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He seems like a pretty cool guy that has been burned a lot by the Powers that Be. He's on many of the cast commentaries for the Futurama episodes and is always hilarious. He goes on and on, about how if he was Fry, he would stick with dating Amy, etc. In fact, the best are the commentaries with both West and DiMaggio (the voice of Bender) since they start doing each other's voices and cracking up.

I hear you on the cacti, though I have found several programs that rip them to MP3 (or wav for that matter) with no problem. Then it is no sweat to load onto iPod or other MP3 player. This goes along with my general rant about pointless security. CC will maybe stop the casual user from burning a CD for his or her friend, but it won't stop the determined pirate, who are the ones causing the most trouble for the music industry. It certainly doesn't seem worth it to me, once you factor in loss of customer satisfaction.

The drum solo in Phantom Lady? Could be best or worst depending on your taste. Doesn't do it for me -- way over the top. Yes, I know that was intentional.

With the power of Starbuck$ behind it, I suspect the album will do pretty well. You come in half asleep, the music is playing constantly, it's this subliminal pressure to buy the CD. Honestly, I do wonder how Starbuck$ became such a cult -- it's only coffee, people, not a lifestyle. On the same subject, I wonder if Verve has started to give away its samplers to retail stores and coffee shops, cause I've heard Remixed 3 playing in a few places now. I guess I can't comment until I actually hear the Hancock album, but for my taste, I would prefer the Verve Unmixed or even Remixed to all those duets.

I agree with you. The Simpsons was great, but honestly it is a shadow of its former self. 4 true seasons is pretty respectable in the TV business, but I think Futurama had about 7 seasons in it, and it was really getting good in seasons 3 and 4. Sigh. I actually do think the movie will happen, but am not optimistic that Futurama will return to TV. The episodes were actually quite expensive to produce.

I guess I am jumping the gun a tiny bit, but there have been rumors for months now that Fox has greenlit a direct to DVD movie of Futurama, with the possibility of a couple more. Futurama movie Apparently both Billy West, the main voice talent, and Matt Groening have been saying it will happen, though the executive producer David X. Cohen is apparently saying not all the contract details have been worked out. Nonetheless, I am incredibly pleased and hope this does come to fruition. Futurama is in my top 5 tv shows of all time, and not just top 5 cartoon tv shows. I can't even completely explain why it clicked so much for me, but it just did. It's a very focused obsession, and considerably cheaper than a Simpsons' obsession, since there is only 1/100th of merchandise to buy. Anyway, if the movie comes out and sells well, just as the DVDs have done quite well, there would always be the chance that Futurama could even return to Fox, like Family Guy did (it definitely helps that there is a new programming chief at Fox). Though that would probably be good, so much time will have elapsed, it definitely won't feel the same. It's such a shame that Fox cancelled it in the first place, since it had a serious following that has kind of dissipated with time. I'll post more news here as appropriate.

It actually happened to me in real life -- getting humiliated at a jazz jam session in Ann Arbor. I brought a flute, but the only fake books they had on the stand were for Bb and Eb instruments, so I had to try to look over the pianist's shoulders at the score, which meant being turned away from the audience. In addition, I followed a saxophonist from the Count Basie orchestra -- why he was slumming there I don't know. Needless to say, I packed up and slunk away quickly. So in short, I don't need to dream about it, since I lived it. I also haven't played in front of an audience since then (clarinet and saxophone were my "real" instruments but I really wasn't that good even though I did play in a small jazz band in high school). I did have a crazy dream once where I got roped into playing a key part in The Pirates of Penzance, even though I didn't know the lines.

Yes, it was called Black Orchid. I was debating whether to bring it along or put it in storage. Now I am doubly glad I brought it with me. A sad day.

I'd probably side with Jerry in that I usually get a middle of the road hybrid, so I am not completely distraught when it gets damaged or, knock wood, stolen. I do, however, like my current bike enough to have it disassembled and shipped to England, which was probably stupid. But I do most of my riding in town where speed is not an issue, and you need a really absorbent frame and wheels to deal with potholes. If you really are planning to be riding around in the countryside where you can really stretch out, then a nice road bike could be the ticket. In any case, enjoy!

I am very sorry to hear of your loss. It is clear you cared very much for your mother, and will continue to want to make her proud of you. It is always hard to let people go, but when they are suffering as much as your mother was, you know there is a time to go. Hopefully you can get some closure from the time you spent with her. My mom died very suddenly, but at least I didn't have any outstanding "issues" with her that I regret not resolving. It sounds like you didn't either, and that will help you as you move through grieving. Even though I am not religious, I found that rituals and traditions do help. I wore all black for about six months after my mother died as a way of mourning and paying respect (it helped that I was a student at the time). But we all have to find our own way of dealing with loss. Again, my thoughts go out to you and your father.

I've seen Ferrell and Hartman. Both great. More cowbell! I've heard Ferrell 2 isn't very good, but don't know. Another interesting extra in the form of an audition is from Confessions of a Dangerous Mind where we see the lead actor auditioning. If I remember correctly, we also see him with prosthetic teeth, which were generally not used in the film itself.

Only one GS. I think two KOB when the remasted edition came out. Love Supreme twice, again when the remastered version came out. Seven Steps on CD and now the box set. Brubeck's Time Out a few times. I have bought some rare BN LPs, and then bought the RVG later on, mostly Mobley and probably Hutcherson, depending on what is on the Select.

Miserable, miserable, miserable. It's been in the high 80s or 90s for about two weeks now with no rain. Quite a drought going on here.

Hard to judge until we get the official listing, but I think I have half the material in here, since I grabbed some recent Tolliver Strata East re-issues that showed up at Dusty Groove. That makes it hard to justify buying a Select (for me), but the missing pieces may be particularly rare.

Very unusual game - basically a knot-unraveling problem. Planarity

I don't know what it is, but I just can't stand Bean. Maybe it is that the character seems to slip around a lot -- sometimes simply oblivious, sometimes wantonly cruel (and often cruel to children). (Yes, he's basically a child in a grown-up body, but I don't find this scenario particularly interesting.) Maybe it was the scene in the Bean movie where he destroys the Whistler's Mother painting. I actually felt sick to my stomach watching it (and not because I was laughing so hard). The animated version is a bit more tolerable, though I wouldn't seek it out. On the other hand, I like Blackadder, particularly the 2-4 seasons. Blackadder can be plenty cruel in those, but the witty language makes up for a lot. Maybe I just can identify better with Blackadder who is reasonably intelligent, than with Bean, the apparent simpleton. Don't know, just know I don't enjoy it.

This has got to be a record for me at least -- I ended up leaving Dusty Groove with more money than when I started. I went in to sell a bunch of LPs and was very surprised when they offered me $130 for the lot. Of course, I did pick up a few things, including the soundtrack to Tati's Traffic (by Charles Dumont), some LPs by the Latin Jazz Quintet and Buddy Collette's Tanganyika. Nonetheless, they still owed me money, which is definitely a first.

I found used copies of Roach's Brown Sugar on the Water label and Tobacco Road by Jack McDuff.

I agree - I can't imagine all these actually making it to the screen - Ant Man, Namor? I did see Silver Surfer, so maybe there will be a galactic adventure after all. As far as the uniforms, well no wonder Doom felt left out. Now if only they had gone into space wearing their Fantastic Five costumes, then the world would have turned out so much better. (Again, a pretty ridiculous change to the basic story line.)

That's right. Who would ever need more than 10 or 20 of these new-fangled CDs I keep hearing about? In fact, I think we could all get by with, say, four copies of Kind of Blue. That way we'd all at least know who the bass player was.

Then I started thinking about Spiderman and Dr. Strange, since they did a cross-over or two. Dr. Strange have his own TV pilot in 1978 which I watched, and for some reason I thought he showed up once or twice in the Spiderman TV series, but I am probably mistaken. Anyway, scanning the web for confirmation of this, I came across this list of Marvel-based movies in development. It's sort of good news/bad news. Bad news for people who like serious movies. Good news for people who like superhero movies, though most of them won't be very good, and the sheer number will end up killing the trend for another 10 years or so. I think Dr. Strange does have promise as a movie, though hard to say it wouldn't be so watered down to avoid getting banned in the South that it would even be worth it. Same with Ghost Rider, though the studios somehow did put out Hellboy and that did ok.

I wasn't really planning on seeing this movie, and most of the reviews I've scanned have been fairly negative. Is it true that the Invisible Woman isn't able to make her clothes invisible and gets a complex over having to strip before using her powers? Does she eventually manage to turn her uniform invisible? Quite frankly, if this is true, it seems such a perversion (in several senses) of the comics that I wouldn't even rent the movie. She is definitely supposed to have the power to turn the things she is touching invisible. What might be watchable would be a cross-over between FF and Spiderman. They made many appearances together and always had a nice tension between whether FF would trust Spiderman, since in most early storylines he had such bad publicity. Maybe they need a successful FF sequel to show the franchise really has legs.

I read some X-Men as a kid, and liked it, but then when I thought about getting back into it, I found there were over a dozen lines of X-Factor, New Mutants, Wolverine, who knows what else. I'm a little bit of a completist, and realized I would go broke trying to buy all these titles, if I got back into it. So I didn't. What I still read sporadically -- Transmetropolitan Girl Genius Mr. X and other comics by Dean Motter

Guilty. I think I have managed to listen to everything in my collection once, but probably 40% I have listened to one time, 30% twice, and the remaining 30% I am more familiar with. On the other hand, I am not constantly on the prowl for CDRs either. Still, I was very grateful someone (not on this board) hooked me up with Hill's Dance with Death until it was rereleased.

Some people get shivers up their spine when we put music into boxes or talk about genres. I get shivers when I find people telling other what they can and cannot say on a jazz board, or that our self-censorship will somehow make a bit of difference to the bean-counters. Maybe Kevin is blowing something out of proportion and maybe not, but he has the right to post about it. Frankly, I never thought of buying jazz as a moral crusade. Finally, I don't interact much with musicians, but if I felt one had done me wrong or dissed me personally, hell no I wouldn't buy their stuff, even if it was Miles or Mingus. (Probably just as well I don't hang out with musicians.)