GA Russell

Happy Birthday BM!

Sounds like the train should have designated cell phone cars and quiet cars.

Your Music only has two. I ordered Happenings today, and put Montara in my queue. The review of Montara there (from AMG) is ecstatic. Anybody have an opinion of it?

Aggie, I love you, man! With the codes, I've just ordered: Al Cohn Quintet Brown/Roach - At Basin Street (with Sonny!) Bobby Hutcherson - Happenings Robert Palmer - The Very Best of the Island Years

Aggie, I love you, man!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/fema...in_page_id=1879 CDs come in cases that are 148mm wide and 125mm high. By contrast, DVDs are sold in cases that are 135mm wide and 191mm high. Why use such different packaging for discs of identical size? A little digging reveals the historical origins of this difference. Prior to the appearance of digital CDs, most music was sold on vinyl discs, packaged in close-fitting sleeves that measured 302mm square. The racks on which vinyl discs were displayed were just wide enough, in other words, to accommodate two rows of CD cases with a divider between them. Making the CD cases a little less than half as wide as the record sleeves they were replacing thus enabled retailers to avoid the substantial costs of replacing their storage and display racks. Similar considerations seem to have driven the decision regarding DVD packaging. Before DVDs became popular, most film rental stores carried videotapes in the VHS format, which were packaged in form-fitting boxes that measured 135mm wide and 191mm high. These videos were typically displayed side by side with their spines out. Making DVD cases the same height enabled stores to display their new DVD stocks on existing shelves, while consumers were in the process of switching over to the new format. Making the DVD package the same height as the VHS package also made switching to DVDs more attractive for consumers, since they could store their new DVDs on the shelves they used for VHS tapes.

Valerie, I always trust your posts. Did you know Gerald or another musician who pronounced it that way?

CD Universe says that Forever Changes will be re-released April 22. It will be a 2-CD set. The first CD will be the original album, and the second CD will be the album remixed, if that's what "alternate mix" means. http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=7640350

Here are some things I've found at Rider announcer Rod Pederson's website http://www.rodpederson.com Ticats drop two CFL veterans Hamilton Spectator Byline: Ken Peters Source: The Hamilton Spectator The Tiger-Cats, who fielded the youngest team in the Canadian Football League last season, just got younger -- they've parted ways with two league warriors. Hamilton general manager Bob O'Billovich confirmed yesterday the club has released 10-year defensive tackle Roger Dunbrack and eight-year offensive lineman Pascal Cheron. Dunbrack turns 33 in October. Cheron turns 34 in July. While Dunbrack's plans aren't known, Cheron said yesterday he hopes to catch on with another CFL club for the upcoming season. ***** (and this too from Rod Pederson about the Riders annual lottery...) (I had no idea that the Riders almost folded after the '96 season, when the league had so many problems.) The Saskatchewan Roughriders almost folded in the spring of 1997. Actually the club Executive was just days away from making the decision to pull the plug before a miracle came along. Here's the story: Hall of Fame Roughrider volunteer and Past President Tom Shepherd was on 620 CKRM's Currie's Corner last Thursday, talking about his HoF induction, and also the perilous road the Riders have travelled the past 30 or so years financially. Initially, Tom was asked how the legendary Friends of the Riders Touchdown Lottery began. It was on the strength of the Lottery -- and the $12-million its raised -- that Shepherd was inducted into the Hall. "It was out of necessity. Greg Walter, a policeman in Saskatoon, ran a lottery for a policeman who was killed and had reasonable success making $25,000 or so. He called me and said I should do it for the Riders. That year Keith Critchley was Rider President and I was Vice and he gave me a mandate to raise $1,000,000 off the field. Luckily Greg Walter called me in 1986 and I started doing it. Now every year we're making about $600,000 for the club." "It's one of those win-win situations. We made $12-million over the years, and that's the people of Saskatchewan not me. CKRM has always been behind us to promote it, so you are a big part of the success. I don't think it would work anywhere else because this is Saskatchewan's team. We've soldout every year but one, and it was very close to a sellout." After discussing the beginnings of the Lottery, Tom went onto talk about how close the team was to death a decade later. "In 1987 it was bad. It wasn't the darkest day but probably the second-darkest. In '87 we had gone 11 straight years out of the playoffs and that's when I became President and hired Bill Baker as G.M. Ted Urness had recommended him and I hired him. I guess I'm good at taking other peoples' ideas. So we did a telethon in '87 to raise money which included Ronnie Lancaster and Bruce Cowie and guys like that. We reached our monetary goal, hired John Gregory and two years later won the Grey Cup. I'm not certain the club would've failed then, but it was very, very close." "The real darkest time in my term was, and it's hard to say this because I get real emotional, was the start of '97 when Fred Wagman was President. As Treasurer I went to the league and said if we don't have 250,000 tickets sold, or X-amount of money, before the season starts, we won't operate. People poo-poo'd that saying "the Riders will never die" but I went to GM Al Ford and said we had very little money until the start of the season. I put all the season ticket money we had into a trust account because I felt if we don't make our goal, people who bought season tickets could lose their money. We had lots of critics, and Fred Wagman took out a full-page ad in the newspaper, went on provincial television and told people how dire it was but people were skeptical of Fred." "He did a wonderful job but was getting discouraged because people weren't receptive. I told him not to back down. But the banks weren't cooperative, and a number of things were going on. We had moderate success raising money, but we needed to have a telethon. A week before the telethon, we were having a meeting and Vice-President Bob Ellard said to me 'are we going to make it?' I said it doesn't look like we're gonna make and it looks like we're gonna have to fold the team. It was March. But I said I got an interesting phone call and I think there's hope. I was supposed to be sworn to secrecy but within the Executive, they said I wasn't sworn to secrecy with them." "Well it was Edmonton's Hugh Campbell who called me and said, 'Tom, are you real about this?' And I said yes. Well he said he and League Commissioner John Tory had met with the NFL and they were gonna give us a whole bunch of money. $500,000 per club. He said 'if you knew that, could you get by?' I told him we had to have x-amount by a certain date. He said we could announce the money, but not who it was from." "So on the day of the telethon, we held a news conference. I said we had a benefactor who bought $500,000 worth of tickets. Of course the reporters were all over me with 'where is this from?', 'is it Canadian?'. I said yes, but then I backed off it. Then I said it was a huge conglomerate. But it wasn't until four months later that the truth came out. So that was 1997 and that saved the team and a few months later we were in Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton watching the Riders in the Grey Cup." "I'm just one person accepting the Hall of Fame honour with a lot of gratitude but I'm only here because of the people of Saskatchewan and their unending love for the Roughriders. It's always going to be a fragile situation, but we've had good times. Back in the 70's and early-80's though, I used to invest $100,000 a month for this team because of a rich television contract. We've been at the top financially before, but we weren't winning then. The difference now with this $1.7-million profit, plus the surplus for stadium improvement, is that they also won the Grey Cup. There's a lot riding on it, like sales and souvenirs. We did $1-million in one month of souvenir sales in '89. This time it was close to $3-million at Grey Cup time." ***** Keith Stokes has moved again, this time to Edmonton. Stokes is only 29. It seems like he has been in the league forever. http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news...a5-002f4b6e9fd2 ***** Here's an article about the state of the players association: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/sports/fo...p-4744189c.html

Thanks, Sundog. I made a mistake above. The model that I could get from keurig.com with about 70 K-cups for about $130. is the B40. I went to BJ's today and saw that what they are selling is the B50. Theirs comes with 90 K-cups. I see that you have a B60, even further up the ladder. I have been thinking about getting the My K-cup reusable filter, so I'm glad you are having good luck with yours. I have found a site that reviews such items here: http://www.singleservecoffee.com

Thanks for posting that, Chalupa. It looks like today's youngsters will look upon the 2008 vintage internet the way my generation looked upon silent movies! The promise of eliminating the monitor freeze is enough to make me excited! How much do you want to bet that the governments will institute censorship before the public has the opportunity to access it?

I didn't know that Ringo's drumkit was manufactured specifically for the band's appearance on Ed Sullivan. Here's Mr. Ludwig's obituary from the Chicago Tribune: http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-...,1,707332.story William F. Ludwig II, 91; son of the founder of Ludwig Drum Co. built a set for Ringo Starr William F. Ludwig II: While watching the show, William Ludwig II said, "Maybe these kids will be big someday," his son recalled. From the Chicago Tribune April 7, 2008 Ringo Starr was so proud to play a Ludwig drum set during the Beatles' first televised appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in 1964 that he asked William F. Ludwig II to build a special set for him with the company name printed in bold letters at the top of the bass drumhead. Naturally, Ludwig obliged. Showcase click to enlarge "I remember my dad watching them on TV and saying, 'Who knows? Maybe these kids will be big someday,' " said his son, William Ludwig III. "The next day our phone was ringing off the hook." Family members said the resulting demand for Ludwig drums prompted the Chicago-based company to build a 100,000-square-foot addition to its factory and add a night shift. "It was hard keeping up with all the orders," his son said. After a concert at Chicago's International Amphitheatre several months later, Ludwig met with Starr, who over the years remained a loyal customer. The two visited again backstage in 2006 after Starr performed with his band at the Rosemont Theatre in Chicago. "It was as if nothing had changed," his son said. "They still had so much respect and appreciation for each other." Ludwig, the son of the founder of Ludwig Drum Co. and its former president, died of natural causes March 22, in his home in Chicago. He was 91. Ludwig Drum Co., originally called Ludwig & Ludwig Drum Co. after its founders, William Ludwig Sr. and his brother, Theobald, was founded in Chicago in 1909. It was built around the bass drum pedal the brothers -- drummers themselves -- invented to meet the needs of professional drummers worldwide. By the 1920s, the company had become the world's largest drum company, family members said. As a young man, Ludwig saw the fortunes of the American drum industry rise and fall through his father's business. Because of the Depression and talking movies, which put theater drummers out of work, his family sold their business to Conn Co., an Elkhart, Ind.-based music business, in 1930. Seven years later, Ludwig and his father became the co-owners of another drum company they named WFL because lawyers for Conn made it clear that they could no longer use their family name. In 1955, Conn left the drum business and sold the Ludwig name back to Ludwig, who was president of Ludwig Drum Co. from the early 1960s until the company was again sold in 1981. "He hung on as long as he could, but competition from foreign markets made it harder and harder to keep the business going," his son said. Born in 1916 in Evanston, Ill., Ludwig grew up in Oak Park, Ill., and received a bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During World War II, he served in the Navy at the Great Lakes Naval Station, where he became a chief petty officer and taught the art of military drumming. Thousands of soldiers learned to march to the beat of drummers he had trained, family members said. In his retirement, Ludwig enjoyed traveling around the country and giving lectures on the history of drumming in America. In 1985, Ludwig was enshrined in Guitar Center's RockWalk on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, along with other influential manufacturers and inventors, including guitarist Les Paul, synthesizer inventor Robert Moog and Jim Marshall of Marshall amplifiers. In addition to his son, Ludwig's survivors include a daughter, Brooke Crowden, and four grandchildren. Ludwig's wife of 54 years, Marguerite, died in 2002.

RIP. I saw in the True Blue thread last week that an album he did with Chet Baker in '64 called The Most Important Jazz Album of 1964-1965 is going out of print. I've been meaning to pick that one up.

Happy Birthday Alison!

I haven't seen Ben Hur since it was new. I'd like to see it again sometime. I wonder if NetFlix gets on run on an actor's movies when he dies. I bet it does.

I'm seriously thinking of getting a Keurig coffee maker. They have one at BJ's for $129.99 that includes coffee for 90 cups, about 20 different blends. I have gone to their website and see that I could get the same maker with the same amount of coffee (but with a smaller selection of blends of my choice) for about the same price. Do any of you have an opinion of Keurig? http://www.keurig.com

Happy Birthday!

I watched every week in fourth and fifth grades. In fourth grade I lived in the DC area. The two I remember the best were Haystacks Calhoun (my favorite!) and Bearcat Wright. The next year we lived in the Seattle area, and I had my choice of the Seattle station and the Tacoma station. The Seattle matches featured a bad guy named Kurt von Poppenheim. The Tacoma station's were better, with a bad guy named The Texan. A few years later I browsed through a wrestling magazine, and saw that The Texan had been unmasked (!), and had been revealed to be a fellow named Dory Funk. I received for Christmas this year a book about the AFL called Going Long. It was revealed that in his best year playing football, Wahoo McDaniel earned $40,000+. In his best year wrestling, he earned $600,000.!!!

Happy Birthday LV!

This is something that hadn't occurred to me before. Makes sense to me.

I wonder why people who do not have a vested interest in the sale of metal razor handles diss the disposables.

Here's the News & Observer article that spurred me to resurrect this thread: http://www.newsobserver.com/lifestyles/fas...ry/1010973.html Men drawn to shaving wars For the closest shave, use your grandpa's method Cyber shaves A lively cyber-world guides shaving buffs through the minefield of "drugstore" products and specialty items. Those include the Art of Shaving's $175 "classic" safety razor and Dovo's $178.95 badger-bristle shaving brush with ivory handle. (Hair from the badger's neck is most desirable and expensive. No kidding.) Some sites are commercial and some are buff-driven, but they're all worth a look on the way to shaving Nirvana. www.shavemyface.com: Shaving author Michael Ham's site. No products for sale, but plenty of good information and links. www.shavingstuff.com: Entertaining site has frequent updates and product reviews of various shaving modes. Also has shaving stuff for women. www.shavers.com: Site devoted to electric shavers sales and lore. Located in Hendersonville, but it's purely a Web-based business. www.straightrazorplace.com: Just what the name implies, with reviews and lots of interaction. www.theartofshaving.com: Has upper-end versions of mainstream products, including the $150 Fusion Chrome Collection model. www.classicshaving.com: Site has everything from vintage razors to strops. www.qedusa.com: Mail-order site has information on staples such as Taylor of Old Bond Street shaving creams and links to many other products. www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6886845/: This witty MSNBC piece offers a tour through the fine points of the retro wet-shave culture. By Thomas Goldsmith, Staff Writer There's a battle going on over men's faces. And much is at stake in the shaving wars.Fewer than one in 10 U.S. males wears a beard, while the rest of us spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on blades and razors for this exclusively male face-defining ritual. The rhetoric among the shave-obsessed factions can get sharp. Just listen to Raleigh barber Richard Creech on the hugely successful multi-blade razors. "Once the first blade is dull, it doesn't matter how many more are behind it," Creech said the other day at Man-Mur, his workplace on Hillsborough Street. "It'll still pull." And don't even mention electric shavers. People who use those are summarily dismissed. "They are not worried about a quality shave," said California razor-blade revivalist Michael Ham, author of the self-published "Leisureguy's Guide to Gourmet Shaving: Shaving Made Enjoyable." In a looks-dominated society where dermatology is one of the hottest medical specialties, anything that makes a man come across smoother stands out amid lots of competition. And in this politics-soaked year, it's worth remembering that in an election cycle long ago, the U.S. presidency may have been lost to a dull blade. "He didn't understand how important it was," Ham, 68, said sadly of Richard Nixon's 5 o'clock shadow during his 1960 debate with a younger and clean-shaven John F. Kennedy. Keen competition In a war of swords, shaving giants Gillette and Schick are locked in a technical, marketing and legal duel over who can sell the most products. Each seeks to win over a worldwide "shaverati," as they pursue the best shave possible. People consult blogs and Web sites, frequent specialty marketers, and search for razor manufacturers in a dozen foreign countries. It would seem that the closeness of a shave shouldn't be a matter of debate. Isn't it possible to measure whiskers before and after shaving in some scientific test? There must be some data behind claims such as this one from Gillette: "The Fusion will give your face the cleanest, closest, and most comfortable shave you'll have ever experienced." Neither Gillette, the market leader, nor Schick responded to requests for the basis of their claims. But deep in federal court records, it seems that the companies do get down to measuring micrometers of whisker length, if sometimes only as part of litigation. In 2005, Schick carried out its own tests to successfully challenge Gillette's claim that its M3Power razor caused facial hairs to "stand up," producing a better shave. "Schick's study took place over three days and included 37 test subjects," a verdict in Schick's favor said. "With respect to each test subject, twenty hairs were measured before and after strokes with an M3 Power razor." Science did not support Gillette's "stand-up" claim, the court found. The straight truth For all the fancy marketing, the basic idea for a shaving tool hasn't evolved all that much. Straight razors date to at least 3000 BC, to copper razors found in India and Egypt, and they remain in vogue today as a specialty item. Modern straight razors are usually handles that have replacement blades inserted into them, rather than a single blade requiring regular honing. "Nobody uses the kind that you strop any more," said Creech, the Man-Mur barber, marking the change down to hygienic concerns. Creech can and does still shave customers with a straight razor. Best customers for that luxurious, complicated rite tend to be men in wedding parties, who sometimes come in en masse to get a super-smooth look for the ceremonies. Safety razors, with the flat, double-edge blades that once dominated men's shaving, were patented by King C. Gillette in 1904. The English company Wilkinson, now part of Energizer along with Schick, made a run at Gillette with its Sword blades in the 1950s and '60s."Wilkinson figured out how to coat a blade with chrome or platinum," creating a longer-lasting and sharper blade, Ham said. "They pretty much took over. Gillette was losing market left and right." That's when Gillette started the two-blade cartridge, once again winning patent protection. Though overpowered domestically by multi-blades, double-edge razors are enjoying a major cult revival and are used to trim beards worldwide these days. "The double-edge razor is still the most common way to shave globally," Ham said. "If you look at where razor blades are made -- in Japan, Pakistan, India, Russia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Germany -- they make some very good blades." Bad buzz Electric razors, as noted above, generally get poor reviews from experts, as do disposables. Available to the general public since 1929, the electric devices get dissed as best for people who want to read the paper or drive when in the act. "They're OK for college students," said Russ Neufeld, editor of the popular site shavingstuff.com. "It's convenient for a quick and easy shave." Opinions like these are common at shavingstuff, where guys can read up-to-date profiles of King Gillette or enjoy "Celebrity Facial Hair Friday." On Ham's shavemyface.com, readers encounter ads for specialty products, such as brushes that use badger hair to apply shaving soap, as they debate the merits of razors old and new. "The multi-blade razors do give a closer shave than, say, the dual-blade razor," said Dr. John Romano, a New York dermatologist. "It might be too close a shave for some people if they have sensitive skin." Said Ham: "The cartridge war, that's a marketing war. You want to keep the market share and you convince people that you need one that vibrates and has a little flashlight on it. But that tugging and cutting is not that good on your face." The real secret, Ham said, is that all faces are different. Some African-American males have to risk razor bumps from shaving that irritate and scar the skin. Ham says that the Treet blade that's great for him may be worthless to someone else. The solution to finding a great shave, he says, is to get a pack of 20 different razor blades from someplace like West Coast Shaving (westcoastshaving.com), try them all and discover what's best for you. That knowledge might have helped Richard Nixon, who was locked in a fierce presidential race back in 1960. It's become a cliche of shaving lore that Nixon lost the election to JFK because he sported a 5 o'clock shadow so dark that makeup couldn't conceal it. History does not seem to record the exact shaving implements Nixon and Kennedy employed that day. But there are hints. "The President-elect waved his aides away and retired to his bathroom to shave, with a straight razor," Theodore . White wrote of Kennedy in "The Making of the President 1960." And Nixon? A researcher at his presidential library found he used two devices shunned by the shaverati, at least during the post-presidential years. "He kept an electric razor (they could not remember the brand) at his office and used disposable razors when he traveled," wrote Ira G. Pemstein, archivist at the Nixon library in Yorba Linda, Calif. So did Nixon's presidency fall victim to an unserious electric shaver or a dull disposable? Perhaps not, said Ham. It's the individuality thing again: "Nixon's problem was that he had a heavy beard and had thin, transparent skin. There's no way he could have looked cleanshaven."

This Wall Street Journal excerpt is so short that there isn't much point in my summarizing it. I guess they will depend almost entirely upon good reviews in the newspapers, the Book of the Month Club and its competitors and word of mouth. Maybe Berigan will give us his opinion. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1207236315...=googlenews_wsj Marking a radical departure from traditional book-publishing practices, HarperCollins Publishers says it will launch a new book imprint that won't accept returns from retailers or pay advances to authors. To be headed by veteran publishing executive Robert S. Miller, the imprint also likely won't pay for more desirable display space in the front of bookstores, a common practice. Instead, the as-yet-unnamed unit will share its profit with writers and focus much of its sales efforts on the Internet, where a growing portion of book sales are shifting.

Wisconsin QB Tyler Donovan has decided to skip the NFL draft, and has signed a four-year contract with Edmonton. He will start in camp as the #4 QB behind Jason Maas (whom I don't expect will make the team). http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/200...181941-sun.html ***** Here's Dan Ralph's article on the Hall of Fame inductees: http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/200...5155136-cp.html

That's an interesting name. Yes, her full name is April 7 Russell.