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Slightly more than halfway through Nabokov's The Defense (or The Luzhin Defense). Just not that interesting to me (actually Zweig's The Royal Game covers much the same territory and is marginally more effective). To be honest, I wasn't that gripped by King, Queen, Knave either, though the plot is a little more compelling. If I don't start enjoying these novels more, I am going to scrap my plan to read all his major novels. I don't want this to become a chore. Because I was traveling, I had a chance to read several shorter works (I didn't bring the Nabokov since it was a library book and sets off most sensors). I finished Transparency: Stories by Frances Hwang, which are interesting set pieces in a melancholy mode. She claims to be inspired most by Russian authors like Dostoevsky and Chekhov, as well as by Alice Munro. A somewhat more substantial work I started on the journey was Antal Szerb's Journey by Moonlight. This is apparently a very well known Hungarian novel, but only appeared in English translation in 2000. It's good so far with the narrator drawing on childhood, perhaps as a more active, more engaged Proust-like figure. Coincidentally, a copy of Mahfouz's The Mirage showed up at the library through interlibrary loan, so I'll basically read these together, and this seems a good pairing. The last thing is I am working my way through Werner Herzog's Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo, which is what is says on the tin. Absolute madness to try to make this film in the jungle. In many ways the back story is just as incredible as the finished film.

I would say the fever is ebbing. I pulled out my favorite or the "most important" CDs (generally the same) and put them on a special shelving unit, and this is pretty much all I listen to (just about 400 CDs). It is slowly sinking in how foolish it is to have hundreds of other CDs that I never listen to, so my musical purchases are slowly winding down.

One of those random things got me thinking about Evening in Azerbaijan, and I did the old google search. It turned out that there are two copies of Command Performance for sale (and probably some on Gemm.com but I didn't look there). One on eBay, but also a reasonably priced copy at DG, so I have it on hold and will pick it up this week. Hope that it is worth the fuss.

Maynard Ferguson Maynard 61 (Roulette)

The whole thing is available for 51 credits at eMusic. Not an amazing deal (particularly with their higher prices), but none of this pricing scheme of 12 dl for an album (which sometimes works in one's favor but generally does not for jazz box sets -- I've actually seen a cost of 24 dls for 9 actual tracks -- needless to say I didn't bite). Had they been using the 12 dls/album that would have been 84. There are 3 tracks less than a minute, including one of them tuning up, which I think I can safely skip, so roughly 48 tracks, which works out to pretty close to $20 under most of the pricing schemes. I suppose I can go for that, esp. before they decide to up it to 84 dls.

Very sorry to hear that, but probably best to know now and not when you show up (this happened to sheldonm and myself when we tried to see Fathead Newman who had canceled for health reasons). Andy's has the Hal Tsuchida Trio, whereas Green Mill has Patricia Barber and her group. Hard to beat the Green Mill's ambiance (but you have to like piano jazz with vocals with her). I saw some exciting news that Threadgill will be at the Chicago Jazz Fest. Not sure if you will be able to come back for that.

Ok, I see in the Reader that this is listed as the Enrico Rava alumni quintet, whereas the Jazz Showcase website still says Rava himself will be there. No one answered when I called, but I will try again later. Anyone else know? This would make a pretty serious difference to whether I would bother coming down!! Rava or not, I don't think it will be crowded. Pretty much anyone really interested in jazz will be coming to check out Pat Metheny and his one-man Orchestrion at Symphony Center on Monday. Probably still tickets available to that.

Well, I hope I don't have to eat my words, but there hasn't been much if any advertising for this, but perhaps the Reader will pick it up. I don't think it will be super crowded (unfortunately), so probably 30 minutes beforehand should be sufficient. I haven't entirely decided if I am going, but I'd like to go. I believe sal is going. There are lots of places to park in the South Loop, though the cost will be relatively high. There is essentially no free parking in the South Loop.

Pretty insane (3 weeks!). Boy I remember when eBay was actually fun. I almost never bother going there anymore and will only sell something with serious value, like a Mosaic. Just too much of a headache nowadays. At the same time as they come up with these rules that are skewed way too far in favor of buyers, there are still plenty of skeevy sellers on there they never manage to stop. I found an interesting auction for a book (apparently) but when I was cross-referencing the ISBN and so forth, it doesn't appear to have been published and certainly not by the listed publisher. So what exactly are they selling? I'm assuming they aren't crazy enough to sell a box of air. On a whim, I asked for more details about the product, but I imagine it will be a cold day before I hear back.

I feel for you, Dan. I got screwed when I sold a CD through half.com and it got lost in the mail. They reached right into my Paypal account, even though I could prove I mailed it (but I didn't pay for the delivery confirmation). I decided after that that I just didn't want to deal with being a half.com seller anymore. Just in general, I didn't like how the rules were evolving. Frankly, I am not crazy about Amazon's new treatment of canceled sales (which I think swing back too much in favor of sellers), but not enough to stop using the site. Maybe I will cull my collection and decide if I have enough rarish CDs to make it worth my time to become an Amazon marketplace seller. Probably not.

Sorry for your loss. It sounds like he had a good life.

Amazon has apparently fairly recently changed the way it handles canceled orders. I found a too-good-to-be true pricing mistake and didn't think the store would honor it, but I said what the heck. I'm not surprised they canceled the order, but I sure as hell wanted to leave negative feedback. Now canceled transactions are completely voided out of the Amazon system, like it never happened at all (just a dream). On the one hand, when you click on an item it no longer says "You ordered this on X date" when you didn't actually receive the item. That's somewhat helpful. But the more substantial problem is that somewhat abusive sellers like caiman (that list a fair number of things they don't actually have in stock) are going to have much more positive feedback than they deserve. On the whole, I am disappointed as I think this will lead to more abuses on the part of sellers like caiman. In this particular case, I'll watch for about a week to see if the seller relists the item at its regular price, then report them to Amazon for a violation of its marketplace policies.

Just found out about Corner Gas, an amusing series set in Saskatchewan and actually mostly shot on location there (fairly rare for CTV). I've been Netflixing it. Also, coming this weekend from Netflix is the first disc of the English-language episodes of Maldugi Days (indeed a filmed version of Narayan's short stories). Now if the question is what are you going to watch, then June 24, Comedy Central has new episodes of Futurama! With all the original voice talent! Yea!! Never thought this day would come. And in August, Max Headroom arrives on DVD. Talk about a long time coming. No idea what will be on there, but they say there will be plenty of bonus content, and it is supposedly a 5 DVD disc so they might have the British movie that kicked this off (ideally all the UK shows but that's unlikely), maybe even the Art of Noise video, probably a making of, commentaries, etc. I'll come back and fill in when more is revealed.

Going this route collects Last Sessions 1 & 2, along with much of Hope's other output aside from Sounds from Rikers Island and the All Star Sessions CD: http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Studio-Recordings-Master-Tapes/dp/samples/B000MRA6BE/ref=dp_tracks_all_4#disc_4

Sort of getting back on track. I read Narayan's Swami and Friends. I am mid-way through Aravind Adiga's Between the Assassinations These are a series of short stories set in Kittur, which is a real city in India (unlike Mulgudi). However, in his portrayal of it, it is much closer to the coast of the Arabian Sea than it appears to be in reality. Adiga is better known for The White Tiger, but actually I like these a bit better than White Tiger, which was a bit too flash for me. One of the longer stories is about a boy in St. Alfonso's Boys' school, who gets into trouble at school. I wonder if it was a bit of a nod to Narayan's Swami. Probably will read Nabokov's The Defense next. I am just about done with my gym book -- The Unlimited Dream Company by J. G. Ballard. It is pretty trippy -- sort of a mix between a PKD novel and Philip Jose Farmer novel (one of the more licentious ones) -- but there is so much repetition in it (imagine just a hint of Groundhog Day thrown in). Almost every chapter the narrator mentions how he is nude but the people of Shepperton take this in stride and he talks about the bruises on his ribs stemming from a plane crash into the Thames. I'm just not digging it that much. It would have been better as a novella at half the length, in my opinion. I should mention Aquamarine by Carol Anshaw, which I reread last month. It's a well done version of the Sliding Doors multi-plot approach where we see the main character (an Olympic medalist in swimming) in three possible variations of how her life might have turned out after the Olympics. Two of her lives are not too shabby (and in fact one is positively glamorous) but one is kind of sad.

I did go ahead and order this, and it looks like a good transfer with very nice audio commentary. Criterion/Eclipse have an awful lot of Ozu's films in circulation. There's one called Green Tea that so far is still only available on a Region 2 Tartan box set. I've been keeping a list of Ozu films in print and I came fairly close to ordering There was a Father from a Region 3 site, but I kept hearing rumors that Criterion had a print and was trying to restore it. Well, they will be releasing There was a Father, in a box set paired with The Only Son, in July 2010. I suspect these will be the best restorations of these early Ozu films, so I will go ahead and pre-order by week's end. Another really exciting set coming out on Eclipse in May is Oshima's Outlaw 60s: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00393SFQG/ref=s9_simh_gw_p74_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0C4RAEAZGCVZAQCRFG83&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846 5 films including one called Double Suicide (but not the same as Shinoda's Double Suicide). It's a little pricier, so I probably won't pull the trigger as fast, but it looks pretty exciting nonetheless. At least for the moment, the Criterion release schedule seems as robust as ever.

Well, that's interesting. They sell a boyfriend pillow too, but it costs $40: http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605_09662469000P?mv=rr I can't tell if that is because they assume women have a lower price elasticity and will buy even at the higher price, or if they expect many more men to buy and thus can make it up in bulk.

Now why didn't I think of that? And here I was all pleased with myself for working out a weekend trip to New York and Philly. Well you just gotta sacrifice for the music, you know?! greg mo Well, after a year of holding out hoping that DG or some other US source would get the Grappelli in (The Nearness of You, I believe is the title), I finally broke down and ordered it from Amazon.co.uk. It's probably sourced from Amazon.fr, but they combined shipping with some other items I was interested in off the UK site, so the shipping doesn't sting quite as much as from Amazon.fr or FNAC. It should arrive early next week. It's probably crazy (and the music wouldn't sustain such hype on its own), but it is the only one from the JIP series that I don't have.

Well, I'm not going to say the Bulls have suddenly made the series interesting (like last year -- what an incredible series!), but they at least will not be humiliated by going down without a fight. It will be 4-1 or maybe even 4-2 Cleveland in what is probably Cleveland's year.

That's pretty interesting. I actually thought this would happen, though I assumed in places like the former Soviet Union or China, once the storage space was no longer a barrier. And so it has. No idea that this happens as a matter of course for many US-based copiers. Why would this be the standard setting? Actually reading through the comments on Berigan's link leaves me quite confused. It suggests that many copiers only put the documents in temp storage, but some do put this into long-term storage.

Well... the show in Chicago is a going to be kinda special. We are playing with Super Happy Funtime Burlesque. We will open the night with an hour long set and then join the SHFB troop for some full blast irreverent mayhem. It's going to be quite the event. Hmm. I'd probably come out for that, but I will supposedly be returning from New York very, very late on the 15th (though all air travel is potentially threatened by this Icelandic volcanic activity, so I'll just see closer to the time). If not this time, I'll try to make it the next time you guys come through Chicago.

I agree, and now the shipping has gotten high enough that I actually consider it -- didn't really do so 3 or 4 years ago. This is one reason I look first at half.com, particularly for older books, since you do get that discount for multiple items from the same seller. Unfortunately, for jazz CDs it is less likely one seller will have more than one item of interest to me.

I went to the Reckless nearest me and picked up some Maynard Ferguson on vinyl. Reckless is one of the few remaining record stores in Chicago and still does good business, so all the promotional goodies and limited edition stuff was gone before I got there. C'est la vie.

If not aware of the other series Graham has been involved with, do check out Father Ted and especially Black Books, which is one of the very best "unknown" comedies out of the UK. Sidesplittingly funny...

That's odd. I know that while they were running, you could stream them. I thought it was shown originally on BBC but perhaps it was Channel 4. You can't access them here: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-it-crowd ? I found the series grew stronger in the 2nd and 3rd seasons (I laughed until I nearly cried in the spoof of Dragon's Den), so I don't think season 4 is necessarily going to be a disaster, though yeah, UK comedy usually peaks in season 3.