On my fifteenth birthday, my mother said she would spend five dollars on me (a lot of money for us then), and asked me what I wanted. I said, "Well, instead of buying me something, why don't you just let me make a long-distance phone call?" (Nobody in our house had ever made a long-distance phone call.) I decided that I would call Edgard Varèse. I deduced that a person who looked like a mad scientist could only live in a place called Greenwich Village. So I called New York information and asked if they had a listing for Edgard Varèse. Sure enough, they did. They even gave me his street address.

Frank Zappa, The Real Frank Zappa Book (Touchstone, 1999)

Antes e depois:

- Neil Young, After the gold rush (Reprise, 1970);

- Lee Ranaldo, Between the times and tides (Matador, 2012).

Deitados de frente um para o outro na cama de dossel, continuaram a contar as suas histórias até cair a noite, e depois ser noite escura, até ambos terem dito praticamente tudo e se terem revelado um ao outro da forma mais completa que sabiam. E no fim, como se ele ainda não estivesse suficientemente enfeitiçado por ela, Marcia sussurrou-lhe ao ouvido uma coisa que acabara de descobrir:

- Esta é a única maneira de conversar, não é?

Philip Roth, Némesis (Dom Quixote, 2011)

When I was a kid I used to carry around this awful image in my head – a picture of three men tangled awkwardly in high-tension wires, fifty feet in the air, their lifeless bodies crisping in the midday sun.

The horror they endured was shared with me by my father, an electrical engineer who worked, among other places, at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, helping with the installation of a new power plant in the 1950s. Carl Frehley was a man of his times. He worked long hours, multiple jobs, did the best he could to provide a home for his wife and kids. Sometimes, on Sunday afternoons after church, he’d pile the whole family into a car and we’d drive north through the Bronx, into Westchester County, and eventually find ourselves on the banks of the Hudson River. Dad would take us on a tour of the West Point campus and grounds, introduce us to people, even take us into the control room of the electrical plant. I’m still not sure how he pulled that one off – getting security clearance for his whole family – but he did.

Dad would walk around, pointing out various sights, explaining the rhythm of his day and the work that he did, sometimes talking in the language of an engineer, a language that might as well have been Latin to me. Work was important, and I guess in some way he just wanted his kids to understand that; he wanted us to see this other part of his life.

One day, as we headed back to the car, my father paused and looked up at the electrical wires above, a net of steel and cable stretching across the autumn sky.

«You know, Paul,» he said, «every day at work, we have a little contest before lunch.»

I had no idea what he was talking about.

A contest? Before lunch?

Sounded like something we might have done at Grace Lutheran, where I went to elementary school in the Bronx.

«We draw straws to see who has to go out and pick up sandwiches for the whole crew. If you get the shortest straw, you’re the delivery boy.»

That was the beginning. From there, my father went on to tell us the story of the day he drew the short straw. While he was out picking up sandwiches, there was a terrible accident back on the job. Someone had accidentally thrown a switch, restoring power to an area where three men were working. Tragically, all three men were electrocuted instantly. When my father returned, he couldn’t believe his eyes. The bodies of his coworkers were being peeled off the high-tension wires.

«Right up there,» he said quietly, looking overhead. «That’s where it happened.»

He paused, put a hand on my shoulder.

«If I hadn’t drawn the short straw that day, I’d have been up there in those wires, and I wouldn’t be here right now.»

I looked at the wires, then at my father. He smiled.

«Sometimes you get lucky.»

Dad would repeat that story from time to time, just often enough to keep the nightmares flowing. That wasn’t his intent, of course – he always related the tale in a whimsical ‘what if?’ tone – but it was the outcome nonetheless. You tell a little kid that his old man was nearly fried to death, and you’re sentencing him to a few years of sweaty, terror-filled nights beneath the sheets. I get his point now, though. You never know what life might bring… or when it might come to a screeching halt.

And it’s best to act accordingly.

Ace Frehley, No regrets - A rock'n'roll memoir

Os rótulos das embalagens de café obedecem, por certo, a rigorosos estudos sociológicos. Só assim se explica a diferença dos modos de uso consoante a língua em que são apresentados: «[…] deite uma ou mais colheres de café numa chávena […]», em contraponto com «[…] verser une cuillère à café plus ou moins pleine dans 100 ml d’eau frémissante […]».

2011 em livros

Depois dos discos, os livros. Poucas novidades, outras leituras.

Edições publicadas em 2011:

a) Ficção:

01. Dante Alighieri, A divina comédia (Quetzal);

02. Robert Louis Stevenson, Os folgazões (Assírio & Alvim);

03. Somerset Maugham, O véu pintado (Asa);

04. John Updike, Rich in Russia (Penguin);

05. Eudora Welty, Moon Lake (Penguin);

06. John Steinbeck, Chama devoradora (Livros do Brasil);

07. Philip Roth, A humilhação (Dom Quixote);

08. Filomena Marona Beja, Histórias vindas a conto (Sextante).

b) Não-ficção:

01. Stéphane Hessel, Indignai-vos! (Objectiva);

02. Tiago Pitta e Cunha, Portugal e o mar (Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos).

Outras edições:

a) Ficção:

01. James Joyce, Ulysses (Wordsworth, 2010);

02. Sófocles, Antígona (Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 2010);

03. John Steinbeck, East of Eden (Penguin, 2000);

04. Sófocles, Rei Édipo (Edições 70, 1999);

05. Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (Penguin, 2004);

06. Herman Melville, Bartleby (Assírio & Alvim, 2010);

07. Jane Austen, Sensibilidade e bom senso (QuidNovi/Book.it, 2010);

08. Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist (Penguin, 2003);

09. Tomás Morus, A Utopia (Guimarães, 2005);

10. Jack London, The call of the wild (Puffin, 2008);

11. William Golding, Lord of the flies (Turtleback, 1999);

12. William Faulkner, A recompensa do soldado (Casa das Letras, 2010);

13. Ayn Rand, Atlas shrugged (Penguin, 2007);

14. e. e. cummings, xix poemas (Assírio & Alvim, 1998);

15. Margaret Atwood, Senhora Oráculo (Bertrand, 2009);

16. Woody Allen, Annie Hall (Bertrand, 1989);

17. Safo, Líricas em fragmentos (Vega, 1991);

18. Ayn Rand, Anthem (Penguin, 2008);

19. Paulo José Miranda, A arma do rosto (Cotovia, 1998);

20. Tonino Guerra, O livro das igrejas abandonadas (Assírio & Alvim, 1997);

21. Issa Kobayashi, Primeira neve (Assírio & Alvim, 2002).

22. Shane Jones, Light boxes (Penguin, 2010).

b) Não-ficção:

01. Theodor Adorno, The culture industry (Routledge, 2001);

02. Susan Sontag, On photography (Penguin, 2002):

03. John Milton, Areopagítica (Ad Astra Et Ultra, 2010);

04. Keith Richards, Life (Little, Brown and Company, 2010);

05. Thomas Mann, Viagem marítima com Dom Quixote (Dom Quixote, 2008);

06. John Fahey, How bluegrass music destroyed my life (Drag City, 2000);

07. Alexandra Lucas Coelho, Viva México (Tinta-da-china, 2010);

08. Bill Milkowski, Jaco: The extraordinary and tragic life of Jaco Pastorius (Backbeat, 2005).