Alexander

OUT!!!!

I agree. Foxx really DID deserve the Oscar. I'm just saying that the Oscars are given for any number of reasons that have nothing to do with acting or talent. And that the role of Ray Charles fulfilled all of the criteria for an Oscar win, no matter who played him or how well they did. My wife and I bought "Ray" on DVD when it came out a little while back, and I've watched it (in both versions) a couple of times since then. The movie itself is good, not great, and it is really a highly simplified and inaccurate film bio. But for Foxx's performance, it wouldn't be worth owning. But Jamie Foxx is SO extraordinary in that role, you can't take your eyes off of him. Which is good, because he's in every scene (and virtually every shot)! It's really the most challenging role I can imagine. If they had gotten some hack to play that role, the movie would've been literally unwatchable. But let's give props to some of the other performances in the film. The actress who played Della Bea (Ray's wife) was wonderfully understated and sympathetic. The actresses who played Mary Ann Fisher and Margie Hendrix also had their work cut out for them. It would have been very easy for both roles to quickly devolve into shillness, but they managed to keep the peformances compelling. I know there was some criticism of the actor who played Fathead, but I thought he was very solid. The actor who played the bass player (Fathead's fellow junkie from Lowell Fulsome's band) had a nice edge. And let's not forget Curtis Armstrong's amazing performance as Ahmet Ertegun! The bit where he sings "Mess Around" is priceless!

I must admit, I was a little worried that Trudeau would think that continuing to run Duke strips would be in poor taste and kill Duke off for good. I'm glad to see that isn't the case.

I picked this up a week or two after it was released. "Sublime" is the only word for it. I got it based on my admiration for Stanko's albums, but these guys are just as good on their own. They remind me, in that respect, of the Red Garland - Paul Chambers - Philly Joe Jones rhythm section!

"Innervisions," with "Talking Book" and "Music of My Mind" taking a close second and third. "Fulfillingness" has never really captured by attention the way Stevie's first three albums of the 70s did, and "Songs in the Key of Life" meanders. "Hotter Than July" has some hot tunes, especially "Master Blaster (Jammin')," but it doesn't touch his earlier work. By the way, I would add "Greatest Hits, Vol. 2" to that list. It's definitely in my top four (possibly even tied with "Music of My Mind" for third place) Stevie Wonder albums. This is the best of Stevie's early singles, and still some of the greatest music Motown ever produced. Stevie's cover of "We Can Work It Out" ROCKS! He shows John and Paul what funk is all about!

I'm actually more disappointed by the fact that she's getting rid of it than with the overall crappiness of her collection. I mean, you like what you like, and if it's Bon Jovi and Kenny G. that float your boat, well then rock on. But that she's selling the lot indicates that she doesn't listen to these discs anymore. So she very likely only bought them for the one or two songs that were playing on the radio that caught her fancy. Now that the moment has passed, these discs are nothing more than an albatross around her neck*, and the sooner she's rid of them the better. *Warning: Literary allusion. If you were a high school student in one of my classes, this would go right over your head.

One of my favorite Emo Philips routines goes like this: "I was walking down the street the other day when I saw a guy who looked just like a guy I grew up with. So I walked up to him and said: "Why Dickie Jones, you old so-and-so, how are you? I haven't seen you since we were five!" And I smacked him on the back...which is when he started to cry. And I thought, "Wait a minute...if this was really Dickie Jones...he would've grown up too."

Funny you should mention this. One of the best concerts I've ever seen was Michelle Shocked at the now defunct Berkire Performing Arts Center in the summer of 1990. This was right after the release of "Captain Swing" and 'Chelle was touring with the Tower of Power horns. Absolutely captivating performance. She was amazing. I had a front row seat and, I'm telling you from experience, she was a very fetching woman to see in person. I've seen her three more times since then. The second time was in the fall of 1991 at Harvard University. She was touring with the Bad Livers and performing songs from her then-upcoming album, "Arkansas Traveler." Again, it was a wonderful evening (I remember it doubly well since I also picked up two Krazy Kat books at the Million Year Picnic in Harvard Square that evening. One was "A Katnip Kantata in the Key of K." The other was possibly "Inna Yott On the Muddy Geranium.") The third time I saw her was right after "Traveler" came out, and it was a real disappointment. The concert was over an hour late in starting. Michelle had a breakdown on stage in front of the audience (I believe it had to do with the fact that Rink Danko and Levon Helm, who were touring with her, were no-shows due to a delay). It was a mess (although Taj Mahal's set was wonderful). My wife and I saw Michelle at a free concert a couple of summers ago, and it was pretty darn good. Disappointing, though, that she seems to have found Jesus and spent too much of the second set talking about it. Otherwise, she was in good form. Her most recent album, "Deep Natural," is quite good. I've been picking up her reissues as well.

Lately, "Get Up, Stand Up" (the Peter Tosh version from "Equal Rights").

Being a big fan of the original King of Soul, I was very pleased with his comeback disc, "Don't Give Up On Me." Well, Brother Burke has a new disc that came out this past week titled "Make Do With What You Got." As great as "Don't Give Up On Me" was, this disc is even better. As with the last disc, many of the tracks were penned by famous songwriter/performers such as Bob Dylan (Burke does an outstanding cover of Dylan's "What Good Am I"), Robbie Robertson, Dr. John, and Van Morrison. All of the tracks are excellent, but perhaps the crowning achievement is Burke's breathtaking cover of Hank Williams' "Wealth Won't Save Your Soul." Van Morrison contributes the excellent "At the Crossroads" as well as liner notes. Highly recommended for fans of classic soul! Solomon Burke is back, baby!

I agree! "BTK" sounds like something they're offering down at Burger King... "Welcome to Burger King, may I take your order?" "I'd like a BTK with a large fries and a coke." "$4.60. Please drive around to the second window..."

No, not grist for fun. But it is a natural human reaction to try to take the edge off of horror by making light of it. Call it "gallows humor." Nobody is sure *why* serial killers go 'round the bend and do the things they do, but psychologists and criminal profilers believe that it has to do with obsessive-compulsive behavior coupled with emotional detachment and (most importantly) a kind of magical thinking (highly structured) in which everything the killer does *makes perfect sense* and in fact *is perfectly justifiable.* These last two points are probably the most disturbing. In one case, a man who murdered several women culminated his serial killings by murdering his own mother. After this last crime, the killer simply stopped his activities and made no effort to elude the police. When asked why he stopped after his mother, the killer replied that futher murders "wouldn't have a point." As though his other murders *did* have a point. Which, of course, for him *they did.* From the killer's perspective, none of his crimes were without reason, but it was an insane personal logic that had no basis in reality. I have a feeling that something similar happened to BTK. Killers don't stop voluntarily. They either get caught, or the compulsion to kill goes away for whatever reason. That may have been the case with this man.

Update on my turntable: So I adjusted the screws and it worked...for a little while. But after a few weeks the "wow" came back and I began thinking that I really needed to look for a direct drive turntable. Flash forward to this week: I was on mid-winter break from school (I'm student teaching) and I spotted a nice looking Pioneer direct drive TT at the local vinyl shop. It was used, but looked to be of recent vintage and in excellent shape (from what I could see). I asked to take it for a test-spin, and they hooked it up for me. The two discs I spun on it ("Our Man In Paris" and "Lets Get It On") both sounded great to my ears, so I enquired if a trade (or partial-trade) could be arranged. They were agreeable, so I brought down my Sony and was able to walk off with a really nice machine for about $60. It sounds great even on my crappy little tabletop system.

Funny thing...they aired an episode of "Law and Order: SVU" last night that was loosely based on the BTK killer in which the killer was called RDK!

Not to minimize Foxx's achievement (it was an amazing performance), but he really had the Oscar locked up for a number of reasons. First of all, he played a handicapped character. Oscar LOVES handicapped characters. From Daniel Day-Lewis in "My Left Foot" to Dustin Hoffman in "Rain Man," when an actor plays a character with a disability, he's got the award locked up. Secondly, Ray Charles is beloved by all. That would be like someone playing Mother Theresa. You KNOW they're gonna get the Oscar...

The great American author William Kennedy was quite close to Thompson when they were both working out of Cuba. I wonder if Kennedy has made any public statements on Thompson's death...

For me, the greatest Mardin-produced album is "Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway" which was actually co-produced by Joel Dorn! Talk about a clash of the titans!

I have several Ravi albums (ok, three) and I enjoy them all. His latest (In Flux) is excellent. The Alice Coltrane album is great too. I'm a fan!

I think the reason some of us (myself included) are so surprised at Thompson's death is the same reason I was so shocked at Spalding Gray's suicide: Both Thompson and Gray wrote from an extremely subjective perspective. We imagined that we knew them, and that if they were depressed to the point of taking their own lives, they would've written about it. We forget that what Gray and Thompson did was create *characters* based upon themselves, much the same way Dante made himself the protagonist of his "Divine Comedy." We tend to listen to people who can say "I've been there." Gray and Thompson exposed their foibles in relentless detail, but they kept a great deal to themselves. Hunter was one of the great voices of his generation and his death leaves a void that will be difficult to fill. I certainly took for granted that he would continue to be out there, living life on the edge but always living to tell about it. But he leaves a brilliant legacy as a writer, and he inspired the creation of one of the greatest comic strip characters of our time. Thompson is gone, but Uncle Duke will live on! Funny though: Thompson's truth was always stranger than Duke's fiction...

Btw, there have been at least two episodes in which Lisa was an adult. In one, we flash forward to her college days when she's about to marry an Englishman named Hugh (voiced by Mandy Patenkin). In another episode, we flash forward to see Bart's future. Bart is a guitarist/singer in a Jimmy Buffett cover-band (which consists of Bart and Ralph Wiggam). Lisa is President of the United States in that episode... Lisa has also had at least two fantasies of being an adult... In one, she's writing her memoirs while Bart polishes her trophies (she kicks him and he winds up impaled on her Nobel Peace Prize). In another, she's fat and stupid and surrounded by screaming children in the trailer park home she shares with husband Ralph Wiggam...

Picking nits here, but I should point out that Lisa isn't 12...she's 8! Bart is 10 and Lisa is two years his junior... It's not math folks, it's arithmetic...

Amazing stuff! "The Sermon" was my first exposure to Jimmy Smith, believe it or not. I was more interested in the fact that Lee Morgan and Tina Brooks were in the line-up. Up until that point, my idea of jazz organ was Big John Patton's "Let 'em Roll." "The Sermon" just blew me away! Never knew the B3 could be made to sound like that! It was just the first of many, many Smith sessions I would own over the years. <Sigh> I miss him already!

"He's as jumpy as a rattle snake in a pickle barrel."

"Crazier'n a sex-maniac in a whore house with a credit card."

I voted for the hair bands. Never did anything for me, and I like 70s metal bands like Zeppelin and Sabbath. The whole singer-songwriter thing is hard to pin down. I don't like Seals and Crofts, but I love Dylan, Neil Young, Gram Parsons, Van Morrison, Paul Simon, Tim Hardin, Nick Drake, Joni Mitchell and a bunch of other people who fit into that scene to a certain extent. Not a huge James Taylor fan, but I certainly don't hate him (my wife has a best-of which is decent). I like Gord, too. Speaking of singer-songwriters, is anybody else into Conor Oberst and Bright Eyes? I got both of his most recent albums ("I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning" and "Digital Ash in a Digital Urn") and I have to say that I'm VERY impressed. The kid reminds me of a cross between Nick Drake and Leonard Cohen. The AMG hates those two albums, but I'm loving them. Has anybody else heard these?