GA Russell

My Christmas season begins the day after the Grey Cup game each year, which means next Monday. I hold off listening to Christmas music until then. The Carla Bley was mentioned on the ECM thread, and I'm looking forward to listening to it here: http://www.lala.com/#album/432627041169191...hristmas_Carols

I can see Shane winning with the final score 45-0! Just kidding!

In case you didn't see it, go play our Grey Cup contest and win a CD here: http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=56020

Thanks Chuck! I hope you'll play the contest this year. You might win a CD. Just what you need!

medjuck, I'm just now noticing your post for the first time. Sorry for the five month delay! Miles Davis Live Vol. 1 is late era Miles, and sounds a lot like Live Around the World. So I assume that Vol. 2 is more of the same. It is on the Delta label and was made in S. Korea.

bumping for the Grey Cup contest

It's that time of year again! It's time for the annual Grey Cup contest. (Past winners have included Noj, brownie and Shane/indestructible.) Here are the rules: 1) Pick the winning team. 2) Pick the number of total points scored by both teams. (aka the tiebreaker) Since approximately half of us will pick the winning team, picking the total points is necessary to win the contest. Your total points prediction must be a number which is a multiple of five (5). The winning tiebreaker will be the one closest to the correct answer. If two are equally close, the winner will be the lower pick. If two people pick the same thing, the first to make the pick will be the winner. THE PRIZE: Your choice of one CD from the list of CDs I have available for sale here: http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php...&hl=Factory Deadline: kickoff, Sunday Nov. 29, 6:00 pm eastern. ***** The Grey Cup game: The Grey Cup is awarded to the world champion of what I think is the greatest game in the world, Canadian rules football. That is to say, the champion of the Canadian Football League. This year's game will be played by the Eastern champion Montreal Alouettes and the Western champion Saskatchewan Roughriders. The location of the game is chosen years in advance. This year's game will be played in the western city of Calgary. You can expect that there will be many more Roughrider fans there than Als fans. Montreal was by far the dominant team in the league this year, finishing with a 15-3 record. Saskatchewan finished with the second best record, 10-7-1. The game's kickoff will be at 6:00 pm eastern, so that time has been designated the deadline for this contest. You can listen to the game here: http://www.am770chqr.com/index.aspx (To listen to the game, you will need Windows Media Player which you can download for free. So you might want to plan ahead if you don't already have it.) You can study the season as it has developed with the CFL thread, which I will be updating during the course of this week. Good luck! Here's my pick (same as last year): Montreal, 50 points

Montreal Alouettes 56....British Columbia Lions 18 http://64.246.64.33/merge/tsnform.aspx?c=s...aspx?id=4268676 Well, what did you expect? The Als scored at will. Calvillo threw 5 TD passes. ***** Saskatchewan Roughriders 27....Calgary Stampeders 17 http://64.246.64.33/merge/tsnform.aspx?c=s...aspx?id=4268736 The score was tied at 10 at the half, but it was all Roughriders in the second half. ***** So now we will see the teams with the two best records during the season face off in the Grey Cup game!

I think they're piggy backing on Britney Spears' success.

Happy Birthday 2009 Doug!

I'm listening to this one now, and I think it's gone from my least favorite Rava to my most favorite. Maybe it's just right for this time of night.

David Naylor Finals preview http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/foot...article1372511/

Pretty amazing, all right! He must have had a lot of time on his hands!

To clarify my view about Duval, I'm not surprised that he was named the placekicker because he broke the league scoring record. But throughout the year the announcers have not treated him as the punter who was having an obviously better year than everyone else. ***** Gregg Xenakes Finals preview http://www.sportsnetwork.com/merge/tsnform.../AJN4267583.htm

Happy Birthday Bill!

Thanks for that link, Noj. I didn't know that Garcia had been let go by the Eagles. It doesn't surprise me, considering that they have McNabb, Vick and Kolb. Garcia is 39 now, and maybe all the decent teams figure that he is too old to do it any more. I think his years with the Browns and the Lions showed that he can't resurrect a bad team all by himself. On the other hand, there seems to be a real shortage of competent quarterbacking in the league this year, from what I hear on Sirius. I heard one guy yesterday suggest that Cassell was the only good quarterback playing on a bad team. All the other bad teams have bad quarterbacks. That was just one man's opinion. But as I recall Garcia looked good when he was healthy last year with Tampa, and I would think that someone would consider him to be better than what they have now.

I don't want to bet a dead horse, but I have to think that the Raiders would be better off if they hadn't let Jeff Garcia go.

The 2009 All-Star team has been announced. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/2009...article1368240/ I'm a little surprised that Duval was named both placekicker and punter, but I haven't seen the stats.

I have received a promo cd of an singer named Somi called If the Rains Come First. I had never heard of her before, but this is her third album available at lala.com. The record sounds a great deal like Bebel Gilberto. Maybe with a little Sade influence too. It so happens that I like Bebel and Sade, so I like this too. There are eleven tracks, the first ten of which are strong. The last one should have been left off IMO. I definitely recommend that you listen to it here: http://www.lala.com/#album/165760613833109...ains_Come_First

I'm sorry to hear this. I still pictured him as a young guy. I have him on a Nucleus album for sure, and perhaps something else as well.

Thanks jazztrain!

Happy Birthday 2009 Aftab!

Darren Johnston is a Bay Area trumpeter. His sound is amazing. His tone reminds me of the Chet in Paris discs from the mid-50s. He has assembled two other guys (accordion and bass) and formed The Nice Guy Trio. Their album is called Here Comes The Nice Guy Trio. First of all, it is not a trio album. There are six guest artists appearing at various times. I love this music, but it's hard to call it jazz. It swings, no doubt about it. But there is no blues to be found. It is more like Django Reinhart music than anything else I can think of. Maybe it is the accordion that gives it its European flavor. The guests play instruments such as tablas, violin, clarinet and cello. You get the idea. It's a unique album. I would love for Sirius to pick up on this one, to lighten up their programming.

I'm stunned to see that Ken Ober has died. There was one time on Remote Control that I remember well. Every day he would ask one impossible question that only an MIT professor could answer, and maybe not even him. Well one day, the question was, "What is the name of the scientific proposition that..." and from there it went on and on in scientific gibberish, and a kid buzzed before he was finished and said, "Khoulam's (sp?) Law." And he was right! That stopped the show for five minutes. No one could believe that a contestant on that show could answer one of those questions. Anyway, here's his LA Times obituary. http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-...0,6123710.story Ken Ober dies at 52; host of MTV's 'Remote Control' game show The comedian and actor was doing stand-up when he landed the job of guiding the 1980s game show, which featured raucous question-and-answer trivia contests about TV reruns. Ken Ober appeared on "Remote Control" from 1987 to 1989. He later turned to writing and producing TV shows. By Claire Noland November 17,2009 Ken Ober, a comedian and actor who as host of MTV's "Remote Control" in the 1980s guided the raucous question-and-answer trivia contests on the irreverent cable TV game show, was found dead Sunday at his home in Santa Monica. He was 52. Lee Kernis of Brillstein Entertainment Partners, who represented Ober, confirmed the death but said the cause was unknown. According to Kernis, friends said Ober had been feeling ill with a headache and flu-like symptoms Saturday and did not meet them later as planned. An autopsy is planned. Ober was a stand-up comic when he landed the job as host of in 1987. On a basement set featuring college-age contestants and audience members, Ober introduced categories spanning the universe of TV reruns -- beginning with the old black-and-white days of "Car 54, Where Are You?" and "Mr. Ed" but returning again and again to "The Brady Bunch." If the players, who were strapped into garish reclining lounge chairs, answered correctly, they got to choose the next category. Those eliminated were ridiculed, then pitched backward in their chairs through the wall of the set. Ober, who grew up transfixed by television, clearly had fun playing the host, even if it wasn't his ultimate goal. "I remember the first time it hit me," Ober said in a 1989 interview with the San Diego Union Tribune. "I was in a supermarket line reading 'TV Guide,' and it said 'Ken Ober, comma, TV game show host.' And I said, 'Oh, no, I'm a game show host.' " Born July 3, 1957, in Boston, Ober studied communications and education at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He worked as a substitute teacher in Boston before performing in comedy clubs in New York. Ober left "Remote Control" in 1989 to audition for acting jobs, but reruns of the show featuring Ober and other series regulars Colin Quinn and Denis Leary continued to air. After acting in TV series such as "Parenthood," "Who's the Boss?" and "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air," Ober shifted his focus to writing and producing for the series "Mind of Mencia" and "The New Adventures of Old Christine."

Edward Woodward died yesterday. In the mid-80s, Atlanta had a singles magazine where you could place a classified ad for a date. So I placed an ad that said, "I'm so conservative, I make The Equalizer look like a liberal." I got a lot of dates from that! In some cases they were conservatives, and in other cases they just wanted to meet the guy who wrote that! By the way, Breaker Morant remains one of my favorites. Here's his LA Times obituary. http://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-edward-w...0,5792524.story Edward Woodward dies at 79; British actor starred in 'The Equalizer,' 'Breaker Morant' The Golden Globe and Emmy-winning Royal Academy of Dramatic Art graduate also recorded 12 solo albums as a singer. Edward Woodward received five Emmy nominations and won a Golden Globe for his role as Robert McCall, a disillusioned former secret agent using his skills to help people who had nowhere else to turn to get justice, in "The Equalizer," which ran from 1985 to 1989. (CBS) By Dennis McLellan November 17, 2009 Edward Woodward, the British actor who starred in the 1980s detective TV series "The Equalizer" and the movies "Breaker Morant" and "The Wicker Man," has died. He was 79. Woodward, who had suffered from pneumonia and other illnesses, died Monday in a hospital in Truro, Cornwall, England, said TV producer Ned Nalle, Woodward's brother-in-law. A graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art who launched his career on stage in 1946, Woodward starred in "The Equalizer" on CBS from 1985 to 1989. He received five Emmy nominations and won a Golden Globe for his role as Robert McCall, a disillusioned former secret agent using his skills to help people who had nowhere else to turn to get justice. As McCall's newspaper ad put it: "Got a problem? Odds against you? Call the Equalizer." "Edward was brilliant in his portrayal of Robert McCall," said Richard Lindheim, co-creator of the series. "One of the reasons for it is you felt beneath what he was doing the sadness and the pain that had driven him to do this. "The brilliance of his performance was not always what he said but the emotion in his eyes and in his behavior. And that's the real mark of a wonderful actor: the ability to convey emotion and have you understand his feelings without having to say a line of dialogue." At one point during the run of "The Equalizer," a survey found that Woodward, well into his 50s and with graying hair and a slight paunch, outranked Don Johnson of "Miami Vice" and Ken Wahl of "Wiseguy" in what one journalist described as "the sexy-detective stakes." "I take this with great humor," Woodward told Australia's the Sun Herald with a raucous laugh in 1989. "I'm the one who gets up in the morning and looks in the mirror, and I don't see a sex symbol. I'm at a loss to see why women see me as a sex symbol. But that's their problem." Woodward had become a household name in Britain as the star of "Callan," a hit spy series that ran from 1967 to 1972 in which he played a British counterintelligence agent/assassin. He reprised the role in the 1974 movie of the same name. He also starred in the 1973 British cult thriller "The Wicker Man," in which he played a police sergeant who is sent to a remote Scottish island to investigate a missing girl and discovers that the locals are practicing pagans. At the time "The Equalizer" debuted, Woodward may have been best known in this country for playing the title role in "Breaker Morant," director Bruce Beresford's acclaimed 1980 film about three Australian lieutenants on trial for murdering Boer prisoners during the Boer War in South Africa at the turn of the 20th century. "He was sensational in that part," said Beresford. "He's an actor with a tremendous emotional range." Beresford, who also worked with Woodward on the films "King David" and "Mister Johnson," said he "was lovely to work with. He was very unpretentious and had a remarkably easy manner" -- an assessment echoed by Lindheim. "In person, he was a wonderful, warm raconteur who told great stories where he would play every role and would keep you in laughter for hours," said Lindheim. Woodward also starred in the 1990-91 CBS series "Over My Dead Body," playing an English mystery writer and amateur sleuth teamed with a San Francisco newspaper obituary writer played by Jessica Lundy. Born June 1, 1930, in Croydon, Surrey, England, he attended Kingston College and entered the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at age 16. As a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, he played roles in "Romeo and Juliet," "Hamlet," "Pericles" and "Much Ado About Nothing." Other West End parts included the title role in "Cyrano de Bergerac" and Flamineo in "The White Devil," both for the Royal National Theatre in London under Laurence Olivier. He also appeared on Broadway, including in "High Spirits," a 1964 musical comedy version of Noel Coward's "Blithe Spirit," with Tammy Grimes and Beatrice Lillie. Woodward, who was named an officer of the Order of the British Empire, also recorded 12 solo albums as a singer and won an Emmy as host of the 1989 documentary "Remembering World War II." He is survived by his second wife, actress Michele Dotrice; their daughter, Emily Woodward Wakem; his three children from his first marriage to actress Venetia Barrett, actors Tim, Peter and Sarah Woodward; and six grandchildren.