Tom Storer

Thanks for the tip! I'll check 'em out.

Today I had an H. Upmann Cuban, not sure of the size but about 6 inches long. My first disappointment: it was badly constructed, I guess. Difficult draw from the start, so I had to puff more energetically than was comfortable just to keep it lit. As a result it started to smoke a little hot and the taste was adversely affected. Then towards the end of the second third, the wrapper began to unravel from the foot, making it look something like one of those exploding cigars. My cigar-smoking pal had an identical cigar; he reported that his too was hard to smoke, but at least it didn't explode.

So far I've been smoking on a full stomach and haven't had any problems. Mind you, I haven't smoked anything extremely big or extremely strong, either. Continuing my cigar odyssey, I have smoked: - Zino Classic No. 6 - Romeo y Julieta Romeo No. 3 - Partagas 160 Loved the Romeo No. 3. The Partagas turned out to be a bit dry. I realized that I had not sufficiently humidified the little humidor I bought. Those little humidifiers are tricky devils.

Cubans are readily available here, but all the advice I've gotten has been that it's better to start mild and work one's way toward stronger cigars. Apparently Cubans tend to be strong, or at least don't cover the mildest end, so I'll be patient. I've seen that fine cigars, like fine whiskies, are expensive; that plus the fact that I don't want to stink up the living room with cigar smoke (and nor does my wife want me to stink up the living room with cigar smoke) means that I will not be a daily smoker by any means. No porch, no balcony, no back yard, so to smoke I'll need fine weather. However, to get me through the winter there are a couple of fumoirs in Paris, bars or restaurants with a physically separate space where one can smoke a cheroot (no service inside, to respect the anti-smoking law, which is based on protecting employees from second-hand smoke). Today after lunch I will go out with a coworker and smoke my second cigar, a Domaine Avo robusto.

Yesterday I smoked my first cigar, an Ashton donated by a cigar-aficionado friend. I liked it, so I find myself at the beginning of a journey. Surely there are cigar smokers here. Can I get a witness?

I totally agree. That's what I was getting at, not as clearly as you did, several posts back when I said "he leads the audience into cheerfully accepting extremely brutal on-screen violence as great fun because it's against the bad guys." You're right, he found just the right scapegoats (universally condemned, symbolic of all that is evil) on whom to unleash his own sadism. "Whose side are you on, me or the Nazis?"

There's a site that is invaluable for situations like this: www.bleepingcomputer.com. The people at this site are guardian angels, I swear. They're very serious and tell you exactly what to do, step by step. It usually involves downloading specific antivirus or antimalware programs if you don't already have them, then sending them the log files with results of scans. They take you through steps in exhaustive detail until you've killed the virus dead. For a thing like this, be ready to spend a weekend working with them on it. I've used their services--it's free of charge--twice, each for exactly this kind of desperate infection. I was so grateful that I donated money. Seriously, they're lifesavers. Well worth trying.

I'll be seeing Bunky Green on Wednesday night, opening for Ornette in Paris!

Got tickets to see his quartet at the Salle Pleyel in October!

I gather that that's just it--they count on most of their sales being not to jazz geeks like us but to the general public, people who have a certain interest in jazz but few or no CDs covering the period in question. Us jazz geeks make up most of the remaining core of faithful purchasers. It's the more casual clientele that can be led away by the siren song of even cheaper compilations, and they need that clientele if they're going to break even. That's how I understand it, anyway.

Yeah, that's what I thought it might be--the supermarkets. I never visit the CD section when I'm in a supermarket big enough to have one, so I haven't seen them; and for brick-and-mortar I go to the FNAC, and haven't seen them there. Fucking supermarkets!

I've never noticed look-alike ripoffs to this series, at least not in the FNAC. But I don't know, maybe they sell them at Carrefour and Auchan and other French hypermarkets, or other places where a large public looks for discounts. I've read that hypermarkets account for a surprisingly large proportion of book and CD sales.

That's infuriating. I don't know the first thing about marketing but I wonder if the "psychological barrier" isn't an obstacle. They might sell more by pricing them higher instead of competing with those who kill the market by underpricing. People will think "These sets are of rare value and are worth paying for" instead of "Great, cheap jazz! But wait, over here there's a box that's even cheaper!" BWTFDIK?

Yeah, but what disturbed me was that there was no sense in the movie of anything than rah-rah delight--and pushing the audience to feel rah-rah delight--when he smashes the Nazi to pulp with the baseball bat. (Not in combat, for those who haven't seen it yet--an unarmed prisoner.)

I enjoyed it but with serious reservations. On a moment-by-moment level I was in it all the way. My reservations echo some of those stated by others in the thread, including the sense that Taratino is above all concerned with the meta-movie aspects; technique, style and reference are all great but the story here was, as Alexander admitted, thin. A simplistic revenge fantasy about killing the bad guys--that was it. In addition, although in general I would agree with the idea that "it's only a movie," there were nonetheless aspects I wasn't comfortable with. Typically Tarantino's over-the-top technicolor gore is in contexts of crime and individuals, not politics and history. Here he does two things that made me uneasy: he leads the audience into cheerfully accepting extremely brutal on-screen violence as great fun because it's against the bad guys; and he trivializes the history of Nazi Germany. The kid in the audience who asked "Is that how it really happened?"--OK, he's woefully ignorant, but still, it's indicative of something. I don't like the idea of turning Hitler and the Nazis into just another cultural legend that people provide their own variations on until young people aren't sure what really happened or if it's important to make the distinction. It's too recent. IMHO. Acting-wise, yes, Christoph Waltz as Landa stole the show, I thought. Pitt didn't have much of a role at all, actually. He just had to read his lines with a good hillbilly accent and collect his paycheck. (An anachronism in the scene in the tavern revealed that Tarantino is not familiar with the history of whisky. They order a "33-year-old single malt," but between the mid-18th century and the latter part of the 20th century, single malts were virtually unknown outside Scotland. Whisky meant blended whisky, even to whisky lovers.)

Tommy T, thank you very much for that clarification! You've made me a very happy man. Long life to Jean Schwarz and André Francis!

I had been assuming the new copyright law would make it impossible to continue the series. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't know how it would be justified. The new EU rule is 70 years before something hits the public domain, right? I've been picking up the Le Monde series: every Saturday with the newspaper, two CDs of selected cuts by a big name, with a biographical booklet and full personnel details. There will be a total of thirty artists featured. Great work, once again. Now that I think of it, if Le Monde can get away it (since the tunes go up to 1959), maybe there are loopholes somewhere that Les Trésors du Jazz could also take advantage of. Or maybe they're just ignoring the new law and to hell with it. Hope springs eternal!

Betty Carter used to be scornful of Lou Donaldson's claim to be keeping the flame of the good ol' stuff. She said that in the mid-70's he tried to jump on the commercial funky-jazz bandwagon like everybody else and used to encourage young players to follow that path to fame and riches. But it didn't work out for him, and he became vocal in his scorn for any compromise regarding "real jazz." AMG provides some evidence for this view, describing 1974's "Sweet Lou" thusly: "The 1974 setting, following standard operating procedure for the period, is a nougat of trumpet and trombone charts plus a funky rhythm section infiltrated by trendy clavinet and synthesizer sounds."

I like the Broom record quite a bit. It's not a sui generis masterpiece, with each member of the trio playing flawlessly well, respecting the very essence of Monkness and yet adding a unique personal viewpoint. That doesn't ruin it for me like it appears to do for some. It feels good and I really like Broom's sound. Maybe I'm just not picky enough.

Happy birthday, Hank! He's scheduled to play a solo concert in Paris this fall. I have my ticket!

I saw it. It was terrible. A gangster movie retread, completely uninspired in all ways.

Hmmm. I love it. Oops, wrong word. You meant "started," right? I can't speak for AllMusic.com, but ever since he left Miles there have been naysayers. Some don't like his bass sound, some say he plays flat, some say he rushes the tempo; in addition his albums have not always been memorable. I think he's on a roll nowadays. All his most recent albums I've found excellent.

It's not unusual for enthusiasms to wax and wane. Sometimes you need air, that's all. If you've been obsessive for decades and find yourself losing interest, that doesn't mean that after a while it won't kick in again. Take up some other hobby for a while! Personally, I've never been a collector, just a random accumulator. I still trundle on buying 1, 2 or 3 CDs a month, plus my 40 tracks on eMusic. There are times when I feel like that's more than enough, and times I burn for more. Just ride the waves and troughs...

Interesting take. It echoes that of a guitarist friend of mine, who is considerably more favorably inclined to what he calls "Scobertheny" guitar than to the heirs of Grant Green. But little by little he has come around to the Peter Bernstein camp and now has great esteem for him, and even buys the CDs. I like Bernstein a lot, too.

Rather predictably, I would think. They're probably getting many times more email complaints and queries in the wake of all this than they ever planned for, so I can imagine a few offices full of harassed wage slaves each with a backlog of hundreds of emails to clear out of the pipe. Their eyes glaze over, they glance very briefly and with little interest at the detailed critiques and nuanced requests for information, then they send the form letter and piss off customers looking for individual attention and respect. Meanwhile, management congratulates itself on not varying from the core message decided at some point by a confused committee. Communication is the name of the game!