JSngry

They make it look so easy, getting those vocals live...guess for them it was, except when it wasn't!

Since I work "for" a bank, I get stuff off that many other private sector people don't. That includes MLK Day, President's Day, & Columbus Day. I don't know if most people get Memorial Day & Veteran's Day, but I get both. What I don't get off that most people do is the Friday after Thanksgiving. My wife works for an insurance company, and she just lost Christmas Eve as a holiday, but got an additional "diversity day" added. Frankly, I don't get why she got it in the first place. Christmas Eve is not a holiday, really, it's the day before a holiday. I get off a few hours early every year on that day, but it's not scheduled, it's just a traditional managerial "courtesy", and I'm fine with that. I don't know what it's like in every environment, but in my wife's company "diversity day" originally just meant the same thing as the old "floating holiday" only it allows for black folks to take off on MLK day and white folks don't have to, they can show up for work and complain instead of having the imagination and gumption to get it declared a company holiday. Or better yet, take a Diversity Day on the holiday yourself. Civil rights is not just a "black" thing, it's a human thing, or at least an American thing, what it takes to get July 4 to have the same meaning for everybody, dig?. Oh, hey white people, I guess you LIKE having to come to work on a national holiday, I guess you really are that ignunt after all, to be tricked into thinking that none of this is relevant to you. Sure looks it. Hate to be that cynical about it, but that's really what it is. Company don't give a shit about right, just in keeping all the workers comfortably dissatisfied. Y'all know the drill, I'm sure. As for the addition of another Diversity Day to take the place of Christmas Eve, well, I get that in a workplace that is becoming more religiously diverse. That one makes sense to me. Why they ever had it off in the first place does not. But Columbus Day, really, what's that one all about? I see no need for it at all, although hey, day off, I'll take it. Still, ok, no banking and no mail on MLK day, I get that, time to reflect, all that. Same on July 4, Labor Day. Profound experiences essential to the national character regardless of their name, built-in contradictions included, especially the built-in contradictions. America has been at its best when confronting and resolving those contradictions in the relentlessness pursuit of a ONE nation under a groove. Even Presidents Day for people who need that, I get it. Definitely Memorial/Veterans Days (although if you need to combine them both, just keep the sentiment alive). And Thanksgiving, anybody who's opposed to the idea of Thanksgiving Day, hey fuck them, right, let's all focus instead on being ungrateful entitled gluttonous self-absorbed backstabbing punkass bitch toxic gaping assholes, centers of our own universe and determined to be the center of everybody else's as well, not (and yet the irony). Keep Thanksgiving if you keep nothing else. These are all days upon which it is proper to contemplate all that goes into the creation, maintenance, and sustainment of a Living & Breathing Always And Forever Still New World. Take those days and use them well. But you gonna tell me that I can't get mail or do banking because I'm supposed to be honoring/reflecting upon/whatever some freakin' Christopher Columbus? Sorry man, just not feeling that one. At all. Not some guy who all he did was chop down the indians to prove that the world was round, and then he said Isabella, I cannot tell a lie, let me free all the slaves to make up for the error of my ways. Flip Wilson done covered all that, thank you. On second thought, let's have Flip Wilson Day! But hey, paid holiday. As long as it's there, there it is. Day off.

President's Day is still a bank/federal holiday, as is Columbus Day.

I've known about it since the mid-70s, read a "real time" review of it in DB, iirc. If not DB, somewhere else, in something that the NT library had. Interesting review actually, talking about how the fundamental differences between Cage & Kirk ultimately weighed heavier than their "superficial" similarities, Cage being about worshiping the silence so that the sound would only be made when absolutely necessary and Rahsaan being more about embracing the sound in all of its manifestations because to do otherwise is to be less than fully realized as a spirit. Or something like that. Different pieces of the same puzzle, if you ask me. Weights balance each other out, right? I've known about it since then. Actually seeing it took a lot longer...not sure if it made it to the Rhapsody VHS thing or not, I never found it if it did.

My goal upon waking every day/afternoon is to outlive myself. Long as I can do that, hey, good day. Ain't gonna be so for everybody.

It is here, yeah. I make it a point to buy large when it comes around, both because it's good, and because it's a kind of a "good neighbor" thing I like to do. But if the stuff was not good, I would not buy large, right?

I'm telling you - what Girl Scouts got around cookies, Boy Scouts got with popcorn. Damn good product and you can buy it from friends and neighbors. Win-win.

Them Boy Scout popcorns will do right for and by you.

Yep!

7 Dwarfs Joe Newman's Midgets The Little People, Whom I'm Sure We All Would Like To Thank

Lu Watters Babalu Keye Luke

Just finished the series...best show ever? Maybe. Definitely one of them. Damn sure one of the most painful. If this The Corner is on HBO Go, I'll give it...a go, as soon as I get over the Wire thing. Had to wait a week after season 3 before getting started on 4. This shit is painful as hell, and I say that as somebody who's always had a ride home after the game, if you know what I mean. Accident of birth. Prayers going out for all the Duquans & Randys of the world as well as for all the Bubbss, as well for myself that I never have to run into any more Omars, real or metaphorical, because, all things considered, moral (at best) ambiguity is not something about which I can be trusted to always side with "right". Play, be played, or, hopefully, get to someplace where there ain't no game. Good luck on that, everybody.

I am reading this book very slowly, because I have to. But damn, this is some entertaining provocativeness once you hit the zone with it. Maybe I'm feeling it wrong, but there seems to be a lot of dark comedy in this, a lot. Then again, maybe it's just that I see dark comedy in pretty much every damn thing. Everywhere I look in this world (as well as that one and the other one) I see dark comedy, what else could it be? Either way, I'm taking my own sweet time to eat this thing up and fully digest each bite, and not minding it nary one bit about doing so.

Perhaps. Definitely an easily-overlooked contributor of quality.

The crack thing is "funny" to me, because I figured it would have come around the early 80s, the time of Monster & Magic Windows, that stuff, neither particularly interesting for any reason, nor particularly inspired in any way. But no, it came in the early 90s, when Herbie was making ok-enough records for Verve, like the Massey Hall thing with Brecker. So, ok, don't blame the drugs then. And besides, there were some other things going on in those years, like Mr. Hands, that were actually pretty good. But Monster in particular, I'd prefer to think that that was the work of a crackhead gone wrong than to think that it was the best Herbie (or anybody) could come up with at the time. That's just depressing.

It's in this 11 disc box, which if you get there in time can be had for about $80.00 total. http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00062138A/ref=tmm_acd_used_olp_sr?ie=UTF8&condition=used&sr=&qid= Depending on what you already have or don't have, that's a really good deal, about $7.00 a CD, and most of it is pretty good. If you don't get there in time, prices jump considerably.

Jackie Mills went back to the Swing Era days, so he knew what a dance beat was. I first knew of him from the Lionel Hampton Just Jazz record, and then with that fine Harry James band that had Willie Smith in it. This is a short but pretty sweet interview here: https://www.namm.org/library/oral-history/jackie-mills

I know a guy who saw her walking through an airport and he, being quite a wise guy, yelled out, "Hey Ellie May!!!" and immediately thought UH-oh, but Ms. Douglas just looked at him, smiled, waved, and yelled back "Howdy!". Hard to argue with that!

Only dumb if it goes unsold, said Mr. Barnum.

Crazier still, look at the label - it says the original label was Tradition, meaning that it's this reissue of Vee-Jay material!