Alexander

Go Sox!!!!! What a great game! I can't WAIT to see them go up against the Rockies! This is gonna be one HELL of a series!

The gay subtext was definitely present in "Deathly Hallows," so I'm not the least surprised. Although I AM surprised that Rowling admitted it so readily.

Good point and one deserving further discussion. Kind of links up with the "commercial" thread. Is Kind of Blue a "commercial" jazz recording because it's popular and sells, and sells, and sells...? Etc., etc. Just because something is popular doesn't mean it's good, and conversely just because something is popular doesn't mean it is bad. I didn't even know she's popular. With the police, yes...but I don't know anything about the popularity of her music. She's certainly been gaining in popularity steadily over the last year or so. Before "Back to Black" was released in the U.S., she was a strictly British phenom ("Frank" is currently still only available in the U.S. as an import. It will be released domestically on November 13th) with a few American fans (mostly in the music industry). Ghostface Killah sampled "I'm No Good" on "More Fish" before "Back to Black" was even available to American listeners. Since the album's U.S. release in the Spring or Summer, she's been on the rise. I've heard "I'm No Good" used as the background music on more than one American T.V. show... She's not topping the charts yet, but she's getting more and more attention, and that's a good enough reason to piss a lot of people off who don't like anything that sells.

Because that's what Clem does. He goes after anyone who has the temerity to enjoy anything he doesn't. I also enjoyed Lazaro's reply. He doesn't have to make any excuses as far as I'm concerned. For me, the world of music is so rich, so multifaceted...it seems so foolish to be closed off to any of it. You never know what the next great listening experience is going to be. Don't judge, just listen...

I know; me too. Even though Henderson's not one of my favorites, I figured this is a good way to expose myself to his oeuvre. I ordered this on Amazon from Village Music World. Joe IS one of my favorites. I bought this with Christmas money several years back and have NEVER regretted it. Be glad that you can get it! Many hours of listening pleasure to be had with this set...

Don't give a damn about Plant or Krauss, but thanks for the news about the Merle. I'm looking forward to hearing that - or just about any Merle. I give thanks that he's still around and still doing it right. I'm looking forward to both the Plant/Krauss album and the Merle.

I'm a big fan! I have, and greatly enjoy, both "Frank" and "Back to Black." I love her voice and I love the fact that Mark Ronson uses the Dap-Kings as her backing group on the new album. Her tunes are very funky and convey her unique personal style. I hope she lives a long time, but I fear that she's going to be an early casualty of fast living. What puzzles me is why popularity seems to be a deal breaker for so many people (and I mean that on both sides of the issue). There are so many people who automatically diss anyone who tops the charts. Why? What's the logic? A few years ago, people couldn't stop dumping on Norah Jones. Just what exactly did she do to deserve such rancor (aside from having a hit record)?

"100 Days. 100 Nights" is a wonderful album. Certainly the equal of Jones' first two albums. My copy came with a fun sampler disc of other Daptone releases put together in the form of a radio show hosted by Binky Griptite! I'd certainly like to check out some of the other albums on the label...

You don't think that Dino, Peter, Sammy and Joey wound up in the same place? If Frank's going to hell, I'm pretty sure they all are. Which means that hell has one SWINGING floor show! I'd better make my reservations now!

I'd like to live in Alaska, preferably someplace that never gets warmer than 60 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer. I hate, hate, HATE hot weather!

I've got both on my Netflix queue. Is "Planet Terror" out yet? I thought it comes on the 30th.

Maybe we're the only two on the planet then. Hello, it's nice to meet a kindred soul. I personally can't see how anyone could dislike "Peanuts," but to each his own. Incidentally, my top ten cartoonists/strips would be: 1. George Herriman - Krazy Kat 2. Walt Kelly - Pogo 3. Charles Schulz - Peanuts 4. G. B. Trudeau - Doonesbury 5. Bill Watterson - Calvin & Hobbes 6. Windsor McCay - Little Nemo in Slumberland/Dream of the Rarebit Fiend 7. R. Crumb - Various titles (Fritz the Cat, My Troubles with Women, etc) 8. Art Spiegleman - Maus/Raw/In The Shadow of No Towers 9. Chris Ware - Jimmy Corrigan The Smartest Kid on Earth/The Acme Novelty Library 10. Bill Griffith - Zippy the Pinhead My favorite newspaper cartoonists who are still working include Stephen Pastis (Pearls Before Swine), Patrick McDonnell (Mutts) and Darby Connelly (Get Fuzzy). I despised Johnny Hart when he was still in the paper. B.C. has to be one of the worst strips EVER.

Looks like Joey is zeroed in on that blonde on the left. But that was the Rat Pack image and he played it off well. The gang's all together at last. RIP.

I grew up reading the strip, and in my opinion, it's probably (along with "Pogo" and "Krazy Kat") one of the greatest strips ever drawn. I still read the reprints daily and I collect the books (haven't gotten any of the recent hardcover "complete" books). I absolutely adore it, always have. My daughter's bedroom is all decorated in Snoopy. Both she and my wife are both die-hard fans. I love everything about the strip, although I admit that it lost some of its lustre by the 80s and 90s. For me, the golden age is the mid-to-late 60s through the 70s. Every story Schulz did in those days was absolutely brilliant. One of my favorites was the time Linus and Sally's class was taken on a field trip...to a field! They stood around in the field for about a weeks worth of dailies before something happened. It was like a Beckett play!

Likely fallacious, Alex. Such stories get started and embroidered. Although it is possible if the grandmaster seriously overlooks the opponent, it really isn't likely. Most of the best chess hustlers are 1800-2200 strength, which is significantly lower than grandmaster level. My own rating is 2000, but I'm not good at blitz. Urban legends develop around how the local hustler was once able to beat a grandmaster, etc. It's likely bogus. Chess requires years of study to understand some of the technical aspects of the game. You just aren't born with such knowledge. The best geniuses were also well trained. Too many urban legends exist about these street hustlers. They are hustlers and hucksters; and they are definitely big talkers too. I didn't say I believed the story, I just repeated what I heard. I was just saying that there are good players on the street. I doubt that this guy was ever that good, though.

When I was a freshman in high school, playing chess became an unexpected fad. One day a kid brought in a portable set, and suddenly EVERYONE had one. The school didn't have a chess club, so we started one. The best player in my circle of friends had a grandfather who taught him how to play. The grandfather was a chess hustler. He hung out in the park and played people for money. The story goes that he once beat a grandmaster who was in town for a tournement and stopped for a game. The grandfather apparently didn't know who he had beaten until afterwards...

I got it the other night, after a long struggle. Perhaps because I'm outside the UK, I had a lot of trouble paying, oddly enough. I kept getting an error message everytime I tried to enter my payment info. I changed the price to zero, and it worked. I feel bad, though, so I might rebuy it in the near future so I can contribute. Did anyone else in the US (or elsewhere) have trouble paying? I figure if I wait a week or so, there won't be so many people trying to download, and I'll try again.

It's ALL done for money. Show me the musician who didn't want paying. MG There's plenty. There's the ones who are OK with $20 a night for playing in a restaurant and then there's the ones who are only interested in making money, they measure their success by how much they make, not how good the music is. There's my short answer, if that doesn't make sense, well...you would have to be there. But the ones who do it for $20 a night are still being paid; they're doing it for money. That's a commercial activity. It's not VERY commercial, I'll agree. But people who talk disparagingly about "commercial" never say HOW commercial commercial has to be before they think it's bad; they always use it as an absolute term. MG Maybe that example didn't make my point very well. There are musicians who don't make any money, who are just glad to get their music heard. But even those musicians would gladly quit their day jobs in order to make a living doing the thing they love. Let's face it: The Monks of the world (those people who suffer in noble obscurity, not giving an inch, until the glorious day the whole world figures out how brilliant they are and they wind up on the cover of Time) are few and far between. Most of us have to make some compromises in order to make a living. At the moment, I'm acting in local theatre for nothing, but I'd give my eye teeth to act and get paid for it. In order to do that, I'll have to make concessions and do things I'd probably rather not (like doing commericals). That's show biz, emphasis on the BIZ.

I don't have to wear a tie to work, and I don't wear one (of course, I wear jeans and sneakers, too. When you have to get on the floor in a restraint with a student, you don't want to wear nice clothes). I wore ties to work for years, and I'm glad that I don't have to wear one now. When I was in high school, I wore a tie to school every single day (even though my school had no dress code). I was teased mercilessly, but my wife tells me that she first noticed me because of the way I dressed, so it obviously got the girls' attention.

I did this when I was younger. I scoffed at Elvis, James Brown and Frank Sinatra as a teen precisely because they were so "mainstream." I mean, who's more mainstream than Elvis, beloved as he was by blue-haired old ladies and the type of person who purchases paintings on black velvet? And EVERYBODY agrees that James Brown pioneered funk...even people who don't like (or even know anything about) funk music. When I'd discover an artist that everybody in the world didn't seem to know about (we'd snicker about it. "Check out that dude. It's like he doesn't even KNOW who Tim Hardin is!"), I'd pride myself on my good taste and my ability to see that the pop music emperor has no clothes. As I grew older, however, I realized that liking things because they were obscure was just as immature as liking things because they were popular. I checked out JB, Elvis and Frank and discovered that there was a reason they were so famous and beloved by all: They were fucking AMAZING. But you have to get to the point where you can see PAST all the hype and (in Elvis's case) bad taste. Sometimes good things are popular and sometimes popular things are good.

Really? You think that Chicago formed because they saw a huge untapped market for jazz and classical influenced pop groups featuring a horn section? Isn't it possible for a pop group to make music for extra-commerical reasons? Obviously the Beatles and the Stones made tons of money. Do we doubt their motives as well? How about the Grateful Dead? And what about artists who continue to tour and produce albums for years after they've made more than enough money to live on for the rest of their lives? Are they still only in it for the money?

I remember reading that members of the rock group, Chicago, bemoaned the way their audience accused them of "selling out" when their first album began generating singles about a year after it's initial release. What bugged them was that the same songs that fans claimed were "too commerical" (such as "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is") were on the very album that they had embraced BEFORE it became successful. I know that a lot of people dismiss people like Brubeck out of hand because he was popular and sold a lot of albums. Anything a large number of people like CAN'T possibly be good.

As a Red Sox fan, I think that Joe's done a fantastic job!

I was hoping they'd do this!

Fascinating!