Larry Kart

Norman Lewis' "A Dragon Apparent: Travels in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam": http://www.amazon.com/Dragon-Apparent-Travels-Cambodia-Vietnam/dp/090787133X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1301691860&sr=1-1 Actually, anything by Lewis, who was said to be the greatest travel writer of the 20th Century.

Perhaps not quite what you have in mind, but I enjoyed this one a lot when I was eleven or so. Great illustrations, too: http://www.amazon.com/Twenty-One-Balloons-William-Pene-Bois/dp/0140320970 On the heavier side, a strong candidate for the greatest English-language novel, Conrad's "Nostromo."

I remember watching "A Drum Is A Woman" on the U.S. Steel Hour at age 14 in May 1957 -- the feeling of intense anticipation, then acute embarrassment. Madame Zajj? The IIRC (to use an old S.J. Perelman phrase) "fire in a whorehouse" choreography? Perhaps I wasn't equipped to get it.

That's Truck Parham. And a lovely record.

Clips of Francis with Walrath (and other stuff by Francis can be found in YouTube):

I love this record. Reviewed it for the Chicago Tribune when it came out (knowing of Francis from "New Ideas"), and IIRC talked to him a bit on the phone at the time. I vaguely recall some YouTube clips of Francis from maybe ten years further on, playing a concert with a group that included Jack Walrath.

That's right, Allan.

One more word about moderation, sir, and you are a pile of ash.

Wait...wouldn't that make it less likely to hit homers? Or is bat size the only issue? Nah ... it's how you swing the thing.

What a lovely couple they must have been.

Done. Thank you.

Beautifully put.

This is not a religion where every right and wrong has to be/should be carved in rock or spelled out on the wall in letters of flame. Also, I don't think I said to you that "only one thread per topic is permitted." Rather, as Dan Gould says above, this is simply a matter of common courtesy/common sense, based on how people actually use this place. One thread per topic (especially a topic like the one that set you off when the new thread was closed -- this with a link to the already going thread) seems like good sense to me. And if you do open an old thread on a topic like that one, how onerous is it to go to the most recent posts? One click? Further, when new posts are made on an old thread, they of course crop up on "View New Content," so anyone knows that activity is taking place there and can pay a visit/post as they will, and then EVERYONE who cares about (in this case the Bristol sessions reissue) WILL KNOW ABOUT IT. What a bizarre concept. Finally, when you've got two threads going on the same or very similar topics, it's very likely that some posters won't figure this out and will either post redundantly on the thread of the two that they are aware of or post interesting things on this thread that those who are aware only of the other thread won't see. I've seen both things happen a lot; it's happened to me. Why should such potential confusion not be avoided when it's so simple to do so? P.S. I assume that the reason this isn't a flaming "rule," aside from it being matter of simple housekeeping, is that one can imagine cases where two significantly different threads on what might in some sense be thought of as the same topic had a good reason to instead be going on as different threads. Again, a bizarre concept.

Oh, yeah -- I remember that one!

Compare to this earlier duet version with her and Jobim: Two people shouldn't be allowed to share this much pleasure in public, although for me there is a melancholic undertone to this performance.

Just got this email from a friend, who lives in Larchmont, N.Y. Has anyone here had a similar experience? Some time ago I ordered "Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer" from Netflix. It arrived cracked. So I returned it and requested another--which also arrived cracked. So I returned it and requested another--which also arrived cracked. I have now ordered and received DVDs of this movie SIX times and all SIX have arrived cracked. Isn't that bizarre. I have reported each one to Netflix, the last three by telephone--the last time the customer representative said she would order the DVD from a depot in Maine rather than the depot in Hartford which had sent the others. But it arrived cracked anyway. I find the whole thing so odd.

A little thing, but the title of that movie was "First Family" (1980), not "The First Family."

That skit is solid gold.

Something I posted a few years ago (slightly modified): I interviewed Newhart once, over lunch at I think the Bel Air Country Club in connection with the movie "The First Family," in which he played a befuddled, Jimmy Carter-like president, with Madeline Kahn as his wife and Gilda Radner as his daughter. The movie was not so hot, but Newhart's account of it over lunch (I hadn't seen it yet) was hilarious. What a nice guy. One thing I particularly liked about him -- and this comes through in much of his work -- is that in a seemingly quite ego-less way he can be actively amused by something that he himself has said or done. It's as though he has an ongoing sense of the multi-faceted absurdities of life, and that he is inside the fence. Another bit about that lunch-interview. We were accompanied by a veteran publicist with a very leathery tan (probably he was connected with the film company). Serving as a potential minder of some sort, as the lunch went on he seemed almost appalled that Newhart and I were having such a good time. It's as though he expected me to ask Newhart a flurry of questions rather than just talk back and forth, and if I didn't do that, no work was being done. But as long as the tape recorder was on, I knew that Newhart was doing most of the work for me -- I just had to go back to Chicago and write it up.

Jaws' relationship to the beat was so explosive and precise. It's like his horn had the world's greatest bongo and/or conga drummer hidden inside it.

It was recorded in 1958 on Jive For Five, a Bill Holman and Mel Lewis session on Andex. Rowles was on piano for the recording, and the track's title was listed as "502 Blues Theme." Hmm -- and I have that album, too. Thanks for the heads up.

Here's the first chapter of a non-Harpur and Iles from James, "Middleman," though it shares much of the flavor. Haven't read this one myself; need to look for it: http://www.thedonotpress.com/extracts/middlemanex.html

How could I have forgotten Englishman Bill James' (pseudonym of James Tucker) Harpur and Iles novels? "Colin Harpur is a Detective Chief Inspector and Desmond Iles is the Assistant Chief Constable in an unnamed coastal city in southwestern England. Harpur and Iles are complemented by an evolving cast of other recurring characters on both sides of the law. The books are characterized by a grim humor and a bleak view of the relationship between the public, the police force and the criminal element." Grim humor doesn't begin to tell the story; also, the mordant, hostile banter between Harpur and Iles (who is in some moods close to insane) is at once baroque and drily hilarious, as are the forms of at once crude and would-be classy speech that are given to the often quite nasty local gangsters who figure so prominently in the books. A brilliant series for quite a while, though IMO it ran out of gas after "Lovely Mover," IIRC. Not sure why, but James' always high degree of stylization, especially of dialogue, suddenly stopped working for me -- perhaps there began to be too much of it in relation to events. BTW, Iles doesn't enter the picture until "Halo Parade," though the first two are excellent in their own right and lead right into Iles' eventual arrival. * You'd Better Believe It, 1991 * The Lolita Man, 1991 (1986) * Halo Parade, 1991 (1987) * Protection (also available as Harpur & Iles), 1992 (1988) * Come Clean, 1993 * Take, 1994 * Club, 1995 * Astride a Grave, 1996 * Gospel, 1997 * Roses, Roses, 1998 * In Good Hands, 2000 * The Detective is Dead, 2001 (1995) * Top Banana, 1996 * Panicking Ralph, 2001 * Lovely Mover, 1999 * Eton Crop, 1999 * Kill Me, 2000 * Pay Days, 2001 * Naked at the Window, 2002 * The Girl with the Long Back, 2004 (2003) * Easy Streets, 2005 (2004) * Wolves of Memory, 2006 * Girls, 2007 (2006) * Pix, (2007) * In the Absence of Iles, (2008)

Has anyone mentioned Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko novels? I was particularly gripped by "Red Square," "Havana Bay," and "Wolves Eat Dogs." Also, they are mysteries, in addition to everything else they are. I do tend to lump together tough or hard-boiled crime fiction in which there's a significant element of suspense (hard to see how there couldn't be) and tough or hard-boiled mysteries, but they're not the same thing. Also (sorry if I've mentioned it before) in the crime fiction bag, semi-psychopath division, Derek Marlowe's "The Vengeance Man," which is adjacent to Jim Thompson territory.

Sounds intriguing. As I've mentioned before, for a good while a Kenton biopic (or a movie about a Kenton-like figure) might have been a natural for Clint Eastwood, with Clint himself playing the lead role. Clint was a big Kenton fan in his college days (according to his friend at the time and later on, Mort Sahl, who also was/is a hardcore Kentonian), and I'm sure Clint would have had a sure grasp of Kenton's temperament.