In the U.S. men’s pants are typically sized in inches, with one figure for the waist circumference and one for the length of the inseam. But as this Esquire piece by Abe Sauer rapidly making the rounds demonstrates, mass-market clothing manufacturers don’t like standardized units like “inches” and have decided to make “36 Waist” mean whatever they want it to mean.

Oscar Nominees
Cate Blanchett ... Elizabeth
Fernanda Montengro ... Central Station
Gwyneth Paltrow ... Shakespeare in Love
Meryl Streep ... One True Thing
Emily Watson ... Hilary and Jackie

Mazur’s Nominees

Katrin Cartlidge … Claire Dolan

Living in Hong Kong, I hear the phrase “East meets West” a lot. Sometimes this is interpreted in odd ways like the television commercials for local property developments that feature Europeans frolicking in palatial homes resembling Versailles. The local music industry, on the other hand, seems to have a better handle on the concept. 24 Herbs (Ya Sei Mei) are one of the territory’s contributions to cross-border mixing of cultures. Formed in 2006, the all-male, all-Chinese group consists of six members including an actor, a music producer and a clothing designer. Their latest video is “Hong Kong/Kowloon” which is more than a little influenced by Jay-Z/Alicia Key’s video for “Empire State of Mind”. Perhaps they’re less “East meets West” and more “East borrows West.” What do you think?

It’s safe to say that Janelle Monáe’s 18-song epic The ArchAndroid is a near perfect record, effortlessly jumping between musical genres, vocal acrobatics, and engrossing songwriting. The video for her latest single “Cold War” is a simple enough concept, harking back to Sinéad O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” and Alanis Morissette’s “Head Over Feet”. But unlike the former, Monáe’s delivery wavers between sincerity and insanity. There’s no question of her beauty, which is only escalated by this wonderfully apt video. It’s hard to take your eyes off of her, and the lack of distraction only propels the content of the song into sharp focus.

The year 1959 was a watershed for jazz music (arguably the greatest single year for jazz in all history—which is saying a lot). Here’s a taste: Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, John Coltrane’s Giant Steps, and Charles Mingus’ Ah Um. That is like the holy trinity of jazz music, all from the same year. But in the not-so-silent shadows a young, relatively unknown alto saxophonist was poised to cause a stir that still reverberates today: Ornette Coleman, who created the provocatively titled The Shape of Jazz to Come.

Kind of Blue is correctly celebrated for establishing modal music and as a genuine evolution from bop and post-bop; Giant Steps is the apotheosis of the “sheets of sound” that John Coltrane had been practicing and perfecting for a decade; Ah Um is an encyclopedic history of jazz music, covering everyone and everything from Jelly Roll Morton to Duke Ellington. Each of those albums were immediately embraced, and remain recognized as genuine milestones today. But The Shape of Jazz to Come was incendiary and complicated; it inspired as much resistance as it did inspiration. Some folks (Mingus included) bristled that it was all so much sound and fury, signifying…little. But what Coleman (along with trumpet player Don Cherry, bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Billy Higgins—representing as solid a quartet as any that have made music, ever) achieved was, arguably, the most significant advancement since Charlie Parker hit the scene.