally by Bessie Smith)

"Children of Stone", with Rufus Wainwright (originally by Espers)

"How Many Worlds", with Teddy Thompson (originally by Brian Eno)

"In Germany Before the War" (originally by Randy Newman)

"Ooh Baby Baby", with Antony Hegarty (originally by Smokey Robinson)

"Sing Me Back Home", with Keith Richards (originally by Merle Haggard)

I Wonder If He'll Sing "Girl From The North Pole?"

I first heard rumblings about a Bob Dylan Christmas album in June or July. I read lots of harsh sniping; about his voice, his stints with or without Christianity, his perceived "cashing in" on a holiday, and the collision of Christmas and Santa and Dylan's Jewish heritage.

As in, "Dylan? A Christmas album?"

If you've followed anything at all to do with popular music over the last, oh, seventy-plus years, you'd already have known that Dylan would hardly be the first Jewish artist to write and/or record Christmas music. Irving Berlin wrote "White Christmas," Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne penned, "Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!" and Johnny Marks wrote "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," among other classic yuletide tunes. And that's just the top of the charts.

Hark; it's just a f****** holiday album, and it's for a great cause.

Ho, ho, ho.

From BobDylan.com:

Bob Dylan will release a brand new album of holiday songs,Christmas In The Heart, on Tuesday, October 13, it was announced today by Columbia Records. All of the artist’s U.S. royalties from sales of these recordings will be donated to Feeding America, guaranteeing that more than four million meals will be provided to more than 1.4 million people in need in this country during this year’s holiday season. Bob Dylan is also donating all of his future U.S. royalties from this album to Feeding America in perpetuity.

Additionally, the artist is partnering with two international charities to provide meals during the holidays for millions in need in the United Kingdom and the developing world, and will be donating all of his future international royalties fromChristmas In The Heart to those organizations in perpetuity. Details regarding the international partnerships will be announced next week.

“When we reached out to Bob Dylan about becoming involved with our organization, we could never have anticipated that he would so generously donate all royalties from his forthcoming album to our cause,” said Vicki Escarra, president and CEO of Feeding America. “This major initiative from such a world renowned artist and cultural icon will directly benefit so many people and have a major impact on spreading awareness of the epidemic of hunger in this country and around the world.”

Bob Dylan commented, “It’s a tragedy that more than 35 million people in this country alone -- 12 million of those children – often go to bed hungry and wake up each morning unsure of where their next meal is coming from. I join the good people of Feeding America in the hope that our efforts can bring some food security to people in need during this holiday season.”

Christmas In The Heart will be the 47th album from Bob Dylan, and follows his worldwide chart-topping Together Through Life, released earlier this year. Songs performed by Dylan on this new album include, “Here Comes Santa Claus,” “Winter Wonderland,” “Little Drummer Boy” and “Must Be Santa.”

Feeding America provides low-income individuals and families with the fuel to survive and even thrive. As the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief charity, our network members supply food to more than 25 million Americans each year, including 9 million children and 3 million seniors. Serving the entire United States, more than 200 member food banks supports 63,000 agencies that address hunger in all of its forms. For more information how you can fight hunger in your community and across the country, visit feedingamerica.org.

I'm not a Christian or anything, but I grew up with Christmas and always give it the ol' secular cheer. This year? Dylan and egg-nog and ho, ho, ho...

(And a donation to FeedingAmerica.org.)

Lend Me Your Ear.

From Guardian.co.uk:

Vincent van Gogh's fame may owe as much to a legendary act of self-harm, as it does to his self-portraits. But, 119 years after his death, the tortured post-Impressionist's bloody ear is at the centre of a new controversy, after two historians suggested that the painter did not hack off his own lobe but was attacked by his friend, the French artist Paul Gauguin.

According to official versions, the disturbed Dutch painter cut off his ear with a razor after a row with Gauguin in 1888. Bleeding heavily, Van Gogh then walked to a brothel and presented the severed ear to an astonished prostitute called Rachel before going home to sleep in a blood-drenched bed.

But two German art historians, who have spent 10 years reviewing the police investigations, witness accounts and the artists' letters, argue that Gauguin, a fencing ace, most likely sliced off the ear with his sword during a fight, and the two artists agreed to hush up the truth.

In Van Gogh's Ear: Paul Gauguin and the Pact of Silence, published in Germany, Hamburg-based academics Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans argue that the official version of events, based largely on Gauguin's accounts, contain inconsistencies and that both artists hinted that the truth was more complex.

Kaufmann told the Guardian: "Near the brothel, about 300 metres from the Yellow House, there was a final encounter between them: Vincent might have attacked him, Gauguin wanted to defend himself and to get rid of this 'madman'. He drew his weapon, made some movement in the direction of Vincent and by that cut off his left ear." Kaufmann said it was not clear if it was an accident or an aimed hit.

Not Available At The Drive-Thru.

     That image is a CT scan of a 6-piece Chicken McNuggets order from McDonald's. I have no idea what your insides might look like after eating it, though.

     I came across an item in the New York Times about Satre Stuelke, an artist/med student who decided to run some cultural icons through the machine to see what he could find.

     Click here to see more RadiologyArt.