Sunday evening with Fred

Astaire, that is.

To accompany a good read, Malcolm dons his Sony noise-canceling [sic] headphones; and cranks up the G4 iPod. That avoids the distraction of the iPodTouch screen waking up with each change of track.

For the occasion he had installed a new Playlist; and settled back to nearly two-and-a-half hours of Top Hat, White Tie and Tails.

Although improved from the original shellacs, sound quality is -- naturally -- hardly hi-fi. But, who cares?

And so time passes.

Pages are turned. Cabernet is sipped. A good evening is had.

Occasionally the surreality of the audio-only of tap-dancing Fred strikes through: as peculiar and irrational as, say, the ventriloquist "turns" that used to "appear" on the BBC Light Programme.

Occasionally, too, the sheer delight of those clever lyrics, in particular those of Irving Berlin, breaks through.

Omaha, Nebraska, twinned with Naas, County Kildare: birthplace of not just Frederick Austerlitz, but also Nick Nolte, Marlon Brando (whose mother first put Henry Fonda on her stage at the Omaha Community Playhouse) ... and Malcolm X/Little. Sphere: Related Content