BruceH

No, but your spam sure is. Heh!

Is jazz dead? Yep.

Broadsides: The Age of Fighting Sail, 1775-1815, by Nathan Miller.

Sunny and breezy. Fog in the city but breaking up during the day.

Right on!

I just can't stop listening to the VeeJay stuff. My favorite Shorter, for some reason.

Why didn't the guy just drown the puppies in a sack like a NORMAL person would?

Yep, that pretty well covers it.

Has anyone mentioned that Lynyrd Skynyrd box from the early 90's? I don't have it myself, but I borrowed it from a library about 12 or 13 years ago, and seem to recall that it was very good.

Apropos of that: How about Creation and the song "Making Time." (They had a couple other decent songs, but that one really gets me.)

Hey, get Flight To Jordan! You'll be glad you did!!

What's the problem with Keepnews, anyway? Isn't it in his interest to do a GOOD job?

I didn't think of that!

The cheapest haircut you can find around here is $15. I tip 3-5 dollars, depending on how long it's been since my last haircut. ($10 haircuts...what a concept.)

HELL yeah! That was a great series! Thing is, I don't feel the slightest bit guilty about liking it. In fact, that's the thing---most or all the pleasures of mine that some might think SHOULD be guilty I don't have the slightest guilt or embarrassment about. Life is short; if you like something, wallow in it and other peoples' standards can go hang. Just my take.

I like these sets. If you consider them "core samples" of person's (pre-WWII) career you'd be close to the feel of them. The Bunny Berigan and Joe Sullivan sets actually got me into those figures; the others were just nice additions to what I already had. The Ellington box has got to be my all-around favorite Ellington anthology, even more than the Smithsonian, just on sheer listenability. Not all the booklets are equally good, but the average is quite high, and some of them are just a joy due to the combination of info and good writing. Frankly, I think there is still a great need for anthologies like this. Well-done, reasonable-length overviews done for the general public rather than overwhelming super-complete megaboxes for the specialist (though I have my share of the latter.) I really, really, (really!) hate to say it, but the closest thing on the market now are probably those Ken Burns compilations, but they are limited to only one CD per artist, which seems a tad slim in some cases, though good for newcomers. And why did Burns & co. feel compelled to make the covers ugly as sin? Ah, well... In short: Hell yeah, if you're into vinyl and see some of these Time/Life Giants of Jazz boxes in good condition at a cheap price, believe me, you could do a lot, lot worse. They be good.

You've got it!

I was a big sci-fi geek growing up, but even then I didn't see what people got out of Heinlein ... it was/is literally unreadable to me. I was more of an Asimov kind of guy! Clarke, Heinlein, and Asimov were my favorites growing up. (But that was before I got into Philip K. Dick.) BTW, just read Supreme: The Story of the Year, yet another Alan Moore self-referential superhero schtick. Eye-crossingly recursive at times, but fun.

I think A Beautiful Day is a good album. My main problem with it is that the worst two tracks are the FIRST two tracks. Not the best programming, for my money. Your mileage may vary.

The two most essential Sinatra albums, INMHO: Songs For Swingin' Lovers A Swingin' Affair! But if you really get hooked, you'll probably want to get everything on Jim's list and then some. Sinatra!

Those damn crack whores! They really piss me off!

Maybe they should try building a wall that seperates north and south. Hey, look what it did for Korea!

That's what happens when you read too much "real" literature! Seriously, you are so right that Heinlein should have stuck to juveniles (what would later be called Young Adult fiction.) Just about all of his NON-juvenile novels are unreadably bad. I've got a soft spot for some of his short stories, though, but you could probably designate those as juvenile without much of a stretch. Let's face it: When it comes to things like felicitous prose or physical descriptions, that's just not what sf writers get paid for. The number of sf writers who could consistently turn out good prose can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand, and that's being generous. There are a lot more who have the pulp-writer's assets, i.e., forward momentum, interesting twists on old ideas, etc.

Morgan/Shorter---discs 4 & 5