BERIGAN

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4...8&q=nirvana Weird!

Stefan, I think I see where you are coming from. You know that this could have been a true tragedy. I think we have all been there, pretty sure that we are good drivers, and are 99.9% percent of the time. It takes just one time to be "off". I remember driving with a friend, deep in conversion, at a left turn lane at a light. I saw green and turned, but it wasn't a left turn arrow! I could have gotten my friend killed as a car was coming. Fortunately, the guy saw me turning and stopped!!!! Like the others said, take comfort in the fact no one was hurt the one time you were "off".....heck even your truck can be fixed. Perhaps the way to look at it, is it was a good start to the year, all things considered.

Were you saying that a couple of years ago when NYC had it's coldest day in history? Were people saying that back in the 30's when MOST of the record highs in the United States were set? They were blaming El Nino of course!

Hey, any group that has a song called the Wives of Artie Shaw, can't be all bad, can they??? Actually, I like the song! http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=28...mp;q=artie+shaw

Former daredevil Evel Knievel, who spends his days hooked to an oxygen tank and a morphine pump, still offers up his trademark snarl — years removed from his last motorcycle jump. Knievel, who is showing off his latest licensed toys, has a message for photographers: "I don't smile." By Jim M. Stern for USA TODAY Updated 1/3/2007 10:16 AM THE EVEL KNIEVEL FILE Age: 68, born Oct. 17, 1938, in Butte, Mont. Name at birth: Robert Craig Knievel Jr. Other sports: Competed in track, ski jumping and ice hockey at Butte High. Won Northern Rocky Mountain Ski Association Class A men's ski jumping championship in 1957. Played in the Eastern Hockey League in 1959. Has been a life-long golfer. Other jobs: Diamond drill operator, hunting guide, insurance salesman, motorcycle dealer. Touring show: Evel Knievel's Motorcycle Daredevils began in 1965. On screen: George Hamilton and Sam Elliot played him in movies, and Knievel played himself in Viva Knievel, which also starred Gene Kelly and Red Buttons. GAMBLING STILL STIRS KNIEVEL CLEARWATER, Fla. -- He doesn't chase women anymore. He can't pound shots of whiskey. He no longer goes on shopping sprees for diamond rings or snakeskin boots. But Evel Knievel has no intention of giving up his favorite vice: gambling. Despite his ill health, he perks up when discussing the time he made two bets totaling $154,000 on Super Bowl IX. Pittsburgh beat Minnesota 16-6, and he won both wagers. Evel says he typically bets most NFL games each weekend. "We're going to win some money today, buddy," he tells a confidante on the phone. That wasn't the case one day a long time ago at a dog track in Tampa, recalls close friend and golf partner, Paul Blanda. Evel found the biggest underdog on four legs and slapped down $10,000, triggering an odds drop from 50-1 to 1-5. "I said, 'Evel, what did you do?' " Blanda recalls. "He said, 'If I'm gonna win, I'm gonna bet on the long shot.' I told him it wasn't the way you bet at the track." Blanda, brother of Hall of Fame quarterback-kicker George Blanda, recalls his celebrated ally as a relentless, aggressive gambler who "never backed down from a bet" and would not suffer fools who tried to deceive him. Years ago, he and Evel played a round with a singer who tried to surreptitiously kick his ball from the rough to the fairway. Evel, he says, pulled out a .45-caliber gun before Blanda calmed him down. "I gambled so much on the golf course, you can't believe it," Evel says. "One of the greatest compliments I ever got was from the guy who built Caesars Palace. He said, 'Kid, you're the biggest gambler who ever came to this town.' " Yet Evel was so generous that he would think nothing of walking into a restaurant and picking up everyone's tab, Blanda says. Or handing $100 bills to the cooks. "Most celebrities have deep pockets and short arms. Evel was the reverse," he says. "He was just a common guy who came up the hard way." -- Jon Saraceno Long-retired Knievel frail, feisty, still cheating death By Jon Saraceno, USA TODAY CLEARWATER, Fla. — The crippled grandfather of extreme sports inhales deeply. He sits in his leather easy chair, mind clouded by meds, bones throbbing with arthritis. As he watches an NFL game, on which he has bet $1,000, the cantankerous stuntman clutches oxygen tubes supplying life to hardening lungs. It is a shock to the senses, if not the sensibilities, to see ultra-cool Evel Knievel, 68, looking so feeble, so frayed around his graying daredevil edges, right down to his gnarled knuckles and wobbly gait. His ravaged, 155-pound body isn't composed of original parts. He has a new liver and a replacement hip, and most recently doctors inserted a drug pump in his abdomen. It gives little reprieve from the excruciating pain in a fused spine mangled by hundreds of perilous, cringe-inducing motorcycle jumps from the 1960s and '70s. "Ever see one of them before?" Evel asks, lifting a pajama top to reveal a pain-relief gizmo under his pale skin. "This sends morphine and synthetic heroin into my back 24 hours a day. It's awfully strong — it affects your thinking, your brain." For years he cheated death, sometimes spectacularly so. Numerous crashes cemented his legend and all but guaranteed premature infirmity. These days, in what might be his last great gamble, Evel flies down the cosmic ramp of his final jump — the leap of faith. While he has avoided the inevitable countless times, he no longer feels invincible. In fact, the bank robber-turned-international icon sounds apprehensive. After decades of hard jumps and harder living, including bouts with alcoholism, Evel tries to bridge the psychological chasm between mortality and eternity. ALL IN THE FAMILY: Father-son daredevil team mends fences He figures he will be judged not just as a cult-like figure, but also as Robert Craig Knievel, the temperamental show-biz performer from the wrong side of the tracks in Butte, Mont. "I think about God a lot more than ever," he says, "though I used to ask him, 'Help me make a good jump.' I'm awfully tough to get along with, but I'll tell you what: I am a good person. I wish there was such a thing as reincarnation." Suffering from the aftereffects of a stroke, Evel bets that a life of crime, fame and indulgence can be outweighed by his good works to those he inspired: children in burn wards, the downtrodden, soldiers. "Veterans have told me that, for some reason, I made a difference in their lives, that they were headed for disaster," he says. "God, at least I have done something." His hair is thinning, his face remarkably unmarked yet gaunt. Evel looks nothing like the handsome, devil-may-care Western buck with the swept-back mane, walking stick, flying cape and — to the chagrin of hardened bikers everywhere — the white leather jumpsuit, festooned with stars and stripes and inspired by Liberace. Evel was a gritty caricature of a superhero whose outfit was as ostentatious as his act was audacious. For decades, he was lampooned in pop culture, but there is no doubt the charismatic showman had a definable aura and mass appeal. Men admired him. Their sons wanted to be like him. Women just wanted him. (And according to Evel, thousands got their wish.) Tending the Evel legend The swagger has been reduced to a struggle simply to get up in the morning and get to the phone. He is a stickler about extending the Evel legend, preserving the Evel persona and creating new business, long after the end of his lucrative stuntman paydays and afternoons of high-stakes golf in which he would bet up to $100,000. In true Knievelian style, he is determined to stave off the effects of pulmonary fibrosis, a condition that involves scarring of the lungs for which there is no cure. "God," Evel says, "never made a tougher son of a bitch than me." Nor a more skilled self-promoter, a man who unintentionally spawned a phrase for the generations: "Who do you think you are — Evel Knievel?" There is only one Evel, and he knows it. He retains a sense of self-importance as expansive as Idaho's Snake River Canyon, the site of his famously failed hurtle 32 years ago. He retains tightfisted control of everything, and everyone, around him. He can be charming and pseudo-gruff. It might be a photographer ("I don't smile. Kiss my ass.") or a buddy talking point spreads ("You can take your newspaper 'line' and shove it — how's that?"). Last month, Evel sued Kanye West and AOL over the rapper's use of his trademark name and likeness in a music video that parodied the Snake River Canyon jump. Two years ago, a judge ruled the cult hero could not hold ESPN liable for publishing a photo of him with two women and the caption: "You're never too old to be a pimp." SPORTS SCOPE: Knievel videos, lawsuit He battled the IRS and Montana over allegedly unpaid taxes; survived abandonment by his parents, who left him with grandparents at 6 months old; endured jail, bankruptcy and divorce — he even ran over a Hells Angel. He continues to fight today … to live a little longer, for better deals, for the affection and respect of friends and family. "All (my grandmother) wanted was to talk with me and to rub her feet. I just hate myself for not spending (more) time with her and telling her 'I love you' one more time," Evel says. "The saddest thing is when a guy is paying so much attention to the world and everything going by that he can't take the time for his own mother," which is what he considered his grandmother. Last summer, he and his youngest son, Robbie, 44, who traced his dad's professional footsteps, appeared back home at Evel Knievel Days after years of feuding. The father's on-again, off-again relationship with his son bears the emotional scars of a lifetime because, as Robbie says, "I'm the only one in the family who stood up to him." Now, he says, "My dad realizes love is everything. To do what he's doing now — to have a talk with God and be loving to his family — I love him to death for it. God loves Evel. Figure that one out." "I love Robbie," Evel says. Kelly, Evel's oldest son, owns a construction firm in Las Vegas. (In 1995, Kelly's telemarketing company was sued by Missouri for targeting senior citizens with high-pressure calls. He agreed to stop the calls, and the company paid $150,000 in restitution.) Evel's family includes daughters Alicia and Tracey, 11 grandchildren and ex-wives Linda Knievel and Krystal Kennedy, 37, the former Florida State golfer who remains his caregiver and companion despite their brief, troubled marriage. He says he thinks often about his creator and prays for forgiveness. "If there is a heaven, I don't know anything else I can do to get there — and neither do you," he says. "There are some personal things that I would never do again. … God made us. He's in charge of everything, right? If he didn't like us, why didn't he change us? "Hey, I faced every challenge that came along. I just did everything. I have no regrets." Driven to be the best ever A longtime friend, Jack Ferriter, 72, says he regularly traveled cross-country with Evel and Linda and remembers their animated discussions involving the spiritual. "She always was trying to promote (him) being a nice guy and to straighten up his act, preaching to him about heaven," Ferriter says. "He would say, 'Linda, I'm not so sure I'm interested in heaven (unless) they've got beautiful women up there and golf courses.' She was a Holy Roller, and he resented it." The cruel irony for the Knievel clan is watching its willful patriarch slowly waste away. At his madcap zenith, Evel could have met his demise on any of his failed motorized leaps over rattlesnakes, cars, water fountains or double-decker buses. "He never wanted anyone to surpass him," Robbie says. "For years, it seemed like my dad was pushing me off, like I was his competitor. He just never wanted to move over. I could never fill his shoes, anyway. It's like being Elvis' daughter or Muhammad Ali's son." With age and debilitating injury, Evel eventually became quite the uneasy rider. He formally retired in 1981. During his wild and woolly years, he broke nearly 40 bones, including his back seven times. He was in a coma for weeks in 1968 when he crashed after jumping over the fountain at Caesars Palace. The $3 million, closed-circuit TV caper propelled his popularity and fueled record audiences for ABC's Wide World of Sports, where Evel and his act became a fixture. The old daredevil's crashes are now positively pedestrian: slipping in a Jacuzzi, falling on a golf course. The last time he rode a motorcycle, a few years ago at a mall appearance, he snapped his left ankle. "It's no laughing matter when they put me under the gas," Evel says. "I gave at the office already." A fortune won and lost Back in the '70s, promoter Billy Rundle recalls Evel telling adoring fans of his next planned exploit: "I am going to jump from an airplane from 40,000 feet without a parachute and land in a haystack." Offstage, Rundle asked him about his sincerity. "I'm serious — you can bet on which haystack I'm going to land on," Evel said. Rundle remembers thinking, "This guy's crazy." Marketing risk is what he did for a living. One of the all-time self-promoters, Evel still loves being in the entrepreneurial mix. One potential venture is the Knievel Motorcycle Co., to be based out of Pittsburgh, 30 years after his last major show, a flopped practice run over a tank of sharks in Chicago. The phone rings. It's a memorabilia dealer. "You want me to sign 1,500 pictures? How much you gonna pay me?" Evel asks. "You're going to pay me $30,000? Well, I'd rather you come in December. I might be dead in January." His popular stunt cycle toy was reintroduced in 2005 after, he says, various Knievel toys grossed $300 million. He says he earned $30 million over his peak years but lavish spending — big-boy toys included yachts and Ferraris — whittled much of it. In his modest condo, he shows off his latest version of the cycle, an Evel bobble-head and a bottle of Evel hot sauce. "I was the first one to ever do a wheelie on a motorcycle while standing on a seat — ever," he says. Today's Gen-X motorcycle performers don't conduct themselves properly, he says. "One kid looked at the camera and stuck out his tongue and made a goofy face. A young man's brain is no more developed than his body. They say with age comes wisdom, right?" Maybe. It didn't help when Evel imbibed long after his doctors told him to quit, before his liver transplant seven years ago. At the time, doctors told him he had less than six months to live. (For years, his favorite cocktail was a "Montana Mary," a scorching blend of Wild Turkey, beer and tomato juice.) Perhaps his vices can be traced to a hardscrabble youth, when he frequently ran afoul of the law. Fame and prosperity often were tough to handle, he says. "You feel important when you're not," he says. "That's the point I reached. I actually had a talk with myself years ago (after) I punched a maitre d' in the puss. I said to myself, 'Who do you think you are?' " The quest to uncover value and meaning from his earthly existence has greater urgency these days. Evel takes a notepad off a chair-side table and begins to read something that sounds like a eulogy, which friends say he has written. "I hope I have lived a life that matters … I am ready to leave my loved ones … "My wealth, my fame will amount to naught … My grudges, frustrations, resentments and jealousies will finally disappear." Evel glances at his visitor, who asks him if he ever thought life on Earth might be heaven, after all. "No," he says, staring death in the face with a weary smile. "God wouldn't do that to us." http://www.usatoday.com/sports/2007-01-02-...vel-cover_x.htm

Great news!

The present-day 'Snake Hips' has to be this guy : David Bernal . I forgot about this guy! He is amazing! My back hurts just watching him

Andy Kirk Basie Boogie, 1948 Nina Mae McKinney -with Eubie Blake- Everything I've Got Belongs To You-1932

Great clips of Redman and Ellington(Well, of Nance anyway)

Ever hear of Earl "Snake Hips" Tucker??? I think I heard of someone else who used the moniker Snake Hips, but this guy is amazing!!! And the music ain't bad either. Earl "Snake Hips" Tucker, 1930

Ravi's still kicking! Tom Scott is with us too as far as I know. Tom Scott? I admit missing Ravi's countenance, but where is he in the photo????

Can't you make an electronic payment for the minimum over the weekend? Check this out - I have a Bank Of America bill due 12/31. Says right there on the bill: Payment Due Date: 12/31/2006So I go to make an online payment & it says thta the payment will be credited Jan 2, since 12/31 is not a business day. Fuck that. I'll pay by phone, take the hit on the fee, and be done with it. Nope. Same deal. Make it on 12/30, get credited for 01/02. I'm talking to some CS zombie and I ask him straight up - Define "Payment Due Date". "That's the last day you can make your payment and not have it considered late." "So why is a payment made before the Payment Due Date going to be considered late?" "Because the Payment Due Date falls on a Weekend" "So it's not really the Payment Due Date then, is it." "Yes, it's still the Payment Due Date." "So you're telling me that words on a piece of paper have no real meaning then, right?" "No, that's not what I'm saying." "You're a liar, aren't you." "No sir, I'm not. Is there anything else I can help you with?" "Yeah, you can get your head out of your ass before it gets stuck there permanently." Click. There's no grace period? Bank of America is notorious for this bullshit. Consumer advocate Clark Howard is forever reaming them over something. I had this happen to me a few times thru the years when I still had a card with them.(Pay on a Friday after 4 PM a bill due Sunday, that wouldn't be credited til Monday with a nice late fee applied) I would raise hell,(Just like it sounds like Jim did) saying why is the due date on the weekend? I would argue , tell them how it wasn't a problem to pay the day my Credit card bill was due(online, or in person) at my credit union. Then I'd say how I know it wasn't the person's fault who picked up the phone,(I'm a one man good cop/bad cop) and that I needed to speak to a supervisor. Usually, at that point they'd say as a "courtesy" they would take off the late fee. So try calling them after the late fee shows...

Who would have guessed when the photo was taken, Ford would live the longest???

Hope you had a great one! Get a sports car????

http://www.gotfuturama.com/Multimedia/Epis...s/4ACV16/07.mp3

Short ghost aliens????

Damn know-it-all electronic musicians... Y'all musician types might also mention flipping the circut breaker off for the room he is in, before taking apart in any way the fan switch.....

I think you nailed it. To be that loaded and not quite 28 and live in SF. He might even be able to afford a place of his own now. At least a 1200 square footer if nothing else.

Dan, Braves fans are gloating right now. There were a few pesky Mets fans that loved to post on the braves blogs saying how they had all this money to spend on Schmidt, and/or Zito. and got neither pitcher. That being said, I think Omar was quite smart not going for that many years, that would have been nuts for sure! What do you bet Zito wanted to stay in the Bay area all along, and just kept his mouth shut??? And what you said about the NL being the thinner league...well, you are right of course, yet look at what Mulder and Hudson have done so far after leaving the A's. Granted, Mulder was hurt last year, but supposedly Hudson is healthy, and his ERA in 2006 was 4.89!!! Honestly, I expect the Phils or Marlins to beat out the Braves and Mets, unless the Mets can turn a trade or two for starters.

Great stuff Berigan. Thanks for pointing it out. I think that is most likely Vic Berton. BUT... I think the trombonist is Tommy Dorsey and not Mole. I was surprised to see Mole mentioned after I watched the video. I'd bet on Dorsey. Jimmy Dorsey did his thing on the changes to Tiger Rag. TD (or Mole if I'm wrong) on something similar to How Come You do me like You Do. Harold, now you got me wondering! Listening to it again, the Trombonist sounds a LOT like TD, especially the way he finished. But....it just doesn't look like him to me! Check out this photo of Miff(Not a whole lot to choose from) Doesn't this look like the trombonist in the clip? Bushy eyebrows, slight build, hairline similar, and the dark framed glasses. Can't find a photo of Tommy in the 20's, but here is one semi decent one.... Looks to me like thinner eyebrows, pointy nose, and larger build(But this photo is from much later) Perhaps Tommy Dubbed Miff's part, just to confuse folks nearly 80 years later! Oh, from googling, it appears this flim clip is found as an extra on the DVD for the 1929 Film Broadway Melody.

Well, I got a piece of string...and some dirt... I got rocks. Jeez, sorry guys! I'm used to looking up at what everyone else got. Plus, you guys buy jazz for yourselves all year long, plus you all each have like 80 Mosaics, and I have 5! Did I mention that I got those simpsons sets for $16 each at Target??? In fact, with the cds I got at tower being 40% off or more, not one item mentioned above cost more than $16. Oh, did I mention the new Bentley convertible I got as well??? It's not a Rolls, but it will get me from point A to point b......

Well, I recalled Republic getting the rights back...but I guess Paul Harvey didn't tell me the rest of the story... from Wikipedia.... Public Domain National Telefilm Associates took over the rights to the U.M.&M. library soon afterward. A clerical error at NTA prevented the copyright from being renewed properly in 1974, however. Around this time, people began to take a second look at this film. A popular fallacy began that it entered the public domain and many television stations began airing the film without paying royalties. The film was still protected by virtue of it being a derivative work of all the other copyrighted material used to produce the film such as the script, music, etc. whose copyrights were renewed. In the 1980s (the beginning of the home video era) the film became a perennial holiday favorite. For several years, it became expected that the movie would be shown multiple times on at least one station and on multiple stations in the same day, often at the same or overlapping times. It was a common practice for American viewers to jump in and out of viewing the movie at random points, confident they could easily pick it up again at a later time. The film's warm and familiar ambiance gave even isolated scenes the feel of holiday "comfort food" for the eyes and ears. The film's accidental public domain success is often cited as a reason to limit copyright terms, which have been frequently extended by Congress in the United States. The film's success decades after its release came as a welcome but unexpected surprise those for worked on it, including Capra. "It's the damnedest thing I've ever seen," he told the Wall Street Journal in 1984. "The film has a life of its own now and I can look at it like I had nothing to do with it. I'm like a parent whose kid grows up to be president. I'm proud … but it's the kid who did the work. I didn't even think of it as a Christmas story when I first ran across it. I just liked the idea." Two colorized versions have since been produced; they are widely considered inferior to the black-and-white original and are often held up by opponents of colorization as an example of the flaws associated with the process: in the scene of the dinner-table chat between George and Peter Bailey, for example, James Stewart's shirt is conspicuously pink. For many years, some television stations paid substantial royalties to show a colorized version, figuring that color would attract more viewers. In 1993, Republic Pictures, which was the successor to NTA, relied on the 1990 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Stewart v. Abend (which involved the movie Rear Window) to enforce its claim of copyright; while the film's copyright had not been renewed, it was a derivative work of various works that were still copyrighted. As a result, the film is no longer shown as much on television (NBC is currently licensed to show the film on U.S. network television, and only shows it traditionally twice during the holidays, with one showing primarily on Christmas Eve from 8-11 Eastern time), the colorized versions have been withdrawn, and Republic now has exclusive ancillary rights to the film. Artisan Entertainment (under license from Republic) took over home video rights in the mid-1990s, Artisan was later sold to Lions Gate Entertainment, which continued to hold home video rights until late 2005 when they reverted to Republic's sister studio Paramount, whose parent is Viacom.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/12/27/D8M92AJO0.html

Here it is!(Man, I have to be missing it, but have looked and looked-just merge it if I have overlooked it) Fortunately, Santa found out about the Tower sale as well. Let's see.... 1. Tempo King 1936-37(Timeless label) 2. Texas and Tennesse Territory bands(Sonny Clapp is the "big"name) 3. Woody Herman Sings Ballads and Blues 45-47(Already mispriced at 6.99 before discount) 4.Johnny Hodges Proper set 5.Five Birmingham Babies(Frog label) 6. Original Memphis Five-Columbias 1923-31(Man, when did the Retrieval/Challenge cds get so cheap? $9.99 was the sticker price!) 7. Maxine Sullivan Tribute to Andy Razaf. 8. Clarence Williams (from Lon's fav remasterer, Robert Parker! Hey, it was cheap) 9. Best of Bob Eberly with Jimmy Dorsey 10. Louis Jordan Proper set 11. Bobby Hacket 1948-54 Classics 12. Noel Coward, 3 cd cheap set from Pulse. Also got my Dad some cds, that I will listen to more than he ever will Dinah Shore ASV that is made up of radio shows(never seen them do anything like that, Groucho, Sinatra, Orson Welles on the cd with her) Ambrose Vocalion cd vol 6, War Years. Only cd that I have listened to so far, never would guess it to be Ambrose!. a 3 cd box set from RCA/BMG of Tommy Dorsey(For 100th anniversary of his birth) and an Ethel Waters ASV cd. Got a few DVDs, George Steven's The More the Merrier, season's 7 and 8 of the Simpsons.

I'm sorry he's gone, but not sure how hype like this helps the cause. Let us know which two of the following get removed from the list to make room for JB, who was by all accounts a groundbreaking musician but a real MF of a human being: - Frederick O. Douglass - Booker T. Washington - George Washington Carver - Jackie Robinson - Duke Ellington - Martin Luther King Don't forget Sidney Poitier...