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So my wife told me this, and I was skeptical, as it sounded like a dream, but apparently Futurama is coming back (with an order for 26 new episodes!): http://www.gotfuturama.com/ This is mostly because the new DVDs sold so well (so I told her it was all worth pre-ordering every one). Most likely they will appear first on Comedy Central, but if Fox looks at them at likes them, they could actually air on Fox. (Given how Fox kept pre-empting it, frankly Comedy Central is probably better. There just doesn't seem to be the same stigma of being on a smaller channel anymore.) Anyway, very very excited. Is this be the longest layover for a cancelled show to come back from?

I guess one question is whether we expect other people to play these "tunes," and for the most part I wouldn't expect it with the originals from Osby and Moran, though they can be very nice pieces. Now is that because they are too personal, too tied to the performer? Is it because everyone needs their own originals and if they cover anything it will be a "true" standard? Is it because recording opportunities to say nothing of gigs are so much harder to come by? Anyway, in the same group as Osby and Moran, I would put Stefon Harris, Vijay Iyer and Rudresh Mahanthappa. Really interesting pieces but not music that I would expect to become a jazz standard in the traditional sense.

Well, true. Though it looks like a lot of recent sales have been for the going price of the real estate owned by the paper: http://www.slate.com/id/2220223/ Going rate for Boston Globe's real estate - about $80-85 million. The value of the good will (as alluded to in the Slate piece) trending towards $0. One real question is whether in a sale situation can the new owner void all the contracts and tell the union to fuck off.* That would certainly make it appealing to a guy like Zell (not that he is in the mood to buy more papers himself). But assume you spun off the Globe and immediately the new owners forced it into bankruptcy, I imagine you could get away with a lot. * I'm not inherently anti-union, but I am anti-stupidity and to vote down this contract when your paper is the main drag on the NY Times was the height of stupidity.

Saw it once at Manhattan's Film Forum. Enjoyed it. Should probably Netflix it soon -- before the database gets all screwed up and sends the wrong one when you want the original. Not too interested in the remake, but if reviews are good, I might, might rent it one day.

Weird. It is back up, but I had never had such a widespread problem. It was like their whole inventory was unavailable. Anyway, I'll take the topic down tonight.

I think Amazon must be going through incredibly fits right now. Either a failed upgrade or maybe even a coordinated service attack. Anyway, virtually all of the CDs and DVDs I've been looking at say currently unavailable, including a bunch of ECMs that I know are still in print. And my basket is completely unavailable. Anyone else having similar probs? I noticed that Amazon.co.uk seemed fine. I imagine it will only last half a day at most, then I will delete the thread. I'm mostly curious if it is across the country, or just if come to Amazon from specific IPs.

Good point, Ken. I've considered Al Cohn Memorial Collection, but haven't put it in the will as of yet. Well, knock wood that should be 30-40 years off. I have a lot of trouble believing that CDs will be salable items at that point, even the Mosaics, and I don't have enough vinyl to be worth much. But I have given thought to the will and whether it is worth the hassle of setting up a trust for my kids.

This is actually a sad story, though perhaps there will be a better resolution. Words to the wise: just leave my damn stuff alone! http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/1...ess-thrown-away

Well, it looks like the ugliness over at the Boston Globe is about to get worse, as the Times is getting ready to sell: http://www.suntimes.com/business/1615795,w...-061009.article

wish i'd know where i've put my books of lovecraft short stories... Well, you can replace it with this: http://www.loa.org/volume.jsp?RequestID=223 I have to say I find it amusingly perverse that LoA would publish this. On the other hand, this looks like one of their skimpier collections. Most of their volumes are complete writings or short stories or nearly so, but some are really disappointing in that they are just random collections or "best ofs". That appears to be the case here, where there are several collections from other publishers even longer than this version.

I'm not that happy with the way the Mosaic website is handling back-orders. There is some language on the main page about sets being back-ordered, but you can still add them to your shopping cart without any warnings. Anyway, I did call and they say that Chu Berry, which is the only set of interest to me right now, is back-ordered until the last quarter of 2009! Definitely seems way too long for catching impulse buyers.

Depends on the year when it was bought and the amount spent, but actually the Mosaic may be a bargain. Inflation calculator True, though I just picked one up on eBay for about $30. For a little while I thought I might get it for less than $15, but apparently someone else was paying attention!

PM sent on: Dexter Gordon - Our Man in Paris (Blue Note RVG) $3 light marks Paul Motian/Bill Evans/Bill Frisell/Joe Lovano/Marc Johnson (JMT) $6

Well, it is certainly not true about National Archives, where you can go in (to the Maryland outpost) and make copies of the videos and films, provided they are in the public domain. I did this once for a history software project. Don't know the story about LOC.

Are you going to go early and see Toumani Diabate as well? I was sorely tempted, though domestic duties call. I did manage to see Diabate at Millenium Park last summer.

If you find it cool; I'm not suggesting you just made this up. We're just curious. And indeed if eMusic is losing money, well paying more is sometimes a necessary evil. It will still be slightly better than iTunes for a lot of what I listen to, but not so much better that I won't cancel after I get through my backlog, particularly the rest of the Black & Blue catalogue. I actually found there are roughly 80 albums on my main wish list, and maybe 35 of them are no longer worth it to me at the new price point (yet 5 or 10 are now better deals if I can actually get them for 12 dls). Then about 75 from Black & Blue. So I might stick around 6-9 months longer. I think what bothers me the most is that they have this ridiculous PR campaign that is trying to make me feel GREAT about getting considerably less than I currently do for the same price. I absolutely hate it when companies treat their customers like idiots.

Thanks, but I am still not clear on this. Why hasn't the label hasn't seen a dime from emusic if a licensing fee was paid? Yes, not clear. Is this because not one customer downloaded any of their tracks? If that's the case, maybe there is a larger problem than their emusic contract.

Well, no guarantees I will actually get it since it is backordered, but Amazon.co.uk is selling this at a low price, and even with shipping it is better than the used copies sold on Amazon.com. I figured it was worth a shot. You could take a look here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Columbia-Original-...f=pd_sim_m_h__2

Right, well I'm on the 90/$19.95 plan which goes to 50/$19.95, nearly doubling the price per track. I feel I'm getting royally shafted to the point where I'll probably get a few boosters to clear out my baglog* and cancel. *backlog, though baglog looks cooler.

Well, it is hardly so black and white. There are plenty of places where the speed limit jumps around for the sole purpose of catching outsiders breaking the speed limit. And right or not, traffic engineers have lots of experience backing up the fact that people subconsciously know what the safe driving speed of a road is, and then speed limits are almost always set 10 mph below this. Or how about the fact that Chicago just dropped the number of outstanding tickets you get before getting booted (which means much higher fees to take care of this) from 5 to 2. Well, they are breaking the law by not paying their fines. Except you can easily be given three parking tickets in a single night in Chicago -- and certainly have no way to pay them off. Plenty of drivers are at fault, but that doesn't change the fact that municipalities have become money-grubbing entities that seem more or less at war with their residents and even moreso with outsiders.

Interesting to see--I've read 270pp of it & was debating whether to bother finishing. Uh, does it get better? Not for me. I've got about 100 pages to go, and it still seems pretty pointless. As I said, Fuller's Best of Jackson Payne does kind of the same thing but is shorter and far, far more interesting. I have actually gotten better about dropping novels that bore me, but I guess I will finish this one, then chuck it out (it literally is falling apart on me and other library copies are doing the same -- it wasn't a well-bound book, which is appropriate I guess though probably not intentional).

I guess this really needs to go on a wish-list, but Murakami has a new novel - 1Q84 - that has just come out in Japan. No word on when or whether it will be translated, but I imagine it would be soon. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/may/2...novel-published

Chicago Public Library has a fairly impressive collection of the early Mosaics, though I don't think they have been keeping up. (Fortunately doing much better on the DVD side with Criterion.) However, they are in reference, so no loaning over night, and definitely no loaning to other libraries (I would be very doubtful if any library would do interlibrary loan for OOP items quite frankly). So that means you need a long afternoon to go in to the music reference section and request them to be played over their equipment. It takes a lot of patience. More than I have frankly.

Two more cat books that I find interesting for the art work (and maybe I am not so subtly trying to condition my kids to want a cat when my wife keeps selling them on a dog ). The Calabash Cat by James Rumford and Wabi Sabi by Mark Reibstein and illustrated by Ed Young. Wabi Sabi is in the general tradition of Muth's Zen Shorts (itself a pretty cool book) though the concept is a little harder to put my head around. Still very nicely illustrated. I'm definitely leaning towards picking this one up. There is actually a fairly interesting backstory to this where the original illustrations were lost (and recovered much later after the artist did them all over again). He feels that the new illustrations far surpass the original ones: Ed Young interview

I'm starting to think about seeing this in the theater. It's been ages since I've seen Star Trek on the big screen -- either Star Trek III or IV. I've seen no more than one or two episodes of any of the follow-up series. I think maybe I was afraid that once it expanded so dramatically, I would lose so much time that I would regret getting into it. Or maybe it is I lived for five or so years without a TV and missed all the intermediate stuff and thought I would never catch up. Not sure. But this looks kind of interesting. Of course on the other hand I hate reboots in general, so it might be hard to get past that. In any case, I just bought my son the coolest toy -- a rocket that is more or less in the Playskool line: Rocket. I'll find out later on if it ends up leading him down either the Star Wars or Star Trek path.