Alexander

Anyone notice that they seem to be mocking more mentally handicapped people this year than in previous years?

Chris Penn was a good actor who generally played fairly slight roles. One of my favorites is "The Music of Chance," an excellent film based on a Paul Auster novel. The film has a host of great performances (James Spader, Mandy Pantinkin, Charles Durning, Joel Gray, M. Emmett Walsh (one of my all time favs)). Penn has a small role as Walsh's thuggish son-in-law, but he's never less than completely believable in the role (and that's not meant as an insult). I also enjoyed him in "Short Cuts" and in "Resevoir Dogs." Sean is a very fine actor, but Chris always managed to get the audience's sympathies on his side in even the smallest roles. He was affable, even when he played a bad guy. He should rest in peace.

I picked up the Raney and the Ellis. Haven't listened to either yet, but I did hear samples of both on iTunes and the certainly pleased me... To answer the earlier question, they're packaged in jewel cases, not digipacks. They're quite reasonably priced at $11.99 a pop in brick and mortar stores...

I saw it! Great film! Very enjoyable...

But that's why I make a distinction between "home-copying" (which is to say, you borrow a CD from a friend and make a copy) and downloading. In the case of home-copying (at least in my case) it's an issue of exchange. I'll let you copy a CD (that I bought and paid for) if you let me copy one of yours (that you bought and paid for). In this case, we've BOTH paid for music and are allowing one another to share in it. You don't let *everyone* share in your music, just your friends. In the case of file-sharing services, hundreds of thousands of people all over the world can share in your music. These are people you've never met. And while you are getting something from them, it's not the same kind of "friendly exchange" that I'm talking about. Illegal file-sharing does seem to be an example of a "something for nothing" mentality. But the kind of sharing that I do is something else entirely. The same way I'd invite a friend to share in my food and drink, I let my friends share in my musical bounty (and with 2000 CDs, it's bounty indeed). Frankly, in most cases, I burn copies for friends because I'm too stingy to let them borrow my CDs themselves. "You want to hear [insert name of CD]? I'll burn you a copy."

Well, based on my one semester in the trenches of public education, I can confidently say that one of the biggest reasons schools fail is because of the failure of administrations to properly support their teachers, especially new teachers. Mine is a case in point: In the fall, I was hired to teach four 10th grade English classes. In three out of the four, things went quite well. The kids were bright, largely interested in learning, and capable of rising to the expectations that I set. The fourth class, however, was a problem. For one thing, the class was at the end of the day (and the classes at my school are 80 minutes long) when the kids are burned out. Because of the scheduling, that meant that this class got a disproportionate number of the Voc-Tech kids (kids who are not academically inclined and spend the first half of the day taking things like auto-shop so they can learn a useful skill, which is great) who weren't very interested in English and had low academic skills. On top of that, for whatever reason, the school saw fit to put virtually every discipline problem into this class (I'm not exaggerating. At least half the class had a long history of suspensions). The class was also quite large (31 kids, the largest of the classes I taught by quite a margin). The problems in this class began on the first day, and things just went downhill from there. I immediately sought help from my supervisor and from my mentor. That I got poor advice from both would be an understatement. Promises were made to break the class up or remove the biggest problems in the hope that the dynamic of the class would change. These promises were never kept, and things went from bad to worse. Nothing got done in this class because I spent all of my time trying to keep the kids from running amok. My other three classes, by contrast, were very successful. The kids were learning and we were making real progress. The "hell" class would move forward in fits and starts. Everything I tried would only work for a short time before the bad behavior would start again. When I went to the administration for help, I got either platitudes or threats (as in threats that I would be fired if I couldn't get the class under control). Then, in early December, things in this class reached a boiling point. A student threw an object at my head while my back was turned for a moment. I exploded in fury (not what I should have done), referring to the student who hit me as "a little prick." Guess who got a pink slip for Christmas? The point is that while I certainly could have handled this last incident better, it happened because I was handed (as a new teacher) a nearly impossible situation and then was given no help at all (or bad help, which is often worse than no help). The fact that my other three classes were successful was given no consideration whatsoever. All that mattered was that I couldn't handle this one class. Now I'm really not sure if I want to continue teaching at all. I certainly don't want to be put in that situation again.

The biggest problem with the "Girls Gone Wild" videos is that they seem to be designed for feebs who don't realize that if they're old enough to buy videos of girls flashing their tits, they're old enough to buy *real* porn!

Not looking for approval, Chuck. Just curious. I've always considered the kind of copying my friends and I do to be a fairly widespread practice. This is literally the first I've heard such strenuious objections, and I wanted to know how widespread such attitudes are...

How do you guys feel about Joe Bussard? He's one of the world's formost collectors of 78 RPM records. For years he has made a well-known practice of making his collection available for copying. For the cost of taping, Bussard will make a custom cassette tape of any of the tens of thousands of discs in his collection (a catalogue of his collection is available on-line). Now, I realize that there are some big differences in this situation. First, the 78s are likely out of copyright. Second, in many cases Bussard owns the only known copy of a given record. Still, I would think that following the line of thinking of many of the folks on this board that Bussard's practice would be similarly "ethically shaky."

Cool! I'm glad they did use them. Obviously, I was just speaking from my own experience, which is far from universal...

Just curious where people on the board fall in terms of this issue...

I disagree that the situation is really that different. From an economic (not moral) point of view, you need to consider past sales as sunk costs or sunk benefits. The fact that it was a legitimate purchase is irrelevant to the fact that there won't be any future revenue from a person who buys a used CD. Exactly. From that one sale, two (or more) people have owned the same disc. And the used record store profited from the second sale. In the case of home copying, no one profited from the creation of the second disc. In fact, when I copy a friend's disc, I'm actually *spending* money to do so (there's the cost of the blank CD, the jewel case, the card-stock upon which I print the cover and back cover, the printer ink, etc.). I also think that there is a "fair use" issue here. When I buy a CD, it becomes mine to do with as a please. Everyone here seems to agree that it is "ethical" for me to rip the tracks to my hard drive so that I can, for example, make a copy to play in the car or transfer to my iPod. But somehow it is not ethical for me to *give* that "car copy" to a friend who hears it and likes it? Like I said before, I understand the problem people have with illegal downloading. It's not just making a copy, it's making potentially MILLIONS of copies. That would, indeed, be wrong. But making one copy? For a friend? If it's a crime, it's a victimless crime. I own somewhere in the neighborhood of 2000 CDs. Of that number, approximately 10 to 15 are burns. Of that 10 to 15, less than half were either copies made from borrowed discs or were given to me by friends (the rest were made from legal downloads for which I paid). I refuse to think of myself as some sort of criminal because a statistically insignificant number of my CDs were acquired in an "ethically shaky" manner.

Yeah, it's 'cause I'm an "old guy". Home taping means you can make your own copies for your own use - like a cassette to play in your car. Time to grow up. See, to me there's a big difference between buring a copy of a friend's CD and illegally uploading that same CD to the internet via a file sharing service. We're talking about friends sharing the music they enjoy with one another (Remember sharing? It was an important concept back in Kindergarten), not sharing it with the entire world. Illegal downloading is bad because it is illegally *distributing* someone else's music (accross state lines and all that). What I'm talking about is *one* guy making *one* copy for himself. To play in the car, so to speak. How about this one: A good friend of mine is a music theory professor. He makes copies of copyrighted music available to his students for use in his class. They can borrow the (burned) CDs from the library and make their own copies. I believe he also makes sound files for them to download. Is this bad too?

Boy do I feel better now. Can someone help me out here? This is a generational thing, right? I was raised on the concept of home taping. This was something my friends and I did all through high school and college. Want to share some good music with a friend? Make 'em a tape. I don't think there was *any* music that I was exposed to in high school and college (including jazz) that I didn't have *first* on a homemade tape. So then CD burning comes into play. I burn discs for friends, they burn discs for me in exchange. Is this a foreign concept? The idea was always to trade music for music. No one ever profits. If I like something a whole bunch, I'll usually pick it up in a commerical copy. It seems to me that the "ethics" of copying only came in once CD burning became a factor. No one was complaining when we were making dubs onto tape. Why is that? Is it a sound quality thing?

I have two (2) problems here. You tried to copy (for free) a friend's discs and failing THAT you went to Walmart! Stand up and be an honorable human. Not sure I would want my kids in your room. Well, the discs were being lent for the specific purpose of being copied. This friend and I often lend one another materials for copying. It's called "being thrifty."

I get mine at Staples too. I've been swapping out the fat doubles for years! Really saves on shelf space!

sent e-mail...

Good call, man!

I admit that I have downloaded a few songs from Walmart because I couldn't find them elsewhere (a friend had lent me his copy of the "From Spirituals to Swing" box and one of the discs wouldn't copy to my computer, so I went online and found the missing songs at Walmart, of all places). I don't make it a regular practice, although I do often go to Walmart.com to find cover art for making CD covers...

Certainly one of the greats. I'll have to spin some Prestige sides in Bob's honor today... RIP

Once again, I find that I can often recognize different bassists, but it's very hard to articulate exactly how I recognize them. I was listening to something recently (I think it was the Pacific Jazz Piano Trio Mosaic Select set), and I suddenly said to myself, "That bassist has to be Gary Peacock." Sure enough, it was him. Lucky guess? I'm not sure. As an instrument, the bass is almost subliminal. You're often more aware of it than you think you are...

Even when exceptionally talented or intelligent people don't actually kill themselves, they often act out extremely self-destructive behavior. Look at Mozart, Bird, Bud Powell, etc. There's a fine line between genius and madness, I think. This kid might have been straddling that line for longer than anyone could have imagined. I also imagine that the pressure of being so accomplished and adored would cause anyone to break...

I love Sonny's score for the film, but I also happen to love Bachrach/David's tune. Joss Stone recorded a killer version for the film with Jude Law. Brad Mehldau does nice things with that tune as well...

I was flying from Albany, NY to Omaha via Detroit. I was absolutely fine during the flight from Albany to Detroit, but the flight from Detroit to Omaha was a different story altogether. I had been reading a magazine when suddenly the plane dipped slightly. My stomach felt like it had just dropped a thousand feet, however, I was sick as a dog for the rest of the flight. In addition, it was a small craft (only two seats on either side of the aisle) so I got intensely claustrophobic. There was a moment there when I felt like I was going to scream if I couldn't get out...

I ordered all three of the above mentioned Dagger CDs today, and I got a call a few minutes later confirming my address and telling me that they would send my order out right away. How nice!