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I wouldn't mind moving into a senior advisor role when I hit 65, but the idea that I wouldn't work is essentially inconceivable to me. But I am someone with a mental, not physical job. On the other hand, my wife seems to be ready already for retirement.

This is an interesting question/dilemma. If it weren't Wynton/LJCO would it be somebody else? Specifically, if Wynton and his crew weren't penciled in every bleeping year at the Ravinia Music Fest would it be some other artist barely above smooth jazz level? Most likely it would be. Ravinia for example has four dates per season for jazz, one goes to Ramsey Lewis and Nancy Wilson, one goes to Latin Jazz, one goes to Wynton and that leaves one open for a more serious artist. One year it was Sonny Rollins. That's slim pickings, but it reflect the reality that people aren't looking for serious jazz at Ravinia. I think where LCJO going away might help is that the fees they charge are high, and if the next best thing to them cost half as much, then there would be enough money to put on other concerts. The way that LCJO sucks up so much in the way of corporate sponsorships and high concert fees is a problem, leaving less on the table for others, since we have seen already that they don't grow the pie.

Correct - see post #6 above and your reply, post #7, and follow-up post #10. Yep, ran off with our money. Not cool at all.

I love 80s music, esp. New Wave. And also Canadian artists (though here they are mostly from the 90s). New Wave has been pretty well covered, though I don't know that I saw any Psychedelic Furs yet. Actually the only 80s Canadian songs I really like are from Bruce Cockburn. Here are some great ones: The Coldest Night of the Year Lovers in a Dangerous Time If a Had a Rocket Launcher Call It Democracy Waiting for a Miracle

It is mysterious. If they can't find the tapes, and it is going to be a needle-drop like a lot of the reissued Stan Tracey, surely it could have come out by now. Anyway, I think there are two more days to listen to the show on-line. I finally got a chance this morning.

For that matter, Amazon.com carries pretty much the entire Lonehill/Definitive/Gambit range. And I see Proper Boxes, everywhere, including J & R and Chicago's Jazz Record Mart. I'm not going to get bent out of shape about it, since I strongly feel extending copyright retroactively was an illegitimate act of Congress, but if I was a record company exec, I might be asking myself what was the point, since it hasn't changed a damn thing. Of course, if I was a record company executive, I would probably be asking myself if I needed a career change.

This concert looks like it would be worth listening to (see below). It should be available on-line for approx. a week here: Proms Click Listen on-line and search for Proms 35 Prom 35: John Dankworth and Cleo Laine Time: 7.30pm - c10.00pm Venue ROYAL ALBERT HALL -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Broadcasts Live on BBC Radio 3 From Bards to Blues John Dankworth Shakespeare and All That Jazz – excerpts Ellington Such Sweet Thunder Interval John Dankworth The Million Dollar Collection The Blues Ain't (lyrics by Duncan Lamont; world premiere) Strayhorn Take the A Train (new arrangement by John Dankworth) Cleo Laine singer Soweto Kinch saxophone Tommy Smith saxophone Guy Barker trumpet John Dankworth Quintet BBC Big Band BBC Concert Orchestra John Dankworth musical director

I was at Dusty Groove and picked up Aquele Som Dos Gatos by Os Gatos and Alice in Jazzland by Stan Tracey. They carry a few other ReSteamed releases, so I will ask them if they plan on carrying Tracey's The Return of Captain Adventure.

What's up with this story that the NFL is going to try to make photojournalists wear ads if they are on the sidelines? Sports Shooter This sounds crazy, and frankly I hope all the magazines/newspapers boycott the NFL if they carry through on this plan. The Chicago Tribune claims they will no longer run photos, but we'll see how long they stick to that if the Sun-Times runs them.

State politics are almost irrelevant in cases of paying for interstate highways and major bridges. 90% of the funding comes from federal government. In many states, there are also dedicated funds from gas taxes to pay for state highways, and this cannot be easily undone by the politicians. The problem is even with all this money (well beyond the imagination of planners in other fields), the need is still two to three times as great as the available funds. If, however, we start seeing catastrophic failures every month, then the priorities will change and we will either (hopefully) raise gas taxes or pull the funds from somewhere else, since we don't seem to be willing to raise income taxes.

This does exist, but it is rare and quite expensive. Gustav Klimt: With a Catalogue Raisonne of His Paintings by Fritz Novotny and Johannes Dobai. Powells seems to be cheapest, starting at $600. I'm actually about 75% going to get the upcoming Catalogue Raisonne of Stuart Davis' work. If you pre-order through Amazon they knock over $100 off the price ($300). I think I would look at it enough to justify the purchase. But I could never tell my wife how much I paid...

Yeah, its always their fault. Like the bridge collapse in CT about 20 years ago - nothing but Democrats in control of the legislature for 60 years or more, and what happens? Wise up, Mark and understand that shit happens sometimes. So if it isn't political, why is Tony Snow already doing some pre-emptive buck passing? I'm sure we'll discuss that in the appropriate forum later. Transportation infrastructure is my line of business, and yes, sometimes it does collapse. However, this is an area that has been starved of resources for decades. There are plenty of reports out there that show that there are 70,000 bridges in roughly the same condition as this one, and 70,000 bridges that are in even worse condition. Can you imagine what it will cost to bring them all up to code? Billions if not trillions of dollars. As a society, we won't pay enough in taxes to take care of all of them, and these kinds of failures will occur. I actually expect a wave of failures to accelerate as the highways and bridges built throughout the 1950s and 1960s start to collapse due to insufficient funds for maintenance.

Very good news. I have several of Simic's collections, and heard him read once in Manhattan. He has a somewhat off-center, sometimes dark perspective that I enjoy.

Well, there perhaps is no overlap between these after all, but I mostly would like one place where all the short story collections are reprinted in their original order. In any case, I see that there is one more Barthelme collection coming out in October: Flying to America. This will have many uncollected pieces. So I'll probably get this and 60 Stories at the same time.

The Complete Stories of Donald Barthelme I think between 60 Stories and 40 Stories you get most (nearly all?) of them but maybe some overlap. Anyway, it shouldn't be too hard to put such a thing together. On a more selfish note, I really wish that my anthology of subway poetry had been published. One publisher was interested but said that the rights were just a killer. And this was before Congress revised and extended the copyright laws, bringing a lot of PD material back into copyright. Oh well. Maybe I'll go talk to the Andorrans.

They've been having an Antonioni retrospective in Chicago. I thought about going to a few, esp. Red Desert, but I just couldn't find the time between work, writing research papers and trying to spend at least some time with my kids.

I saw a few when they aired on the BBC. In fact, they have been out as DVDs in the UK for several months. I think they are coming out here fairly soon, since he was on Colbert promoting the show, which usually means there will be a DVD out soon. I liked the Picasso and Van Gogh episodes. I wasn't as crazy about the Rothko show. In fact, I imagine they did Rothko and not Jackson Pollack because of the Rothko room in the Tate Modern. Actually, if you are interested in art, you might be as interested in people faking art. I finally watched Welles' F for Fake (from Criterion) and it was pretty cool.

I've found that far more often than not, the classy hotels charge an arm and a leg for wireless internet, whereas it is almost always free at Days Inn, Holiday Inn, etc. It has started to factor into my travel decisions, since I am always traveling on business and need that connection -- and think it is a total rip off to have to pay for it on top of an already ridiculous day rate.

11 of the regular sets and about half the Selects. I have a number of the boxes duplicated on other formats, so didn't bother getting the box (or trying for an OOP set). There are always a few more I want, but I don't feel it is completely out of hand (yet). I have listened to all or just about all of my Mosaics, though in many cases I've only made it through the box once.

Just browsing the Onion and I saw this classic: You can buy it here: Onion store Honestly, I still see people around wearing the real one, and I sort of wonder about them. That was a couple of years ago, folks. You can take it off now. Or at least wash under it.

I wonder about the whole process of giving some bonus time here and there for winning various stages and sprints. I suppose it is an attempt to balance the playing field, so it isn't only one type of rider who wins year in, year out (aside from the fact that the people who can avoid getting caught doping are the ones who typically win). But it just seems so open to gimmickry. I think most of that should be stripped out and move closer to a pure time to completion event.

You can say that again. There was an interesting piece recently that speculated that Bonds is missing out on roughly $20 million/year in endorsements that he would get if he weren't such a jerk and if the majority of fans didn't think he was a cheater (yes, he will always have some defenders -- in fact right here on this BB). I think there is some kind of karmic justice in that, though I will be even happier if he does end up found guilty of perjury and has his records expunged, which seems fairly likely.

As usual, Sal is correct. Somewhere (probably YouTube) they have the ultimate edited Sopranos, no swearing, no sex, no violence (overt or implied), etc. I think each episode lasts 3 minutes. Don't know what it is, but I just don't like Mob-related movies or TV. Sopranos did nothing for me. Ultimately, despite the violent downfall of many of the characters, these TV/movies celebrate thugs and promote violence as a way of getting ahead. I just can't get down with that, I guess.

But don't re-use them for more than a week at most. There was a pretty gross segment on all the bacteria in water bottles that were being re-used. Now this was specifically on people refilling store-bought bottles (which you can't wash) with tap water, but I would suspect that even with the sports bottles, most people don't wash them frequently enough.

I'm going through a bunch of books to try to decide whether to keep or donate them. One was the SF novel A Case of Conscience by James Blish. I can't recall what my original reaction was, but this time around I thought it a completely stupid novel. What I can't understand is that when genre writers try to come up with a positive portrait of a religious person, esp. a Catholic, they always go over the top and these people are completely dogmatic. In fact, the novel ends with the Pope telling the lead character to excommunicate an entire planet!! I can't believe this won a Hugo. I'm having trouble tracking down whether Blish was or was not Catholic. But the writer that really sticks in my craw is G.K. Chesterton. I really tried to like his Father Brown stories, but after a couple where the villian was always an atheist, who generally committed his crimes simply to get back at religious types, I gave up. The Father Brown stories and Case of Conscience both seem at about the level of religious cartoons, but personally I think Chesterton could have done better.