Author: DOuG pRATt

Non-Union Jobs

I don’t own an iPod or a MacIntosh computer, but I admire Steve Jobs. He’s made mistakes, of course.

One mistake was hiring John Sculley; a man of limited ability, and zero vision, who successfully maneuvered to have Jobs removed from Apple a short two years after being recruited from Pepsi.

Apple barely survived the incompetence of Sculley. Jobs returned to run the company in 1996, and take on the seemingly impossible challenge of competing against Microsoft. Jobs’ stunning comeback is one of the all-time great business success stories.

The Jobs stock option scandal doesn’t interest me. What does are comments he made recently at an education forum, concerning public school teachers. He doesn’t like unions. He wishes school principals could fire teachers.

“I believe that what is wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way. This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the-charts crazy.”

Michael Dell, who was present, explained succinctly why unions came into existence.

“The employer was treating his employees unfairly and that was not good.”

Thank you, Michael Dell.

Colbert at New York Comic Con

Head’s up, fans of Stephen Colbert and comic books. You are one and the same. Colbert will be at the New York Comic Con this weekend! My buddy Dennis will be there too, although mostly to see Stan Lee. I’ll be right here. Starting work on the taxes. 🙁

Stephen Colbert is the Emmy Award-winning host of Comedy Central’s Colbert Report. He will be at NYCC on behalf of Oni Press in support of his new 5-issue comic book miniseries, Stephen Colbert’s Tek Jansen, which will arrive in stores on March ’07. The series is written by John Layman and Tom Peyer with Jim Massey and illustrated by Scott Chantler with others. It is a full color, 32-page comic book that will retail for $3.99. Colbert will be autographing on Friday, February 23 at 4:30pm.

Classical Music Scandal!

Fraud in Fine Art is common. Literature is occasionally prone to scandal. Classical Music has been relatively immune.

Over the past few days there have been accusations of fraud committed by a recently deceased British pianist named Joyce Hatto. Click here to read a New York Times article about the story. Here’s a portion of it:

February 17, 2007

A Pianist’s Recordings Draw Praise, but Were They All Hers?
By ALAN RIDING

Hatto.jpgPARIS, Feb. 16 — In the autumn of her life, decades after she had last performed in public, the British pianist Joyce Hatto was rediscovered by a small group of musicians and critics who contended that her recordings of Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Liszt and others ranked alongside those of the 20th century’s most exceptional virtuosos.

When she died last June at 77, some of those same enthusiasts again proclaimed her to be a neglected genius, in glowing obituaries written for British newspapers. In The Guardian, the music critic Jeremy Nicholas described her as “one of the greatest pianists Britain has ever produced.”

Mr. Nicholas and others, it seems, had accepted the explanation for her lack of renown among music lovers: a long battle against cancer had forced her to abandon her concert career in 1976 and led her to devote her energy to recording all the great works in the piano repertory, from Scarlatti to Messiaen, for the small British label Concert Artist.

“Joyce Hatto must be the greatest living pianist that almost no one has ever heard of,” Richard Dyer wrote in The Boston Globe in 2005.

But now Ms. Hatto’s reputation for excellence and originality has been shaken by a charge of plagiarism. Gramophone, the London music monthly, has presented evidence that several of the recordings issued under her name were in fact copied from recordings of the same music by other pianists.

The Pristine Classical Web site is actively documenting the alleged frauds. Click here to go the Joyce Hatto Hoax page. The comparisons between recordings are only now starting to be made, but already they seem unassailable. Most, if not all, of the recordings attributed to Hatto are, in fact, identical to those made by others.

I remember reading the article by Boston Globe Classical music writer Richard Dyer that’s mentioned above. It was glowing and uncritical. Dyer’s career has taken a serious blow and may perhaps now be over. Dyer has a trained and experienced ear, yet he failed after listening of a third of the claimed Hatto CDs to recognize them as being the work of others.

Here are excerpts from Dyer’s Boston Globe article:
Continue reading Classical Music Scandal!

The Death of George Reeves

It’s an indelible memory. My mother coming into the room at 330 Zida Street, Fort Atkinson, WI, where I was watching The Adventures of Superman on TV. She snapped off the set and said she didn’t want me watching the show. I didn’t understand why. My brother Jeff said, “He jumped out a window and killed himself!”

Jeff was referring, of course, to George Reeves, who shot himself in 1959. If this event from my childhood occurred close to the time of Reeves’ suicide, I was not yet four years old.

I loved the show, and I still do. I own the entire series on DVD. In the movie Hollywoodland, just out on DVD, a fictional private detective investigating the death of Reeves learns that his son is seriously disturbed by the suicide.

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/FEB07/Hollywoodland.flv 425 240]

I have a pretty good recollection of my feelings upon learning that Reeves had killed himself. First, I didn’t believe my brother’s assertion that Reeves had jumped out of a window. Second, I wasn’t filled with dark thoughts. I merely accepted it. I did exactly what Adrien Brody’s character tells his son to do, as seen in the video clip. I continued to watch the show on TV.

My mother made a Superman sweatshirt for me. I don’t remember if that was before or after Reeve’s suicide. The “S” was inside of a circle instead of a diamond, but I didn’t mind. I treasured that sweatshirt. For a cape, I would fasten a bath towel around my neck with a safety pin. And, yes, I would look for things to jump off of — chairs, rocks, etc. It was lots of fun. But it was always play.

Hollywoodland perpetuates the notion that somehow the show was a bad influence. And that bothers me. I haven’t heard that opinion expressed anywhere else, but other than that omission I agree with NPR movie critic Kevin Turan’s assessment.

Pratt Attack – 8

Last week’s Newsweek had a feature on comedy in the Baby Boom generation. I was surprised and pleased to see how much influence MAD Magazine is credited as having.

Alfred E. Neuman, a slightly altered spelling of the name of one of Randy Newman’s uncles, is of course the MAD Magazine mascot. The image of the face and the famous catch phrase, “What, Me Worry?”, were far from new when Harvey Kurtzman, MAD’s creator and its first editor, adopted them.

Helen Pratt was one Pratt who really did go on the attack! She sued MAD Magazine for copyright infringement. Her husband, Harry Stuff, had obtained a copyright for this image and slogan, for this postcard that he produced in 1914:

Helen Pratt Stuff lost after the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. The full story was written up by Maria Reidelbach in chapter 8 of her excellent 1991 book, Completely MAD. Here are excerpts of Reidelbach’s account.
Continue reading Pratt Attack – 8