GA Russell

Jim, all my best to Zora! Maybe we should take up a collection to buy her a stuffed animal!

Amen aloc! That's why I prefer listening to the radio over watching a football or baseball game on TV. On the radio they talk about the game. On TV they talk about the replay.

Thelonious Monk - Light Blue

I feel different about this Red Sox team than I have ever before. When I was a boy the Red Sox stunk, but they turned it around on a dime in '67. For the past forty years they have been consistently (remarkably so) good, so it really hasn't been the struggle to be a Red Sox fan that some would have you believe. But each time they took the World Series to seven games, or for that matter when they lost to the Yankees in the playoff game that Bucky Dent hit a home run in, they failed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. They weren't really upset by an underdog. But for the first time in my lifetime, the Red Sox were obviously the best team in the majors this year. (Of course in baseball anything can happen in a post-season short series. That is why before 1969 great respect was given to both league champions regardless of who won the World Series.) For almost the entire year they had the best record in the major leagues. So their winning the World Series this time was for the first time in my life something that should have happened. In the past when the Red Sox would disappoint, they were never obviously the best. I never felt that they blew what was deservedly theirs. It looked like they would when they were down 3 games to 1 against Cleveland, but they pulled that out. Because the Red Sox were obviously the best team this year, I find their winning the World Series to be very enjoyable of course, but not as thrilling as it would have been in '75 for example.

Happy Birthday Catesta and Patrick! Today is also Kate Jackson's birthday, I read in this morning's paper. I always thought she was the cutest Charlie's Angel.

Broadway veteran Amy London has a new album out called When I Look in Your Eyes. She was an original cast member of City of Angels. The album may be of great interest to those of you who are trained musicians, but to me it is fifty minutes of dissonance. One dissonant song would have been appealing, but the whole album like that is too much for me. Here's the deal. Every song has many key changes. On every song at least one instrument either anticipates the key change or ignores it and sticks with the old key. So for much of the album the instruments are playing different keys at the same time. London has an excellent alto voice, but she sings like the Broadway performer she is rather than someone who paid her dues in small intimate nightclubs. Most of the songs are standards, but she has taken two Elmo Hope songs and written lyrics to them. The pianist is John Hicks. This was recorded in August of 2005, so it was one of his last recordings. You can hear the album and see what I mean here: http://cdbaby.com/cd/amylondon I'd be interested to see if any of you musicians take the time to listen to this and give us your thoughts on what the musicians are doing here. edit for typo

Week 18 previews: http://scoreboards.canoe.ca/merge/tsnform..../live/pv640.htm http://scoreboards.canoe.ca/merge/tsnform..../live/pv641.htm http://scoreboards.canoe.ca/merge/tsnform..../live/pv642.htm http://scoreboards.canoe.ca/merge/tsnform..../live/pv643.htm ***** The Argos have announced their all-time team. Dick Shatto once had reason to give me a call for business purposes. I once spoke on the phone with Dan Ferrone. Reggie Pleasant came to my 1995 Grey Cup party. http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/R...tsFootball/home ***** Doug Flutie says, "Playing in Canada put the fun back into football for me." http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/sto...ory/GlobeSports

Happy Birthday Daniel!

Me too. Five years or so ago, I bought a book which listed hundreds or thousands of movie soundtrack albums and rated them, much as Leonard Maltin's books rate movies. I noticed that an extremely high rating was given to John Barry's music for The Knack (and How to Get It), so I bought the CD. I enjoy it. The problem with albums of this type is that the composers usually wrote three melodies for the movie (I guess you would call them motifs) and then played them over and over during the course of the film. So the albums consist of forty-five minutes of variations on only three themes.

The results of the first round of balloting for the CFL Awards are in. Each team's nominees are listed here: http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/R...tsFootball/home Ben Cahoon was finally nominated as the Als' best player. The guy is a surefire bet for the Hall of Fame, yet I don't think till now he has gotten the nod over Anthony Calvillo as the team's best player. I think I would vote for Nick Setta for Rookie. I suspect Joe Smith will be named Outstanding Player.

RIP. Sorry to hear this. I saw him with Kirk at The Cellar Door in 1969 or '70. I remember their doing Volunteer Slavery.

Congrats JP!

Nice article today from Ian Busby, listing each team's chances in the playoffs, and the league records that might fall this year. He mentions that Troy Davis is not available for the Argos. Was he hurt? http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/New...598723-sun.html ***** Anthony Calvillo has left the Als for an indefinite period to be with his wife who is seriously ill after giving birth last week. Jason Maas will start if Calvillo misses the game this week. http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/Mon...4599014-cp.html ***** The Buffalo Bills plan to play one pre-season game and one regular season game every year in Toronto starting next year. They still need NFL league approval. http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/R...tsFootball/home

I voted for "Something else". My second favorite is adult popular, such as Brasil '66 and Matt Monro. I listened to Shirley Bassey's Greatest Hits earlier today, and this thread has got me to put on Jack Jones' Greatest Hits. I also have a few 60s movie soundtracks that I enjoy very much which I think would also fit into the adult popular category.

When the first book came out, it was marketed as children's literature. As far as I know, all of the succeeding books were as well. Mark me down as someone who believes that it is inappropriate to have homosexual heroes in children's literature. In this case, apparently the guy was celibate during the course of the extended narrative. I don't see any reason for the author to explain why, if it was not important enough to include in one of the books. And, as I say, if it was important enough, it should not be children's literature. I believe that in children's literature, celibacy should be considered the normal behavior of unmarried people.

Tonight's game was the first baseball game I watched all year.

Big Wheel, are you sure you are correct? It was my understanding that only a couple of albums are included in their entirety, Power to the People being one of them. I don't have it, so I may be wrong.

British Columbia Lions 37....Edmonton Eskimos 26 http://sports.canada.com/default.asp?c=can.../AJN4108666.htm Saskatchewan Roughriders 38....Hamilton Tiger-Cats 11 http://sports.canada.com/default.asp?c=can.../AJN4108758.htm I tuned in late in the second quarter. The Ticats are so inept I turned it off in the middle of the fourth quarter. BC, Sask and Calgary have clinched playoff spots. Sask still has a mathematical chance of finishing first. In the East, Winnipeg has clinched second. Edmonton still has a mathematical chance to cross over and displace Montreal for the third Eastern playoff spot.

Max McGee died yesterday. I had his bubble gum card in 1959. In his autobiography Run to Daylight, Vince Lombardi said that he had never met anyone so preoccupied with money as McGee. I thought that was an odd comment for a coach to say about one of his players. Here's an AP obit: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,303822,00.html (A click on the link shows a photo. It looks like Lamar Hunt with McGee.) Max McGee, Super Bowl I Hero, Dies After Falling From Roof Sunday, October 21, 2007 AP MINNEAPOLIS — Max McGee, the unexpected hero of the first Super Bowl and a long-time challenge for Hall of Fame coach Vince Lombardi, died Saturday after falling from the roof of his home, police confirmed. He was 75. Police were called to the former Green Bay receiver's Deephaven home around 5:20 p.m., Sgt. Chris Whiteside said. Efforts to resuscitate McGee were unsuccessful. McGee was blowing leaves off the roof when he fell, according to news reports. A phone message left at a number listed for an M. McGee wasn't immediately returned. "I just lost my best friend," former teammate Paul Hornung told the St. Paul Pioneer Press. "(His wife) Denise was away from the house. She'd warned him not to get up there. He shouldn't have been up there. He knew better than that." Inserted into Packers' lineup when Boyd Dowler was sidelined by a shoulder injury, McGee went on to catch the first touchdown pass in Super Bowl history in Green Bay's 35-10 victory over Kansas City in January 1967. Still hung over from a night on the town, McGee caught seven passes for 138 yards and two TDs. "Now he'll be the answer to one of the great trivia questions: Who scored the first touchdown in Super Bowl history?" Hornung said. "Vince knew he could count on him. ... He was a great athlete. He could do anything with his hands." Though an admirer of Lombardi, McGee time and again pushed the tough-as-nails coach to the breaking point. McGee — remembered for saying: "When it's third-and-10, you can take the milk drinkers and I'll take the whiskey drinkers every time." — put Lombardi to the ultimate test prior to the first Super Bowl. McGee had caught only four passes for 91 yards during the 1966 regular season and, not expecting to play against the Chiefs, violated the team's curfew and spent the night before the game partying. Reportedly, the next morning he told Dowler: "I hope you don't get hurt. I'm not in very good shape." Dowler went down with a separated shoulder on the Packers' second drive, and McGee had to borrow a helmet because he left his in the locker room. A few plays later, McGee made a one-handed reception of a pass from Bart Starr and ran 37 yards to score. "He had a delightful sense of humor and had a knack for coming up with big plays when you least expected it to happen," Packers historian Lee Remmel said. "He had a great sense of timing." Remmel said McGee once teased Lombardi when the coach showed the team a football on their first meeting and said, "Gentlemen, this is a football." "McGee said, 'Not so fast, not so fast,'" Remmel said. "That gives you an index to the kind of humor that he served up regularly." McGee was a running back at Tulane and the nation's top kick returner in 1953. Selected by the Packers in the fifth round of the 1954 draft, McGee spent two years in the Air Force as a pilot following his rookie year before returning in 1957 to play 11 more seasons. He finished his career with 345 receptions for 6,346 yards — an 18.4-yard average — and scored 51 touchdowns and 306 points. After retiring from football, he became a major partner in developing the popular Chi-Chi's chain of Mexican restaurants. In 1979, he became an announcer for the Packer Radio Network with Jim Irwin until retiring in 1998. McGee and wife Denise founded the Max McGee National Research Center for Juvenile Diabetes at the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin in Milwaukee in 1999. According to the center's Web site, his brother fought diabetes in his lifetime, and Max and Denise's youngest son, Dallas, lives with the disease. McGee is survived by his wife, four children and several grandchildren. Funeral arrangements were pending.

Week 17 previews: http://sports.canada.com/default.asp?c=can.../AJN4108359.htm Winnipeg Blue Bombers 27....Calgary Stampeders 13 http://sports.canada.com/default.asp?c=can.../AJN4108496.htm Ben Sankey, not Henry Burris, started for the Stamps. No explanation was given. Maybe Burris aggravated the injury to his left (non-throwing) shoulder last week, or maybe the Stamps are conceding second place to the Riders and are keeping Burris out of danger till the Western semi-final. The Bombers play the Argos next week. A win by the Bombers will clinch first place for them. Toronto Argonauts 16....Montreal Alouettes 9 http://sports.canada.com/default.asp?c=can.../AJN4108605.htm Michael Bishop is 9-1 as a starter this year.

Casey Stengel said that the secret of managing is to keep the five guys who hate you away from the five guys who aren't sure!

I remember watching Joey Bishop's late night show on ABC when I was in college one night. His sidekick was Regis Philbin. Bishop read a letter from a viewer stating that Philbin was without talent and should be fired. Philbin walked off the stage! http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,303278,00.html Joey Bishop, Last of the 'Rat Pack,' Dies at 89 Thursday, October 18, 2007 AP LOS ANGELES — Joey Bishop, the stone-faced comedian who found success in nightclubs, television and movies but became most famous as a member of Frank Sinatra's Rat Pack, has died at 89. He was the group's last surviving member. Peter Lawford died in 1984, Sammy Davis Jr. in 1990, Dean Martin in 1995, and Sinatra in 1998. Bishop died Wednesday night of multiple causes at his home in Newport Beach, publicist and longtime friend Warren Cowan said Thursday. The Rat Pack became a show business sensation in the early 1960s, appearing at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas in shows that combined music and comedy in a seemingly chaotic manner. Reviewers often claimed that Bishop played a minor role, but Sinatra knew otherwise. He termed the comedian "the Hub of the Big Wheel," with Bishop coming up with some of the best one-liners and beginning many jokes with his favorite phrase, "Son of a gun!" The quintet lived it up whenever members were free of their own commitments. They appeared together in such films as "Ocean's Eleven" and "Sergeants 3" and proudly gave honorary membership to a certain fun-loving politician from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy, at whose inauguration gala Bishop served as master of ceremonies. The Rat Pack faded after Kennedy's assassination, but the late 1990s brought a renaissance, with the group depicted in an HBO movie and portrayed by imitators in Las Vegas and elsewhere. The movie "Ocean's Eleven" was even remade in 2003 with George Clooney and Brad Pitt in the lead roles. Bishop defended his fellow performers' rowdy reputations in a 1998 interview. "Are we remembered as being drunk and chasing broads?" he asked. "I never saw Frank, Dean, Sammy or Peter drunk during performances. That was only a gag. And do you believe these guys had to chase broads? They had to chase 'em away." Away from the Rat Pack, Bishop starred in two TV series, both called "The Joey Bishop Show." The first, an NBC sitcom, got off to a rocky start in 1961. Critical and audience response was generally negative, and the second season brought a change in format. The third season brought a change in network, with the show moving to ABC, but nothing seemed to help and it was canceled in 1965. In the first series, Bishop played a TV talk show host. Then, he really became a TV talk show host. His program was started by ABC in 1967 as a challenge to Johnny Carson's immensely popular "The Tonight Show." Like Carson, Bishop sat behind a desk and bantered with a sidekick, TV newcomer Regis Philbin. But despite an impressive guest list and outrageous stunts, Bishop couldn't dent Carson's ratings, and "The Joey Bishop Show" was canceled after two seasons. Bishop then became a familiar guest figure in TV variety shows and as sub for vacationing talk show hosts, filling in for Carson 205 times. He also played character roles in such movies as "The Naked and the Dead" ("I played both roles"), "Onion-head," "Johnny Cool," "Texas Across the River," "Who's Minding the Mint?" "Valley of the Dolls" and "The Delta Force." His comedic schooling came from vaudeville, burlesque and nightclubs. Skipping his last high school semester in Philadelphia, he formed a music and comedy act with two other boys, and they played clubs in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. They called themselves the Bishop Brothers, borrowing the name from their driver, Glenn Bishop. Joseph Abraham Gottlieb would eventually adopt Joey Bishop as his stage name. When his partners got drafted, Bishop went to work as a single, playing his first solo date in Cleveland at the well-named El Dumpo. During these early years he developed his style: laid-back drollery, with surprise throwaway lines. After 3 1/2 years in the Army, Bishop resumed his career in 1945. Within five years he was earning $1,000 a week at New York's Latin Quarter. Sinatra saw him there one night and hired him as opening act. While most members of the Sinatra entourage treated the great man gingerly, Bishop had no inhibitions. He would tell audiences that the group's leader hadn't ignored him: "He spoke to me backstage; he told me `Get out of the way."' When Sinatra almost drowned filming a movie scene in Hawaii, Bishop wired him: "I thought you could walk on water." Born in New York's borough of the Bronx, Bishop was the youngest of five children of two immigrants from Eastern Europe. When he was 3 months old the family moved to South Philadelphia, where he attended public schools. He recalled being an indifferent student, once remarking, "In kindergarten, I flunked sand pile." In 1941 Bishop married Sylvia Ruzga and, despite the rigors of a show business career, the marriage survived until her death in 1999. Bishop, who had one son, Larry, spent his retirement years on the upscale Lido Isle in Southern California's Newport Bay.

Sean Millington is coming out of retirement again to play for the Argos. The guy is 39 years old, and ruptured his achilles tendon the last time he came out of retirement in 2005. I think the whole idea is a joke. If there is room for another running back, the team should hire a young guy. and give him a chance to compete for the Grey Cup. I also wonder why the Argos feel they could use him, seeing as how Robert Edwards is doing so well. Millington is a Canadian, so maybe it is an import ratio issue. http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/R...tsFootball/home ***** Khari Jones signed a contract with the Bombers and promptly retired as a Bomber. It always looked to me like he hurt himself and kept it a secret so that he could collect the big money he couldn't earn. Reminds me of Jason Maas. Maybe their shoulder injuries were just coincidences to their signing big contracts, but once they signed for the big money, they couldn't perform on the field. http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/R...tsFootball/home

RIP. I seem to recall that she made at least one record for Flying Dutchman. I'd like to hear it. As I was reading the obit, I was wondering when Music, Music, Music would be mentioned. It was the only song of hers that made an impression on me. I was quite young in her heyday, the pre-rock & roll 50s.

Happy Birthday Chris! You must have been quite a salesman to get a job at the Philly CBS affiliate on your first day of trying!