‘Take One Last Look’

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Out of David Letterman’s 6000-plus shows, Tom Waits appeared on only ten, whether or not he had a new album or tour or play or film to advertise. When he appeared for the last time, he debuted a song titled, “Take One Last Look.”

He directed it as a tribute to Mr. Letterman and was accompanied by Larry Taylor (once of Canned Heat) on upright bass and Gabriel Donohue on piano accordion, with the horn section of the CBS Orchestra helping on the choruses.

On his website, Waits joked, “I don’t know when I will see Dave again. I guess from now on we’ll have to settle for bumping into each other at Pilates.”
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January 3 in History

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Motorola introduced a new mobile phone on this date in 1996: the Motorola StarTAC, a clamshell-style model (above). It was the first “flip” cellphone, and it was popular: more than sixty million were sold over the next few years.

When it was introduced, the price was $1000 per phone. It was also around this time that mobile phone makers and service carriers introduced the concept of selling the phones at a discounted price or for free in exchange for user subscription commitments.

The StarTac replaced Motorola’s almost-as-popular MicroTAC, which had a piece fold over the keypad in a style that reminded many users (well, me, certainly) of the “Communicators” seen in use in episodes of Star Trek. The StarTAC folded in half and the earpiece and mouthpiece were separated in the two halves. Flip phones dominated the mobile phone market over the subsequent fifteen years.
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Through a Wall, Clearly

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The architect Philip Johnson died in January 2005 at the age of 98, at his residence for the previous five decades: his famous Glass House (above), which he built in 1949.

The idea behind the house is intricately simple: walls are an interference (obviously) between us and the world. What if the views on your property provided your home’s natural walls? Of course, my cynical brain brings me to memories of neighborhoods in which I would have happily lived without any windows, where “the view” (not the TV show) was exactly what I did not want to see. Heck, my cynical brain brings me back to apartments in which there were not enough walls between me and … me.
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