Fred Astaire called this dance routine the greatest to ever be caught on film. The Nicholas Brothers, Fayard and Harold, were tap dancing stars of Vaudeville and the Harlem Renaissance, their careers continuing well into the 1990s. While the 1943 film "Stormy Weather" was primarily about its star, Bojangles Robinson, the "Jumping Five" sequence by the Nicholas Brothers really steals the show.

...was Saturday. I'm mortified to have missed the event and hereby make amends for my unconscionable oversight. However, I believe that I've aptly expressed my appreciation for the little critters over the years. Here's a snapshot of the flower pot outside our house in Georgia on a typical day last summer.

The invasion quickly escalated into a full Occupy Casa Paulette Movement, as evidenced from this view of our back yard.

Of course, we may have been partly to blame for encouraging them.

 

My realtor, a savvy local conservative, saw what we were encouraging in the back yard and warned us that Georgia squirrels are Democrats. They'd soon feel entitled to the food, housing and quality of life to which they'd become accustomed and expect us to continue paying for their leisure long after we'd moved away.

The difference between squirrels and Democrats, of course, is that squirrels are really cute.

Etta James has died.  She was 73 years old.  She once said: "A lot of people think the blues is depressing, but that's not the blues I'm singing.  When I'm singing the blues, I'm singing life.  people that can't stand to listen to the blues, they've got to be phonies."  Her best song was At Last.  RIP.

This clip of Louis Armstrong and Danny Kaye singing "When The Saints Go Marching In" from 1959's Five Pennies is one of my favorite videos to watch; it's a type that turns a poor day into a good one. The enjoyment that the two entertainers have as they sing to each other of the great musical artists is catching. Even more fitting is the very American character of the two men singing, who both came from nothing and despite hardships in their past were able to exhibit such joy and fun and beauty with their music that it helped reveal them as great. Good stuff.

Law jokes may be a bit funnier to me than to most, but WSJ's Law Blog posted a few resolutions which I thought worthy of sharing.

BigLaw Partner: Spend more time with the family. This year I mean it.

BigLaw Associate: Save more. Bill more.

The SEC: Stop bringing cases in the Southern District.

Justice Department: Get the bankers before the statute of limitations runs out.

Supreme Court: Keep cameras out of the court, knock out a few opinions by July.

Plaintiffs Lawyer: Stop settling so often.

ABA: Spend more time with law schools.

In-house counsel: Avoid the word "billable."

President Obama: Remember to get Justice Kennedy a present.

My own new year's resolutions pertain to spiritual exercises a la St. Ignatius and finding the perfect kim chi. If anyone can suggest superior goals, I'm all ears. 

So begins Alexander Nazaryan's review of The Oxford Companion to Beer, a work that just been added to my Amazon wish list--as well as, I am sure, to that of thousands of other beer geeks.  It is easy to forget that only a generation ago respectable, educated people would never admit to drinking beer--or, at least, to drinking American beer.  Today, perhaps for the first time in history, the world's best beer is being brewed here in the United States.  This is a point that needs to be made more often in a country where pessimism seems so pervasive.  It should also be remembered that the current beer renaissance would have been absolutely impossible had it not been for the deregulation which began under Jimmy Carter (who in 1978 signed the legislation making home brewing legal for the first time since Prohibition) and which continued at the state level (with the legalization by several states of brew pubs) in the 1980s.

I add simply in passing that this weekend I'll be kegging my whiskey-barrel stout, which will be ready in time for the holidays.

Fall and October beckon and, with them, come the conclusion of baseball season and the beginning of another long season of hopeful anticipation of the spring.  I have often thought that if a man cannot study philosophy and will not reflect upon his religion, there may yet be some hope for a meaningful life if he will, at least, study baseball.

Elizabeth Scalia waxes poetic on some of the reasons for this over at the First Things blog, On the Square.  At the heart of her musings is her recollection of the dread and then heartbreak she witnessed in a fan of one of her rival teams as her team rode the wind to glory.  The capacity of baseball to "break your heart," she reflects, is what makes baseball great.  And the reason baseball can do this is because of the way it can put you "in the clutch"--that is, in a state of suspension between certainty and uncertainty; the place where you have offered up your best, but can only hope for an agreeable outcome.  As the potential for tragedy spins on this roulette wheel of fate, love prevents us from calling in our chips.  We double down and are drawn in, yet again, for another spin.  We are caught in the clutch and the love that drives us compels us to surrender to it.  The pitcher may have perfected balance and form and strength and speed but, at some point, he must release the ball. 

It is a grand read.  Enjoy.

I opened the teach-yourself manual and it pointed me--after pages on fingers and their numbers, wrist placement, and posture and such--to middle C and then some other notes.  I touched it and it made a sound, a good sound.  I liked it, even though it filled me both with wonder and terror.  Certainly this is not yet rhythm and melody, but move we will. So I brought her home about two weeks ago and she fit at an inside wall, under Ben's portrait, with a couple of porcelain Hungarian peasants, drunk, on her top, next to gifted flowers.  So I am pushing along, maybe an hour a day, and getting to know her, Evelyn, or Evie (because all good things have to have names).  She is a console, not young, but in fine condition, a lovely thing actually, with simple and elegant lines, darker complexion. Simply beautiful, even graceful, and all her movements are primitive poetry, music, something like the soul's primary speech.  She does not complicate anything.  She sounds very good, seems to like me making noise, the only thing I am capable of yet.  Eventually it will become moody food, maybe even poetry, that may push folks to dance.  I'll work on it.  She is a great good and a fine pleasure. 

A tragedy in Italy this week. Tenor Salvatore Licitra, seen by many as the successor to Pavarotti, has died in a terrible motorscooter accident. He was 43 years old. Licitra gained his big break in 2002 when he had to sub for Pavarotti in a performance of Puccini's Tosca, and absolutely wowed the crowd. The tenor and his voice represented much of the beauty of Italy. Here he is singing the classic O sole mio--a fitting song for the heir of Pavarotti--and here he is again performing Nessun Dorma in Moscow.

I visited Montana a few months ago and was struck by the scenic beauty, but I seem to have missed one local treasure: a recreation of the Shire from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.

There are fans ... and then there are fans.

H/t: Debby Witt at NRO.