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The last two years the Bears' defense has slipped mightily (and most of us believe was in no small part due to Lovie forcing out Ron Riveria and putting in his friend/tool Bob Babich). In fact, this year, it ranks in the bottom half of the league and one of the worst against the pass, and yet the defense collectively is the second or third highest paid in the league. So you have an anemic offense and a defense that it simply going down the tubes. Well, no suprise that you have a mediocre team. If it weren't for generally good contributions from special teams (esp. two years ago but even this season) the Bears would probably wouldn't even be a .500 team.

Not so fast. There is talk about the Lions going after some new management and coaching. We already know that they own a fistful of high picks in the draft. Teams can turn around quickly in the NFL. Whereas the Bears are an organization that thrives on rewarding mediocrity. The last I heard Lovie Smith was interested in going after the Lion's ex-head coach and stick him on defense coaching somewhere (maybe he once was a defensive guru but not this past year) and make room for the Bears' existing defensive coordinator (who sucks). As it turns out, they all have the same agent. When the fuck did coaches get agents? I've never been a big Bears fan, but I've been begging my wife not to support the team in any way, shape or form until they fire at least half the coaching staff and really shake up the team. Bears' fans are some of the biggest enablers in the league (ok, maybe not quite as bad as Cowboy fans ).

One of my favorite CDs he is on is the Hutcherson-Hill CD Dialogue (also Out to Lunch). Now I can't recall how prominent the trumpet is, but I believe it is a prominent role. I'm hoping to dig it out later today.

I've got One Step Beyond already (TOJC and on the Moncur box), but am pretty excited about the Leo Parker (just as the other one is going OOP ). I'm having a small debate whether to upgrade that one from a Spanish BN, but probably won't. It's not one where the blue tinged cover makes that much of a difference.

Don't think I ever bought a CD from them. The prices and selection in every store I set foot in were a joke. Fopp, on the other hand, were way better jazz-wise. Not in Cardiff. Fopp in Cardiff was awful in every department! And right across the road (virtually) from Virgin/Zavvi. I rather think local management might exert more influence on how these chain stores did than is generally reckoned. MG I thought the Fopp in Cambridge was pretty good, and I picked up a number of jazz titles for 5 pounds, as well as a couple of Blue Note covers books. I probably went once or twice a month.

I think they do best with material from the 1950s (where the sound isn't too bad), particularly that is slightly more obscure (no real point in getting the Quadromania of Miles Davis or Stan Getz or Mingus). I only have one -- James Moody and that seems pretty good.

We had a fairly restrained Christmas, which was fine. I was kind of hoping to get the Akiyoshi/Tebackin Select, but I got the Chicagoan book instead, which was just as cool. I got my wife the new Batman movies, which she actually requested (it wasn't one of those where you give the gift you want). The kids are already fighting over their toys, since they both want to play with the same thing, regardless of how many other toys they have. Ah youth. So I'll probably order the Select for myself in the near future and the Complete New Yorker on DVD.

I think you're going to want to read at least a couple Chandler and Hammett novels before Yiddish Policemen's Union. I read most of them a while ago. Then they came out with the Library of America sets (which do a better job with the novels than the short stories). I can't recall right now which of these I have in LoA, maybe just the Hammett novels.

Generally, we get the prices/shipping details set in a couple of PMs back and forth, and that is when you can cough up the goods, i.e. your paypal address. I wouldn't generally recommend putting it in a live post.

A few on-line orders I am waiting on, a Chu Berry/Lucky Thompson CD with their Commodore recordings, as well as a couple of Red Norvo CDs. Then I went into Dusty Groove to pick up my copy of Dizzy Reece's From In to Out and got a few other things including a used copy of Sleepwalker's The Voyage. I nearly paid big bucks for this on a trip to Tokyo, so I'm glad I waited. Tomorrow I will know whether I got a Mosaic Select or not, which will determine whether I spend a little time and money at the Mosaic webste.

I''m really digging Chabon's Yiddish Policemen's Union. It's got the world-weary tropes of the noir detective stories cross-fertilized with Jewish angst. It kind of goes right up to the edge of parody and skates back. What I'm feeling is if Samuel (I can't go on; I can't go on; I'll go on) Beckett was writing detective fiction and then for some reason made everyone in the story Jewish. Since it is set in Alaska, it is perfect reading in this weather. On the basis of this, I went ahead and got Kavalier & Clay, though I believe it has a very different feel, probably a lot more "shiny" and optimistic, as everyone (except minorities*) was in the Eisenhower years. Chabon is quite a writer, so I'll be interested how this one turns out. * Yes I am aware that the frission in this book comes from whether Jews are considered full Americans during the 50s.

Still pretty bummed about waiting too long on the Chu Berry. Anywhoo, I bought a couple of DVD sets in their buy-one get-one free sale, and I found that they charged me sales tax! Well, in Illinois that certainly adds up, making them a lot less appealing than other sites. Anyone else notice if they were charged sales tax?

You're only allowing for 3. Tough choices have to be made. I love Chu's playing but there is a lot of Cab Calloway to deal with. Sometimes I'm not in the mood for that part of the set. And answers also obviously depend on when someone found out about Mosaic. For me it wasn't until the Konitz/Tristano/Marsh set came out. Monk's Blue Note material is some of my alltime favorite music, but for me I know it as RVGs. Herbie Nichols is a Blue Note box that fits easily on the shelf, not a big box Mosaic. And so on. If I answered on music I have that was a Mosaic set but I have in another form, you'd get different answers. Definitely. I came to Mosaic just a bit late for the Andrew Hill and Jackie McLean sets, but with patience it has all been reissued on CD. This is unlikely to happen for some of these other artists, particularly as we are in the "end of days" for CD distribution. It really sounds like the Chu Berry stretches the Mosaic ethos, in the sense that it isn't complete and they sort of arbitrarily included or dropped some of his sidemen sessions. Then like Proper they say, oh for the Red Norvo cuts, go to the Berigan set. Well, the difference is the Proper Boxes almost never go out of print. While they were writing the Chu Berry press release, the Berigan set went out of print. I think it is a little disappointing that they didn't include these tracks (roughly 10 minutes' worth), particularly With All My Heart and Soul, which features Chu more than Berigan. I'll still get the set eventually, but there are definitely some aspects of it I don't care for.

I'm still having trouble understanding how this would happen to be in their possession unless someone made a recent trip and had it thrust into their hands. But this "German sinologist," does he actually read Chinese -- or is he just a faker that being caught out now? I mean it doesn't sound like there was anything subtle that only was apparent as a hidden meaning that only a native speaker would know.

Well, it isn't just US-made cars. There was an article, probably in the Times, about how foreign car companies (the ones that import cars rather than make them in Tennessee) are now leasing space at the Port Authority and turning it into a giant parking lot.

It's worth checking if the films were also added to the National Archives. They have a video facility in Maryland (Silver Springs I think) and it is set up well for dropping in, getting registered, and watching video and films.

Ah, I had the feeling that the correct place to reissue "Ain't no way" would have been on the "Common touch" CD, since it's from that session. So, was the "Easy walker" CD the first issue for "A foggy day"? I don't think I've got that. (So I can't make my own CD-R ) MG Ain't no way is indeed on Common Touch; it appears to be from a separate session, though with almost the same personnel as the session that led to Common Touch (the drummer is different). Don't know if Foggy Day landed elsewhere.

Ah, I had the feeling that the correct place to reissue "Ain't no way" would have been on the "Common touch" CD, since it's from that session. So, was the "Easy walker" CD the first issue for "A foggy day"? I don't think I've got that. (So I can't make my own CD-R ) MG Ain't no way is indeed on Common Touch; it appears to be from a separate session, though with almost the same personnel as the session that led to Common Touch (the drummer is different). Don't know if Foggy Day landed elsewhere.

Oh, I didn't know there were bonus tracks. Are they the ones that were issued on the "Rainbow" BN called "Ain't no way" (LT1095)? Stan's shuffle Watch what happens Intermission walk Wave Ain't no way (with Shirley) MG Almost. "Ain't no way" is not on Easy Walker, but "A Foggy Day" is an additional bonus track.

I knew it wasn't much longer, but was still surprised to walk by Dr. Wax in Evanston and saw they were going out of business. I really hadn't planned to go in, but at 70% off (and all vinyl at $2) it was too much to pass up. Very few gems, though I did get Cab Calloway with Chu Berry and a couple of Tom Harrell CDs. I did better with the classical CDs where there wasn't as much competition. They had a $1 rack of pop CDs, and I picked one up. I guess I hadn't considered that someone would have bothered to steal the CDs out of a $1 sale, but in fact neither I nor the clerk looked inside the case. A pretty minor loss though still annoying. My worst sale-related loss was when Crow's Nest in the Loop closed. They had this system I always hated where you couldn't see the cash register ring anything up. Well, sure enough on the day that box sets went 50% off, they charged me twice for the same set, which I didn't discover until looking over the receipt a bit later, but it was too late to dispute the charge. (I had bought some other things so it wasn't immediately obvious what the total should be, and I was running late so I didn't check carefully on the way out when I still could have done something about it.) In this case, I am pretty sure the asshole clerk did it on purpose (and pocketed the difference). I guess I don't know what it is about the music business that encourages so much bad behavior all the way around -- performers, agents, record execs, store clerks and free-loading, downloading fans. The kicker about the Dr. Wax closing is that they are going out of business Christmas Eve. That's cold (for the couple of employees still left there).

Agreed. If you suffer from insomnia, this is the perfect disc to help you on the way... I think you're both nuts. Why? Because it makes me yawn? To each their own... I don't remember much about this one one way or the other, but I do have the Brubeck/Desmond duets CD (has some slightly different title). While there is some fine music on there, it makes me soooo sleepy. I also used it successfully to put my son to sleep when he was cranky at age 3.

Well, maybe though the subtitle is John Hammond discusses the box set promo. So if it is only a promo disc (a little like the Hank Mobley 45 that Dan got a while back), well not such a great deal. And then when the Definitive version of the Holiday Columbia recordings came out, Amazon was selling it for $25 or so for the first week. So these things do happen. But yes, when I've sold OOP box sets on eBay I do put a reserve price on, even though the automatic prompts try to discourage you from doing so.

I was a teacher a long time ago in Newark, NJ. I was brought in as a math teacher to teach to the NJ Basic Skills test for high schoolers. I'm not being facetious. Our job description was to teach enough basic skills that the high schoolers could pass the math portion (yes, the high school had the whole range of math classes including advanced math, but I wasn't involved with any of that). I was not a particularly good teacher, but my first set of students wasn't so bad. Then they decided to play by the rules and pull me out and observe another class, so it became apparent I was an apprentice teacher. That undermined my authority when I finally came back to the classroom, but ultimately I had run ins with another teacher, who would put up one set of problems on the board (for the entire day!) and insist I use the blackboard at the back of the room if I wanted to write anything. After a month more of this, I threatened to quit, and was re-assigned to the no-hopers (9th graders who had failed reading, writing, math and had behavioral problems in middle school). I somehow stuck it out, though the children frequently ran over me. I came back for one more year (while applying for grad school). I had a more normal range of students. 3 classes were actually not too bad. One was always different, sometimes ok, sometimes bad (this one was filled with several students I had previously, who knew I was a pushover). Then I had one bad class, where I had a senior, who was completely disruptive, and also happened to be the son of the chief security guard. Not much to do about that class but wait it out. There were a handful of decent moments, but I don't miss it at all.

I've had a handful of Pevear/Volokhonsky translations and went and got several more this past week. I think I have most of their Dostoevsky's now and Anna Karenina. Still haven't gotten War and Peace but probably soon. As to when I will read them, that is a different issue.

No, I think generally it is from the recording date. Again these things vary by country, and you never know when the politicians will try to change the law.