Brownian Motion

Jumpy Enough to Chew a Chair? Try DogCatRadio By DINITIA SMITH Published: November 2, 2005 "Remember, be kind to your mailman," said Jane Harris, a disc jockey. Then she softened her voice until it was a little insinuating: "He only wants to deliver the mail." It is a message that many of her listeners need to hear. Ms. Harris is a D.J. on DogCatRadio.com, a new Internet radio station for pets. Now dogs, cats, hamsters and parrots can keep the anxiety, the loneliness, the restlessness at bay while their owners are out. It is radio just for them, live 17 hours a day, 4 a.m. to 9 p.m. Pacific time, and podcast for the rest of the 24 hours. Those who listen to DogCatRadio will find that there is generally an animal motif to the playlist, like "Hound Dog": "You ain't nothin' but a hound dogcryin' all the time." This Elvis song is a frequent request from listeners (presumably the owners), as are the Baha Men, singing: "Who let the dogs out (woof, woof, woof, woof)." And Dionne Warwick is also popular, especially her soothing song "That's What Friends Are For": "Keep smiling, keep shining,/Knowing you can always count on me." Since many pets are apparently bilingual, DogCatRadio also has a "Spanish Hour," 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. Pacific time daily, with Hispanic commentary and music, like Luis Miguel's "No Sé Tú": DogCatRadio.com was started last June by Adrian Martinez, who is also president of Marusa records, an independent record label in Los Angeles. He runs the station out of a customized RV parked in his office lot in the Eagle Rock section of Los Angeles. Mr. Martinez, 34, who owns six dogs and two cats, said he founded the station because "my cat, Snickers, asked me to do it." One day, Snickers was pacing the floor restlessly and meowing. "I said, 'What do you want?' " Mr. Martinez recalled in a telephone interview from Los Angeles. "I turned up the music, and she was fine." He discovered that Snickers likes 80's rock, particularly the Eddie Money version of the song "Take Me Home Tonight:" "I feel a hunger /It's a hunger that tries to keep a man awake at night." Mr. Martinez added, "I wanted to do something for the pet community." The first week that DogCatRadio was broadcast, the local CBS television station showed a feature about it. As a result, so many people tuned in, 130,000 in one day, that the server crashed, Mr. Martinez said. "We had to get a bigger server to accommodate more listeners." Now, he said, "We average close to 8,000 hits a week. We have a meter that tracks it." "People are just e-mailing us," calling from all over the world, Mr. Martinez said. "I love what you are doing, but please don't forget our equine friends," an e-mail message from Australia said. When Mr. Martinez gets requests, he springs into action. "We go to Tower Records within the hour," he said. "Since we're conquering the globe, we want to make sure we can accommodate these people." Sometimes Mr. Martinez broadcasts from the field. DogCatRadio showed a segment on people walking their dogs first thing in the morning outside the Rose Bowl in Pasadena - a very popular early morning route for dog walkers, bikers and joggers - with interviews (with the owners). It reports on animal charity events like "Walk for Paws," recently sponsored by the group "Nuts for Mutts." Internet radio, which claims about 20 million regular listeners, is still in the early stages of development and has a relatively small number of fans who use their laptops, desktops or hand-held computers to tune in. Mr. Martinez said he believed he had latched onto something unique with his little station: "With all the news you hear on Iraq, it's something to balance the bad news." Meanwhile, the broadcast has received some notice. Dr. Larry Family, who has a talk show program, the Pet Vet, on WROW-AM in Albany, recommends DogCatRadio to his patients' owners. "It's of interest to those people whose pets have certain phobias or anxiety issues," he said in a telephone interview from the outskirts of Schenectady, where he has his practice. "I have recommended it to those whose dogs are having certain problems behaviorwise in the home environment," he said. "It might be helpful with dogs with separation anxiety issues," Dr. Family went on. "Dogs, especially, are interested in watching TV with their owners and listening to music." Mr. Martinez said that at the moment, the station has no advertising and is making no money. But, he said, "I'm not in it for the money." He added, "Eventually, I'm sure, people will advertise." That is not such a leap, since it is estimated that American pet owners will spend $35.9 billion this year on everything from electric toothbrushes for dogs to bird pedicures to self-flushing litter boxes for cats, according to the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association. So far, the six people associated with the station, four of whom act as D.J.'s, are paid only a small stipend to cover expenses. "I'm so involved with the pet community," said Ms. Harris, the D.J. and an owner of five dogs. "I'm looking to this as an avenue to open something up." When Ms. Harris isn't broadcasting on DogCatRadio.com, she works as a market researcher. "How are all my furry friends doing out there?" Ms. Harris asked her listeners recently. "We hope you're doing great and not chewing on anything but your toys."

I'd bid for it 'cept I already own it. But I wouldn't be keen on sending money to the city of Pineville, LA. Sounds like a black hole. Isn't there a bigger city nearby, like Bogalusa, Lafayette, or Algiers whose greater metropolitan area you can pretend to be part of?

I like those, Berigan.

The New York Times October 30, 2005 Phil Hays, Illustrator and Teacher, Is Dead at 74 By STEVEN HELLER Phil Hays, an illustrator and teacher, whose lush watercolor portraits of legendary blues artists like Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday for LP covers defined a distinctive graphic style of album art in the 1970's, died on Monday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 74. Mr. Hays, who lived alone, was found in his apartment, said a friend, the illustrator James McMullan. The cause of death was not officially known, although he had been suffering from emphysema. In the mid-1950's Mr. Hays was one of a young band of expressive and interpretative illustrators, including Robert Weaver, Jack Potter, Tom Allen and Robert Andrew Parker, who, rather than paint or draw literal scenes based entirely on an author's prose, interpreted texts with an eye toward expressive license. Mr. Hays said that representational illustration was an art of nuance, and his work routinely dug below the surface, drawing on Impressionist, Expressionist and Surrealist influences. In 1957, Mr. Hays was hired by Silas H. Rhodes, a founder of the School of Visual Arts in New York, to teach his first illustration class, and later he became chairman of the illustration department. As a teacher he introduced novels, plays and films to students as a way to increase their visual and verbal literacy. "Phil's favorite expression is 'Why not?,' " wrote the poster artist Paul Davis, a former student of his, on the occasion of Mr. Hays's being awarded the Society of Illustrators 2000 Distinguished Educators in the Arts award. "He welcomes experimentation and innovation." At the time Mr. Hays was not much older than his students, but he was already deep into a successful career. His editorial work appeared regularly in Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, McCall's and Esquire. One of his more notable advertising commissions was a very painterly-looking piece for Coca-Cola. Philip Harrison Hays was born in Sherman, Tex., on March 14, 1931. In 1936 his family moved to Shreveport, La., where he went to school until joining the Air Force in 1950. In 1952 he enrolled at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, and in 1955 he moved to New York and started a career as a freelance illustrator. His early watercolor approach, partly inspired by Vuillard, was often quite loose but also extremely detailed. By the mid-1960's his approach to fiction in Esquire and visual reportage in Sports Illustrated "had become darker and more serious," Mr. McMullan noted. He also found a new métier doing portraits of blues and rock 'n' roll musicians. His rendering of Bessie Smith for Columbia Records in the early 70's glows out of the darkness in what appears to be a drug haze, and his Jerry Lee Lewis looks to have stepped out of a seedy motel room. "It was no accident that his most memorable portraits were of performers that lent themselves to Phil's particular kind of visual decadent glamour," Mr. McMullan said. In 1979 Mr. Hays moved back to California to become chairman of the illustration department at the Art Center College of Design. He retired in 2002. He is survived by a brother, Richard, who lives in Tennessee.

Happy Birthday! Save one of these for me!

Love it! A terrorist attack masquerading as a heavenly aroma!

The New York Times October 28, 2005 Good Smell Perplexes New Yorkers By KAREEM FAHIM An unseen, sweet-smelling cloud drifted through parts of Manhattan last night. Arturo Padilla walked through it and declared that it was awesome. "It's like maple syrup. With Eggos. Or pancakes," he said. "It's pleasant." The odor had followed Mr. Padilla and his friend along their walk in Lower Manhattan, from a dormitory on Fulton Street, to Pace University on Spruce Street, and back down again, to where they stood now, near a Dunkin' Donuts. Maybe it was from there, he said. But it wasn't. Mr. Padilla was not alone. Reports of the syrupy cloud poured in from across Manhattan after 9 p.m. Some feared that it was something sinister. There were so many calls that the city's Office of Emergency Management coordinated efforts with the Police and Fire Departments, the Coast Guard and the City Department of Environmental Protection to look into it. By 11 p. m., the search had turned up nothing harmful, according to tests of the air. Reports continued to come in from as far north as 112th Street shortly before midnight. In Lower Manhattan, where the smell had begun to fade, it was back, stronger than before, by 1 a.m. "We are continuing to sample the air throughout the affected area to make sure there's nothing hazardous," said Jarrod Bernstein, an emergency management spokesman. "What the actual cause of the smell is, we really don't know." There were conflicting accounts as to its nature. A police officer who had thrown out her French vanilla coffee earlier compared it to that. Two diplomats from the Netherlands disagreed, politely. Rieneke Buisman said it smelled like roasted peanuts. Her friend Joris Geeven said it reminded him of a Dutch cake called peperkoek, though he could not describe that smell.

Happy Birthday, Brownie!

The thing that most concerns me about drip coffee makers is having the boiling water drip through a plastic basket. I can't imagine that the plastic isn't being added to the finished coffee. Does anyone know of a drip maker that uses a ceramic or stainless steel basket instead of a plastic one?

I like Blakey's "Night in Tunisia" on Victor. Very nice trumpet throughout the date from Bill Hardman, and the drum-bass intro on the title cut moves.

Is that a hat? Carmen Marenda!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/apps/ve/katrina.htm?a=1/ You can type your address in the box on this page and get a bird's eye view of your neighborhood. (I don't know whether it works for addresses outside the US.)

Happy Birthday, Maren!

I've always found this fellow an irritant.

Thanks for your many contributions to making this an interesting and inviting place to hang out.

Hack writing. Probably fancies himself a real iconoclast.

Sometimes there is a higher truth than the merely factual. Ralph Berton's memoir "Remembering Bix" was probably equal measure fact and fiction. Is it still one of the great memoirs of the "Jazz Age"? Without question.

He's also one of the last of the Louis Armstrong All-Stars.

The New York Times October 4, 2005 Serious Riders, Your Bicycle Seat May Affect Your Love Life By SANDRA BLAKESLEE A raft of new studies suggest that cyclists, particularly men, should be careful which bicycle seats they choose. The studies add to earlier evidence that traditional bicycle saddles, the kind with a narrow rear and pointy nose, play a role in sexual impotence. Some saddle designs are more damaging than others, scientists say. But even so-called ergonomic seats, to protect the sex organs, can be harmful, the research finds. The dozen or so studies, from peer-reviewed journals, are summarized in three articles in September's Journal of Sexual Medicine. In a bluntly worded editorial with the articles, Dr. Steven Schrader, a reproductive health expert who studies cycling at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, said he believed that it was no longer a question of "whether or not bicycle riding on a saddle causes erectile dysfunction." Instead, he said in an interview, "The question is, What are we going to do about it?" The studies, by researchers at Boston University and in Italy, found that the more a person rides, the greater the risk of impotence or loss of libido. And researchers in Austria have found that many mountain bikers experience saddle-related trauma that leads to small calcified masses inside the scrotum. This does not mean that people should stop cycling, Dr. Schrader said. And those who ride bikes rarely or for short periods need not worry. But riders who spend many hours on a bike each week should be concerned, he said. And he suggested that the bicycle industry design safer saddles and stop trivializing the risks of the existing seats. A spokesman for the industry said it was aware of the issue and added that "new designs are coming out." "Most people are not riding long enough to damage themselves permanently," said the spokesman, Marc Sani, publisher of Bicycle Retailer and Industry News. "But a consumer's first line of defense, for their enthusiasm as well as sexual prowess, is to go to a bicycle retailer and get fitted properly on the bike." Researchers have estimated that 5 percent of men who ride bikes intensively have developed severe to moderate erectile dysfunction as a result. But some experts believe that the numbers may be much higher because many men are too embarrassed to talk about it or fail to associate cycling with their problems in the bedroom. The link between bicycle saddles and impotence first received public attention in 1997 when a Boston urologist, Dr. Irwin Goldstein, who had studied the problem, asserted that "there are only two kinds of male cyclists - those who are impotent and those who will be impotent." Cyclists became angry and defensive, he said, adding: "They said cycling is healthy and could not possibly hurt you. Sure you can get numb. But impotent? No way." The bicycle industry listened, said Joshua Cohen, a physical therapist in Chapel Hill, N.C., and the author of "Finding the Perfect Bicycle Seat." Manufacturers designed dozens of new saddles with cut outs, splits in the back and thick gel padding to relieve pressure on tender body parts. Scientists also stepped up their research. Since 2000, a dozen studies have been carried out using sophisticated tools to see exactly what happens when vulnerable human anatomy meets the bicycle saddle. The area in question is the perineum, between the external genitals and the anus. "When you sit on a chair you never put weight on the perineum," Dr. Schrader said. "But when you sit on a bike, you increase pressure on the perineum" sevenfold. In men, a sheath in the perineum, called Alcock's canal, contains an artery and a nerve that supply the penis with blood and sensation. The canal runs along the side of a bone, Dr. Goldstein said, and when a cyclist sits hard on a narrow saddle, the artery and the nerve are compressed. Over time, a reduction of blood flow can mean that there is not enough pressure to achieve full erection. In women, Dr. Goldstein said, the same arteries and nerves engorge the clitoris during sexual intercourse. Women cyclists have not been studied as much, he added, but they probably suffer the same injuries. Researchers are using a variety of methods to study the compression caused by different saddles. One method involves draping a special pad with 900 pressure sensors over the saddle. The distribution of the rider's weight is then registered on a computer. In another technique, sensors are placed on the rider's penis to measure oxygen flowing through arteries beneath the skin. Blood flow is detected by other sensors that send a "swoosh" sound to a Doppler machine. The research shows that when riders sit on a classic saddle with a teardrop shape and a long nose, a quarter of their body weight rests on the nose, putting pressure on the perineum. The amount of oxygen reaching the penis typically falls 70 percent to 80 percent in three minutes. "A guy can sit on a saddle and have his penis oxygen levels drop 100 percent but he doesn't know it," Mr. Cohen said. "After half an hour he goes numb." Dr. Goldstein added, "Numbness is your body telling you something is wrong." Today's ergonomic saddles have splits in the back or holes in the center to relieve pressure on the perineum. But this may make matters worse: the ergonomic saddles have smaller surface areas, so the rider's weight presses harder on less saddle, Dr. Schrader said. The perineum may not escape injury because its arteries run laterally and they are not directly over the cutouts. The arteries can come under more pressure when they come into contact with the cutouts' edges. Thick gels on saddles can also increase pressure to the perineum, the studies found, because the material can migrate and form clumps in all the wrong places. Just as many smokers do not get lung cancer, many cyclists will never develop impotence from bicycle seats, the scientists said. What makes one person more vulnerable than another is not known. Body weight seems to matter: heavier riders exert more pressure on saddles. Variations in anatomy may also make a difference. Dr. Goldstein said he often saw patients who were stunned to learn that riding a bicycle led to their impotence. One middle-aged man rode in a special cycling event to honor a friend and has been impotent since. A 28-year-old who came in for testing, Dr Goldstein said, showed the penile blood flow of a 60-year-old. A college student who had competed in rough cycling sports was unable to achieve an erection until microvascular surgery restored penile blood flow. "We make kids wear helmets and knee pads," Dr. Goldstein said. "But no one thinks about protecting the crotch." The safest seats and saddles, experts say, force the rider to sit back firmly on the sit bones so the perineum is protected. Dr. Schrader advocates saddles that do not have noses. After finding that traditional saddles reduced the quality of nighttime erections in young policemen who patrol on bicycles, he has persuaded scores of officers in several cities to use noseless seats and is now studying the officers' sexual function over six months. Nunzio Lamaestra, a 46-year-old police officer in San Antonio, said he appreciated his noseless bicycle saddle. "You get used to riding without the nose," he said. "I can do everything, including ride with no hands."

Those Keebler elves for sure. And drowning would be too quick and painless for Care Bears.

Chris, Wal-Mart?. That's low, just top save a couple of bucks. And it was priced cheaper at Amazon.

Thanks, guys.

I like that photograph! What can you tell me about it?

I've taken quite a fancy recently to his excellent playing. He seems to have one foot planted firmly in late swing and one in bop, but without any of the preciousness often afflicting similarly situated players. Lou can be heard to wonderful advantage on "C'Est Magnifique", a concert recording by George Masso of all Cole Porter material. Lou also has a Concord Jazz album under his own name dating from the early 90s, and he's appeared on a few other albums over the last decade, but considering the quality of his playing and his age (I think he's in his early 70s) his discography is extremely thin. Anyone know why?

Another one I like a lot is by Jim Cullum's Jazz Band (Columbia) - they give the score a dixieland interpretation, and it works quite well. Of course, the Ella/Louis and the Miles/Gil are tops in my book. Who is that professor/historian? ← I'll second the Jim Cullum interpretation. I wouldn't call it dixieland; it's more planned than that, but it's clearly an interpretation based on pre-30s jazz styles. Too bad it's out of print and damned difficult to find: it deserves better.