ghost of miles

Jodi Doering, South Dakota nurse, on Twitter: “I have a night off from the hospital. As I’m on my couch with my dog I can’t help but think of the Covid patients the last few days. The ones that stick out are those who still don’t believe the virus is real. The ones who scream at you for a magic medicine and that Joe Biden is going to ruin the USA. All while gasping for breath on 100% Vapotherm. They tell you there must be another reason they are sick. They call you names and ask why you have to wear all that ‘stuff’ because they don’t have COViD because it’s not real. Yes. This really happens. I can’t stop thinking about it. These people really think this isn’t going to happen to them. And then they stop yelling at you when they get intubated. It’s like a fucking horror movie that never ends. There’s no credits that roll. You just go back and do it all over again.” Jodi Doering on Twitter

I think one source was Otto Friedrich’s City Of Nets (I just pulled it off the shelf and found the relevant section on pg 231-33), but I’m pretty sure that I also read about it in one of the Chandler bios. The Wikipedia entry for the film makes a brief allusion to Chandler’s original intended ending and why he had to change it.

The peekaboo!

Chander was infamously pressured to change the identity of the murderer. I don't want to give away any spoilers for those who've never watched it; it's a classic noir, but the first time I saw it the reveal struck me as weird and forced. Didn't read the account of the script change & reasons behind it till years later.

An old favorite that I haven’t listened to in a long time:

Ricky Riccardi has high praise for this session in his new Louis book.

A Jasmine set of V-discs (and one that thankfully excludes any commercial recordings that were repackaged for V-disc release; it uses only sessions recorded exclusively for V-discs as well as broadcasts):

Timely for me, as I've recently been revisiting the Johnny Hodges 1956-61 Mosaic set. Will definitely give this a listen!

The Hawaiian waffle was my favorite when I was a kid. We always went to Waffle House after Easter church services. There was a Waffle House for many years here in Bloomington at the corner of 10th and College, but the family owners finally sold the land and building, and it was replaced by a student apartment building. An iconic Btown location to me especially because the Waffle House was where a local jazz musician/promoter took Marshall Allen and John Gilmore after a Sun Ra gig here (either late 1970s or early 80s).

Finished American Pastoral several days ago and am about 100 pages into I Married A Communist in the LOA edition of Philip Roth’s American Trilogy. American Pastoral was outstanding, except... much like The Plot Against America, I think Roth fails to stick the ending, which is frustrating for me in both instances, because they’re such ambitious and well-written books. I read Plot not long after it came out, and it merits a rereading (does it ever, given current circumstances), and found it a brilliantly-rendered and all-too-plausible alternative-history novel until the ending, which at the time struck me as ludicrous and almost pat in the way it corrected the narrative back on track to subsequent real-life events. But maybe I was asking too much and will find it less disagreeable in a reread. With American Pastoral, there’s an epic and revelatory dinner party that goes on for quite some time, and then the book just sputters out IMO with an attempted act of violence, the significance of which didn’t work for me as a conclusion to such a large-scale narrative... it closed the story off in an abrupt and (to me) artistically-unsatisfying manner. But a superlative novel nonetheless.

If only. A certain recently-electorally deposed public figure has been touting them for some time now. As with so many other things in the past several years, lunacy has left satire in the dust. Re the article, I do hope this doesn’t point to an eventual decrease in Japanese CD releases and reissues, though I suppose that’s inevitable.

A happy 81st birthday today to Mr. Andrew Cyrille:

Man--I did this show so long ago that I truly think I'd forgotten about putting it together. Glad you guys are enjoying it! I contemplated a sequel but never got around to doing one.

One more once for The Fantastic Jazz Harp Of Dorothy Ashby, which aired again last week on stations that carry Night Lights.

Between the changing-of-the-guard news in general and Pfizer’s announcement of how promising its vaccine-in-development is, I’m starting to think we may be in a much better place by next summer. It’s gotten really brutal again for the time being, and the next few months will in all likelihood be worse. Hopefully we can ride it out until there’s a more aggressive, coherent, ongoing response in place and an effective vaccine can begin to be distributed. And that’s really cool about one of the new task-force members being a friend of yours, RT!

Revisiting this one for the first time in many years tonight. Sitting here with some windows open because it’s so warm for November, and this music sounding lovely and perfect for a late Sunday evening.

I loved it! Listening right now to a session that Buster plays on about 20 years prior: