This Week in A & E

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Published: Oct 11, 2006

Despite film profs screaming, "Screenwriting isn't about words. They're called motion pictures!" consider this: David Milch's HBO western, Deadwood, has taken cursing to lyrical heights, with pimp Ian McShane delivering haunting, expletive-filled soliloquies mid-blowjob. In another "western" — Joss Whedon's one-season wonder Firefly — space-settlers speak in a heightened Old West vernacular peppered with clever metaphors, and don't limit their cursing to English. (Ever heard "Shit on my head!" in Chinese before?) And David Kelly's Boston Legal attorneys spout rhetorically complex closing arguments that are simultaneously hilarious, inspiring and politically charged. Luckily not everything on TV in the TV nation is monosyllabic.

Ever since I first came across Morton Feldman's music while reading David Cope's New Directions in Music during a (boring) summer session class in college, I've had a fanatical interest in his work. Music critic Kyle Gann calls Feldman the most influential composer of the last 25 years. I call him the most-often referenced, and proportionally least-often listened to, composer of the last 25 years. In addition to his tremendous musical contributions, Feldman also left a particularly interesting set of anecdotal writings, which should go a great distance to solidifying him as a singular presence in the history of art.

Upon recently acquiring a stately, 3,135-page, unabridged Webster's dictionary from 1971, I wonder how our household survived for so long on a pitifully abridged paperback version. Besides the endless definitions, I love the drawings of tricycles and flying ants and thistles and the "Seven Language Dictionary" at the end. Now I know that accordion in Swedish is dragspel, and love in Yiddish is libshaft! And while I may never fulfill my fantasy of learning 10 new words a day and actually incorporating them into my everyday conversation, it is just such a secure feeling to know that it's there, to settle disputes and to reveal the missing words to songs not yet written.

I love Jeremy Piven. My crush predates his Emmy-kissing Entourage glory days. I loved him in PCU and Say Anything (yes, he was in Say Anything!). Jeremy is hotter than John Cusack, especially with his new Ari Gold biceps. Jeremy/Ari is the only reason to have cable. Have you seen his new Gap ad? Oy. Jeremy is my Jewish dream man. He's single, you know. Can someone set me up with him? I devoted a scene to him in my upcoming comedic cabaret show "Sex and the Single Singer." Jeremy, if you're reading this, I'll be at the Tin Angel this Saturday.

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