Jim Alfredson

Yellow dye in the pickles. Yellow dye in the cheese. Probably in the "butter" too, which most likely isn't real butter. Has the patty been bleached with ammonia like other fast-food hamburgers (in order to protect against ecoli and salmonella)? Yum! Fast food is gross. On our last long road trip, which was mostly in the Great Plains, I was so sick of fast food I actually didn't eat all day until we had dinner at the venue each night. In states like Nebraska, Iowa, etc. there is literally nothing else to eat on the road unless you have time to sit down for 1 to 2 hours and get a real meal. Nothing even decent like a Panera. It was hell. I'll never eat at Wendy's again; that stuff is nasty.

They all went out yesterday. Should be there soon.

That's just me. Doesn't have to be that way for you or anyone else. But personally, I find professional sports hard to enjoy. I do enjoy a college game now and again but even that starts to piss me off when I think about my alma mater, Michigan State, and how they've been promising a new music building (the current one is insanely out of date) for 20+ years yet there's constant additions to the football stadium, multiple brand new multi-million dollars buildings to help student athletes' education (ie, tutors to do the work for them), new training facilities, etc. and the tuition for regular kids just keeps going up and up and up and up. Our priorities are completely out of whack. That's all I'm saying. What you choose to do about it is your own choice. Part of my choice is not supporting the massive sports industry financially, which means I don't watch games on TV or in person and I don't buy the merchandise. Now you're talking!

My wife is attending a school board meeting tonight that will determine whether Zora's school will close next year. This is in a district that has traditionally been known as a well-off community. This will be the second school that Zora has attended that has closed, if the decision is made. When these things are happening all over the country and yet we have people being paid millions upon millions of dollars to put a ball in a hoop, something is fucking WRONG with the system. Y'all can make excuses for it and sit back and say "Well, that's the way it is," but that doesn't make it right. Like Leeway said, it's the same people who don't blink an eye at spending $300 to watch a stupid baseball game, yet can't be bothered to have their property taxes raised $5 a year to support the school system, that signify the breakdown in priorities and the social contract in general. I've got mine, fuck you. That's the American way, it seems.

That's a good point. However, I still think the fact that sports teams play in heavily taxpayer subsidized stadiums / arenas is the major difference. If these teams are making so much money, the owners should build the damn stadium on their own dime and pay property/income/whatever taxes like every other business. But instead they convince local officials that it's too expensive for them to do so and they need lavish tax breaks and money from the city, all the while claiming it will help the community. Of course, that's all bullshit (see here if you don't believe me) and as usual the taxpayer is left holding the bag. If the city wises up and doesn't pony up, they pull a Supersonics and go to the next town full of gullible child-like policy makers with visions of uniformed dollar signs dancing in their heads. You could argue "Well, the mega pop stars play in stadiums, too!" but those structures were not built with musical entertainment as their main focus. Or maybe they were, who knows. It's all fucked up. Regardless, mega pop stars would play somewhere else if privately owned stadiums were too expensive to rent. Or most likely they'd just pass the buck onto you and you can shell out $300 instead of $175 to see a bunch of old farts like Bon Jovi pretend to be viable rockstars or Lady Gag's piss poor imitation of early 1990's Madonna at 120db if that's what floats your boat. It's also important to note that as much as those huge tours bring in, very little of that actually goes to the performer after he/she pays off the label, the promoter, the rental companies, the sound company, the tour bus company and drivers, the union workers, the arena, taxes on merchandise, the back-up musicians, the back-up dancers, etc. etc. etc. Anyway, I guess we all better enjoy it while it lasts because when the house of cards that is the world economy collapses, those memories of paying $200+ to sit on an ice cold seat in the dead of winter watching the New England Patriots repeatedly ram themselves into [insert "your" team here] for four hours in their fancy helmets and shiny uniforms will all seem pretty quaint.

My brother is seeing them in Detroit in October. Wish I could go but I'll be in LA. I want to pick up the new record.

I could start quoting stats about tax payers bearing the burden for stadiums and such, but I prefer to just "vote with my wallet" and not watch the shit, buy the shit, or get into the whole "us vs. them" gladiator mentality that it supports. I did that, it was a waste of my time, time better spent doing my own thing, and the developmentally arrested sports figures won't miss me anyway.

My wife and I just saw The Faces of Jesus at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, an exhibition on Rembrandt. It was very cool. The thing that impressed me the most was a short, 5 minute movie about etching and printing, displaying how Rembrandt made things like The Hundred Guilder Print. Amazing.

I don't care. I think it's gross and it's one of the reasons I don't watch sports anymore. I think the amount of money these people are paid is obscene.

I don't understand why any athlete should be paid such an exorbitant sum for putting a ball in a net. It's insane.

Has anyone ever been kicked off the board for criticizing a moderator? Decisions are changed. The thread was re-opened.

Dr. Lonnie pushes people. I love the way he plays and can identify him instantly.

Europe was an absolute ball, all three times we went there this summer. I'll be dividing my time next month between Lansing and Los Angeles, tracking the next Janiva CD, doing some West Coast gigs, and spending precious time at home with my beautiful family. Life is good!

Never got into them but you gotta respect 31 years in this business.

What exactly is the point of all this? That we should be nice to each other and other people within the sphere of jazz, be they musicians, collectors, critics, etc no matter what? How boring would that be? The whole point of a discussion forum is to voice one's opinion about the topic at hand, in this case jazz. The value those opinions are is directly related to how much integrity is behind them. I don't need people telling me everything is peachy keen if it's not because of some perceived bruise to the collective ego. Believe me, I do plenty of self-editing when discussing subjective subject matter like music, but sometimes I just gotta call it when I see it. Case in point, the aforementioned Clapton / Marsalis debacle. That shit sucks, plain and simple. It's not the end of the world by any means nor does it really matter in the grand scheme of things. It just sucks. The insincerity lurking behind it is grossly palpable and is insulting, hence the negative reaction. If someone likes it, hey more power to them but it still sucks to me. Don't confuse opinions with personal or professional attacks. That's grade school.

As far as I understand it, there are two types of Vitamin D, D2 and D3, and we can synthesize D3 from the sun but not D2, which we only get through food. So if you're not eating the right foods (or getting enough sunlight... say you work the graveyard shift) then it's wise to supplement. I take a Vitamin D supplement a few times a week to help with my heart since there is a history of heart disease on both sides of my family. I also take fish oil pills. And of course since I found out about my food dye allergies, I've become better educated about food in general and I'm eating much healthier. I have some of those Vitamin D soft gels, but I can't really find anything about a recent recall online.