T.D.

Happy Birthday! Many causes for celebration! :party:

With the Bengals' win, Lions now the only winless club.

It was f*****g hell here recently... Got hit with a freak early snowstorm Monday night through Tuesday. Twenty inches of wet snow, which no one was prepared for. Trees down all over (some still had leaves, which didn't help). Lost power for close to 80 hours, just got it back this evening. Fortunately it only got down to around 20 the next couple of nights, so no pipes froze. Had to shovel everything out by hand, as local plow guy hadn't yet put either plow or studded snow tires on his truck.

Peter, it's funny, but I have this album on CD and recalled that Art Taylor was listed as drummer, which stuck in my mind because the only non-Caucasian musician pictured in the cover photo is Donald Byrd. Consulting the booklet (straight reproduction of LP notes): George had disbanded a very swinging group he was heading, and when a couple of months later, he formed a new one, only Donald Byrd remained. (Art Taylor of the first group did make these recordings as Junior Bradley, who is pictured on the cover, was out of town at the time.)

(Possibly dumb question from soccer non-expert) One angle I saw in a news story is that Beckham wants to get high-level Euro exposure in the hopes of being selected for England again. Is this a real possibility, or just spin-doctoring? England selection seems very unlikely to me.

My bad. I just checked the jazz "New Arrivals" again, and they seem to have yanked all the classical. Honest, I last looked at the page no more than a week ago, and there were a bunch of classical titles, admittedly some schlock, but some fairly reasonable-looking discs, too.

But the last time I looked (a day or two ago), many of the jazz "New Arrivals" were classical...

I'm halfway with you here. Personally, I think the album is a mixed bag, with some very good compositions, and some that are a bit on the dull side, but it doesn't hang together well as an album. I love the track "Enitnerrut" for one. Also, it's supposedly one of the worst RVG's soundwise, as ghost pointed out----a lot of others would agree with him. This might add to the sense of it just sitting there (if you've got the RVG.) Along with "Enitnerrut" I wanted to add that "A Fickle Sonance" is another standout track, IMO; some amazing playing by Butch here. I really like "Five Will Get You Ten", and sometimes play the CD to hear that tune. Agree that the album's uneven, but I don't find it too disappointing. The sound quality of the RVG is really horrible (I've heard it called the "AM radio RVG"), so I don't listen to the disc that often. It sounds like it was recorded in a toilet stall; maybe Sen. Larry Craig was moonlighting as an engineer...

Agreed on all but the last point. Anand has been totally dominant, to the point where it's painful to watch. It is over for Vlad, and his playing style has become so dry that I can't conceive of him reascending to challenger status. I don't expect much interesting chess for the rest of the match. Maybe one more excellent Anand win. Vlad needs to just draw a couple of games to stop the rot and avoid a historic thrashing (Lasker-Marshall ugliness territory).

The WCh match has turned into an ugly rout. At the (nominal) halfway mark (can't imagine the "full" 12 games being played) it's essentially over: Anand +3 with 3 draws. I won't bother to watch any of the remaining games.

Sláinte!

Anand draws first blood in WCh, wins Game 3 with Black. It looked like Kramnik played into a prepared variation in the Meran. Anand's definitely had the better of play so far (duh)...equalized easily in Game 1, had some pressure and advantage in Game 2 but bailed out and accepted a draw offer in Zeitnot.

No; you're mixing him up with Phil Linz.

Just received from yourmusic.com: Art Farmer, Brass Shout + The Aztec Suite This is a 2-LP-on-1-CD release which I expected to be marginal, but it's quite good. Liked the Brass Shout album as expected, and Aztec Suite was better than I expected (granted, I may have been overly influenced by AMG reviewer comments).

Thanks for posting that. RIP. Brings back some memories... Tresh was one of the very first baseball players I became aware of. I was born in 1957, and somehow recall hearing about him winning the '62 AL Rookie of the Year award (though I may have heard it a year or two later). And Joe Pep...I grew up in the Chicago area, and saw him play CF for the Cubbies(!) many times. Quite the character. Sadly, he really went downhill in the NYC area (Canarsie, iirc) in recent decades, got arrested several times, and may have done jail time.

Clever, thanks. I'm not a Greenspan fan, but I don't think Getz was the immediate cause of Greenspan giving up music. I first saw the Getz anecdote in a review of Greenspan's autobiography. But upon reading the book, I found that the encounters in question took place when Greenspan was in high school (they practiced together when AG was around the age of 15 iirc), and he realized that he simply didn't have Getz's talent. But he still played, even professionally, for several years afterward.

Ouch! But you could almost expect the Browns win after the Cowboy and Redskin upsets on Sunday.

Actually, From London to Elista is published by NiC. I really should buy it, as I've also long been a Bareev fan, because of his ironic wit and because he plays the Caro-Kann... One of the main reasons I haven't is that I watched so many of the games on the Internet, and saw so many "annoFritzations," that I might not like the pure chess part so much.

Pats defense is showing some serious age IMO. They'll have to win some shootouts, which may not be within Cassel's capabilities. Gee, BB likes Vinny T...think he'll come back again at age (one month shy of) 45?

This may seem lame, but I completely agree. It's a tough call. Anand's talent is second to none, but I'm not so sure of his stability in a match (I recall him blowing a lot of Rook endings). Anand's last tournament result was horrible, but Kramnik's results haven't been overly impressive, either. Conn, have you read the book "From London to Elista" (Bareev/Levitov), about Kramnik's title matches? It got good reviews and seems interesting, but I didn't feel like spending the money.

Many thanks! My posting frequency has gone down, and I mostly post in OT forum, but I do lurk lots of "music threads".

Is Penn State that good, or is Wisconsin (who lost by 2 to Michigan and by 41 to Penn St.) horrible?

Some time ago, I read Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux (one of my favorite authors). He traveled (essentially) by bus, car and train from one end of Africa to the other (Egypt-S. Africa, with an understandable gap in the middle). In the mood for more exotic travel, I recently heard about Jeffrey Tayler, and read his Angry Wind: Through Muslim Black Africa by Truck, Boat, Bus and Camel. Not bad, and I'm going to read more of his books, probably some Siberian ones next.

They sure do. I couldn't believe you laid the 17. Granted, the 2-point win over Wisconsin showed promise, but they followed it up with a 25-pt loss to Illinois.

Speaking of teams that look awful, gee whiz, the Seahags... But as a Jints fan, I enjoyed today's drubbing.