Randy Twizzle

I have a problem with the picture of me that they're using. I'm really not that creepy...really.

Predicted in 1923 after years ofl scientific research

I saw a young woman walking through the World Financial Center while holding her iPod Nano up at eye level. I assume she was doing this in order to show the world that she owned the hot new accessory for the young urban professional. I'm a caring, tolerant individual, but I wanted to grab the damn thing and smash it into little (or littler) pieces.

Well the health police better hurry because it's already '06 and today this news appeared in the financial page of the NY Post

Every cable tv documentary in the last 80 years about Martin & Lewis and/or the Rat Pack, (individually or a as a group), used this guy as a talking head, and now he's dead.

She's a jerk. Everyone know Philip Morris is milder.

Here's an Al Lewis story from 1963BM (before Munsters)

It's part of the William Gottlieb Collection at the Library of Congress website http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/wghtml/

Here's a variation on the Chet Baker/Romano story. It's from, believe it or not, Willam F. Buckley Jr.:

At approximately 2 pm EST this afternoon one of the two XM Real Jazz DJs actually gave the full personnel of a recording. Granted it was only a trio (Donald Harrison, Ron Carter and Billy Cobham)playing "Easy Living" but it's the first time in almost 2 years of listening that I've heard such a thing. I hope it's a new trend at XM's RJ, but I suspect it was a freak occurence, not to be repeated in my lifetime.

Arnett Cobb and Symphony Sid's head.

http://home.att.net/~joeshepherd/jazz/jihist.html

I don't know if it's already been pointed out here, but the text of many issues of the pioneering jazz magazine "Jazz Information" is available at http://home.att.net/~joeshepherd/main.html It makes for interesting reading, though some of the recored reviews are a little puzzling:

According to this AP Story it's all about Oprah's brand. She's a one man brand. Let's strike up the brand!

Belfast Telegraph columnist Walter Ellis visits some exotic NYC Jazz Clubs and puts his dictionary of 1930's slang terms to good use: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/fea...sp?story=677313

I looked up my father's WW II enlistment records at http://aad.archives.gov/aad/series-list.jsp?cat=WR26 and found some interesting information. During his life, he didn't talk much about his past, certainly not to me. We barely spoke to each other during the last 15 years of his life (he died in 1991). It was unfortunate but it's too late to cry about it. For instance I never knew that he only completed two years of high school but what I found most interesting was that his civilian occupation was listed as "MOTORCYCLIST" (whatever that means) This didn't seem to jive with what little I did know about his past. I asked my mother and she told me "He worked on a delivery truck with his father and uncle, delivering seltzer to delicatessens in the Bronx and Manhattan." When I asked about motorcyles she laughed: "Can you picture your father on a motorcyle?" I don't know how that information got on his record, but I'd like to think that when the old man was called up he decided to pad his resume with something more dashing and romantic than "selzer delivery man" ARMY SERIAL NUMBER 32631915 32631915 RESIDENCE: STATE 23 NEW YORK RESIDENCE: COUNTY 005 BRONX PLACE OF ENLISTMENT 2364 NEW YORK CITY NEW YORK DATE OF ENLISTMENT DAY 16 16 DATE OF ENLISTMENT MONTH 11 11 DATE OF ENLISTMENT YEAR 42 42 GRADE: ALPHA DESIGNATION PVT# Private GRADE: CODE 8 Private BRANCH: ALPHA DESIGNATION BI# Branch Immaterial - Warrant Officers, USA BRANCH: CODE 00 Branch Immaterial - Warrant Officers, USA FIELD USE AS DESIRED # # TERM OF ENLISTMENT 5 Enlistment for the duration of the War or other emergency, plus six months, subject to the discretion of the President or otherwise according to law LONGEVITY ### ### SOURCE OF ARMY PERSONNEL 0 Civil Life NATIVITY N0 POLAND YEAR OF BIRTH 20 20 RACE AND CITIZENSHIP 1 White, citizen EDUCATION 2 2 years of high school CIVILIAN OCCUPATION 735 MOTORCYCLIST MARITAL STATUS 1 Single, with dependents COMPONENT OF THE ARMY 7 Selectees (Enlisted Men) CARD NUMBER # # BOX NUMBER 0542 0542 FILM REEL NUMBER 2.206 2.206

Here's the LA Times Obit. They were the greatest. Fayard Nicholas, the elder half of the show-stopping Nicholas Brothers tap-dancing duo that thrilled audiences during the 1930s and beyond with their elegance and daring athleticism, has died. He was 91. Nicholas, who had been in failing health since suffering a stroke in November, died of pneumonia Tuesday at his home in Toluca Lake, said Paula Broussard, a friend. The self-taught Nicholas Brothers — Fayard and Harold — tap-danced their way from vaudeville and Harlem's legendary Cotton Club to Broadway and Hollywood. Known for their airborne splits and acrobatics, the handsome, dapper duo is considered by many to be the greatest dance team ever to work in American movies. The Russian ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov once called them "the most amazing dancers I have ever seen in my life — ever." When filmgoers saw the Nicholas Brothers' dazzling acrobatic routine in the 1940 movie musical "Down Argentine Way" (starring Don Ameche, Betty Grable and Carmen Miranda), they were known to applaud and stomp their feet until the projectionist rewound the film and played the dance sequence again. Fred Astaire considered the Nicholas Brothers' "Jumpin' Jive" dance sequence in the 1943, all-black musical "Stormy Weather" the greatest dance number ever filmed. Miles Kreuger, president of the Los Angeles-based Institute of the American Musical, agrees. "With its spectacular splits and leaps, their 'Jumpin' Jive' number is easily the most exhilarating dance routine in all of cinema," he said. The show-stopping performance, set in a large cabaret with the Cab Calloway band playing, has the brothers jumping onto tabletops and leaping off a grand piano onto the dance floor in full splits. The highlight of their breathtaking, synchronous routine occurs when they leap over each other in splits while descending an oversized staircase. "That was one take, coming down those stairs … jumping over each other's heads," Nicholas told The Times in 1989. "It's simply unbelievable," Kreuger said. Fayard Nicholas was born in Mobile, Ala., in 1914; Harold arrived seven years later. Their musician parents played in vaudeville pit orchestras, and Fayard learned to dance by watching the shows. "One day at the Standard Theater in Philadelphia," he told Associated Press in 1999, "I looked onstage and I thought, 'They're having fun up there; I'd like to do something like that.' " So he copied what he saw, taught it to his brother and worked up a vaudeville act called the Nicholas Kids. "We were tap dancers, but we put more style into it, more bodywork, instead of just footwork," Harold Nicholas said in a 1987 interview. Fayard, he said in another interview, "was like a poet … talking to you with his hands and feet." In 1932, the two young performers made their film debuts in a short subject ("Pie, Pie Blackbird" with Eubie Blake) and the same year began singing and dancing at the Cotton Club. They caught the eye of Hollywood producer Samuel Goldwyn, who hired them for their first major film musical, "Kid Millions" featuring Eddie Cantor (1934). "The Big Broadcast of 1936" followed. The Nicholas Brothers appeared on Broadway in "The Ziegfeld Follies of 1936" and in 1937 they worked with ballet choreographer George Balanchine in the Rodgers and Hart Broadway musical-comedy "Babes in Arms." In 1938, the Nicholas Brothers used their engagements at the Cotton Club to refine and update their style, and they took that style back to Hollywood in a series of musical films made throughout the 1940s. Among those films are "Sun Valley Serenade" (1941), in which they memorably performed the number "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" with Dorothy Dandridge, whom Harold later married and divorced; "Orchestra Wives" (1942) and "The Pirate" (1948), which was highlighted by their acrobatic routine with Gene Kelly in the "Be a Clown" number. "We call our style of dancing classical tap," Nicholas said in a 1991 Washington Post interview. "Some people think we're a flash act. But we're not. At the end of the act, we'd put those splits in, but we'd do them gracefully. You don't just hit, bam and jump up. We tried to make it look easy. It's not easy. But we tried to make it look that way — come up and smile." After spending a year in the Army stateside during World War II, Fayard re-teamed with Harold. In 1946, Fayard had a featured role in the Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer Broadway musical "St. Louis Woman," in which Harold had the lead. They then embarked on a series of international tours. In 1948, they gave a royal command performance for the king of England at the London Palladium. Later, they danced for nine U.S. presidents. Nightclubs, tours and television appearances dominated their performing schedule for the next decade, along with a number of projects away from each other. With Harold working in Europe and Fayard in the United States, the Nicholas Brothers did not perform as a team for seven years. The brothers reunited as a duo in 1964 for an appearance on "The Hollywood Palace" TV variety show. But they lived on opposite coasts after that, Broussard said, and when not performing together they performed separately. On his own, Fayard Nicholas took on a dramatic role in the 1970 movie "The Liberation of L.B. Jones" and won a Tony for his choreography for the Broadway revue "Black and Blue" (1989), which included a dance on stairs for three child tap dancers, one of whom was a young Savion Glover. Among a string of awards in their later years, the Nicholas Brothers in 1991 received Kennedy Center Honors and were honored at the Academy Awards. Broussard, who had been working with Fayard on a biography of the Nicholas Brothers in recent years, said he remained active after his brother's death in 2000, dancing at tap festivals and giving lecture-demonstrations — after having had both hips replaced due to arthritis. "He was the consummate entertainer and just one of the nicest people I've ever met," Broussard said. "He just always had a big smile on his face." Fayard Nicholas' dance choreography and the brothers' place in dance history were chronicled in the 2000 book "Brotherhood in Rhythm" by Constance Valis Hill. The Nicholas Brothers also were the subject of a television documentary, "The Nicholas Brothers: We Sing and We Dance" (1992). The late tap dancer Gregory Hines said in the foreword to "Brotherhood in Rhythm" that if Hollywood were to make a movie of the Nicholas Brothers' lives, "the dance numbers would have to be computer-generated." Nicholas is survived by his third wife, Katherine Hopkins-Nicholas; his sister, Dorothy Nicholas Morrow; his sons, Tony and Paul; four grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter. Services are pending.

Though it doesn't have an official spokesperson, the "Girls Gone Wild" infomercials are clearly some of the most disgusting and despicable infomercials currently running. Even worse are the videos themselves. They represent the worst aspects of our hedonistic and exhibitionist culture. Everytime I view one of them I come away depressed about the future of our civilization; and the lighting is really bad.

Here's some more basball card news Mother Throws Away Son's Baseball-Card Collection As Required By Narrative Convention January 18, 2006 | Onion Sports NEW HAVEN, CT—With her son Jason safely away at college, Janet Pinsky fulfilled the traditional custom of any suburban mother by throwing away her son's baseball-card collection without asking his permission. "Lord knows I didn't want to just toss seven years and over 1,300 cards—including the '86 Topps Traded Barry Bonds rookie, the rare limited-edition Michael Jordan Upper Deck, and the '91 Donruss Signature Series Ripken with hologram border—into the trash, but I have certain obligations as a middle-class-mother archetype," said Pinsky, who years earlier was helpless to do anything but disapprove of Jason's first girlfriend even though she seemed like a perfectly sweet girl, and whose own mother had no choice but to give away her brother's 1951 Bowman Mickey Mantle rookie. "It's a shame I had to get rid of them—some of those cards would have been worth a lot of money someday." In keeping with the convention, Pinsky will remain silent on the issue until Alex Rodriguez hits his 800th home run 10 years from now, at which point she will inform her excited son that the cards were taking up too much room in the basement and that he hadn't played with them in years, anyway.

Maybe I'm showing my age, but "long-ago baseball stars" should mean Honus Wagner, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Ty Cobb etc. not Mickey, Willie and Roberto.

Here's Dr Hoffman with some fellow researchers.

Unmentioned in the obits is Winter's part in spreading the story that Jerry Mathers of "Leave it to Beaver" fame was killed in Vietnam. Here's an excerpt from an online interview with Mathers in 1998: Question: How did the rumor get started that you died in Vietnam? BeavrCleav: I had given out an Emmy to Gene Kelly in uniform because I was in the Air Force at the time. People saw me in uniform. They tell me that the bureau chiefs of AP and UPI were scanning casualty lists for their wire services. Someone saw the same name or a similar name pulled my obituary file and ran it. Shelly Winters read it in the paper went on the Tonight Show, announced it, and said Bring The Boys Home! Because she said that we were killing the flower of American youth. Tony Dow even sent flowers and a letter of condolence to my family.

In other Elvis auction news, this just in: Associated Press BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - Hundreds of pieces of Elvis Presley memorabilia were auctioned off over the weekend by a longtime collector trying to win back his girlfriend after she warned him, "You leave the Elvis clothes or I'll leave you." Items auctioned in Beverly Hills included three Elvis concert suits, two of which sold for $125,000 and $50,000, said Alan Lipkin, senior vice president of Regency-Superior, which organized the online auction. The third was still on the auction block. Also sold were necklaces Elvis gave to girlfriends and friends, cufflinks he received from President Nixon and belt buckles he wore, Lipkin said. About 90 percent of the keepsakes were sold by early Sunday evening, with the auction continuing into the night. The seller, Jim Curtin, collected Elvis memorabilia for more than 30 years and met the star numerous times. So why give up the lifetime collection? "He's doing this to try to win back his girlfriend," said Lipkin. "She left him, saying 'You leave the Elvis clothes or I'll leave you.'" Attempts to reach Curtin, who lives in Philadelphia and has an unlisted number, were unsuccessful. Curtin has been a die-hard fan since he was 8 years old, when he began collecting Elvis mementos, according to the Regency Web site. "We picked up 600 cartons of memorabilia from his house," Lipkin said. Curtin also has written books on the music legend and done impersonations across the country, according to the site. His unrelenting adoration eventually got the attention of Elvis, who personally presented Curtin with a white jumpsuit he wore in a Houston concert in 1974, the site says. Curtin's collection also included signed records, thousands of photos and two original ticket stubs to a 1956 episode of "The Ed Sullivan Show" on which Elvis appeared. The stubs sold for $19,000, Lipkin said. Total auction sales wouldn't be tabulated until Tuesday, but organizers estimate the take could reach $2 million.