JSngry

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In a perfect world, there would be no championship series or even seasons, just baseball every day that the weather allowed, with a little time off for everybody now and then. Then there really would be no clock in baseball!

Also beautiful is that the season is so long that, almost always, talent eventually restores to its natural level.

Thanks, but this, here, is all the writing I care to do, and sometimes more than I need to do...

The sinner gonna do what the sinner gonna do, be it to get right or to stay wrong. That's one thing. Those of us who get hit by their shit, we got the same choices as the sinner. That's another thing. Ain't nobody ever "all right", and I don't know that even the darkest souls are "all wrong", so pretty much everything comes down to this what choices do you make? After that, it's a pinball machine. Don't run out of quarters.

+2 "Forgiveness" of the type under discussion here is not about taking the burden off the perpetrator, it's about ridding yourself of the hate that unresolved anger inevitably becomes. Now, "classical" "Biblical" forgiveness does indeed involve the perpetrator asking to be forgiven, upon which forgiveness is given, upon which (and this is the part that gets short shrift these days, because it's...difficult)the perpetrator is then obligated to atone for their wrong. And true atonement, that's a bitch. Although this was composed as an atonement before God for a direct sin, these words from Psalm 51 speak to the object of the game quite clearly, I think, for anybody who has been dirtied by evil, directly or indirectly (which is pretty much everybody who lives): I thnk that this should be the ideal goal for both perpetrator, victim, and collateral damage all, for what better way to try to go through life than with a clean heart, right spirit, joy, and the reinforcement of spirits both holy and free (even if these spirits are only metaphorical)? Nothing there about not getting hit by or stepping into some ugly shit, either directly or indirectly, and nothing in there about forgetting any of it. I think it's implicit that we will get hit by shit, and repeatedly. It's all but inevitable. It also follows that if we practice some kind of simple-minded forgive=forget formula that we greatly increase our odds of the shit coming our way faster and more furious than ever. But this isn't about "prevention", this is about response, how to deal with the aftermath. Let it go, don't let it stay with you forever, get a clean heart & right spirit, and then proceed accordingly until the next time comes along, which inevitably it will. No matter how smart you get from the lessons learned, there will always be new lessons to learn. Just as good is infinite, so is evil. Nothing in here about it being "instant" or "easy" either. Obviously it's not. But it's a goal, a good goal (imo), and like most anything else, if you believe it to be possible and do indeed want it, you'll direct yourself accordingly according to how much you believe it and how much you want it. And that too gets tricky, because it's easier to say or think what you really believe and what you really want than it is to actually know it. Life is not without its challenges.

Some Christmas music to beat the heat! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwSZMtos8Qc

Probably Taylor...but I'm wanting to say Al Green?

To forgive does not mean to forget.

Bake McBride Cookie Rojas Pie Traynor

And who would know better than him!

Watermelon Man Muddy Waters Billy Bayou

No, I applaud anybody who can get that kind of dough, really. And the MacArthur foundation does show an admirable tendency to recognize the under-exposed (relative to the general concept of "exposed" any way). I'm just skeptical, terminally skeptical, actually, that the process operates in a total vacuum devoid of any and all "outside influence". That would defy damn near every trait of human behavior, especially of those humans involved in "the arts". No proof, though, so maybe it is really all that. Would be nice if it was.

Here y'all go!

I think you mean "until"? I've always thought it should be "unless" myself, but nobody asked me...

Can't make the threads about 2-on1 into a 2-on-1? Is this International Irony Day or what?!?!

To get serious for (just) a second, I was switched to tenor as soon as I hit High School by my band director, who told me that I was goiong to have to learn to "ad lib" so I coulod play the solos. This was a good nine months or so before I heard Bird. Now, my HS BD was big into Konitz & Desmond, and he knew that I was into Hendrix & Zappa. So maybe he knew best after all!

Well, that makes for good copy, but...let's just say that I'd be significantly more shocked to find out that the process really was that "anonymous" than i would be to find out that there's all kinds of opportunities to "make a play" along the way. It's money, big money (relatively speaking), and there are careers involved, as well as people who represent those careers. Ain't no "accidents" going to come out of that mix, imo. Somebody be lobbying somebody somewhere, bet on it.

Two things - "Journeyman", in the true sense, while certainly not high praise, should not be considered a negative: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JourneymanI'm pretty sure that there "solicitations" for almost all grants. Perhaps not by directly by the artists, but definitely by "those on their behalf".

If you're old enough to remember when Was (Not Was) very first came out, they brought all kinds of influences to the table & were actually tangentally related to the "no wave" movement of the time, albeit in a significantly more overt R&B-ish way than most other in that orb. Which is just to say that Don Was is not some musical robot programmed to function in the prevailing vacuum. The guy has skills and he's not at all musically illiterate. I think it's unreasonable to expect him to bring in an ongoing stream of small groups into Rudy's on a weekly basis (besides, there's more than a few people making those types of records now, and...really, it's over. At least for me). But I wouldn't automatically expect him to turn out nothing but crass overt pop or "adult pop" records for the imprint either. Of course, he may do exactly that. I'm just saying that if you want anything like the "old" Blue Note, yeah, it's probably time to be suicidal. Otherwise, clean the gun, but don't load it just yet.

No problem. I'll get to it here in a few. I loved the irony of that guy being that band that did that song now being the guy to A&R BN. Even more funny is the irony that I originally linked that video to this thread but then moved it over there b/c a response had already been posted there, so I was just trying to get n line. But NO! Maybe that's how the dinosaurs went extinct - they got in the wrong line.