Last night I met up with Wolfson for the Empty Bottle improvised music festival.* In the past people have complained that these meetings don't result in enough dish, so here goes.
1. At dinner I wondered, as I long have, why in fans 'high' rather than 'low' is next to 'off'. The words weren't out of my mouth when Wolfson said, "I found that out just the other day." I should've predicted that. (Apparently electrical devices are less likely to fail if you start them up in something that draws a lot of power rather than a little, or something like that.)
2. The subject came up recently of things that people do not notice. A thing that Wolfson does not notice: An ambulance howling along the street right next to him. (To be fair, he noticed a bookstore cat that I did not.)
3. Tammy is charming.
4. Attempting to explain who John Perry is, I said, "The only bearded philosopher in a Safeway west of the Mississippi." (This, I admit, was not very helpful. JSTOR.) Wolfson asked, "How can you be bearded in a dangerous way?"
*I enjoyed the whole thing. It was great to see Paul Rutherford, and I'm really looking forward to his solo show at the Woodland Pattern tomorrow. Edward Wilkerson/Tatsu Aoki/Michael Zerang played a very grooving set, and the quartet of Rutherford, Peter Brötzmann, Kent Kessler, and Nasheet Waits was particularly good.
Posted by Matt Weiner at June 18, 2005 04:36 PMI thought you were talking about the supermarket chain, but that didn't make any more sense to me.
Posted by: ben wolfson at June 18, 2005 06:16 PMThat was just an aspect of the unhelpfulness. Click the links and all will become clear. (Too bad you can't do that in real life.)
Posted by: Matt Weiner at June 18, 2005 06:36 PMOh, that John Perry. Not only did I encounter him, he read part of a paper he's working on, and it contained an example quite like that of Rudolf Lingens.
Posted by: ben wolfson at June 18, 2005 06:51 PMThat John Perry? What the hell John Perry did you think I was talking about, in the context of the Stanford philosophy department?
Posted by: Matt Weiner at June 19, 2005 05:35 PM"That John Perry" wasn't the most felicitous locution, perhaps.
Posted by: ben wolfson at June 19, 2005 09:10 PM