Randy Twizzle

I looked in misc non political and didn't see anything. I guess it was somewhere else.

From the NY Times: By DENNIS HEVESI Published: March 20, 2008 Ivan Dixon, an actor and director who was best known for playing Sgt. James Kinchloe on the 1960s sitcom “Hogan’s Heroes” but whose films included vivid portrayals of black struggles in the American South and insurrectionist inclinations in the North, died on Sunday in Charlotte, N.C. He was 76 and lived in Charlotte. The cause was complications of kidney disease, said his daughter, Doris Nomathande Dixon. Ms. Dixon said her father was always pleased to be recognized as Sergeant Kinchloe, the American radio technician in a World War II German P.O.W. camp who could adeptly mimic his captors. But he was most proud, she said, of the 1964 movie “Nothing but a Man,” in which he starred, and of the 1973 film “The Spook Who Sat by the Door,” which he directed. In “Nothing but a Man” Mr. Dixon played a young black railroad worker who gives up his job to marry a minister’s daughter, played by Abbey Lincoln, and then runs into trouble for not knowing his place in the Deep South. In a 1991 article on the history of black films, Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times that “Nothing but a Man” was “way ahead of its time.” “Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln give tough, moving performances as a couple making their way in a white world without apologies to anyone,” he wrote. “No thoughts of integration for them. They demand their own lives and are willing to fight for them.” “The Spook Who Sat by the Door,” based on the novel by Sam Greenlee, tells the tale of Dan Freeman, the first black officer in the Central Intelligence Agency. After five years of menial assignments, Freeman quits, takes what he has learned about terrorist tactics and goes to Chicago, where he tries to put together a black guerrilla operation. Although “The Spook” aroused controversy and was soon pulled from theaters, it later gained cult status as a bootleg video and, in 2004, was released on DVD. At that time Mr. Dixon told The Times that the movie had tried only to depict black anger, not to suggest armed revolt as a solution. Mr. Dixon directed scores of television shows, including episodes of “The Waltons,” “The Rockford Files,” “Magnum, P.I.,” “Quincy” and “In the Heat of the Night.” In 1967 he played the title role in a CBS Playhouse drama, “The Final War of Olly Winter,” about a veteran of World War II and the Korean War who decides that Vietnam will be his final war. For that role he received an Emmy nomination for best single performance by an actor. Ivan Nathaniel Dixon 3rd was born on April 6, 1931, in Harlem, where his family owned a grocery store. Besides his daughter, Doris, who lives in Charlotte, Mr. Dixon is survived by his wife of 58 years, the former Berlie Ray; and a son, Alan, of Oakland, Calif. Mr. Dixon graduated from North Carolina Central University in 1954 with a drama degree. His big break came in 1957 when he appeared on Broadway in William Saroyan’s “Cave Dwellers.” Two years later he played Joseph Asagai, the charming, mannerly Nigerian student visiting the United States in Lorraine Hansberry’s “Raisin in the Sun,” the first play written by a black woman to be produced on Broadway.

I remember seeing the Rashied Ali show broadcast on 3/14/72. I was a sophomore in high school and had just started hearing "avant garde" jazz on WKCR but had never seen musicians playing it. I remember being thrilled by the whole experience and though I saw a few of the other Jazz Set show, it's the Ali show that sticks with me, especially Carlos Ward's playing.

It's not a concert memory but when I was 8 years old the first record I remember hearing which wasn't part of my parents' small lp collection was a 45 of I Get Around owned by 13 year old brother. I loved it and played it a lot when I was allowed to touch the family stereo.

I'm very busy at work now

More of those damn birds

Sheriff Whipple is also upset that someone may have squeezed the Charmin.

Beautiful downtown Garfield NJ as seen through a wet train window. Some birds hanging out in Hoboken NJ across the river from Manhattan The Liberty Street pedestrian bridge leading from the World Financial Center.

WKCR is also doing a full day of Beiderbecke's music. Though every time I've tuned in, I've heard Phil Schaap in full lecture mode, which is more than I can handle today.

I read somewhere that Tony Bennett named his son Danny after once hearing Art Tatum playing Danny Boy in a club.

He's a scary looking guy. I wouldn't want to be chased through the sewers (or whatever it is D&D players do) by him.

Even in women's college hoops it all comes down to offensive rebounds.

Why? I just clawed my eyes out watching that. Not even the Dodger thing made me do that. I think you may have a built in prejudice against the 86 Mets. For the life of me I can't figure out why. I was prejudiced against the Mets 17 years before that. Figure that out if you will. OK I'll put that on my to-do list somewhere below learning Esperanto.

Why? I just clawed my eyes out watching that. Not even the Dodger thing made me do that. I think you may have a built in prejudice against the 86 Mets. For the life of me I can't figure out why.

It's makes me feel a little better about this.

Remembering the Mentor By DAVID BROOKS Published: February 29, 2008 When I was in college, William F. Buckley Jr. wrote a book called “Overdrive” in which he described his glamorous lifestyle. Since I was young and a smart-aleck, I wrote a parody of it for the school paper. “Buckley spent most of his infancy working on his memoirs,” I wrote in my faux-biography. “By the time he had learned to talk, he had finished three volumes: ‘The World Before Buckley,’ which traced the history of the world prior to his conception; ‘The Seeds of Utopia,’ which outlined his effect on world events during the nine months of his gestation; and ‘The Glorious Dawn,’ which described the profound ramifications of his birth on the social order.” The piece went on in this way. I noted that his ability to turn water into wine added to his popularity at prep school. I described his college memoirs: “God and Me at Yale,” “God and Me at Home” and “God and Me at the Movies.” I recounted that after college he had founded two magazines, one called The National Buckley and the other called The Buckley Review, which merged to form The Buckley Buckley. I wrote that his hobbies included extended bouts of name-dropping and going into rooms to make everyone else feel inferior. Buckley came to the University of Chicago, delivered a lecture and said: “David Brooks, if you’re in the audience, I’d like to offer you a job.” That was the big break of my professional life. A few years later, I went to National Review and joined the hundreds of others who have been Buckley protégés. I don’t know if I can communicate the grandeur of his life or how overwhelming it was to be admitted into it. Buckley was not only a giant celebrity, he lived in a manner of the haut monde. To enter Buckley’s world was to enter the world of yachts, limousines, finger bowls at dinner, celebrities like David Niven and tales of skiing at Gstaad. Buckley’s greatest talent was friendship. The historian George Nash once postulated that he wrote more personal letters than any other American, and that is entirely believable. He showered affection on his friends, and he had an endless stream of them, old and young. He took me sailing, invited me to concerts and included me at dinners with the great and the good. He asked my opinion about things, as he did with all his young associates, and he worked hard on polishing my writing. My short editorials would come back covered with his red ink, and if I’d written one especially badly there might be an exasperated comment, “Come on, David!” His second great talent was leadership. As a young man, he had corralled the famously disputatious band of elders who made up the editorial board of National Review. He changed the personality of modern conservatism, created a national movement and expelled the crackpots from it. He led through charisma and merit. He was capable of intellectual pyrotechnics none of us could match. But he also exemplified a delicious way of living. Magazines are aspirational. National Review’s readers no doubt shared a hatred for Communism, but many of them simply wanted to be like Buckley. He had a Tory gratitude for the pleasures of life: for music, conversation, technology and adventure. Days at the magazine were filled with rituals. And through all the fun, I don’t recall him talking about politics much. He talked about literature, history, theology, philosophy and the charms of the peculiar people he had known. I don’t recall politicians at his home, but I do recall literary critics like Anatole Broyard and social thinkers like James Burnham, even after his stroke. Buckley contained all the intellectual tensions of conservatism, the pessimism of Albert Jay Nock and Whittaker Chambers, as well as the optimism of Ronald Reagan. He loved liberty and felt it must be constrained by the invisible bonds of the transcendent order. One night we were at his home, and his wife, Pat, at the height of her glamour, swept in from an evening on the town and took one look at the little group of us debating some point. You could feel her inner thought: “Why does he spend his time with those people?” But Buckley loved ideas, swept us along as his companions, and sent us out into the world. And years later, I asked if he’d ever reached a moment of contentment. He’d changed history and accomplished all that any man could be expected to accomplish. After you’ve done all that, I asked, do you feel peace? Can you kick back and relax? He looked at me with a confused expression. He had no idea what I could possibly be talking about.

It was Red Skelton talking about Harry Cohn.

A co-worker of mine thought it was disgusting, and it caused him to go on a short tirade about the "slobs" who allow their dogs to pee on the bushes in front of his apartment house. He then complained that Manhattan dog owners are only paying $10 a year for dog licenses while he's got to pay $100 a year to play on a tennis court in his neigborhood. I didn't quite see the connection but held my tounge unlike the dog in the video.

From today's NY Post:

Ok I think I got it now. WFB: evil but still not quite as evil as the horrible terrible awful lousy disgraceful shameless murderous stinking people who have followed him into the conservative (shudder...) movement. I don't understand why anyone would want this thread in the Political forum

No problem at all with Mr. Vidal's remark. "Crypto-Nazi" is, if anything, a nice word for Buckley. It's Buckley's network airing of his homophobia and threats of violence that make this so disgusting. Stop it you're killing me....

Enought about the "charming creep". I just want to know what Bill Dixon thought about the Kennedy assassination.

I used to watch Firing Line even before I sometimes really understood what was being discussed. What I always found different about the show was his inclusion of people like Mark Green and Jeff Greenfield as regular panelists. He wanted liberals to question him and his guests (who many times were also liberals). He wanted open and intelligent discussion without rancor, hatred and name calling (despite the Gore Vidal episode) He was also a regular speaker on college campuses during the 60s and 70s and was quite willing to face hostile audiences if they were willing to let him be heard. But I understand this is 2008 and the Internet has made us quite skilled in name calling and defamation.

I thought it might be interesting if this thread went in this forum but then again I should have expected this kind of vile filth. Will one of the mods place this thread where it belongs so that all the other liberal haters can shit on the memory of a great man without my having to read it? Thank you in advance. Should everything that offends you be moved to some "doesn't offend Dan Gould" folder? There was no vile filth, just one guy's assessment of what a public figure was all about. Doesn't mean that I'd put it in those terms, but there was nothing vile or filthy about it. Of course not. He was talking about republicans. How could that possibly offend anyone?

The above post is a good example of what is being referred to in bold in the following post from another board Ah yes, things were so much more elevated back in the good old days: As commentators for ABC News at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, where the police went on a headbanging rampage against hippies and Yippies amid clouds of tear-gas, Vidal and his conservative rival William F. Buckley Jr blew their own fuses and made television history. When Vidal called Buckley a ‘crypto-Nazi’ (he meant to say ‘crypto-fascist’ but words for once failed him), Buckley responded: ‘Now, listen, you queer! Stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in your goddam face and you’ll stay plastered.’ Yipes; the technicians in the control booth nearly popped their headphones. As Kaplan records, Buckley’s angry use of the word ‘queer’ was so jolting and unprecedented that ABC cancelled the time-delayed West Coast feed of the telecast and used static to obscure the offending word on its archival tape. Like spit on the sidewalk, this spat would have evaporated had Buckley not decided to revive the incident in the pages of Esquire, semi-absolving himself of fag-bashing before offering Vidal an apology as warm and sincere as a dead-fish handshake. Unmoved, Vidal composed a withering rebuttal, exposing some allegedly anti-semitic hijinks by the Buckley clan, and Buckley whistled for his lawyers. Years of litigation followed as the case turned into a tar baby to which everyone was stuck. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v22/n03/wolc01_.html So what's your problem with that. It seems to be the kind of debate you might enjoy, especially the crypto-nazi quote.