7/4

Take two aspirin and call me in the morning. On second thought, don't call me in the morning.

That's good. Some how I missed that bit. All zoned out from all the strange shit I've been listening to this week. Dave Koz? Nah....a day of Xenakis. Not eating well doesn't help...

That's good. Some how I missed that bit. All zoned out from all the strange shit I've been listening to this week.

Off campaigning for Huckabee.

These are the original liner notes to Anthony Braxton's For Alto, written by Braxton himself but never used.

Rolled - Up $20 Bill Was Near Ledger Body By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: January 23, 2008 Filed at 3:01 p.m. ET NEW YORK (AP) -- A rolled-up $20 bill was found near Heath Ledger's body, though no illegal drugs were found in his apartment, police said Wednesday -- the same day an autopsy on the ''Brokeback Mountain'' actor came back inconclusive. The bill would be taken to a lab for testing, though no visible drug residue was found on it, police said. NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly released the information at a Manhattan news conference, but did not elaborate on whether police think the bill may have been used to ingest drugs. Meanwhile, authorities said the autopsy on Heath Ledger was inconclusive and that it would take about 10 days to determine a definitive cause of death for the ''Brokeback Mountain'' actor, whose fans remembered him Wednesday by leaving flowers and candles outside his Manhattan apartment.

Someone's been watching too much TV. not really. Around here, this wouldn't be much of a priority. I've seen the local law enforcement at work. Anyways...the guitars are safe Joe?

This looks interesting: New Clean Feed releases for late February CF 100 - Anthony Braxton / Joe Morris - 4 Improvisations (Duets) 2007 (4 CD set) http://cleanfeed.wordpress.com/2008/01/22/...-late-february/

Someone's been watching too much TV.

I see there are new updates to TR's performing schedule. And a new release, Terry Riley's Piano Concerto - Banana Humberto 2000.

His body was found around 3:31 PM, but you heard about it this morning. Could I have the name of your crystal ball gazer? Could have sworn it was the morning... Well, as a West coast dude, it was three hours earlier your time... Which makes it 12:31 pm in LA.

His version of The Joker appears to be a little different than Nicholson: The makeup sure is casual...I like it. One thing that gets me, is the location. I have a good friend that has a long time bartending gig a few blocks away. Our own JLarsen lives in that neighborhood, a bit North of there, I think. But then, that's the city...these things happen and there's a lot of people there...

4 April 1979 (from imdb.com)

WTF?

This just in from the NYTimes:

I heard about this a few hours ago. I wonder who would be in the band... This could be interesting!

Watching People's Court, eh? Heath Ledger

Birthday Greetings!

Good to hear you made a safe trip!

These poor people. First Benazir Bhutto, now Britney Spears. When will it stop? Press Trust Of India Islamabad, January 14, 2008 First Published: 15:58 IST(14/1/2008) Last Updated: 02:46 IST(15/1/2008) Britney Spears moving to Pakistan? What is it about Pakistani men that glamorous women from the West find so irresistible? The latest rumour of pop singer Britney Spears possibly converting to Islam and moving to Pakistan with her companion Adnan Ghalib has set off a debate among women in the country. The grapevine is abuzz with twice-divorced singer Spear's romance with little known Ghalib, a man of Pakistani origin. Spears, according to Britain's Sun newspaper, wanted to fake her death and embrace Islam and move to Pakistan and start a new life! Ghalib, 35, who works for a photo agency, is being described as "a gold digger" whom the "lonely" and "vulnerable" Spears cannot do without. According to media reports, Ghalib's respectable Sunni Muslim family in Birmingham is so horrified by his antics that they have disowned him. "His parents Ghalib and Saghra are devastated. This week his dad gave him an ultimatum, 'Give up Britney, or you are dead to me,' which Adnan ignored," a friend of Ghalib was quoted as saying. But much before Spears, there was Jemima Khan, the glamorous daughter of a millionaire who married the much older cricketer Imran Khan against her family's wishes and moved to Pakistan. Their marriage did not last and she was back in London with her two sons in less than a decade. The romance of Diana, the Princess of Wales, who reportedly found her "Mr Wonderful" in a Pakistani cardiologist in London, is another case in point. Hasnat Khan decided not to marry his love because of the great cultural divide. Unfortunately, his marriage to a woman of Afghan royalty did not last reportedly because of his Diana connection. Sehr Naqvi, a homemaker, said: "I think Pakistani men are more committed and, of course, the Pathan genes hold them in good stead. Britney Spears is hardly a good example - well, she could fall for anyone - but we have had Jemima and Diana too falling for Pakistani men." With the news of Hasnat Khan breaking his silence over his "affair" with Diana, the topic is hot at dinner tables. "May be he didn't speak about Diana because his own marriage was not working out. We learnt that he has separated from his wife of 18 months just yesterday. But he seems still so much in love with Diana," Naqvi said. Like Naqvi, many feel Diana and Jemima were good news for Pakistan, but they can do without Spears. "I can imagine how the orthodox amongst us would react. I can almost see a fatwa against Spears coming," said Shazia, Naqvi's 22-year-old daghter. Shahida Haq, another homemaker, wondered what is it about Pakistani men that makes them so "special" to Western women. "Look at the way they treat our women. I think they are so chauvinistic and full of themselves. I wonder what these women find attractive in them? "May be they should launch their charm offensive on Pakistani women. That's something we women will never complaint against," Haq chuckled. http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Pr...4b-71cc5fa00a70 © Copyright 2007 Hindustan Times

Looks like it's time for a separate sports forum.

January 21, 2008 Bobby Fischer Buried in Iceland By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 7:40 p.m. ET REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AP) -- Reclusive chess genius Bobby Fischer was buried Monday in a private ceremony at a churchyard in southern Iceland, a television station reported. Fischer, who died of kidney failure on Thursday at the age of 64, was interred at Laugardaelir church outside the town of Selfoss, Iceland's Channel 2 reported, citing the parish priest. The Rev. Kristinn Agust Fridfinnsson told the TV station the ceremony was arranged so hastily he did not arrive until after the ceremony was over. The funeral was attended by only a handful of people, including Fischer's longtime companion, Miyoko Watai, and friend and spokesman Gardar Sverrisson, the TV station reported. Sverrisson did not return a call seeking comment late Monday. A troubled chess genius, Fisher gained global fame in 1972 when he defeated the Soviet Union's Boris Spassky in Reykjavik to become the first officially recognized world champion born in the United States. The showdown, played out at the height of the Cold War, took on mythic dimensions as a clash between the world's two superpowers. Fischer lost his world title in 1975 after refusing to defend it against Anatoly Karpov. He dropped out of competitive chess and largely out of view, spending time in Hungary and the Philippines and emerging occasionally to make outspoken and often outrageous comments, sometimes attacking the United States. Fischer -- born in Chicago and raised in New York -- was arrested in Japan in 2004 and threatened with extradition to the U.S. to face charges he broke international sanctions against the former Yugoslavia by going there to play a chess match in 1992. Fischer renounced his U.S. citizenship and spent nine months in custody before the dispute was resolved when Iceland -- a chess-mad nation of 300,000 -- granted him citizenship.

January 21, 2008 In Harlem, 2 Record Stores Go the Way of the Vinyl By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS, NYTz On Saturday morning, Bobby’s Happy House, a music store in Harlem that opened in 1946, was in a state of chaos. The store’s owner, 91-year-old Bobby Robinson, who was wearing a dark blue suit and his trademark black fedora, seemed bewildered as he surveyed his store. Albums were stacked on the floor, photographs of him with Fats Domino, James Brown and others had been pulled from the walls and the store’s glass display cases contained only a few scattered CDs and cassette tapes. A few hundred yards northwest, at the Harlem Record Shack on 125th Street, an employee with a handmade sign was urging passers-by to sign a petition to keep that store from being evicted. Inside, the voice of the store’s owner, Sikhulu Shange, 66, rang through the Record Shack as he vowed not to go easily, even though he was under a court order to leave within a few weeks, after 36 years in business there. Mr. Robinson and Mr. Shange, who have been friendly rivals for Harlem’s music dollars for almost two generations, are on the cusp of being forced out of business here within weeks of each other as Harlem continues its uneasy transition from being a haven for some of the city’s poorest residents to a place where apartments selling for $1 million and tripling commercial rents have become unremarkable occurrences. Bobby’s Happy House, on Frederick Douglass Boulevard near 125th Street, is closing on Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Mr. Shange has been given until the end of March to vacate his store. Each man represents a distinct generation of black men who arrived in Harlem as young men seeking to contribute to a neighborhood they had long heard about and had admired. Mr. Robinson, originally from South Carolina, came after World War II. He speaks in the language of that time, using words like “colored,” which has long been retired. Mr. Shange, who arrived from South Africa in the 1960s, came of age during that era’s tradition of protest. He wears dashikis and repeats words like “empowerment.” Each man said the runaway pace of change in the neighborhood during the past few years was unlike anything they had seen before. “Everything you see here, I built,” Mr. Robinson said, waving his arm around his store as friends and family members boxed up decades of mementos. “How do you think I feel?” On the other hand, Mr. Shange, who was at the center of an eviction battle in the 1990s that culminated in gunfire and an arson attack that killed eight people, left no doubt about his feelings. He was angry. “There was a time when everybody was running away from Harlem, but we stayed, keeping the culture alive,” he said, as shoppers surveyed the small store’s African, gospel, jazz and R&B selections that are kept in locked glass cases. “We don’t have nothing to show for being in the community all these years and keeping it beautiful. Tourists are not coming here to see McDonald’s and Burger King. They are coming here to see black culture.” The two stores have survived so long, the owners say, because they offer services and products customers cannot get anyplace else. At Bobby’s Happy House, those services included recording albums onto cassettes or CDs for customers and allowing visitors to pull up a plastic chair and chat with Mr. Robinson, who was a noted record producer. His work included Wilbert Harrison’s No. 1 hit “Kansas City” in 1959 and groundbreaking hip-hop songs by Doug E. Fresh and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five during the late 1970s. The inspiration for the name of Bobby’s Happy House, which has had various names over the years, was a doo-wop song Mr. Robinson wrote for Lewis Lymon & the Teenchords in 1956 called “I’m So Happy,” a hit in the Northeast. (Lewis Lymon was the younger brother of Frankie Lymon, best known for a song with the Teenagers, “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?”). At the Record Shack, customers have found in Mr. Shange, a former dancer, an authoritative source on American soul music and hard-to-find African music. In a nod to their customers, both stores continued to sell records and cassette tapes, formats most other stores have not sold for years. “A lot of old people are ashamed to go to a store and ask them for cassettes,” said Mr. Robinson’s daughter, Denise Benjamin, who has managed Bobby’s Happy House for her father in recent years. Both Mr. Robinson and Mr. Shange said it was unclear what role the downturn in the record music industry has had on their stores, but HMV and the Wiz, two large retailers that sold CDs and other items, have closed stores on 125th Street during the past few years. Mr. Robinson and Mr. Shange said they had been caught off-guard by their evictions and the transformation of the neighborhood. Each has a different landlord. Within a few blocks of their stores are more than a dozen construction sites for projects that include a 19-story hotel, office towers and luxury co-ops and condominiums. Once the last of the old records have been cleared from Bobby’s — and other tenants in the block-long building have moved out — the new owners, a partnership of the Sigfeld Group and Kimco Realty Corporation, have said they will tear down the structure and replace it with a four-story office building, including retail space on the ground floor. None of the old tenants, including Mr. Robinson, said they had been invited to set up shop in the new building. Several store owners have filed a lawsuit contesting their evictions. Ms. Benjamin said family members decided not to join the lawsuit because they wanted to save their money to find a location nearby. Representatives for Sigfeld and Kimco, which bought the building for $30 million in August, did not respond to phone calls and e-mail messages seeking comment. Mr. Shange’s landlord, the United House of Prayer for All People, won a court order forcing Mr. Shange to leave the store empty and “broom clean” by March 31. The church has not announced its plans for the space, and a church representative at its headquarters in Washington declined to comment. David M. Grill, the attorney representing the church in New York, did not return a phone call and an e-mail message seeking comment. Mr. Shange, who has been paying $4,500 a month — about $500 more a month than Mr. Robinson at Bobby’s Happy House — said that he was willing to pay more, but that the church, which is above the store, had refused to negotiate. Mr. Shange said the store was organizing a protest rally on Sunday at 11 a.m., when many of the church’s parishioners will be arriving for services. A flier at his store advertising the rally reads: “Protest Greedy Landlords! We will not be moved from Harlem!!! We must reclaim, preserve and protect our historic black community. If we do not, no one will!!!” Eight thousand people have signed a petition opposing his store’s eviction, he said. When Mr. Shange faced eviction in 1995 during a dispute with a different landlord, who held the sublease for the Record Shack, weeks of demonstrations over the plans of the landlord, who was white, to evict the black-owned store took on a racial tinge. The dispute ended after a protester walked into the landlord’s store, which was next to the Record Shack, carrying a handgun and a container of paint thinner. After shooting and wounding four people, he set the store ablaze before shooting himself. He and seven other people died in the blaze. Mr. Shange said he expected the coming demonstration to be peaceful, just as others in support of his store have been in recent months. Unlike Mr. Shange, Mr. Robinson’s daughter said she did not particularly object to the changes occurring in Harlem, which have included new bank branches and grocery stores. “I don’t mind change, but when people have had to endure everything — and you know if you’ve been here 60 years you’ve endured a lot,” she said, her voice trailing off. “This is everything to him.”

January 21, 2008 Fischer’s Roots in City Tangle With His Legacy By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS and SHARON OTTERMAN, NYTs Before he became notorious for his anti-American and anti-Semitic ravings, and before he became an icon for dominating, and then dismissing, the cloistered world of chess, Robert James Fischer was just Bobby, another young New Yorker on the make. His world was the city, and friends say that before he made comments supportive of the 2001 World Trade Center attack and before he lived in exile, New York had held him in thrall — from the streets of Flatbush, Brooklyn, where he went to high school and rooted for the Dodgers, to the Upper East Side, where he ate on the cheap, to downtown, where he mastered the game. Mr. Fischer died on Friday, far away from those places, of kidney failure at 64 in a hospital in Iceland. Joseph Virovatz, 85, a retired physicist and Jewish Holocaust survivor, said he still remembered a day in 1961 when he, Mr. Fischer and Pal Benko, a chess grandmaster who, like Mr. Virovatz, emigrated from Hungary, were in Mr. Benko’s apartment on the Lower East Side. “It was a beautiful, sunny day outside, but Bobby was sitting in the dark watching Westerns; he loved Westerns,” Mr. Virovatz said on Friday at the Village Chess Shop, where he was playing speed chess. “He was eating Hershey bars Benko had given him. He was aspiring to be a world champion, but he was broke.” The three men began to spend evenings together. Often, they would eat at one of the Hungarian restaurants that used to line Second Avenue, what Mr. Virovatz called “Goulash Avenue.” A place called the Tip Top Restaurant was a favorite. Mr. Virovatz said he often wound up picking up his young friend’s tab. Mr. Fischer would talk about chess, of course, but also about other things, like favorite volumes from his extensive comic book collection, which included a first-edition Superman. Instead of holding a steady job, he said, Mr. Fischer would virtually encamp at a table at the New York Public Library. “He would be spending 12 to 14 hours a day in the library studying the games of the old chess masters from the 1850s,” said Mr. Virovatz, who said he empathized with Mr. Fischer’s unhappiness in his later years, and thus took phone calls from him despite Mr. Fischer’s public anti-Semitic comments. “He was an example of Yankee ingenuity; he largely taught himself.” Although Mr. Fischer was born in Chicago, he learned the game of chess in Brooklyn and became a star in Manhattan, at the outdoor tables in Washington Square Park and at the Manhattan Chess Club, which was at 100 Central Park South when he became its youngest member as a 12-year-old in June 1955. The club moved around Manhattan before closing in 2002. One of his early feats came at a simultaneous exhibition in 1955, when he defeated 12 chess players competing against him at the club. Four years earlier he had been among a group of players who had challenged a chess master at a similar exhibition at the Brooklyn Public Library at Grand Army Plaza. After he was defeated in less than 15 minutes, he began to cry. But he had been noticed by Carmine Nigro, president of the Brooklyn Chess and Checkers Club, where Bobby soon was playing most Friday nights. Part of Bobby’s training included accompanying Mr. Nigro to a tournament between the United States and the Soviet Union at the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan in June 1954. At one point, Bobby’s mother became so concerned about her son’s obsession with chess that she took him to the children’s psychiatric ward at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital, where the doctor pronounced him healthy, according to “Bobby Fischer Goes to War,” by David Edmonds and John Eidinow. Bobby attended Erasmus Hall High School on Flatbush Avenue, where he was said to be friendly with Barbra (then spelled “Barbara”) Streisand. He dropped out to concentrate on playing chess. The school is now closed. Frank Brady, 73, the chairman of the mass communications department at St. John’s University and the president of the Marshall Chess Club in Manhattan, where Mr. Fischer would sometimes play, said he first met Mr. Fischer at a tournament when Bobby was about 10 and Brady was in his late teens. The two played hundreds of matches — a few of which Mr. Brady said he won — but had virtually no contact after the early 1970s, when Mr. Fischer rose in prominence. Mr. Brady wrote a book, “Profile of a Prodigy,” about Mr. Fischer, which strained their friendship after Mr. Fischer became angry that his Jewish heritage had been mentioned, Mr. Brady said. “About then is when Fischer started to go bad,” Mr. Brady said. “He began to see almost a kind of conspiracy against him. I wouldn’t call it clinical paranoia, but it was a kind of paranoia.” In his later years, Mr. Fischer became nearly as well known for his anti-Semitic rants and problems with U.S. immigration officials as for his chess. During a radio interview after the Sept. 11 attacks, he said, “What goes around comes around, even for the United States.” Mr. Fischer’s legacy in New York might be the most enduring among the prodigies of Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn, winner of seven national high school chess championships, including the last four. Eliot Weiss, the team’s coach, said that he owns many of Mr. Fischer’s chess books and that his teams learn chess by studying Mr. Fischer’s games. But he said he had mixed feelings about Mr. Fischer. “His influence on chess is bipolar,” he said. “He was a genius and his contribution is unmatched, but he brought chess down to a horrible level in his later years.” Mr. Virovatz said part of Mr. Fischer’s bitterness, particularly late in life, can be attributed to being forced to live outside the United States, where he faced arrest after playing a chess match in Yugoslavia in 1992 that violated an American law that prohibited conducting business with Yugoslavia while it waged war on Bosnia. “If you can understand how upset he was to be rejected by his country, exiled, you can understand his belligerency, his ill feelings,” he said. “He was a cold war hero. I don’t know who to blame. But since he was a genius, he should have been treated differently.” David Gonzalez contributed reporting.