Scott Simon

A 'Tough, Smart, Proud Town' Meets Terror With Determination

Scott Simon — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 15:08:00 +0000

People in Boston can speak for themselves. And do. Loudly, bluntly and often with humor that bites.

It's a city that speaks with both its own broad, homebrew, local accent — although no one really pahks thea cah in Havahd Yahd — and dialects from around the world. It is home to some of America's oldest founding families, and fathers, mothers and children who have just arrived from Jamaica, Ireland, Bangladesh and Ghana.

There are people in Boston who dress in pinstripes and tweeds, and tattoos and spiked hair.

How Did All Those People Get Inside Jonathan Winters?

Scott Simon — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 09:07:00 +0000

You can call anyone but Einstein a genius and start an argument.

Well, maybe Einstein or Jonathan Winters. The comedian, who died Friday at the age of 87, was immediately hailed by Steve Martin, Robin Williams and others as a genius.

He made hit comedy albums, was a regular on the old Tonight Show, memorably knocked down a gas station in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World and co-starred with and inspired Robin Williams.

But Winters was best known for creating a repertory company of characters that he carried around in his head.

Roger Ebert: Elegance and Empathy

Scott Simon — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 09:11:00 +0000

Roger Ebert was a critic, not a blowtorch. He could be sharp if he thought a movie insulted the audience, but had a champ's disdain for a cheap shot.

Many critics ridiculed the film Deep Throat when it came out in 1973. Who couldn't mock its absurdities?

Back From Extinction: Brooding Frog Or Thank you Note?

Scott Simon — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 12:13:00 +0000

The gastric brooding frog may be coming back. Does that give us a lot to brood about, too?

This week scientists at the University of New South Wales' Lazarus Project announced they have reproduced the genome — that bit of biological material that carries our genetic structure — of a gastric brooding frog.

The gastric brooder once lived in the rainforests of Queensland, Australia, and was declared extinct in 1983. It was not so named because it had the temperament of a Russell Crowe character, but because it gave birth through its mouth.

Pianist Van Cliburn, Warmed Russian Hearts During Cold War

Scott Simon — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 23:35:00 +0000

Van Cliburn thawed out the Cold War.

He went to Moscow in 1958 for the first International Tchaikovsky Competition. When he sat down to play, Russians saw a tall, 23-year-old Texan, rail thin and tousle-haired, with great, gangly fingers that grew evocative and eloquent when he played the music of the true Russian masters — Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, and Borodin.

Cliburn died Wednesday at his home in Fort Worth, Texas. He was 78.

"Van looked and played like some kind of angel," the Russian pianist Andrei Gavrilov told a Cliburn biographer.