GA Russell

From the WTF? dept.: Rob Hitchcock has come out of retirement to play for the Eskimos! http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/Edm...4578401-cp.html ***** Not that there was any doubt, but the Bombers have clinched a playoff spot. http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/Win...575680-sun.html

I'm sorry to hear about this Joe. I guess the lesson is to not allow oneself to become too attached to material possessions. I'm glad that neither you nor anyone you loved was harmed.

Congratulations Conn!

Happy Birthday Bluerein!

Toronto Argonauts 35....Montreal Alouettes 17 http://sports.canada.com/default.asp?c=can.../AJN4107425.htm I listened to the Argos broadcast, and Adrion Smith, announcer and former Argo player, confirmed my suspicion stated above that there was bad blood between Robert Edwards and Als coach Jim Popp. British Columbia Lions 24....Edmonton Eskimos 18 http://sports.canada.com/default.asp?c=can.../AJN4107580.htm Saskatchewan Roughriders 40....Hamilton Tiger-Cats 23 http://sports.canada.com/default.asp?c=can.../AJN4107714.htm Calgary Stampeders 38....Winnipeg Blue Bombers 25 http://sports.canada.com/default.asp?c=can.../AJN4107756.htm Henry Burris is back! ***** Vinnie Testaverde joined Carolina Wednesday and led them to victory today over Arizona. I was reminded of how Casey Printers and Jason Maas needed a week-plus with their new teams before they saw any game action. Apparently a winning NFL gameplan can be pretty simple compared to a CFL gameplan.

Happy Birthday John!

I'm sure that a number of you rock fans know more about this than I do, but here is what I know. A popular group, Nine Inch Nails, is led by a guy named Trent Reznor. Reznor has from what I gather been outspoken regarding his negative opinion of record companies. Today he announced at www.nin.com that Universal has released the band from its contract. I don't know the details. Speculation at Digg is that the band may follow Radiohead's lead and release music for downloading cheap or free. What strikes me is that the majors have in recent years seemed to have change their business model to rely solely on huge hit albums. And now the bands of these most popular CDs are going it alone. So the majors' business model seems obsolete. This would be a problem independent of the declining sales due to pirate downloading and competition from video games. I wonder if Norman Lear and Concord have stumbled upon a business model more likely to survive the changes - sign stars like Paul McCartney and Joni Mitchell to single album deals (which I think is the ECM business model) and take it one step at a time. http://www.theninhotline.net/news/

Well, I'm not Dan, but the Yankees beat the Red Sox 5 of the last 6 they played, so I sure would rather them face the Indians than the Yankees regardless of who is pitching!

Today is the first day I have had reliable internet service since Sept. 26. My problems were both computer and ISP related. So today I have logged in using my original account, and everything seems to be working AOK. Thanks again Jim!

During the Bombers broadcast, Bob Irving said that Ricky Ray was gone for the season with his separated right (throwing) shoulder. With rookie Stephane LeFors in there, I don't see how the last place Eskimos can expect to climb into third place or cross over to the East. But what makes it interesting is that third-place Calgary has apparently lost Henry Burris for the season, so they may not win again either. Thanksgiving Day results: Montreal Alouettes 27....Hamilton Tiger-Cats 19 http://sports.canada.com/default.asp?c=can.../AJN4106718.htm The loss eliminates the Ticats. Saskatchewan Roughriders 33....Calgary Stampeders 21 http://sports.canada.com/default.asp?c=can.../AJN4106739.htm Akili Smith started for the Stamps and showed nothing. He was replaced at halftime by Ben Sankey, who turned in a decent performance, leading the Stamps on two TD drives. The last I had heard of Sankey, he was Jarious Jackson's backup at BC, so how and when he wound up with the Stamps I don't know. Maybe this indicates that Buck Pierce will soon return for BC. It is likely that neither Calgary nor Edmonton will host a playoff game. The last time that happened was in the 1950s.

I'm too old to have ever heard a Sex Pistols song. But I did see a clip of Tom Snyder interviewing Johnny Rotten. Wasn't their appeal based upon the "angry youth" trip? I have doubt that seeing men in their forties go through the routine will have much appeal.

I heard about this sort of thing on the radio (I think NPR) a couple of weeks ago. It basically scams the credit rating people into thinking that one's credit is better than it is. As I understand it, you allow a complete stranger(s) to list your card as one of his, and the stranger pays the broker for the privilege. The broker pays you $3,000. a month. Obviously, the credit reporting people won't allow this loophole to last long.

Years ago I worked at Borders, and I found that his fans were fanatics. When a new book came out, they sold like hot cakes all right. He was much younger than I thought for a writer so popular. The paper said this morning that he was only 58.

Stan and Chet if they are white! If they're black, maybe Johnny and Lockjaw.

Happy Birthday Dan! Have some cake and coffee ice cream!

Thanks guys!

Do you have a link for the list, Mike?

My understanding is that insurance companies consider nuclear power plants to be too dangerous to insure. So the power companies want the government to insure the plants. I say let's wait until they are safe enough that the insurance companies will take them on. (That's the libertarian argument.)

Happy Birthday vibes! What's the latest news on the retail scene?

There's a story in Edmonton about Rahim Abdullah, but I don't know what it is. As far as I could tell from the Eskimos broadcasts I've listened to, he's good. But apparently he got into the coach's doghouse. They paid him but wouldn't let him attend practices or meetings. He retained an attorney. So they cut him yesterday. Now he has the opportunity to sign with a team that might win the Grey Cup. http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/Edm...492975-sun.html ***** Here's a Canadian Press preview of the games for Week 12: http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/New...4494141-cp.html

Ask and ye shall receive! http://www.newlaunches.com/archives/how_to...r_in_office.php

I had the pleasure of meeting Willie T at a press conference for the first New Orleans Jazzfest in 1968. Nice guy. He told me that he was sorry that he had recorded Teasing You, which was a hit in New Orleans, because it interfered with his getting jazz gigs. At the press conference, Willie and his brother Earl and their group played a couple of modern jazz modal things - much more modern than what New Orleans was used to at the time. I noticed how small his hands were on the piano keyboard. Sometimes I hear Thank You John on the radio here. It is a standard of the Carolina beach music scene. It is the same song as Teasing You with slightly different lyrics.

At this moment I'm the only person on the board. That's only happened once before to my knowledge. The things you learn on the internet. Tonight I learned that Britney Spears is an anagram for Presbyterian! Now to business: Matt Dominguez suffered a second degree sprain of his mcl, and is out a minimum of 4-6 weeks, and maybe the whole season. The Riders are in first place, but I can't see them staying there without him. Yo Murphy is coming back off the injured list, so he will help. And the Eskimos are going to have to really improve to keep the Riders out of the playoffs. http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/New...4488119-cp.html

I've already posted elsewhere that I had the opportunity to interview him in 1969 when he was a member of Cannonball's band, so I won't go into that again. He was very nice to a young kid from a college radio station who didn't know much. I saw him again two years later with the original Weather Report lineup. RIP It must be hard for his children, regardless of their ages, to lose both parents within such a brief span of time. Here's his LA Times obituary: http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-...news-obituaries Joe Zawinul, 75; influential jazz keyboardist led Weather Report Ken Hively KEY PLAYER: Joe Zawinul, formerly of Weather Report, died early Tuesday in Vienna. He was 75. By Don Heckman, Special to The Times September 12, 2007 Keyboardist Joe Zawinul, whose innovative playing and composing influenced musical genres reaching from soul jazz and avant-garde to fusion and world music, died early Tuesday in Vienna. He was 75. According to the Associated Press, his death was confirmed by a spokesperson for Vienna's Wilhelmina Clinic, where he had been hospitalized since August. Zawinul's manager, Risa Zincke, told the Austria Press that he suffered from a rare form of skin cancer. Zawinul's achievements stretch across five decades and numerous stylistic borders. A native of Vienna where he played accordion as a boy, Zawinul arrived at the Berklee College of Music in Boston in 1959. But he quickly left school and gigged with Maynard Ferguson and Dinah Washington before joining the quintet of alto saxophonist Julian "Cannonball" Adderley in 1961. His groove-driven piece, "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy," with its surprisingly authentic -- for a European musician -- connection with American blues and gospel music, was one of the significant compositions of the then-popular soul-jazz style and was a hit for Adderley. Switching into a different mode, he was a vital participant in Miles Davis' transition into electric jazz, writing the title song for "In A Silent Way" and performing on "Bitches Brew," albums that opened the door to combinations of jazz, rock and electronica that would follow. From 1970 to 1985, Zawinul co-led the groundbreaking ensemble, Weather Report, with saxophonist/composer Wayne Shorter. Viewed by many as the band that defined jazz fusion, it was universally praised as a creative breakthrough, the character of its sound driven by Zawinul's synthesizers. "The synthesizer was not a toy in Joe's hands," Shorter said Tuesday. "He even practiced how to touch the keys on a synthesizer. He'd say, 'You touch them differently than you touch an acoustic piano. People approach it like it's going to do something. You have to play it like it's not going to do anything; you have to do everything.' " Weather Report's effects were felt across genres, triggering the arrival of a succession of jazz fusion ensembles, as well as jazz-oriented pop groups. Despite its popularity, however, and largely because of the presence of its two leaders, the band retained the respect of the most critical jazz observers. Reviewing the Playboy Jazz Festival in 1982, Leonard Feather wrote in The Times, "Weather Report is less a collective of five men than a single instrument with 10 magisterial hands; a soaring sonic spaceship controlled by two far-from-automatic pilots, Zawinul and Wayne Shorter." According to Shorter, however, the group was initially formed with far different goals in mind. "When we got together," Shorter said, "we spent very little time describing what we wanted to do. In the beginning, we mostly talked about music as literature. Almost compared like to James Joyce -- sentences without periods or commas, without capital letters, or maybe with all capital letters. "The musical changes that took place emerged along the way. Instead of saying, 'Let's do this,' and then planning to take it someplace else the next night, we just worked on a musical dialogue. We knew that sending out what we were trying to do, and having it be received, wasn't going to take place overnight." Nevertheless, Zawinul's "Birdland," released on Weather Report's 1977 album, "Heavy Weather," was a significant jazz hit, garnering Grammy awards for the original version, as well as cover versions by Quincy Jones and one with lyrics by Manhattan Transfer. The band broke up in 1986, and over the last 20 years of his life, Zawinul's musical activities largely centered on his sextet, the Zawinul Syndicate. Mixing rhythms from every part of the world with his own complex of synthesizer sounds, he would sit behind his keyboards like an alchemist, tossing musical phrases back and forth to musicians from across the globe. "I'm a traveler and a listener," Zawinul told Bill Kohlhaase in the L.A. Weekly in 2000. "I'm into the folklore of music, but I've never taken a single bar from another culture. The music [of the Zawinul Syndicate] is just the feeling I have for it. It's what I have in my stomach." Zawinul also composed and performed in other contexts. A recording of his "Stories of the Danube," a seven-movement work for orchestra, incorporating several of his well-known themes, was released on Philips in 1996. And in 1998, he appeared as a soloist on the site of the World War II German concentration camp in Mauthausen, Austria, drawing a crowd of 10,000. Zawinul's illness apparently had already progressed in July when his wife, Maxine, who was the first African American Playboy bunny, died. Shorter recalled seeing him around that time and asking about his health. "The only thing that he said to me," he recalled, "was something really quick: 'I've got this cancer, man.' He just kind of tossed it off. Not that he was in denial. It was more like he was talking about a nuisance. That was Joe." In August, Shorter, finishing a European tour, visited Zawinul at a concert in Hungary. Although they had spoken several times about a Weather Report reunion, it had never actually taken place. "As we drove in from the airport," said Shorter, "his son said that this could be the last time Joe and I would play together. When we got to the concert, I went on stage near the end of his program. Joe and I did the introduction to 'In A Silent Way,' which is the part that his wife, Maxine, liked. When we played together, it was very concise and to the point -- very eye to eye, that kind of thing. When we finished they got a wheelchair, and that was the first time, and the last time, I saw him in a wheelchair." Zawinul lived in Malibu and Vienna, where he started his own club, Birdland. He is survived by three sons, Anthony, Erich and Ivan, and several grandchildren. Although no funeral plans have been announced, Vienna Mayor Michael Haeupl said Zawinul would be buried in a place of honor in Vienna.

My pick this month is again Charles Tolliver Big Band - With Love. As I stated July 13, this was my pick two months ago but they were out of stock. Today I received notice that it has been shipped. I've been holding off breaking open a Stan Kenton because this Tolliver has been described here as being loud like Kenton. I'm looking forward to finding out!