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I didn't link to it, since I don't go onto YouTube that often. It's kind of a blackhole of time for me, so I try to ration myself. However, I did have a little time tonight and found that there is a cottage industry of Beatles songs on ukelele, and then I was drawn in a bit to Julia Nunes and the soap opera of her life. This is sort of interesting watching fairly talented kids make music assisted with technology. I really do like the enthusiasm and showing the positive side of the Facebook/MySpace/Twitter generation. But I wouldn't bother clicking through the links unless you have patience with the young'uns. (For instance, I was beside myself this morning when a young woman would not stop texting and just walk down the subway stairs and stop blocking the rest of us from getting to work -- so that we could do something productive -- like email all day.) I can't quite get my head around what it would be like to be 20 and have grown up inside the digital revolution, and I can barely imagine what my children will be like -- probably WiFi implants by the time they are twenty. Anyway, you might find these ukelele covers of interest, though certainly not as professional as Jake Shimabukuro. Julia plays Her Majesty (music) (Many more where that came from.) Wade plays Regina Spector On the Radio (music) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8CtKFESsdQ...feature=related Julia responds http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XCL6s4L1gY Wade responds http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oIgp5CBzvk...feature=channel Wade & Julia play Across the Universe (music) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yT6z_-niUIU...feature=related

It's sort of a novelty, but frankly even with the big band, the arrangement just seems so close to the original that it isn't particularly interesting to me. Now there is a ukelele version of While My Guitar Gently Weeps that is kick ass. That's where the unusual instrumentation really adds a new twist. (FWIW, I like the bassoons doing Watermelon Man.) I have heard some interesting Take Fives though, my favorite probably being Ozzie Hall's take on Cult Cargo -- Grand Bahama Goombay. And there are a few that put it into 4/4. I'm thinking of one, but I can't recall what it is precisely (or where I might have stashed it). There is "You Can't Wear Another Man's Hat" by The Black Sorrows, which they've renamed but still credit to Desmond and Brubeck, so it is clearly supposed to be Take Five in 4/4 and not a new composition.

Yeah, I think they will have to change the law and make this a jailable offense. It seems to me the only deterrent against such scumbags starting up a new service after another one is shut down.

Do you mean 2 different DVD releases or that the film is different in each release? My understanding is that it is the same basic film, but marginally different package (a trailer in one case, no real bonus features on the other one).

I was actually thinking about your tales when I heard this, since it sounded pretty similar. The comments on the article are pretty amusing, since they point out that FTC had thousands of complaints, but it wasn't until Schumer got personally involved that they decided to act. Pretty lame. But much lamer is that the scumbags are still making robocalls. I got a call on my cell phone tonight. I decided to press 1 -- and waste someone's time = money before hanging up. I was so close to asking how it felt to be working for a criminal enterprise, but I held off. Next time I will do it for sure.

I don't know how serious an art collector he is, but he has at least a few pieces. I know because I bought a small piece from an artist at Art Chicago, and the gallery later told me that Groening owned a piece by the same artist. So two degrees of separation right there. By the way, that is way cool that he liked your CD -- and wrote to tell you. You guys coming through Chicago anytime soon?

I only listened to disc 7, but it sounds fine (of course I am listening at work on headphones!). According to the booklet, nearly all of the source material did escape the fire (maybe stored elsewhere or on loan) with the exception of the last three sessions covering 1944-1946 (roughly the last 1/3 of disc 7). They note that this material comes from LPs and even CDR! , which has to be a first for Mosaic. They surmise that one alternate take may be gone forever. But otherwise, the vast majority of the 1930s/40s Decca material survived. Hope the same can be said for the 1950s Decca material!

Got mine today. #554! Seems pretty high for something that was still in pre-order until a couple of days ago. Anyway, I have a question. On disc 7, the third track is called "New Do You Call That a Buddy." I was checking (for reference purposes only) against one of the PD labels, and they title it "Now, Do You Call That a Buddy," which frankly makes more sense. Anyone want to weigh in on this?

There are two versions of the film itself out on DVD but only region 2 (UK and Western Europe)*. I'm intrigued enough I might order a copy the next time I place an order with Amazon.co.uk. * As I've said before, if you love film, it is worth investing in a region free player that can handle PAL/NTSC conversion.

I got interested in Mosaic a little late. Andrew Hill and Jackie McLean were already OOP. In fact, it is possible that getting deeper into these two brought Mosaic to my attention. So I started picking up some of the Hill and McLean (and Hutcherson) as singles (back when eBay was relatively new and kind of fun -- I almost never even look anymore, probably less than once a month). Suddenly I had a chance here and there to get the Hill or McLean Mosaics, but I was in a bit deep. Fortunately, all the material was eventually released on singles, so I don't regret it deeply. And indeed, I suspect that I do listen to this material far more on singles than I would if it was a box set.

Agreed, something not right about the eyes. But if you want the poster boy for plastic surgery gone bad, take a look at Kenny Rogers: http://cityrag.blogs.com/main/2006/07/they_killed_ken.html My god, what did they do to his face, esp. his eyes? Country singers are supposed to have character in their faces, dagnabit, and they sucked it all away. I think he looked pretty good -- certainly normal before -- and now What I really can't get is the floppy cuffs and the little ax he's wearing. Did he come out of the closet, and I missed it? Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it would be a little mind blowing.

...that would be in storage... Well that may be, but you do have Frat Rock on vinyl clearly visible. To be fair, I have this but on cassette, since it was the kind of thing too likely to get scratched when the party got too out of hand.

I'm: You know you want to be a Vulcan, but you know deep down you're some other crazy alien. I don't even know what a Cardassian is (I guess it is Deep Space 9), but this does sound scarily accurate (at least the snob part). I guess I need to take this quiz next: http://www.quizilla.com/quizzes/1552632/wh...ove-affair-with

Been reading academic things. Most not interesting, though Immigration and Integration in Urban Communities was pretty readable for an academic book. Anyway, now that the reviews are wrapping up, I can get back to some fiction. I'm finally going to finish The Savage Detectives (a bit of a chore at this point -- I never really warmed up to it). I also am dipping into A.N. Wilson's A Watch in the Night, which seems pretty good so far. Not sure after those two. Most likely Gibson's Spook Country. On the other hand, I've been on a bit of a Japanese kick, esp. the cinema. I just reread Soseki Natsume's Ten Nights of Dream and picked up used copies of his Kokoro and I Am a Cat. I might try to read one of those before too long.

Well, keep your eyes peeled for the Cheez-It boxes. They've got a Star Trek promotion for adults where for $10 you can get a uniform. It turns out you can indeed get yellow, blue or red. I promised my wife if I do get one, I won't wear it outside the house.

Who's on vibes? Warren Wolf? Should I have heard of him? Anyway I thought I would look up McBride and see if he is gigging locally. It turns out that he is in Chicago next week with Sting, but that the rest of the spring/summer he is touring with Inside Straight -- but not in Chicago. Rats.

Futurama got to them first. And got them to rap over the Theme Song!

Believe it or not, I was somewhat randomly listening to pop music on my iPod and decided to play Castaways and Cutouts by the Decemberists. I like them but hardly have their songs memorized. "A Cautionary Tale" popped up, and I almost fell out of my chair. Anyway, this is certainly one of the more twisted songs one might play on Mother's Day (along with Pink Floyd's "Mother" I suppose). Happy Mother's Day, y'all. I don't want to mess with the lyric database, but I think it is actually "thirty dollars" not "dirty dollars."

I went to see the CSO last night. If I had known how it would turn out, I would have been better off staying at home. I've known for a long time that the seats get more uncomfortable the higher you go, but now the ones in the upper balcony are sheer agony for me to sit in (something about a slightly unusual angle and being a bit too low to the ground and being too narrow). So I will definitely keep this in mind before buying tickets in the future. If I recall, there are several levels above this (the super gallery?), and those are even more narrow and the stairs have a terrible pitch, but the seats might be higher off the ground. The conductor was Bernard Haitink. He is looking frail now. He was walking with a cane and sat in a chair to conduct (he did not do this last year, so if you are hoping to hear him conduct you might want to move that up on the agenda). The first piece was a short piece by Purcell, which was ok. The next was Britten's Illuminations sung by Ian Bostrich. I'm not a huge fan of this piece. I generally dislike classical song cycles or lieder or opera (or most jazz vocals for that matter). I suppose it comes down to disliking pieces where meaning is impinged upon by treating the voice as an instrument. Anyway, the problem this time was really with Ian Bostrich. He's got quite a career going on across the Atlantic. He certainly has the look of the Romantic poet, but then he spent half his time singing down at his feet (I guess because he looked cooler that way)! Sorry, we can barely hear you in the cheap seats. I was thoroughly disenchanted. Anyway, I had primarily gone for Shostakovich's Symphony 15. I was hoping that this would save the night. I've really enjoyed hearing some of his symphonies, but this wasn't one of them. Haitink took the middle movements at a truly glacial pace, and the symphony didn't benefit from it. It just seems too slight when really stretched out and you have to pay such close attention to each element. I was exhausted and basically bored when it finally ended. So it was kind of a bust all the way around, sorry to say.

As far as I can tell, if you do the most minimal of rewrites, you can even post WashPost and NYT stories. Maybe not. Maybe interviews are treated differently, though I've certain seen stories that appear to recycle another paper's interview. It's not a legal issue the newspapers have pushed so far, since the "wrong ruling" would basically shut them all out of a story once someone published a "scoop." Not as much of an issue now that virtually all cities are going to be one-paper (or no paper) towns before long.

Except that NYTimes already tried that and it went over like a lead zeppelin. Part of the problem is for basic news, google can grab it and make minor rewrites and post it. The "news" isn't something you can copyright. That's 85-90% of the market for newspapers. The number of people who actually care enough to read the columnists is small indeed, and most of the are the most networked people and if you can't get it free, they will simply grab it from Huffington Post or Daily Kos but not here any longer (now that we generally don't post full articles -- good call by the way since it just ruined flow). For newspapers, it really is the genie out of the bottle. People who bother to pay for Kindle subscriptions are basically the same people that put a dollar in the beggarman's cup. On top of everything, I actually grab tons of newspaper clippings from online sources since I occasionally use them (referenced properly) in academic articles. Well, there are too many restrictions on the Kindle content that I don't want to bother with it. Maybe someday they will pass DRMA III and force people to change their ways, but until then it will be free and much more convenient to go on-line. So I just don't see Kindle saving the newspaper/magazine industry.

Yeah, I've seen one or two on the train. I briefly thought about one, but the pricing was absolutely ridiculous. It wasn't so outrageous for books, but for newspapers and journals (particularly where this is already on-line for free). I don't think enough people are going to switch to Kindle and then agree to sign up for downloads of the NYT to make a difference.

I can't speak to your iPhone apps, but, assuming your music is on your computer, they would transfer to a new iPod. Though if you had a fatal hard drive error and lost your iPod, I think you are out of luck. Certainly one thing I like about emusic is how easy it is to download everything all over again. A bit off the subject, but I just found out that a guy I went to high school with and was reasonably good friends with (at the time) did a lot of the work for the operating system that drives the iPod.

It's a classic alright. Still frustrating that they don't have that killer instinct. How many times could they have put this one away? And Kirk better give Rose a car or something so that he didn't end up goat of the game. Back to Boston. We'll be seeing some of these players with oxygen masks in game 7, since they've used everything up.

A few items of interest regarding Charles Simic. He has a new (2008) collection called That Little Something. I enjoyed it. I thought the 1st and 3rd sections were strongest. The book in that funny phase when it is starting to get pulped and there are lots of very cheap copies at the on-line stores (the number of books you can get for a penny (plus shipping) nowadays is just astonishing). Also, BBC is doing a series on poet laureates. Not familiar with most of them, but this is a short segment featuring Simic: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00k107b It will be available for about 5 more days.