Randy Twizzle

It's from The Ski Lift in Season 5, probably the best episode of the last season.

I've never given a damn about what bed I owned. My current one probably should have been tossed out several years ago, but it does its job. I don't have back problems nor do I desire to sleep all that comfortably, and currently I'm sleeping alone. As long as I wake up in the morning, I'm reasonably happy. If I don't wake up, having a state of the art bed won't mean a damn thing anyway.

1955 Jazzbo Article and a A 1953 Profile of Jazzbo

From Saul Bellow's Humboldt's Gift

As both an anti-PC type and an asshole I'm deeply offended by your anger.

That's offensive to women.

A sad story from the 8/5/1925 NY Times. The world may have lost one of the great Princeton educated jazz pianists.

I've always enjoyed this William Gottlieb photo from the Downbeat club in 1948. I used to have a copy hanging on the wall next to my desk at work. One of my gay co-workers was quite smitten with the guy on the far left.

Dizzy should have demanded a blood test.

An actor friend (lots of deductions for things like movie and theatre tickets and cab rides to auditions) recently got a 2-year IRS audit notice the day before entering the hospital to have major colon surgery. He's had better weeks.

Sadly it wasn't much of a retirement LOS ANGELES Apr 14, 2006 (AP)— Arthur Winston, a longtime transit employee who received a citation from President Clinton for his decades of service, died in his sleep less than a month after retiring on his 100th birthday, his family said Friday. Winston recently had been admitted to a hospital for exhaustion and dehydration, but returned to his home April 6. He died Thursday evening. For decades, he reported to work at the crack of drawn to supervise workers who cleaned and refueled the region's bus fleet. He missed just one day of work in more than 70 years at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and that was to attend his wife's funeral in 1988. In 1996, he received an "Employee of the Century" citation from Clinton. He was born in Oklahoma and said he began picking cotton at age 10. His family headed west when droughts and storms ruined several crop seasons. In 1924, Winston found work with the Pacific Electric Railway Co., a forerunner of the MTA. He left the company in 1928, returned six years later and stayed until his retirement last month.

We celebrate Cheeta's life in 2006, but he didn't always get such favorable press, as this 1939 news story sadly attests.

How do you think doormen feel having to be nice to so many self-involved assholes every day? The Times once again comes through with a hard hitting article spotlighting the problems of creeps with an endless sense of entitlement who sometimes have to deal with those horrid service people.

I sent an email, but it seems ridiculous that a jazz channel would need prodding by listeners in order to play McLean's music. Also If I thought it would do any good I'd email them to please stop playing some of those annoying between song promos like "Jazz so fresh, you can practically smell it." What the hell does that mean?

Over at xmfan.com there's a search engine that lets you find out how many times an artist's music has been played on any XM channel in the last few months. A search for Jackie McLean shows 8 tunes played on Sunday morning Feb 5. between 10:10 and 11:15 a.m. I assume that was a special profile show. After that there's "Nature Boy" on March 5 and "116th and Lenox" and "Frankenstein" on 4/4 and 4/5 respectively. In other words since the news of McLean's death this 24 hour all jazz station has played a grand total of 2 McLean cuts. In the same timer period (since Jackie's death) they've managed to play 9 Wynton tracks. Anybody who has spent any time listening to ""Real Jazz" can tell you that the DJ's (there only seem to be 2 of them, mostly on tape) have little or no knowledge of the music. The death of a giant like Jackie McLean doesn't cause them or the station to deviate from their tight playlist. All these guys do is tell you what has been played during each "set", which is worse than useless since the same information appears on the display screen of any XM radio. God forbid the programmersor DJs should set aside a few hours for Mr McLean's music during the week of his passing.

Could you possibly work that theme into one of your Afterglow shows?

Yesterday I tuned in to the WKCR Buck Owens tribute and strangely enough there was Schaap doing a 15 minute soliloquy on Junior Samples.

I know millions of people still watch those half hour network news broadcasts but I haven't seen a complete one in at least 10 years. To me they seem like quaint relics from the 60s, when people had to wait until 6.30 or 7 pm to find out what was happening in the world, (or what a handful of producers in NY and Washington decided that the viewers should know about)

This news may lead to world wide rioting by Catholics.

I once went to a bar in Foggy Bottom and saw Amiri Baraka, who was then teaching at GWU, sitting alone in a booth and writing in a notebook. Next to me at the bar were 3 semi-intoxicated Secret Service Agents. I knew they were Agents from listening to their conversation. It was 1979 and in those days I guess they were allowed to talk shop in public while sitting next to a shabby looking kid like me.

If you visit Washington in August, you'll be praying for those bracing cold winds. It's a hot and humid hellhole.

Beautiful? that's debateable I don't know. Maybe it's the Italian in me, but i find her to be scrumptious. Well the Italian may be in you, but according to her official website JamieLynnSigler.com she's ""Cuban, Jewish American, and Greek" and grew up on Long Island (big surprise there)

This has nothing to do with spring training 2006, but yesterday while taking a long walk I found this baseball card lying on the sidewalk It's a 1967 Ted Davidson card, probably part of some guy's childhood collection recently thrown in the trash. I had never heard of Davidson, so when I got home I looked up him and found that on March 11, 1967 he had one of the worst spring training days in history.