Dave Garrett

Those speculators are about to be disappointed, because both the LP and the CD set are already up for preorder at the official Nat King Cole website with a street date of May 31: https://natkingcole.com/pages/shop

Not the same as seeing it in person, of course, but PBS aired it last month as part of the "Great Performances at the Met" series. I was only able to watch a few minutes of it at the time and figured I'd catch it when it reaired, but so far there's no indication of that happening. Wish I'd DVRed it, but I didn't know it was going to be on until I stumbled across it by chance.

I only have the Ellington, and wasn't sure until now how many had been released. Might have to track down some of the others, since they appear to be available at bargain prices.

You're probably already aware of this, but Bear Family will remove the VAT for international customers who are not subject to it if you ask them to do so. It's been quite a while since I ordered directly from them, and I'd forgotten about this until recently when someone on the Hoffman board mentioned it.

That's certainly true of current and relatively recent Toyotas (and many other makes as well), but not as much when it comes to 20+ year old ones. The latter-day move away from standard, unadorned DIN car stereo bays to oddly-shaped dashboard trim that discourages you from installing a non-factory head unit unless you want it to look like crap is inexcusable. For what it's worth, I drive a 25-year-old Honda, and although it still has the factory stereo in it, the car that preceded it was an identical model, and I had no trouble getting a new deck like the one pictured upthread installed in that one. I used to stream music from my phone to it using either Bluetooth or a direct USB connection.

I can't remember the last time I watched an F1 race live. I DVR them and usually watch later that evening, and try to avoid motorsport news articles until I've watched that week's race. Although there's not much in the way of suspense these days, given Verstappen's dominance. Verstappen is clearly an elite driver, but he also has the undeniable advantage of having the best car, and it's not even close. Put Hamilton in a Red Bull, and I have no doubt the two of them would run away from everyone else while fighting among themselves tooth and nail, the way Senna and Prost did in the 80s when they were both driving for McLaren. Some of the other constructors have made midseason improvements to their cars that have narrowed the gap somewhat, but it'll be interesting next season to see if Red Bull continues to have the best car or if Mercedes/McLaren/Ferrari manage to improve enough to actually compete for wins on a weekly basis.

Yep. I can't believe anyone still does that, but they do. Along similar lines: people who treat Springsteen's "Born in the USA" as if it were some sort of hyperpatriotic anthem, when it's anything but. Guess no one actually listens to lyrics anymore, beyond a catchphrase or a chorus that can be taken wildly out of context.

Not according to Ken Rosenthal, at least as of a few hours ago. They certainly have more to offer in terms of prospects than the Astros, but given that Verlander has the final say over any potential trade destination, I'd have to think he'd be more inclined to return to the Astros than make a move to LA. Assuming the Mets actually decide to pull the trigger on a trade, anyway, which is far from a foregone conclusion.

Definitely. If you can get a ticket, anyway - from what I've been hearing, most of the 70mm IMAX screenings are already sold out well into August, if not later. Given the very limited number of theaters that can screen that format, there are people that are traveling considerable distances to be able to see it in one of them.

If you change your mind, don't go too far out of your way to see an IMAX screening unless it's actual IMAX 70mm - the regular "IMAX" screenings are digital and don't even have the resolution of regular 35mm film. The best summary I've seen of the confusing array of screening options that are available is the "Film Formats" illustration a little ways down the page in this article: Only 19 U.S. theaters will show ‘Oppenheimer’ in 70mm Imax.

There are already plenty of electric motorcycles out there, as opposed to e-bikes (pedal-operated bicycles with an electric assist). It's definitely a growing market. A few examples: https://www.topgear.com/car-news/electric/best-electric-motorbikes

Not sure if it's the same one you're referring to, but a Hoffman poster has a site that not only documents the missing tracks but also has links to FLAC downloads of them. Not going to post the link here for obvious reasons, but if you Google "missing bennett tracks blogger" it's pretty easily found.

My engagement with Twitter has lessened significantly since Elon bought it, but probably not for the same reasons most other people cite. I have long found the official Twitter app to be hot garbage, and had been using the far superior third-party iOS apps Twitterrific and Tweetbot for over ten years. A few months ago, Elon cut off third-party developer access to Twitter's API without any warning, meaning all the third-party apps suddenly stopped working. I tried using the official app for a while before giving up, and now when I do look at Twitter, it's either via the website on a computer or not at all. I never used the algorithmic feed, and have always preferred the chronological feed, which in concert with the now-defunct apps allowed a much better degree of control over what you wanted (or didn't want) to see in your feed. Reddit has also limited API access recently, announcing they would start to charge huge access fees that most developers won't be able to pay, so the most popular third-party app, Apollo, went dark a week or two ago. They are preparing for an IPO, so I expect other changes to follow which will be in the best interests of the investors and not the users. Facebook I have long regarded as a necessary evil, as it's the only social network that many longtime friends and acquaintances use. I've never had an Instagram account and don't intend to start now, so I won't be on Threads. Mastodon seems to be the most promising, but as others have pointed out it has a long way to go to reach any sort of critical mass. Decentralized networks like Mastodon, and Usenet long before it, are a far better option than the walled gardens that practically every VC-funded/publicly-traded social network has implemented. The walled gardens' only interest is in mining user data and monetizing it, and that means engineering their sites and apps to keep users' eyeballs on them for as many waking hours as they can. Why this is a bad thing should be fairly obvious.

No. This is Lou Gehrig:

Peach pits contain a chemical that is converted to cyanide when it's digested. A single one probably isn't enough to poison you, but I'm not sure I'd press my luck much further than that. I can't think about peach pits without remembering the old saying "shaking like a dog shitting peach pits".

Looks like the Wayback Machine has snapshots up until May 12, but the most recent one that doesn't automatically redirect to an "Account Suspended" page is from January 15: https://web.archive.org/web/20230115182640/https://efi.group.shef.ac.uk/

At least one baseball pundit has picked the Rangers to win the AL West, with the Astros slotting into a wild card berth. Despite the Astros' characteristically slow start to the season (and the equally-predictable sky-is-falling rhetoric from the online fan boards), I think they'll be right there in the mix for the division title. It's a miracle they've done as well as they have so far considering the staggering raft of injuries they've had to deal with, which have left them without 3/5 of a starting rotation that was already expected to have to compensate for the departure of Verlander.

TCM Underground aired FLESHPOT ON 42ND STREET a couple of times, which contains several very explicit scenes that go way further than boobs and f-bombs (as in full hardcore sex). Despite the late-night timeslot, I was pretty surprised they aired it uncut and was imagining some of their core classic-film audience having heart attacks if they happened to be tuning in - there was never any shortage of online griping about TCM Underground from that contingent. It's possibly a moot point now as the programmer in charge of TCMU was recently laid off and it's not clear what, if any, future that series will have.

Ads for various collections of his music used to be near-ubiquitous on the UHF TV channels in my neck of the woods. Same for Slim Whitman. I can't say I knew anyone who actually owned any of his music, but I think most people certainly had at least a vague awareness of him, thanks to those ads.

FWIW, I paid $45 for a used copy back in 2005, and I remember thinking at the time that I'd gotten a pretty good deal. I was on the lookout for a copy for some time before I finally got one at a price I was willing to pay. Copies certainly haven't gotten any more plentiful (or cheaper) in the used market since then.

Not sure about HBO, but TCM still airs intermissions (and the associated music) for the big-budget roadshow epics that had them back in the day - Lawrence of Arabia, Ben-Hur, 2001, etc.

ImportCDs had it for $43.04, but it's backordered: https://www.importcds.com/wakawazoo/602448169594 Might want to keep an eye on that, however, as it's also sold out at the official Zappa store, but there's a note there indicating that it ships on January 12, which suggests that additional stock should become available at other retailers as well.

Depending on the specific component, USB ports can also be used to connect to external storage devices (portable hard drives or flash drives). I have 2TB and 1TB portable drives that I have connected to my Blu-ray player via the USB port. I mainly use them to stream locally-stored video files to the player, but have also used them to stream music files as well.

I meant to post about this before, and forgot until this thread got bumped again. I wound up getting three of the Uniqlo shirts - Judgment, Out to Lunch, and Cornbread - and was really happy with both the great deal price and the high quality of the shirts. Anyway, a month or two ago my wife and I headed out for our weekly trip to the grocery store, which we usually do on Thursday or Friday night (less crowded, and less hassle in general). I happened to be wearing the Out to Lunch shirt. As we were making our way through the store, we crossed paths with a guy who I soon realized was looking at my shirt. He stopped and said he was surprised to see someone wearing a Dolphy shirt, as they weren't exactly common. I told him about the Uniqlo sale but I think they had already sold out of almost all of the shirts by then. As we parted, he mentioned that he'd recently been listening to "Springtime" from the Last Recordings album, and that it was probably his favorite Dolphy. A couple of weeks later, we were at the store again, and when we were walking in I saw the same guy. He smiled, waved, and yelled "Springtime!" Haven't seen him there again since then.