Posted 6:58 PM by Gene

By accident I've found another cultural Web site one could spend eons on if one had eons to spend: the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project in the Department of Special Collections of the Donald C. Davidson Library at the University of California, Santa Barbara. (Whew!) In short, a library's disseminating old acoustical cylinders (primarily Edisons, as that company invented them), and once you get past that scratchy tinny sound you're hooked; I love their opening intros. One problem is a lot of tearing of hair as many recordings of the top vaudeville acts were -- racist; a small and very worthy company called Archeophone duly and humorlessly informs would-be buyers. Some tell us this is early [C]RAP, justifying the later kind. I would never defend racists but at least the old minstrel and blackface stars had one difference: music.

I still try to get to ASIFA-Hollywood when I can -- an absolute national treasure, especially when it posts the ineffably screwloose Milt Gross and the imperishable Cliff Sterrett. I'm no fan of Hef's but I must say I lingered around the Little Annie Fanny post awhile (their second). Am I glad women don't look like that. (Then again, maybe I'm not.)