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Just a small joke, but apparently the head of FIFA is thinking seriously about getting rid of penalty shoot-outs to decide the World Cup Final. Something that many people, mostly Americans apparently, complain about. Excellent -- if it happens. Here's the article from the UK Guardian.

After she resettled in Chicago, she and her family ran a gift shop on Belmont in Chicago. I think it did have Rose in the name, but can't remember. They had a few news clippings inside the store about her, but basically few people thought it was that remarkable and she got on with her life. I only went in a few times, as it didn't really carry things I liked.

I should have posted in the jazz radio area, but it is too late now. The BBC had a show where Zorn's Moonchild was played live with Mike Patton, the former singer of Faith No More, vocalizing in "preverbal language." I certainly didn't like it. That's a matter of taste. I like some of Zorn's music, but not much. I like some of what comes out on Tzadik and am glad he has kept doing that. What I found quite interesting was that the presenter -- Robert Sandall, who is a big fan of new music -- didn't hide the fact that he found it all pretty disappointing. He didn't just rip it up and say it was two seagulls making love, but had some cogent points about how Zorn had done this all better before. It's fairly refreshing to hear straight talk on the radio. (I know there are a lot of great jazz shows out there, but largely they are playing music that they really dig so aren't inclined to be critical.)

Me too. I'll see if I can get it in the UK for a reasonable price. Otherwise, it will be the second item on my Xmas list. I believe that one track was put on the 13 Pictures Mingus anthology. I believe that the anthology had "Meditations on Integration" from the Monterey date, not this one. Yes, I guess so. I was thrown by the discussion of it being a rare pressing on Mingus' label. So I see there are Japanese imports of "At Monterey." Anyone know if there are plans to reissue this in the States? It would seem to make sense now that the UCLA date is finally coming out.

Me too. I'll see if I can get it in the UK for a reasonable price. Otherwise, it will be the second item on my Xmas list. I believe that one track was put on the 13 Pictures Mingus anthology.

Well, I agree with those who say the more the merrier. Having Scott Yanow here is cool. Having other new members who like jazz but have never reviewed CDs is also cool. I guess Mr. Yanow has given me a bum steer now and then (a solo Steve Lacy CD I really didn't like), but I've found his reviews useful most of the time. Still, I certainly don't rely on AMG or any other reviews to shape my listening habits.

I think only two came out so far, with two more still in the pipeline. I do have them, and think they are fine but not essential. There's a very short thread over in New Releases.

That's a pretty good price, esp. for the UK. Thanks. The CD Universe offer is also good, but comes with a hefty shipping price, especially as I do live in the UK (for now). I think I saw that one piece is more recent (than the previous box set), but I probably wouldn't buy this if I had that 10 CD box set.

So Nonesuch is releasing a 5 CD retrospective later this month. CD Universe has a good price, and I am leaning towards ordering, even though I already have roughly half the music already. CD Universe - Reich There was a remix project previously, which generally got very poor reviews. This time around, the 2006 remixes are a bit better apparently, but either you get 3 on an EP or you can have 4 but only bundled with the original remix album (I think this is called Reich Remixed - Expanded, but currently is only available on amazon.co.uk). So that's a bit annoying.

So I've just heard the track Icarus off Mythologies. Not bad. Sort of a rock beat. The ending of the song is very dense with guitar (multi-tracked unless I am mistaken) on top of piano without any vocals. I'm still not ready to buy this, but if the rest of the album is similar, I probably will eventually.

Saw Acoustic Ladyland for 30 minutes at the Brick Lane Festival in London. I think it was just a fluke I found out about their performance, as the Brick Lane organisers just did not have their shit together and the website didn't have anything useful until a couple of days before the event. But it was still a good time. I went down and had some street food (Indian and Bengali) and listened to the band. They played very loud and fast as expected. I don't think any piece lasted more than five minutes. I can't really explain why I don't mind their "schtick" but don't like the Bad Plus, but that's just how it is. I had to leave a bit early to make sure I caught the train home and didn't have to wait an hour for the next one.

Just finished Anthony Powell's Temporary Kings, the 11th book in A Dance to the Music of Time. One more to go. I think the first half didn't work quite as well as the second. Sometimes Powell seems to dwell too much on some legend and then show how it illuminates contemporary events. It's also a little strange how most of the non-artistic characters are fading out, so that the only ones who interact with the main character are novelists, editors, painters and musicians (and Widmerpool of course). Maybe this is somewhat overstated, and maybe it simply reflects how upper class people from that era were educated -- heavy exposure to the arts.

Well, I like Global Warming (from the late 1990s). This is What I Do is a contender for 2000, but I haven't listened to the new one yet ...

I was quite surprised to see this, as some sets hang around forever and just time out, but these two really must be selling. It will be interesting to see what happens if there are still EU sets of the Mulligan floating around.

In Region 2 land, a new collection of the films of Louis Malle is coming out. In fact, it is split over 2 box sets, though I am renting the ones I am interested in to see if I will buy the whole thing (either one): Louis Malle set1 I was particularly intrigued by Zazie in the Metro, which is not available in the US currently. This is based around a novel by Raymond Queneau and was considered unfilmable. I find it pretty interesting, particularly seeing shots of 1960s Paris in vivid technicolor, though it is a fairly frantic film with a lot of surrealistic touches and not to everyone's taste. Maybe you should just mix uppers and downers, watch a bit of Zazie, then a bit of Tati's Mon Oncle to take the edge off. I was particularly struck by this weird scene, practically out of Benny Hill, where this buxom blonde (looking a bit like a low-rent Marilyn Monroe) is being bothered by a horndog cop. She runs into a kiosk with a poster of Sachel Distel on the door! Then when the door opens a man emerges and there is a bit of guitar on the soundtrack, presumably by Sachel. So I went to look for info on the soundtrack and can't find confirmation of this, but I did learn that Sachel Distel had an uncredited cameo in the movie. And sure enough when I watched it again, it is Sachel Distel standing right next to his poster. Weird. By the way, is anyone else excited about the new Criterion edition of Playtime? I think it will be pretty cool and it should be the best transfer of the lot, though I would like to read some reviews once it is out. So far it is the only thing on my Xmas wish list.

I guess I didn't think it was that hard to reseal a 2-liter tight enough to save the bubbles at least for a few days. Get yourself one of these down at the five and dime and you'll be set: This is useful for those without freakishly strong wrists to reopen the bottles that you've sealed back up.

No problem. My dilemma is Seasons 4 and 5, since there are quite a lot of stinkers in these two seasons, but a few of the great episodes as well. I know I'll get them eventually, but they are a lot lower on my list. I haven't decided if I will get the Outer Limits. I'd probably like them, but I never watched this very much.

Some columnist for SI was predicting that they wouldn't beat Argentina (which was favoured to win -- and might have done so by now), but I think it is pretty shocking that they couldn't beat Greece. Kurt Hinrich at least knows how to play defense -- WTF is going on with the rest of them?

So where can we buy the Complete RVG collection? There was a thread about this, but I'm too lazy to search. Complete RVG Of course, they call this the complete collection, but if they come out with new RVG Editions in the future, are they going to send them to you? I think not.

You're asking this question on a board where 45% of poll responses are from folks with more than 21 Mosaic sets? Yeah, but this is also the board where people gripe about Mosaic including all these albums they already have. I just think most people that might possibly be interested in this set would already have 10-30 of the individual DVDs already. I do.

Well, maybe we could start a pool with everyone claiming one or two of the films and then we have a lottery to determine who gets the book and runner up getting the t-shirts. Anyway, it still a bit much, given how many of the films I already have.

I know I have bought some enormous box sets in the past (Jazz in Paris comes to mind), but this box set (and the complete RVG Edition) spring to mind as really weird marketing decisions. Who would possibly shell out this kind of money when if they were that much of a film buff, they would have been buying the films individually? Granted the box set comes with a fancy book, but really ... I think of the 50 films, there are probably only 5 that I don't have that I might pick up. Only $850 ($650 if you pre-order) • ALEXANDER NEVSKY (1938), Sergei Eisenstein • ASHES AND DIAMONDS (1958), Andrzej Wajda • L'AVVENTURA (1960), Michelangelo Antonioni • BALLAD OF A SOLDIER (1959), Grigori Chukhrai • BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (1946), Jean Cocteau • BLACK ORPHEUS (1959), Marcel Camus • BRIEF ENCOUNTER (1945), David Lean • THE FALLEN IDOL (1948), Carol Reed • FIRES ON THE PLAIN (1959), Kon Ichikawa • FISTS IN THE POCKET (1965), Marco Bellocchio • FLOATING WEEDS (1959), Yasujiro Ozu • FORBIDDEN GAMES (1952), René Clement • THE 400 BLOWS (1959), François Truffaut • GRAND ILLUSION (1937), Jean Renoir • HÄXAN (1922), Benjamin Christensen • IKIRU (1952), Akira Kurosawa • THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST (1952), Anthony Asquith • IVAN THE TERRIBLE, PART II (1958), Sergei Eisenstein • LE JOUR SE LÈVE (1939), Marcel Carné • JULES AND JIM (1962), François Truffaut • KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS (1949), Robert Hamer • KNIFE IN THE WATER (1962), Roman Polanski • THE LADY VANISHES (1938), Alfred Hitchcock • THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP (1943), Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger • LOVES OF A BLONDE (1965), Milos Forman • M (1931), Fritz Lang • M. HULOT'S HOLIDAY (1953), Jacques Tati • MISS JULIE (1951), Alf Sjöberg • PANDORA'S BOX (1929), G.W. Pabst • PÉPÉ LE MOKO (1937), Jean Duvivier • IL POSTO (1961), Ermanno Olmi • PYGMALION (1938), Anthony Asquith • RASHOMON (1950), Akira Kurosawa • RICHARD III (1955), Laurence Olivier • THE RULES OF THE GAME (1939), Jean Renoir • SEVEN SAMURAI (1954), Akira Kurosawa • THE SEVENTH SEAL (1957), Ingmar Bergman • THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE (1973), Víctor Erice • LA STRADA (1954), Federico Fellini • SUMMERTIME (1955), David Lean • THE THIRD MAN (1949), Carol Reed • THE 39 STEPS (1935), Alfred Hitchcock • UGETSU (1953), Kenji Mizoguchi • UMBERTO D. (1952), Vittorio De Sica • THE VIRGIN SPRING (1960), Ingmar Bergman • VIRIDIANA (1961), Luis Buñuel • THE WAGES OF FEAR (1953), Henri-Georges Clouzot • THE WHITE SHEIK (1952), Federico Fellini • WILD STRAWBERRIES (1957), Ingmar Bergman • THREE DOCUMENTARIES: THE GREAT CHASE (1962), THE LOVE GODDESSES (1965), and PAUL ROBESON: TRIBUTE TO AN ARTIST (1979), Saul J. Turell Criterion 50 film box set

Well, I can't list all the bonus features, but basically season 1 spreads the 36 episodes over 5 DVDs -- generally 7 or 8 to a disc. Most individual episodes have a bonus feature such as audio commentary or the isolated score. Walking Distance also has a bit of a classroom lecture by Rod Serling. Some of the episodes have interviews with the actors, but they aren't contemporary interviews, such as a 1978 interview with Burgess Meredith. Generally, if it is recent commentary, it is writers, though there are exceptions such as Leonard Nimoy and Don Rickles. There are a fair number of historic interviews, however. Disc 6 is all Bonus Features. There is the original pilot of Where is Everybody, a couple of Rod Serling bloopers, a sales pitch featuring Rod (no idea why this was filmed), and a Twilight Zone radio show. Season 1 also should be bundled with the book The Twilight Zone Companion, which has details on all five seasons. That's one reason Season 1 is usually a bit more expensive. Seasons 2 and 3 are much the same with audio commentaries on many episodes, a few radio shows and some promo shots. Perhaps most interesting is an alternate ending (written but not filmed) for A Game of Pool. Some time next year, I'll pick up seasons 4 and 5. Since you asked, the episodes are arranged chronologically by air date. According to other reviews on Amazon, there are actually video interviews for Season 5. I am a bit disappointed that William Shatner does not do a commentary for Nightmare at 20,000 Feet. Season 5 also has a Bonus DVD that appears to focus on Serling and his career. I would certainly recommend this set, since it has cleaned-up versions of all episodes and a pretty good amount of bonus material. I think it is pretty good value overall. Don't know how much it matters to people, but the cases are the slimline cases, so the whole set doesn't take up an entire shelf the way it used to. They are dual-layer but not double-sided DVDs (some people really don't like 2-sides DVDs as they get fingerprints everywhere I guess). I suppose I wouldn't buy these if I already had a fair number of the episodes in other formats, but I certainly thought this was the best way to go to get the episodes. Eric

They're worried about rising rent and they're considering south loop? Yikes. Of course, a trifecta of HotHouse, the Velvet Lounge and the Showcase all within a cheap cab ride of each other isn't a bad idea at all... Well, at the moment rent in the south loop is almost certainly lower than River North. There still isn't quite as much foot traffic in the South Loop.

Tower Japan is a separate operation from US Tower with completely different ownership. Apparently they are doing very well and an IPO is planned in the near future. By the way, did you check out the Disk Union in Shibuya? They have several of the TOCJ 1500 series on sale at 1000 Yen. HMV Shibuya also was selling them at 20% off recently. This series seems to be widely discounted. I had a few hours on my last day to do some more CD shopping. I tried to find one of the CD stores in Shinjuku but a lousy map and bad directions did me in. I made it to the Shibuya Disc Union about 15 minutes before they shut and did pick up 3 of the TOCJ 1500 series for 1000 Yen (yes, quite a bargain) and a few used CDs, including Freddie Roach's Down to Earth and Shepp's Deja Vu. What I found quite odd was that artists are alphabetized by their first name, which took some mental energy on my part to find things. I wish I had had more time, but I think I did pretty well for two days, filling in some gaps in my BN collection, mostly Duke Pearson, Lou Donaldson, Freddie Roach's Down to Earth and Baby Face Willette's Stop and Listen. Best of all, work paid for most of the trip (not the CDs though).