duaneiac

At the very least, I would expect police academies would teach their officers when and how to say, "Hey guys, this is against the law and you can be charged with crimes and go to jail for this. Don't do it,". That obviously didn't happen here. So just what do they teach at police academies? The best ways not to get caught?

Not mentioned in the article in the original post, but I did see it mentioned in another article that one of those charged, Brian Gilbert, is a former Santa Clara police captain. That's right -- a former police captain was involved in these heinous acts of terrorism, harassment and intimidation. I wonder where he learned those skills?

I don't think I've ever seen a Helen Gahagan movie. Later as Helen Gahagan Douglas, SHE was elected to the US House of Representatives and SHE might have spared us all a lot of trouble had SHE defeated Richard Nixon in their 1950 Senate battle.

Contains the album Mess of Blues along with 3 tracks from Blue Rabbit and as bonus tracks, the album Stride Right with Earl Hines in lieu of W.B. Davis.

Watched a couple of absurd, supposedly film noir movies last night. First up: A laughably silly story. Paul Henreid plays a med school dropout turned criminal He orchestrates a robbery of an underworld gambling den and after his henchmen are bumped off by the mobster he robbed, he comes up with an escape plan. Turns out there is a psychiatrist who just happens to look exactly like him (and oddly enough, just also happens to have a German accent) save for a scar on his cheek. Mr. Henreid romances Joan Bennett who is the doctor's secretary. He then concocts an elaborate plan in which he kills the doctor and takes his place. To do so, he must put a scar on his face, but -- are you ready for this -- he puts the scar on the wrong side of his face, but no one even seems to notice. Things do not end well for any one. Then things got even worse with this stinker: That's right -- this nearly 40 year old "girl" is in danger y'all! Her husband is very ill and has it in his mind that his wife (Ms. Young) is in love with his doctor and they are scheming to kill him. He secretly writes a letter to the D.A. making his allegation and his wife hands it off to the postman. After confronting his wife with this allegation and almost killing her with a gun, the husband conveniently dies of his heart condition. Now, the wife must track down the postman and get that letter back or else she will be suspected of murder. A truly awful performance by Ms. Young and the whole film seems more like a long Carol Burnett sketch as it is so inane and silly. This movie really deserves an MST3K treatment. Undistinguished music by Andre Previn.

Deep Discount has Gerry Mulligan's Western Reunion -- Jazz at the Concertgebouw marked down from $37.99 to $7.57! And on vinyl, they have the double-LP soundtrack album to the Clark Terry documentary, Keep On Keepin' On for under 10 bucks!

I absolutely LOVE the Jack Benny Show! It was such a well written show and had a talented ensemble cast that could easily rival that of Friends or Seinfeld. The show did not focus much on topical humor (unlike, say the shows of Bob Hope or Fred Allen), so a lot of the comedy still works and has not overly suffered with age. What delights me is how much of the program's humor came at Jack Benny's expense -- making fun of his age, his vanity, his stinginess, his movie career (and really, The Horn Blows At Midnight is not that bad a movie). Jack Benny was not even a comedian in the traditional sense. He did not come on and tell jokes on his show like Hope or Berle did. I mean, the funniest thing Jack Benny ever said on air was, "I'm thinking it over!" and that was only funny because of the years and years the writers spent building up the miserliness aspect of his character, so that when in response to a mugger's demand for "Your money or your life!", JB takes a loooooong pause and then says those 4 not funny at all words, he got the biggest laugh from the live audience the show ever had. That is expertly crafted comedy! I remember watching that CBS tribute program when it first aired. Jack Benny's was only the second celebrity death that genuinely saddened me. Louis Armstrong's was the first.

I stopped following baseball the year they had to cancel the World Series due to the labor dispute/lockout, so it has been a while since I really paid close attention to the sport. Still, this item from the above article really surprised me: Retired Yankees ace C.C. Sabathia said in 2017 that Fenway Park was the only Major League stadium where he’s heard the epithet ― and said he wasn’t alone. “We know. There’s 62 of us,” he said, referring to the number of Black players in the majors at the time. Only 62 players -- that seemed unusually low to me, especially given that there are way more teams now than when I was a kid. I don't guess I ever really thought about it at the time, but given the presence in the 1970's of such high-profile players like Hank Aaron, Reggie Jackson, Joe Morgan, Dave Parker, Dave Winfield, Frank Robinson, Willie McCovey, Vida Blue, and my hometown heroes, Bob Gibson and Lou Brock, I probably assumed African Americans comprised a larger percentage of MLB players back then. Looking into it, I found this article which states, " By 1981, 18.7 percent of MLB players were African Americans. But by 2017, only 6.7 percent of MLB players were African Americans."

I bought my copy of that George Shearing Three Originals set used. Inside it, in addition to the liner notes booklet, there was also a one-sheet, fold-out Japanese copy of the liner notes. In one corner of that, the original owner (I presume) has handwritten $44, so I guess that's what he paid for it. Now playing:

Disc 1 of 2, which contains the albums Light, Airy and Swinging (a 1973 trio session with Andy Simpkins and Stix Hooper) and Continental Experience (a 1974 quintet session with additional Latin percussion)

From this, the "Ferrara" disc.

The CD reissue adds 4 new performances to the album's original 6.

"It's Too Darn Hot" "Summer Me, Winter Me" "Those Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer"

Disc 2 of 2, which includes the albums Gilbert & Sullivan Revisited and Hallelujah! Spirituals In Hi-Fi Brass. Recorded in 1958/59, the bands heard here included lots of big and soon to be big names, including Donald Byrd, Doc Severinsen, Joe Wilder, Ernie Royal, Jimmy Cleveland, Urbie Green, Kenny Burrell, Mundell Lowe, Phil Woods, Al Cohn, Hank Jones and Milt Hinton.

If ya gotta ask, I will never be able to explain it for ya. Meanwhile, the police in Alameda, CA apparently are not big fans of Martha Reeves & The Vandellas -- Alameda city officials are demanding action after cell phone video surfaced showing an unarmed black man handcuffed by police after reports he was "dancing in the street." https://www.yahoo.com/news/alameda-city-officials-demand-action-021710680.html

Here's one which has historical relevance and is explicitly pornographic -- Meanwhile, this happened: A Florida chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police posted a now deleted advertisement over the weekend calling on those officers involved in violent incidents in Buffalo and Atlanta to join the ranks of local police agencies, drawing howls of outrage from citizens across Florida. "Hey Buffalo 57... and Atlanta 6... we are hiring in Florida. Lower taxes, no spineless leadership, or dumb mayors rambling on at press conferences... Plus... we got your back! #lawandorderFlorida," reads the June 6 post made at 1:21 a.m on the Brevard County FOP Facebook page. https://news.yahoo.com/florida-chapter-fraternal-order-police-193421794.html

I was raised in the Catholic Church, so perhaps I am inured to "death porn" "Porn" or "Art"? Do I know it when I see it?

I guess it is complicated. One photo above includes a fully nude underage girl, which would certainly qualify as "porn" in many quarters. How about this photo? "Porn" or "history"? I'll bet the person taking the photo was probably delighted by the brutal killing of Mussolini and his mistress among others. Does the possibility that the photographer might have derived a sense of pleasure from seeing this horrendous sight automatically make it "death porn"? Should any Italian (or any European or American) who derived a sense of pleasure in 1945 from seeing the mutilated corpse of Mussolini strung up like a side of beef be considered a "sick fuck"? History is frequently unpleasant to look at and the photographic records we have of recent history can be deeply troubling but very informative. It's a mistake to gloss over the most unpleasant records in our history.