Tom Storer

"Could of been"? ARGH! Could HAVE been!

Hell, I didn't need no steenking financial crisis to live on the edge! No, but seriously. I have a very small nest egg in a company investment plan and all the rest of my income (and my wife's) goes into living month to month and paying my mortgage. We save crumbs every month. Even if my savings are halved I'm not out much.

I'm really looking forward to this one. Much as I love the quintet and big band, it'll be nice to hear his music for another configuration.

Somebody is old! He's not the only one. Hang on, I'll google him... Ah, yes, the actor, singer, producer, composer and screenwriter born on August 28, 1969 in Hermosa Beach, California. That Jack Black!

Anyone know when this was recorded?

Take heed, users of portable audio devices. I used them for years while commuting in the Paris metro and had to give them up overnight when a hearing test revealed that I had indeed damaged my hearing. Don't let it happen to you!

Argh. I have enough trouble wrapping my head around all this finance stuff. Language like "if the market is allowed to do what it thinks is best" doesn't help! A market does not think or have opinions. It's an aggregate of millions of individual actions. I think what that phrase means is "if the market is allowed to function without regulation." I know I'm splitting hairs, but the term "the market" is often used imprecisely. Whenever it's anthropomorphized into a thoughtful individual I just get more confused (even though I can understand the temptation to sum it up that way). It's kind of like when people talk about evolution as if it has clever intentions ("this species evolved this way to solve the problem of..."). Thank you for listening.

As I understand it, the problem is not whether the banks in a given country are strict about home loans, but about whether they invest in the financial products whose value is uncertain because they contain "subprime" home loan credit originating in the States. Those subprime mortgages were sliced up and packaged, resliced and repackaged with other stuff, and so on, and sold and resold all over the world--all the while being given good credit ratings. Therefore conscientious Canadian banks could well be stuck holding the same risky assets as banks in any other country.

Rachel, I'm trying to guess what profession you might be in... lawyer? Painter? Short order cook? Computer programmer? Opthalmologist?

Actually, I was wrong, they do have my neighborhood, but they have no idea what it contains. Not surprising that they wouldn't have good data for the entire world, but even in the US they seem to be sort of random, according to comments. A great idea for a site, but dependent on having complete data.

Just started Balzac's "La Comédie Humaine," starting with "Le Père Goriot." I've never read Balzac.

The site doesn't cover Paris, but my neighborhood would have to be 100. If I didn't have to go to work in the morning (via metro station two minutes from my house) I wouldn't have to ever leave the neighborhood if I didn't want to.

Damn, if the critics' fears come true and the earth is swallowed up by tiny black holes, we'll never know who would have won the election!

Perez plays very conservatively compared to what he does in the outer-space Shorter quartet, certainly. But conservative doesn't mean uninteresting. He can't go too far afield from the strings or there wouldn't be any point playing with the strings to begin with. But I find his playing more interesting than the strings!

Boy, I totally disagree, GA. I hear the orchestra as being sonically in the background--kind of compressed and thin-sounding, not much relief, although very warm. Not acoustically realistic at all--it doesn't sound in any way as if the orchestra and the musicians were in the same space. I'm not surprised in the least to learn that they didn't record it together, it really sounds that way to me. I'd like to know, however, whether Perez and the rhythm section were listening to another recorded, perhaps synthesized version of the charts as they played. I'm no expert but it must be pretty hard to come up with string arrangements to put behind a jazz group after the fact, no? Personally, 95% of my enjoyment does come from Perez and his partners. The strings are a lush, warm pillow--more like an image of a pillow since as I said, there's not much depth to the sound--but not, to my ears, the main deal at all. Perez plays beautifully throughout, with a beautiful, contained lyricism. Nor do I think that McBride, Nash and Quintero were wasted. They play very well and I greatly enjoy Nash's discreetly swinging drums--a testament, IMO, to the way a great jazz drummer can make a big difference in a less-is-more style. Special mention also to Cassandra Wilson's absolutely gorgeous versions of "Lazy Afternoon" and "(All of a Sudden) My Heart Sings." As with much of her work these days, she sings relatively softly and close to the mike, as opposed to singing out. In this sumptuously recorded context it sounds great. Like you, I like it more with each listen.

Not in the least. I've had the same stereo and speakers for perhaps 15 years and off the top of my head I don't even know what brand they are. But they sound good to me. Not that I don't notice especially good or bad sound. A friend bought an expensive Bang and Olufsen setup a few years ago and I always thought it sounded terrible. It really bothered me. BWTFDIK? I once read a letter to the editor of a French classical music magazine. The magazine has separate reviews for the music and the audio quality of each CD, and the writer wondered why the same reviewer didn't do both. The magazine answered that the music reviewers mostly listened on their shitty old equipment and had no clue about audio quality.

Amazon has it.

I guess when you're reviewing thousands and thousands of CDs with a deadline staring you in the face, you must run out of things to say. In that case, a little quick and dirty armchair psychoanalysis can fill entire paragraphs! Best thing about it is that you can say any old thing that comes to mind without needing anything to support your hasty conclusions.

That's supply and demand for you. More demand, prices rise.

Often, women want to find solutions to problems that, to women's great frustration, men don't consider to be problems to begin with. If they are aware of them at all. My wife is a great nest-maker, to use Jim's metaphor, and living in a nice nest is really very good for one (studies show that the lifespan of married men is greater than that of single men). When my wife comes up with a suggestion for somehow rearranging the living quarters, once upon a time my reaction would be, "But it's nice the way it is!" By now I've learned that she doesn't make such suggestions unless she has analyzed the situation with razor-sharp reasoning, financial as well as aesthetic, thought about it for a long time, and come up with a solution (to the problem I hadn't noticed) that will make the nest even nicer: either better to look at, better in terms of practical arrangement, better in terms of possibilities offered, or all of the above. Absolutely. But if you listen, you can also contribute. They do go together. Lots of men have solutions that go like this: "Problem is X. Solution Y removes X. Let's do Y right now and put all this behind us so we can stop talking about it. Get out of my way, I'm going to do Y right this instant! What do you mean you don't want to do Y? You were just complaining about X! Sheesh!" Whereas a more unisex kind of approach is "Problem is X, huh? Yeah, I guess that's right. But why do we have X? X has some good things about it, too. What do you think? ... We could do Y. How does Y sound? You don't like Y? Why not? Oh, OK. I see your point. But let me try to convince you. Over a glass of wine, I'll pour." Brainstorming between spouses can be a pleasurable and fruitful experience--much better than "Oh hell, another dreary task coming from out of left field. These women and their constant demands." Vice-versa too, no? Taken care of? Yeah, but in the sense that couples are kind of supposed to take care of each other. In my experience women want not to be taken for granted. You have to keep paying attention to each other and adjusting to all the minor changes. If you're not paying attention, trouble will come. And when you pay attention, they like it, they like you--and pay attention back.

Jeez, you US residents... Amazon has them for only $19.98! Here in France it would be about the same figure in euros... I could order them from Amazon in the US, get them shipped here, and it would still be cheaper than going to the local store. I have no sympathy!

Funny--same thing happened to me yesterday. But when I uninstalled and reinstalled, it worked. Go figure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL9rvv_QFTs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMHwBoHaH2Q...feature=related

Damn.