Uncle Skid

"winky dink"?? Free, I think we've just been pitched a soft ball...

I had one... my Grandparents had my picture of the dog hanging in their dining room for years. Covered Bridges rule!

I was contemplating a road trip tonight or tomorrow to see Vijay, but I'll probably stay close to home this weekend. Chicago-based "Charlie Love & The Silky Smooth Blues Band" is making the trip here, so maybe I'll go check them out.

That's an outstanding deal for a whole lot of great music!

Wish I had heard more. I was totally enthralled with the Schweizer/Anderson/Drake tune that was played towards the end of the show. I had never heard of that record (Willisau & Taktlos) before, but it sounded great. Very nice youtube video

yeah! I asked because all of the times I've been to the Velvet, it was always $20 at the door, first come, first served. When Roscoe Mitchell played there, I believe people were being turned away -- standing room only.

You were able to buy tickets in advance for this?

Congrats, Shawn, and good luck to you!

We've had one here for a few months now, and have been quite impressed. We also have the $8.95 Netflix deal. Going into geek mode for a minute, so please bear with me: It is absolutely amazing what Roku is doing with this box. The box is running Linux, and I still can't believe they are selling it for $100. Either they are very good at hardware design, or they are selling it at a loss in anticipation of future earnings... either way, it's still pretty darn cool. FWIW, I suspect it's a little of both. But, what's really impressed me is the image quality, the ease-of-use, and the automatic software upgrades. The image quality is obviously dependent on your internet connection speed, but I'm getting very good results over wireless. I'm not sure that HD is "really" HD, but it looks great to me. Netflix has the original Star Trek series on-line in HD, and it's been fun revisiting those old episodes in HD. The user interface is simple and easy to use. The remote control doesn't have tons of buttons, and it's intuitive. When I first bought the Roku box, it didn't support HD. Since then, it has automatically upgraded itself to support that, and it has also added support for Amazon Video on demand. Looks like most Amazon on demand is $3.99, which seems a bit expensive, but it's still nice that Roku isn't just tied to Netflix. Last geek thought: sorry Moose, you can't watch movies 24/7 on this thing, unless you've got a very generous ISP. Most have instituted download limits per month, and watching movies more than occasionally would probably hit that limit fairly quickly. Streaming video eats up lots of bandwidth. Net Neutrality is a good thing, but I'd be very surprised if the big providers (Comcast especially) let that happen without a fight. It's pretty clear to me that Roku could be a very nice (on-demand) replacement for cable TV, eventually.

My first MAD magazine: And, if I remember correctly, my subscription started sometime in 1975. Probably still have every issue from '74 to about '81 or so in the basement somewhere. Those are probably worth more than my IRA right now... I just watched "Serpico" (for the first time) about a week ago... Mrs. Skid kept getting irritated with me because I kept calling him "Serpicool"! My son has had a subscription to MAD for about 4-5 years now, and it just isn't the same. It's still strange to me to see the paid advertisements, and while some of it is funny, most of the content seems to be lacking. Of course, it's not aimed at old farts like me. I've been tempted to buy a Don Martin collection more than once. Friggin' hilarious!

Just watched that a couple of days ago, for the first time. On an Al Pacino kick, watched Serpico as well. Really enjoyed Dog Day, got irritated and bored with Serpico. Wish that John Cazale had made more movies.

Happy Birthday, B. Thanks for more than a few great recommendations over the years, Braxton stuff, especially.

My 15-year old daughter asked me to download "Esperanza" for her, from eMusic. I had never heard of Ms. Spalding, and my daughter says "you might like this, Dad -- it's kind of jazzy". I've listened to a couple of tracks, and it really "ain't that bad". One track in particular, "Mela", struck me as very interesting.

I haven't, but I'll say this: I don't care. And that is the downside to what he (or his "marketing" people) are doing. I know it should be about the music and not the "image", but here's a case where I fully expect to hear museum jazz. High quality museum jazz, most likely, but I can't come up with any compelling reason to listen to him when I haven't fully explored Benny Goodman himself. And I'm also confident that Benny Goodman left many cracks and crevices "unexplored", if that makes sense. If this guy is doing that, it might be interesting. But I doubt it. I sincerely hope that I'm wrong, but there's way too much other music I need to listen to first.

Probably too obvious, but if Dave Bennett loves Benny Goodman so much, why doesn't he just take what he loves so much, make it his own, and expand on it? I bet all the local "jazz societies" (dedicated to "preserving" jazz, whatever that means) love this guy. Maybe that's not all bad, but it looks kind of pathetic to me.

Muskrat Love???? I don't know if I should give you a hug or kick your ass! I will admit that Toni Tennille has a great voice. I heard her sing the national anthem once (live), and was quite impressed. But, that song sucked when it came out, and it still sucks.

ok, i'll immeDIately stop the Coherence on this thread by maKing a post that doesn't make any sense!

Well, you can call me Skid, or Mark, or Skid Mark, just please don't confuse me with Aggie or Free For All. Those guys are weird. But I'd probably just prefer Mark.

That's easy: have Aldo Nova shoot Big Al's avatar with his rockin' guitar's laser beam. Duh! (and Big Al has it coming for posting lyrics to Muskrat Love. )

I'm totally irritated with both of you guys... this thread is almost starting to make sense. Coherence is overrated. Here's my irrelevant thoughts: I've heard two of Allen's CDs (New Tango '92 and A Modern Portrait of Louis Armstrong). They are both very good, and I'd bet that many of our board members would agree. P.S. Doc Cheatham rules.

Thanks for the heads up on that one, BF. Looks interesting!

(looks like both Mark and I might be a week too late in responding, sorry 'bout that!)

BeBop, if you haven't done so already, check out http://now-is.org/. Jeff Parker, Josh Abrams, Frank Rosaly on Friday 2/20 looks interesting (Charleston). Also, I'd be inclined to make at least one trip to the Velvet, especially if it includes Isaiah Spencer on drums.

I've been experimenting with using .flac files on my iPod, instead of VBR mp3s. iPods normally don't support flac, but there is alternative software available that does. It won't take long for flac files to fill up 80GB -- I have 118 CDs encoded so far, and that takes up almost 31GB.