Wes Phillips

David Mehegan remembers his grandfather's devotion to the Harvard Classics: The Five-Foot Shelf of Books. Mehegan contends that the "Five-Foot Shelf" was the lodestone for "the life of a totally successful human being."

This is one of the best profiles ever run in The New Yorker—and one of the longest. It's worth it.

The 50 greatest cartoons of all time? Could be.

Because nothing says Christmas like marimbas and wild bass! BTW, if the marimbas look backwards, it's because the clip was designed to be projected in one of those film jukeboxes, where they were in fact viewed from the other side.

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Kyle">http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2006/12/merry_christmas_from_ahn… Gann has posted Schoenberg's Weihnachtsmusik for our Christmas bliss. If you think Arnold never wrote a melody you'd like, take a listen to this gorgeous setting of "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming."

"Are you lonesome tonight,




Do you miss me tonight?




Are you sorry we drifted apart?




. . .




Do the chairs in your parlor seem empty and bare?




Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me there?




Is your heart filled with pain, shall I come back again?"

I find my logic compelling, but Bagheera doesn't buy it—she thinks DVD players make excellent perches.