GA Russell

Here's what the oddsmakers see to be the final won-lost records for the regular season. The Argos and the Lions are picked to win the most games, and the Als are picked to win the fewest. http://www.cappersmall.com/press/articles/...-Wins-5847.html

I received my copy of The Croydon Concert today, and right away put on Disc 1. It's terrific! I have a few things with bassist Bob Magnussen, but this one stands out. He is interesting on every song. Maybe fifteen years ago I picked up a CD called Laurie's Choice which contained four tracks recorded live. I can't put my hands on it at the moment, and I can't remember if pianist Milcho Leviev is on it or not. If not, this is my first album of his. He does a great job here. The three releases on the Widow's Taste label each feature a different pianist, and it may be that my order of preference is based upon my opinion of the pianist. At this point, I would rank Roger Kellaway first (The Last Concert), Milcho Leviev second (The Croyden Concert) and George Cables third (The Abashiri Concert). I enjoy all three releases, but I have wondered why Laurie released The Abashiri Concert first, because I haven't thought that it is as good as The Last Concert. But the press release included a New York Times article which stated that Laurie released Abashiri because she was interviewed about that concert, and she said during the interview that she would release it so that it would receive some publicity from the article! Anyway, I'm going to play Disc 1 for a few days before I move on to Disc 2. Usually I wait a while to get to the second disc of a set, but this Disc 1 has got me yearning for more!

I remember when Korman won the Emmy for best comedian, and Conway closely followed him up onstage and wordlessly stood inches away from the podium, with a world-class hound dog face, completely stealing the show from Korman who was trying to give his acceptance speech.

George Shearing, disc 3

Herbie Nichols, disc 2

I have the Warner Bros.

RIP. I had the piano sheet music of Harlem Nocturne when I was in high school. I was motivated to learn the song because I liked The Ventures' recording of it. A few years later in college, I got Hagen's I Spy soundtrack album. I'll have to pull it out and give it a listen.

Kirk Penton grades each team's off-season, not considering the draft: http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/200...663721-sun.html ***** Damon Allen is expected to announce his retirement tomorrow. http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/R...tsFootball/home http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/Tor...5682831-ca.html ***** Milt Stegall had knee surgery, and will miss training camp. The Bombers released Juran Bolden. http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/R...tsFootball/home ***** The Als have signed former Cincinnati Bengal (and Florida State star) Peter Warrick. http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/Mon...5685156-cp.html ***** The Stampeders traded Duncan O'Mahony to the Eskimos, who then released Rob Pikula. http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/Edm...5674101-cp.html

Funny you should say that, Chuck. I was talking Friday with someone about looking for another job.

Here's his LA Times obituary: http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-...ewed-storylevel

I always find it interesting to read about the people who "invented" what is now commonplace. Here's his LA Times obituary: http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-...0,5859298.story J.R. Simplot, whose lifetime fascination with the potato helped change the nation's eating habits and made him a billionaire, died Sunday. He was 99. Simplot, who in his prime drove around Idaho in a Lincoln Continental with the license plate "Mr. Spud," died at his Boise home, apparently of natural causes, according to the Ada County coroner's office. The son of a farmer, Simplot began building his fortune while barely a teenager, finding new ways to bring potatoes and other vegetables to market. His efforts to perfect the frozen French fry accelerated the growth of the fast-food industry, analysts said, and made him the world's largest supplier of frozen potatoes. Decades later, Simplot built another fortune when he took an unusual turn and became an early and major shareholder in Micron Technology, a Boise computer chip maker. But it was root vegetables that lifted Simplot out of poverty. Beginning at 14, when he left his family home, Simplot grew, harvested, sorted and eventually figured out a way to dry potatoes as well as onions and other vegetables -- products that would feed American troops in World War II and make Simplot wealthy. Then, in his most lucrative vegetable venture, a Simplot company scientist found a way to freeze potatoes without turning them to mush. This process made the already popular French fry so cheap and plentiful that, for better or worse, it became a staple on fast-food and other restaurant menus. Simplot's sale of frozen fries to McDonald's and other chains accelerated the growth of the fast-food industry and changed the nation's eating habits, according to Eric Schlosser, author of "Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal" (2001). "Americans have long consumed more potatoes than any other food except dairy products and wheat flour," said Schlosser, who called Simplot "America's great potato baron." By 2006, J.R. Simplot and family ranked No. 80 on Forbes magazine's list of America's richest people, with an estimated net worth of $3.2 billion. John Richard Simplot -- known as J.R. or Jack -- was born Jan. 4, 1909, in Dubuque, Iowa. Not long after he was born, his father moved his family west, eventually settling near Declo, Idaho. He quit school, left home at 14 and showed an early skill at making money. While still a young man, he made a tidy profit in the hog business before moving on to farming and planting potatoes, beans, hay and grain. Working with another farmer, he developed an electric potato sorter and, after winning the rights to it in a coin flip, Simplot went into the potato sorting business. He traveled from farm to farm, hooking up the machine to the closest light socket, and soon began building cellars to store potatoes. By the time the Depression hit in 1929, Simplot was set up to supply people with a source of cheap nutrition. Within a decade, Simplot operated 33 potato warehouses in Idaho and Oregon. But he didn't make his first serious money until he got into the business of drying vegetables. When the United States entered World War II, America needed dried onions to feed the troops on the war front, and Simplot jumped into the business "in a big way." He built plants around the country to dry onions and, later, potatoes. By the end of the war, he had supplied tens of millions of pounds of potatoes to the armed forces. But Simplot's greatest enterprise was perfecting and distributing the frozen potato. In 1965, Simplot capitalized on his business relationship with Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald's Corp. Kroc's fast-food operation had grown so big that he was struggling to supply enough French fries to go with McDonald's hamburgers. Simplot, who provided McDonald's with fresh Idaho russet potatoes except during the summer months, had assigned one of his chemists to work on a method to freeze potatoes without compromising flavor or texture. When customers couldn't tell the difference between fresh and frozen French fries, Simplot quickly boosted production of frozen fries and became the main supplier of potatoes to McDonald's. "That's what made me," the plain-spoken Simplot once said. "I got McDonald's to use my frozen French fries." Other fast-food chains, including Wendy's, Burger King and Jack in the Box, soon began buying frozen French fries from Simplot. By the late 1960s, Simplot's various enterprises had made their creator a prominent fixture in American industry. He was Idaho's biggest cattle-grower and employer. He dried and froze more potatoes than anyone. He owned processing plants, fertilizer plants, mining operations and other enterprises in 36 states, Canada and elsewhere. And he owned a lot of land. In 1980, Simplot took a surprising turn when he decided to invest in a start-up company called Micron Technology, helping it to become one of the world's biggest semiconductor companies. Occasionally, Simplot got himself into trouble. In 1978, in what Fortune magazine later called "one of the largest scandals ever to hit the commodity market," Simplot paid a $50,000 fine and was barred from trading for six years after he was accused of manipulating Maine potato futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange in 1976. And in 1977, he pleaded no contest to federal charges that he had failed to report income and had claimed false personal and family deductions; he paid two $20,000 fines. Survivors include his wife, Esther, two sons and a daughter.

I too am 6'3", and in March got stuck in the middle seat on a flight from Seattle to Raleigh (changing planes in Cincinnati). I spent the whole time waiting for the flight to be over. My job requires my driving about 150 miles a day at my expense, so the $4.00 gas is really hurting me.

Happy Birthday Sundog!

Here in the US, I saw a few CD singles at Borders ten years ago. But I can't say that I've ever seen a store that carried CD singles the same way that record shops sold 45s forty and fifty years go.

George Shearing, disc 4

My reception of the Indy 500 today was unacceptable. The race was constantly interrupted with "no signal". It was a Durham station maybe 45 miles away. Maybe there was a storm between here and there, I don't know. But with reception like that, television would have never caught on.

After a slow news week, there are a couple of interesting items today. The first is that the Als have hired Joe Paopao as a consultant. That tells me that he will be waiting in the wings if their new head coach with no Canadian rules experience gets off to a slow start. http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/R...tsFootball/home ***** The second item is about the NFL in Toronto. I don't need to go through all that you know about how 20,000 of the NFL "season" tickets have been allotted to Argo season ticket holders. The remaining NFL tickets will go into a lottery. Over 100,000 have applied for the lottery tickets. But since it didn't cost anything to apply for the lottery tickets, that 100,000 figure may not indicate the amount of interest in the tickets that the press would have you believe. It could be 100,000 people who have no interest in going to a Buffalo Bills game but who figured that a lot of other people would, so they applied (at no cost and no risk) hoping to flip the tickets at a profit. Well, the deadline for the 20,000 allotted to the Argos was yesterday. And the Argos sold only 14,000 season tickets. Now you know that not all of the Argos ticket holders are interested in the NFL games. And you also know that the NFL tickets are priced (averaging $150. each) to appeal to people for whom money is no object. That is to say, if a corporation wanted the NFL tickets, it would buy Argos tickets and be assured of getting good NFL seats. But the corporations didn't do that. So that makes me wonder what the market in Toronto will be for the Buffalo Bills games. http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/Tor...649471-sun.html

I read in the paper: a) The Best Buy unit will tell you what will be shown the next hour on the channel you are watching. The Radio Shack unit will do the same for the next 24 hours. b) Both cost $60.00.

Here's the Spectator's pre-season analysis of the Eskimos: http://www.thespec.com/Sports/article/372435 ***** Here's the Spectator's pre-season analysis of the Argos: http://www.thespec.com/Sports/article/373732

I got "58% (Dixie). Barely into the Dixie category". My parents were both from Boston, so I'm not surprised that my score was so low. But I was surprised by the number of my answers that were rated "Michigan/Great Lakes" beause I have never lived in that area. (I have a vague recollection of taking this quiz before, so forgive me if this has been posted here some time in the past.) http://www.angelfire.com/ak2/intelligencer...dixie_quiz.html

Happy Birthday David!

I don't think I have heard anything from him since Show Magazine in the mid-60s. He was famous mostly for blowing through his money. Here's his Washington Post obituary: http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-...0,3985195.story Huntington Hartford II, 97; A & P heir spent his fortune on the arts By Adam Bernstein, The Washington Post May 20, 2008 Huntington Hartford II, heir to the A&P supermarket fortune whose quest to be taken seriously as a patron of the arts led him to bankroll a series of movies, plays, galleries and publications that ultimately drained his wealth, died Monday at Lyford Cay in the Bahamas. He was 97. No cause of death was reported. Money man Ranked among the world's richest people at one time, Hartford was once called by Architect Frank Lloyd Wright "the sort of man who will come up with an idea, pinch it in the fanny and run." He underwrote a series of failed enterprises, most of which resulted in spectacular losses. Among them were an artist's foundation and colony in Los Angeles, and the glossy magazine Show, a journal of art and culture. His Ocean Club resort on Paradise Island in the Bahamas suffered from the lack of a gambling license and went bust. Resorts International eventually bought him out for $1 million, a shell of his $30-million investment. His Gallery of Modern Art in New York City, featuring an Edward Durell Stone design, opened at 2 Columbus Circle in 1964 to risible reviews, both for its structure and offerings. He had promoted the museum as a bulwark against modernism in art, whether the paintings of Pablo Picasso and Willem de Kooning or the literature of William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams. He condemned the "vulgar" and "meaningless" extremes of modern abstract art, preferring what he called "realistic art" of an earlier period. His vocal antipathy to artists he disliked led to the resignation of all advisors to his self-titled foundation meant to aid composers, writers and fine artists. He appointed new advisors and bought large advertisements condemning "obscurity, confusion, immorality, violence" in contemporary painting. Meanwhile, with money never an object, he remained devoted to extracurricular pleasures, including the study of handwriting, petroleum extraction and the personal lives of showgirls. He once dated Marilyn Monroe and described her as "too pushy, like a high-class hooker." His excesses cost him financially and personally. He had unexpectedly ascetic habits in some areas of his life, such as a disinclination to drink alcohol. But his fourth marriage, in the 1970s, marked a turning point. According to a 2004 issue of Vanity Fair magazine, his last wife, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., hairdresser a decade his junior, introduced Hartford to cocaine, amphetamines and Quaaludes. At least once he was hospitalized for an overdose. After his fourth marriage ended, Hartford spent his final years living quietly in the Bahamas, a much-reduced figure than how he presented himself in his prime. In his 1964 book "Art or Anarchy?," a polemic against modernism, he described championing traditional art against the prevailing trends. "I have always hated the goose step," he wrote. George Huntington Hartford II was born in New York on April 18, 1911, and never used the name George. He was the namesake of his grandfather, a Maine tea merchant who in 1869 founded the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. The company would become one of the storied American businesses, rivaling General Motors by the 1950s as a multibillion-dollar corporation. Hartford began reaping the financial benefits at age 6, when his grandfather died and left him with an annual income of $1.5 million. The family lived lavishly during the 1920s and '30s and owned a seaside estate in Newport, R.I. His father, an inventor, strayed from the family business and patented a shock absorber for cars. Hartford received an elite education, graduating from the private St. Paul's preparatory school in New Hampshire in 1930 and Harvard University in 1934. In college, he played on the tennis and squash teams. Subsequent years were spent enjoying his wealth, although he made periodic forays into employment. He spent six months as an A&P clerk, monitoring pound-cake sales until he was fired after walking off the job to catch a Harvard-Yale football game. He later became a reporter at the newspaper PM in New York, a job he acquired after investing $100,000 in the publication. His interest in boats was put to use during World War II, when he served in the Coast Guard and commanded a cargo vessel in the Pacific. After his discharge, he settled in Los Angeles, where he met Marjorie Steele, a 19-year-old cigarette girl who became his second wife. She reportedly was responsible for his interest in fine arts, resulting in the creation of an artists foundation and retreat. Meanwhile, he deepened his involvement in movie production, including the Abbott and Costello comedy "Africa Screams" (1949) and the feature anthology "Face to Face (1952), which starred his wife. He also funded Broadway productions, including his own short-lived 1958 adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre" with Eric Portman as Rochester and Jan Brooks in the title role; movie star Errol Flynn briefly portrayed Rochester in a troubled pre-Broadway production. Hartford's traditional tastes were evident in a costly renovation of Hollywood's Vine Street Theatre in 1953, which became the Huntington Hartford Theater. He lured Helen Hayes to star in "What Every Woman Knows," a creaky J.M. Barrie drama she had starred in on screen 20 years earlier. (He also owned much of the land that is now Runyon Canyon Park in Los Angeles and lived for a time in the property's mansion. The estate's most famous resident was Flynn, who stayed for a time in the guest house, giving rise to the false perception that he actually owned the land. In 1984 the city bought the property for $5.16 million and it was turned into a park.) By the early 1960s, Hartford had accomplished few projects that amounted to anything. He devised an automatic parking garage system, chaired a shale-oil company and hoped to create a European-style cafe in New York's Central Park before parks commissioner Robert Moses axed the idea. Toward the end of his life, he told Vanity Fair that he had always been searching for ways "to create something beautiful. . . . I had a lot of money, and now I have enough." He is survived by two children.

Happy Birthday Chuck!

I accidentally stumbled upon my recording of King Korn tonight. It is on Paul Bley's Milestone Cd Circle, taken from the LP Paul Bley & Scorpio. I see that tonight is the first night of the band's American tour. Anybody planning to see them?

I'm very sorry to learn of the loss of your wife, Larry.