"Bob Dylan ran through the 18th century English folk song 'Pretty Saro' six consecutive times during the Self Portrait sessions in March 1970..."

"... but none of those versions made the final cut for the album and the song remained in Columbia's vault for the past 43 years. The track never even leaked onto bootlegs, but on August 27th, it's finally coming out on Another Self Portrait, a 35-track box set of songs cut for Nashville Skyline, Self Portrait and New Morning."

Details and video of the song here. 

Here's the old "Self Portrait." "Another Self Portrait" will come out at the end of the month.

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"There is absolutely nothing worse than the stereotypical old fart in the cluttered office telling people 'It’s all crap!!!'—while pulling down, year after year, a handsome if static salary..."

"... and I’m perilously close to that. In classical Chinese philosophy there is an oft-repeated motif of the sage who writes a book and then departs beyond the frontiers, never to be seen again. Perhaps 7DS is that [non-]book."

So writes 62-year-old Philip Schrodt, who retiring from his tenured prof job at Penn State and setting up shop as an independent consultant.

7DS = "Seven Deadly Sins of Quantitative Political Analysis/The Web Site."

(I got to Schrodt's screed via Paul Caron.)

I'm 62, by the way, and last night I had a dream about someone trying to talk me into retiring, so it's odd running into this today. If you read between the lines chez Schrodt, you'll see he's energized about keeping more of the money he brings in. (I don't think he says anything about the pension he's going to collect, but that has to be part of the economic analysis upon which he's run the numbers.) He's also tired of what he's calling the "authoritarian" governance at his university and it's Sandusky-sullied reputation. And he's sick of academic journals:

I’d like to think I’m still doing research that is interesting, but once the work is written, it is out there on the web where anyone can find it, so why go through the agony of dumbing down the work for a major journal which will then hide it behind a paywall?

It's best to set up your work life so that the efforts you expend create the motivation to do more. If there's pointless drudgery and you don't have to do it, it's lazy not to change. You may imagine that laziness feels good, but slogging along doing things you don't value is deadly, and if you don't need to do it for the money, especially if the alternative is intrinsically energizing and more lucrative... honey, how come you don't move?

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The consequences of blushing.

1. I was reading this Wall Street Journal essay — "The Appeal of Embarrassment/Blushing, fidgeting, looking down — the more contrite a wrongdoer looks, the more likable he seems" — written by Robert M. Sapolsky, a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University and author of the enticingly titled "The Trouble with Testosterone" and "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers."

2. I don't give a damn about zebras and their freedom from ulcers. (I'll just guess that when any given zebra slips toward ulcer-producing mental activity, some lion eats him, and that's the end of that trajectory.) But I am interested in the trouble with testosterone in connection with the subject of Sapolsky's essay, which is Anthony Weiner. Something about that ravaged face. Is he using testosterone to build up those muscles he shows off in his selfies?


3. Sapolsky's essay is not, however, about testosterone, but visible signs of embarrassment, like blushing. Is Weiner one of these people who do not blush like normal people? If so, Sapolsky suggests, we shouldn't trust him. "Numerous studies have shown that autonomic responses to strong emotions are blunted in sociopaths. Thus, in individuals there is a positive and statistically significant covariance between concern about violating social norms and concern with pro-sociality." (I'm resisting inserting an old joke here.)

4. Sapolsky's essay pulled me in enough to read it, but it didn't make the cut into bloggable. Something unsatisfying about the maundering. And it's just the same old thing about Weiner, really. Why isn't he embarrassed? The Stanford prof doesn't have anything new to say: Why doesn't Weiner blush? Maybe he did blush? Was anyone checking to see if he blushed? That's how Sapolsky ends it, saying it would be "nice" if there were some kind of blush-o-meter to check.

5. I thought I could find a way into blogging the essay I'd dumped time into reading with an almost-remembered song lyric with the word "blush." Was it Bob Dylan? I do a word search at bobdylan.com I see Bob's used the word exactly once: "Now, there’s a certain thing/That I learned from my friend, Mouse/A fella who always blushes/And that is that ev’ryone/Must always flush out his house/If he don’t expect to be/Goin’ ’round housing flushes."

6. That's not helpful. This friend Mouse always blushes. I thought the line was never blushes, which might help me with the Weiner/Sapolsky quandry, and anyway, it's a dumb Dylan verse, just some off the top of his head Basement Tapes foolery, where Bob not only wasn't above rhyming "mouse" and "house" but he also double-used "flush" in his low-effort rhyme for "blush."

7. I'm not getting any good material about blushing, and I'm completely distracted by the title of the song, "Open the Door, Homer." If you've listened to "The Basement Tapes," you know it as "Open the Door, Richard." What's with the Homer/Richard switch?

8. That turns out to be a much better question than did Anthony Weiner blush? For one thing, it's perfectly answerable, via Wikipedia. "Open the Door, Richard" was an old vaudeville routine:

Pigmeat Markham, one of several who performed the routine, attributed it to his mentor Bob Russell. The routine was made famous by Dusty Fletcher on stages like the Apollo Theater in New York and in a short film. Dressed in rags, drunk, and with a ladder as his only prop, Fletcher would repeatedly plunk the ladder down stage center, try to climb it to knock on an imaginary door, then crash sprawling on the floor after a few steps while shouting, half-singing "Open the Door, Richard." After this he would mutter a comic monologue, then try the ladder again and repeat the process, while the audience was imagining what Richard was so occupied doing.

Jack McVea was responsible for the musical riff which became associated with the words "Open the Door, Richard" that became familiar to radio listeners and as many as 14 different recordings were made....

"Open the Door, Richard" was an early R&B novelty record, a song category that became a basic genre of rock and roll in the 1950s. It started the fad of answer song records. It was also the first commercial record to use a fade out ending....

The phrase "Open the Door, Richard" passed into African American Vernacular English and became associated with the Civil Rights Movement. When college students marched in 1947 to the state capitol demanding the resignation of segregationist governor Herman Talmadge, some of their banners read "Open the Door Herman." The Los Angeles Sentinel used "Open the Door Richard" as the title of an editorial demanding black representation in city government and a Detroit minister used the title for a sermon on open housing.

"Open the Door, Richard" became a catchphrase in broader American society, as well; the line appeared in routines by Jack Benny, Fred Allen, and Phil Harris. Jimmy Durante and Burl Ives each recorded versions of the song; opera star Lauritz Melchior performed it on national radio. Molly Picon recorded a Yiddish language version; it was also covered in Spanish, Swedish, French, Armenian and Hungarian. There were "Richard" hats, shirts, and jeans, and ads for products ranging from ale to perfume incorporated references to the song....

In 1967, Bob Dylan and The Band recorded an homage to the song as part of The Basement Tapes. Entitled "Open the Door, Homer," the chorus nevertheless repeated the phrase "Open the door Richard."

9. The door never opens, I think. What's that old line, when a door closes, a window opens? I immediately remember the lyric I was searching for at stage #5:

Some people, they like to go out dancing
And other peoples, they have to work...
And there's even some evil mothers
Well they're gonna tell you that everything is just dirt
Y'know that, women, never really faint
And that villains always blink their eyes, woo!
And that, y'know, children are the only ones who blush!
And that, life is just to die!

10. Children are the only ones who blush... that's what the evil mothers tell you. The evil mothers are the sociopaths who don't blush, and they'd like you to believe that no adults blush, so you won't attribute any significance to the failure to blush when caught in a shameful act.

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"Each post you make seems to invite conversation, yet allowing none, creates a constipation of thought."

Emails a reader who — when the comments were on — commented under the pseudonym Salamandyr. I'm blogging this because I think poop is funny. And because I've already used the tag "excrement" once this morning, quoting Greil Marcus's famous question — reviewing Bob Dylan's "Self Portrait" — "What is this shit?"

So Salamandyr's saying "Turning off comments was a dreadful mistake that I hope you'll reconsider."

[Y]our writing style invites comments.  Each post you make seems to invite conversation, yet allowing none, creates a constipation of thought.  

Yeah, that was the problem. Too much pooping in the comments! Why would your complaining about constipation convince me to reopen? This is Althouse, not Shithouse. But some people didn't seem to notice, didn't care, or had their own delusions of redesigning the place.

Previously, even if I choose not to type out my comments, the ability to, invites me to think about what you wrote, to consider it in more detail, to create a dialogue with your post.  This oftentimes made your post all the more memorable.  

And the difference now is what? That when you think the thoughts the post prompts, the fact that you could put it in writing, next to my writing, and now you can't, impedes a mental process that never emerged in writing anyway? To stick with your metaphor, if it's constipation, you've got constipation in both situations, and what's bothering you is that there's no toilet available.

Then what the commenters wrote in response to your post, made it even more memorable.  Every comment reinforced what your writing [sic], made it that much more prominent.  

That's where you are wrong — wrong in a way that crucial is to me, as I explained right here. If you take the trouble to read that, tell me — or tell your constipated brain — whether you saw or took the trouble to look for the 15 topics and whether you think there's the slightest chance that if the comments had been open, the commenters would have explored them and, if some did, whether the writing about the 15 topics would outweigh the writing about how Bob Dylan's voice is bad and I write about Bob Dylan too much. See why I'm not feeling "reinforced"?

I might spend an hour reading your post, reading the comments, thinking about how they relate to your post, whether they successfully rebut your point, support it, or were irrelevant....

Now, that sounds constipated. It's dangerous to sit on the pot that long. Don't you know that's what killed Elvis?

If you choose not to re-open comments, I'm sure your writing will change, become more declarative, less inviting....

You're sure? Why are you sure? Do you need to deposit your answer to those questions to benefit from thinking about them?

Whatever you choose, I'll probably still read you.  You are smart, educated, and have interesting opinions.  But without comments, I find myself visiting your site less often during the day, and spending less time there when I do, and spending less time considering your posts.  

Good! Keep it moving. It's much healthier.

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"On Obamacare, Republicans test the definition of insanity"/"Buyer’s Remorse from ObamaCare Backers?"

Headlines paired at Real Clear Politics.

The first one is from Dana Milbank at The Washington Post. The second one is from Seth Mandel at Commentary.

I figure I can move on, they cancel each other out/I don't need get my head scrambled up and my brain dragged about.

“It’s all been designed,” he said, “to make you lose your mind
And when you go back to find it, there’s nothing there to find
Every time you look at it, your situation’s worse
If you feel it grabbing out for you, send for the nurse"

It = TV, in that old Dylan song, but let's interpret it to include the internet, there being no Dylan song about the internet. Not explicitly, anyway.

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"The news of the day is on all the time/All the latest gossip, all the latest rhyme..."

"Your mind is your temple, keep it beautiful and free/Don’t let an egg get laid in it by something you can’t see..."

That's Bob Dylan talking about television. Any eggs laid in your beautiful mind lately by some invisible insectoid politico?

"It will lead you into some strange pursuits
Lead you to the land of forbidden fruits
It will scramble up your head and drag your brain about
Sometimes you gotta do like Elvis did and shoot the damn thing out"

He means the TV, which is what Elvis shot out, not the brain. That's a lyric you must take care not to misread.

Having taken a break in the middle of writing this post to scramble some eggs — chicken eggs, not insect eggs — I take delight in the appearance of "scramble" (in "scramble up your head") so soon after "Don't let an egg get laid" (in your head).

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Bob Dylan looks like Rick Santorum.

In his painterly mind:



The trouble with painting/drawing portraits is everyone gravitates to the question whether it looks like the person it's supposed to be. That's a good reason — if you like doing portraits — to choose subjects who aren't well-known. Alternatively, use a camera. You might get credit for making one person look like someone else.

Here's Bob Dylan's new "Self Portrait (1969-1971): The Bootleg Series Vol. 10." And here's Dylan's long-ago release titled "Self Portrait"...



... the one about which Greil Marcus asked in Rolling Stone: "What is this shit?" (Here, please credit me for resisting making a Santorum joke.)

Comparing the 2 selfies, we see a consistent approach to the upper lip/lower lip proportion, the the Scarecrow-from-the-Wizard-of-Oz nose, the hair part deeply denting the forehead (making it look like a lopsided heart), the cut off jawline with jowls, and the un-level ears (though the down ear is now up and the up is down*). The biggest difference, other than skin tone, is in the eyebrows. Gone is the amazement of youth. The old man has seen it all, but he's still looking.
_________________________

*Old lyric that resonated (after a search for "up" and "down"):

Oh, the only decent thing I did when I worked as a postal clerk
Was to haul your picture down off the wall near the cage where I used to work
Was I a fool or not to try to protect your identity?
You looked a little burned out, my friend, I thought it might be up to me

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Bobby Vee goes on stage with gets tribute from Bob Dylan in St. Paul.

"The young Dylan once played several concerts as part of Vee’s band in the Fargo, N.D., area well before both hit it big."

The 72-year-old [Bob Dylan] told the crowd he has gone on to share stages with everyone from Mick Jagger to Madonna, but he said Vee is one of the most powerful performers he has played with.

Dylan then asked for a round of applause for Vee, whom he said was in attendance, before covering Vee's “Suzie Baby.”

Vee is younger than Bob Dylan — he's 70 — but he has Alzheimer's disease. You can listen to Vee's old recording of "Suzie Baby" here. It has a bizarrely long, lush intro.
From the Wikipedia article on Vee:

Vee's career began amid tragedy. On "The Day the Music Died" (February 3, 1959), the three headline acts in the line-up of the traveling 'Winter Dance Party'—Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper—were killed, along with 21-year-old pilot Roger Peterson, in the crash of a 1947 Beechcraft Bonanza v-tailed aircraft (registration #N3974N) near Clear Lake, Iowa, while en route to the next show on the tour itinerary in Moorhead, Minnesota. Velline, then aged 15, and a hastily-assembled band of Fargo, North Dakota, schoolboys calling themselves The Shadows volunteered for and were given the unenviable job of filling in for Holly and his band at the Moorhead engagement. Their performance there was a success, setting in motion a chain of events that led to Vee's career as a popular singer.

The 2 Bobby Vee songs I remember hearing on the radio the most back in the old days were: "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes" and "Take Good Care of My Baby." The first one has a really crazy video, which I've blogged about before:



CORRECTION: Sorry, Vee didn't go onto the stage, but was in the audience, when Dylan talked about him and played his old song.

ADDED: More details and the video of Dylan singing "Suzie Baby."

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"This article should not have been published without a picture, even if only an artist's rendering."

"There's only one thing that anyone who clicks that headline wants to see."

Emails Freeman Hunt, referring to guess what headline?

"Bin Laden was in the habit of wearing a cowboy hat in his Abbottabad compound because he thought it would shield him from U.S. drones."

Anyone have a picture? Feel free to photoshop using this picture of mine:

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Naked Bob Dylan Robot has something to say about the meaning of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat."

As channeled by betamax3000:

Well, you look so pretty in it
Honey, can I jump on it sometime?

The Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat Represents the Stylish Repression of the Sexual Urges of the Hat-Wearing Woman -- the Hat is a "Pillbox", thus referencing both Birth Control and Containment --, and How those Urges Create a Corresponding Attraction in the Male, as the Leopard-Skin Pattern Stimulates Animal Urges. This Becomes More Obvious in the Following Lines, where the Titular Hat is Compared to A Mattress:

Yes, I just wanna see If it's really that expensive kind
You know it balances on your head
Just like a mattress balances
On a bottle of wine
Your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat

That the Mattress is Balanced On a Bottle of Wine Implies that the Man is Contemplating the Use of Alcohol to Achieve the Goal of "jump(ing) on it sometime."

However, this Desire Remains Unrequited, as Evidenced in the Following lines:

Well, if you wanna see the sun rise Honey,
I know where We'll go out and see it sometime
We'll both just sit there and stare
Me with my belt Wrapped around my head
And you just sittin' there
In your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat

Notice that they Will "Sit and Stare": there is No Jumping Upon the "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat". Furthermore, The Man Now Has a Belt Wrapped Around His Head, Indicating Restraint of His Hat-Jumping Thoughts, and -- Possibly -- Implying a Restraint Around His Phallic Head. Meanwhile, the Woman is "just sittin' there" and there is no further mention of a Mattress.

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At the Underwater Egyptian Café...

Sister, lemme tell you about a vision I saw/You were drawing water for your husband, you were suffering under the law...

(Thanks to Chip Ahoy for rearranging me in that photograph by Meade.)

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"Hardly a man takes a half-hour's nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, 'What's the news?' as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels."

"Some give directions to be waked every half-hour, doubtless for no other purpose; and then, to pay for it, they tell what they have dreamed. After a night's sleep the news is as indispensable as the breakfast. 'Pray tell me anything new that has happened to a man anywhere on this globe' -- and he reads it over his coffee and rolls, that a man has had his eyes gouged out this morning on the Wachito River; never dreaming the while that he lives in the dark unfathomed mammoth cave of this world, and has but the rudiment of an eye himself."

An old quote that crosses my mind as I realize I have yet to check the news this morning.

Do you recognize that quote? It's from the oft-quoted "Walden," and I'm amused to see the next paragraph:

For my part, I could easily do without the post-office. I think that there are very few important communications made through it. 

Read in isolation, that sounds like Henry David Thoreau foresaw email and the internet, but, in fact, he's at the opposite end of the technology spectrum:

To speak critically, I never received more than one or two letters in my life... that were worth the postage. 

I have written 34,859 posts on Blogger — this is #34,860 — and they were surely worth the "postage," since I have paid $0.00 to write to you like this.

The penny-post is, commonly, an institution through which you seriously offer a man that penny for his thoughts which is so often safely offered in jest. And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. 

Boldface added.

If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter -- we never need read of another. 

But a man on a vintage tractor was killed by a vintage firetruck in a 4th of July parade, and a cop shot the Rottweiler of a man he was arresting for photography the other day, and what's happening with those 17-year cicadas? Surely, these details from elsewhere need to be uploaded into our furiously grinding cogs of cognition.

One is enough. 

If you've read one dead dog story, you've read them all.

If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications? To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea. 

In my defense, I am an old woman. I've had coffee, and have moved on to water. Are you a philosopher? The test is: Do you think all news is gossip?

Yet not a few are greedy after this gossip. There was such a rush, as I hear, the other day at one of the offices to learn the foreign news by the last arrival, that several large squares of plate glass belonging to the establishment were broken by the pressure -- news which I seriously think a ready wit might write a twelve-month, or twelve years, beforehand with sufficient accuracy. 

What news stories are you reading this morning that might just as well have been written a year ago?

As for Spain, for instance, if you know how to throw in Don Carlos and the Infanta, and Don Pedro and Seville and Granada, from time to time in the right proportions...

All these people that you mention/Yes, I know them, they’re quite lame/I had to rearrange their faces/And give them all another name...

.... they may have changed the names a little since I saw the papers -- and serve up a bull-fight when other entertainments fail, it will be true to the letter, and give us as good an idea of the exact state or ruin of things in Spain as the most succinct and lucid reports under this head in the newspapers: and as for England, almost the last significant scrap of news from that quarter was the revolution of 1649; and if you have learned the history of her crops for an average year, you never need attend to that thing again, unless your speculations are of a merely pecuniary character. If one may judge who rarely looks into the newspapers, nothing new does ever happen in foreign parts, a French revolution not excepted.

What's the news from Egypt?

What news! how much more important to know what that is which was never old! "Kieou-he-yu (great dignitary of the state of Wei) sent a man to Khoung-tseu to know his news."

All these Chinese names you mention... presumably, what's the news of how to spell them today?

"Khoung-tseu caused the messenger to be seated near him, and questioned him in these terms: What is your master doing? The messenger answered with respect: My master desires to diminish the number of his faults, but he cannot come to the end of them. The messenger being gone, the philosopher remarked: What a worthy messenger! What a worthy messenger!" The preacher, instead of vexing the ears of drowsy farmers on their day of rest at the end of the week -- for Sunday is the fit conclusion of an ill-spent week, and not the fresh and brave beginning of a new one -- with this one other draggle-tail of a sermon, should shout with thundering voice, "Pause! Avast! Why so seeming fast, but deadly slow?"

What is the fit conclusion to your ill-spent week?

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