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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.

Maybe we can just end it with a series of penalty kicks. At least a shoot-out on bikes has some novelty value. I can't say I've ever cared about the Tour de France, but after these last couple of years, I don't see why anyone would bother.

The NY Times also has a story naming the ref. It turns out that Donaghy and Crawford are from the same high school. Coincidence? Though they are 15 years apart in age, so probably weren't running in the same circles then...

So after dropping in to Dusty Groove, it looks like there are 5 copies of each set on the shelves. I didn't ask if there were any in the back, or if they would re-order. So you've probably got a few more days before the tenacles start calling again.

The obligatory encore is alive and well here in Boston, too, at just about every jazz and classical show I attend. I, too, appreciate the players who just play until their time is up, which is more common in alternative spaces rather than clubs or concert halls, I find. One of my pet peeves is the obligatory standing ovation. Again, just about ever concert seems to end with the audience on its feet. I think that, in part, this is because people in general go to many fewer concerts per year than they did in the past, thus they have no standard for comparison. More frequent concertgoers, it seems to me, would be less likely to give a standing ovation. In a way, the folks who do so nowadays are applauding themselves for being cultured people who came to a concert! For some reason, I think classical encores are far more common in the UK than in Chicago or New York. Never listened to classical in Boston, so I don't know. Personally, I blame the Proms ... One concert in Cambridge, the conductor insisted on coming back for a 3rd encore! If I had been in an aisle seat, I would definitely have left after encore number 2. The whole ridiculous encore ritual bothers me a lot more than clapping right after solos.

Not in my experience. FWIW, I am generally sympathetic to your position. If you are playing that kind of stuff in a mall music store, yes you'll get complaints. If it is an "indie" store, then they may well tell you to leave the store if you complain. I remember a store in Chicago that played extremely offensive rap very loudly, which did shorten my browsing there, though I still bought a few things there from time to time. Interestingly, my wife is still so upset over Michael Richards that she now refuses to watch Seinfeld refunds. I find this kind of extreme, but that's how she feels.

Roughly 90% of all drum solos get this enormous and largely uninformed reaction. I think applauding after every solo is its own ritual now, just like the obligatory encore, esp. in rock concerts and classical concerts (though mostly in the UK not US). I like the performers who say, well, we could leave the stage and come back and play two songs, or we could play three and call it a night.

So I've got my order in, and will go pick them up at the store on Monday (the CTA Blue Line is down all weekend or I would be there already). Don't know how many they ordered, but I guess we'll find out soon enough.

I suppose it is too early to tell, but I was having trouble seeing how the archive would work, since the shows appear to be mixed in with more general blogs about music. I think the current archive is more straight-forward, i.e. user-friendly.

Vol. 3 is a 2-CD set, with all of disc 2 and maybe part of disc 1 taken up with interviews. Not essential, but worth listening to once or twice.

Good luck. I very much enjoyed the Jazz in Hollywood set. I also hope to see Command Performance w/ Red Norvo released on CD one of these days. It would be better for a "legit" release, but I'd probably get an EU version if that was the only route.

Kevin has been our "in" with Michael for a long time. When he announces a new batch for a particular date, you can take it to the bank ... to withdraw the cash to pay for 'em. Well, there was Basra but that was a special case. I thought I saw some mention that Smithville is likely to be reissued by 2008, so fingers crossed on that.