DTMX

Thanks for the mammaries.

I don't think this name's come up - Charlie Rich. I know, I know. But the Feel Like Going Home: The Essential Charlie Rich 2 CD set is just amazing, particularly the material recorded at Sun Studios. On NPR, Sam Phillips said the best song he ever recorded was Rich's Don't Put No Headstone on My Grave. Some songs get a little countripolitan at times but there's enough soul on the other material to even it out. And Rich's last recording, Pictures and Paintings, made for a great swansong. Amazon's review follows: On Pictures and Paintings, Charlie Rich got the chance before he died to make the jazz record he always had in him, though of course, this is Charlie Rich, so even when he's doing Duke Ellington's "Mood Indigo," it's never just jazz. Always a singer's singer, Rich slides gracefully here - in the same song, sometimes even in the same phrase - from jazz and blues to pop and gospel, his gruff vocals straining, sighing, tearing, pausing, living in these songs until you'll swear you've lived them too. Backed by a swinging combo that includes his own Stan Getz-influenced piano, Rich is flawless throughout, whether he's laying down a definitive "Am I Blue" or revisiting his own "Feel Like Going Home." --David Cantwell

When Branford Marsalis played Atlanta a couple of years ago, the last song of the night was The Impaler. Tain was playing so hard that he broke his bass drum pedal in the middle of the song. They tried to fix it but couldn't so the encore ended up being a simple blues jam (with greatly subdued drums).

I suspected as much... The real eating disorder.

I think Anthony Braxton has played the instrument on the left.

From the movie Sling Blade: Frank Wheatley: I don't like potted meat. Daddy used to say they was made out of lips, peckers and intestines.

I read that the one with the eating disorder was doing it so her sister would be labeled "the fat one". I read a lot of shit.

Forever immortalized in animation.

When visiting the boss' house, you eat whatever his wife puts in front of you (no matter how many eyes are looking back at you from the bowl). And in Japan, you don't get a napkin to spit into (so carry many hankerchiefs and fake a cold so you can always have one in your hand). Another tip: Japanese meals usually consist of small servings of many different foods and/or atrocities. When served a dish of squid entrails, fake taking a bite (everyone else will be too busy digging in to notice the food never actually left the chopsticks). Then hog the conversation by telling stories or something so everyone else will eat while you talk. With luck, they'll eat the gross stuff and not leave you any. But when something edible hits the table, shut up and eat. Sometimes this works, sometimes not. More than a few nights nothing decent came around and I had to finish a 3 hour meal by filling up on Ritz crackers in my hotel. Still, wouldn't have missed the experience for anything. And love Japanese food, just not crazy about eyeballs on the plate.

The little podunk town of Honjo (big shoutout to Saitama Prefecture!) in Japan had three restaurants in which I could order by merely pointing to a picture of the food. One was a McD's, the other two were a Denny's and KFC, side-by-side. I used to walk a couple of miles to Denny's for breakfast, then walk a couple more over to McD's for lunch, then back to KFC for dinner - weekends only (for 9 weeks). Weekdays were the company cafeteria and 7-11.

September 15th, 2004 LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Johnny Ramone, guitarist and co-founder of the seminal punk band "The Ramones," has died. He was 55. Ramone died in his sleep Wednesday afternoon at his Los Angeles home surrounded by friends and family, his publicist said. He had battled prostate cancer for five years, and was hospitalized in June at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Ramone, born John Cummings, was one of the original members of the Ramones, whose hit songs "I Wanna be sedated" and "Blitzkrieg Bop," among others, earned the band induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002. The band's singer, Joey Ramone, whose real name was Jeff Hyman, died in 2001 of lymphatic cancer. Bassist Dee Dee Ramone, who was born Douglas Colvin, died from a drug overdose in 2002. Johnny Ramone founded "The Ramones" in 1974 with Joey Ramone, DeeDee Ramone and Tommy Ramone, the only surviving member of the original band. A tribute concert and cancer research fund raiser was held Sunday in Los Angeles to celebrate the band's 30th anniversary. It featured performances by Los Angeles punk band X, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Henry Rollins and others. Along with his wife, Linda Cummings, Johnny Ramone was surrounded at his death by friends Eddie and Jill Vedder, and Rob and Sherrie Zombie. Other friends who gathered at his Los Angeles home included Lisa Marie Presley, Pete Yorn, Vincent Gallo and Talia Shire.

Japanese Food: 1. Boiled pig intestines with buckwheat dumplings - both of them the identical shade of gray. 2. Liquified squid, innards and all (hold the ink), blenderized into applesauce-like consistancy and served in a small bowl (as an appetizer). 3. Natto: not exactly sure what it is but I suspect it's fermented soybeans mixed with some kind of turd.

I've been going to the same barber since I was 5 years old and haven't tipped him in 35 years - of course I do have to supply my own bowl.

Suspects still at large, presumed adorable.

"I know what you're thinking. Did he fire six shots or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I've kinda lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya punk? Arf!"

Find out who George is putting money on for the World Series this year - I hear it's a lock.

Sad. I was a big fan of his work.

I bought a CD from Amazon a few years ago and they sent me a Vinny Golia CD by mistake. I returned the Golia and got the one I ordered. Then I got into Golia and ended up re-ordering the CD that I had returned. Gotta lotta Golia now. Out of 600+ purchases from Amazon, that's the only wrong shipment that I've ever received.

The Antheil on Naxos is the way to go. There's a recording of his 4th and 6th symphonies; they're okay but there were better symphonies being written during that period. George Antheil was also an author and inventor. As reported here, Antheil and Hedy Lamarr invented a radio frequency-hopping torpedo control system. Although rejected by the US Navy the idea was later taken up by the cellular telephone industry. As cellphones move from place to place they are assigned new, unoccupied frequencies to jump to - called a "hand-off" (I worked in cellular for 10 years). Here's an excerpt from the previously mentioned website: Antheil knew practically everybody in Paris's literary, artistic and musical circles, but in 1933 he returned permanently to the United States. He became a film composer in Hollywood and a writer for Esquire magazine, producing a syndicated advice-to-the-lovelorn column and articles about romance and endocrinology. He even published a book titled Every Man His Own Detective: A Study of Glandular Endocrinology. In 1939 he set an article to Esquire about the future of Europe that proved impressively accurate: It predicted that the war would start with Germany invading Poland, that Germany would later attack Russia, and then the United States would be drawn into the conflict. He met Hedy Lamar in the summer of 1940, when they were neighbors in Hollywood and she approached him witha question about glands: She wanted to know how she could enlarge her breasts . In time the conversation came around to weapons, and Lamarr told Antheil that she was contemplating quitting MGM and moving to Washington, D.C., to offer her services to the newly established National Inventors Council. They began talking about radio control for torpedoes. The idea itself was not new, but her concept of "frequency hopping" was. Lamarr brought up the idea of radio control. Antheil's contribution was to suggest the device by which synchronization could be achieved. He proposed that rapid changes in radio frequencies could be coordinated the way he had coordinated the sixteen synchronized player pianos in his Ballet Méanique. The analogy was complete in his mind: By the time the two applied for a patent on a "Secret Communication System," on June 10, 1941, the invention used slotted paper rolls similar to player-piano rolls to synchronize the frequency changes in transmitter and receiver, and it even called for exactly eighty-eight frequencies, the number of keys on a piano. Lamarr and Antheil worked on the idea for several months and then, in December 1940, sent a description of it to the National Inventors Council, which had been launched with much fanfare earlier in the year as a gatherer of novel ideas and inventions from the general public. Its chairman was Charles F. Kettering, the research director of General Motors. Over its lifetime, which lasted until 1974, the council collected more than 625,000 suggestions, few of which ever reached the patent stage. But according to Antheil, Kettering himself suggested that he and Lamarr develop their idea to the point of being patentable. With the help of an electrical engineering professor from the California Institute of Technology they ironed out its bugs, and the patent was granted on August 11, 1942. It specified that a high-altitude observiation plane could steer the torpedo from above. Despite Antheil's lobbying, the Navy turned its back on the invention, concluding that the mechanism would have been too bulky to fit into a torpedo. Antheil disagreed; he insisted that it could be made small enough to squeeze into a watch. And he thought he knew why the Navy was so negative: "In our patent Hedy and I attempted to better elucidate our mechanism by explaining that certain parts of it worked like the fundamental mechanism of a player piano. Here, undoubted, we made our mistake. The reverend and brass-headed gentlemen in Washington who examined our invention read no further than the words 'player piano. 'My god,' I can see them saying, 'we shall put a player piano in a torpedo.'" History kicks ass. So does Hedy Lamarr.

After driving through Tropical Storm Frances at 5AM to get to work for a meeting that I'm not even being paid to attend this is just what I need to cheer me up. No need to save this one for special days - every day at Organissimo is a special day. Avatar updated and greatly appreciated. Thanks, Doug

Particularly at street-level.

I just ordered this one from Amazon - DON'T TELL ME HOW IT ENDS!

Ned Beatty was unavailable for comment.

The only decent commercial radio station in Atlanta, the legendary Z93, dropped all of its on-air talent last month and changed over to a alternative/classic rock format that consists mostly of a buttload of Dave Matthews songs. The new station name - I shit you not - is DAVE FM. There's still no on-air talent. Just songs, commercials, and traffic reports. At least there's college radio and NPR.

Black Water is amazing. Haven't heard anything else by him (but want to).