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I'm a real fan of quirky shows, so I am very glad that Northern Exposure showed up (season 1 anyway). Does anyone remember The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, starring Blair Brown? In many ways the forerunner of Ally McBeal, but I think much better written. It lasted a few seasons, had poor ratings, and I think ran for two seasons of new episodes on Lifetime. There doesn't appear to be any clamour for this, or the fan websites are just incredibly poor, so it will probably come out long after F Troop. I would like to see Get Smart, and I think there is a good chance that will come out in a few more years.

The good stuff I offer here first, then to the local record store, and then half.com. The record store wouldn't even have looked at that disc I sold, so it was infinitely higher than I could have gotten there.

My impression was that they were trying to push people to open up Ebay "stores" where you can have buy it now items and so forth. I have sold on half.com, actually more items than I have sold on ebay. I feel it is a little lower pressure, and a good place for items that are going to stay on the shelf for a while, as it were. I think it took four months for my copy of the Pet Shop Boys Greatest Hits to sell (insert joke here), and the probability that I would have kept relisting it on ebay would have been 0.

Does anyone remember this parody/spoof from 2003? It sounded so in character that thousands (millions?) believed it was true. Here's some follow-up to the hoax that I hadn't read before:

Sending a PM on Soviet Jazz.

Under $75 for the pre-order!! I just couldn't resist. But I don't see how they can make any money on the deal, especially with all those goodies in the box.

Lou Donaldson?

I will eventually get these, mostly for the bonus disc and the commentary track. I don't believe they will ever be released individually, but I guess never say never. I have been very appalled that the originals will never be released and the fans have to put up with Lucas' constant tinkering. After poking around on the web, I found a place that reviewed four or five Star Wars bootlegs (taken from laserdisc). I bought one set and was pleasantly surprised at the quality. They are letterboxed, and don't have any of the odious changes that Lucas added.

Mingus?

I've been fairly happy with Netflix, though there are a few titles they should have but don't. I usually manage to turn the DVDs over in two days, so I am usually able to get about 35-40 DVDs a month (I'm on the three at a time plan). One nice thing is that when DVDs are damaged, Netflix hasn't hassled me about them and just sent replacements. They have only a few NC-17 movies, the ones that have some "artistic merit" to them, so this isn't the place for hardcore. Don't know how Blockbuster will stack up, but I've never been impressed with the selection at the store, so I don't see how their on-line selection will be any better. (I think I watch 40% foreign film, 40% anime and 20% mainstream Hollywood films, so Blockbuster hasn't been worth it at all.)

Observatory Mansions by Edward Carey Take the absurd Ignatius J. Reilly from Confederacy of Dunces, particularly his crazy jobs and manic journal writing, add in a half a cup of Edward Gorey and just a touch of Gormenghast, and I think you would come up with this book. It is kind of creepy and funny. Not all that far into it though.

I know why they do it. I just don't like what they came up with. Actually, my favorite currency is the Canadian Twoonie.

If you search for used CDs on Amazon, there is the Watkins for $25. A little steep for one CD, but still... Every so often, I have seen one at Downtown Music Gallery, which is where I got my copy. If I see one again, I will let you know.

Well, I'm thinking horn player active in the 60s. Maybe Ornette's bud, Don Cherry?

Click here to see the new US nickels. Nickel story I do not like the front. The reverse is ok. I’ve got one of the 2004 nickels where only the back is different and that’s ok. The worst is that they say the front of the nickel isn’t ever going back. This is a problem when people have to justify their existence at the Mint. I hate all the new dollar designs. The quarter competition was pretty hokey, though there have been a few nice designs (NY, MI, IL, NH, NJ, VA), though some have really been awful (MD, AK, IN is the worst so far). Yeah, the states got to pick their own designs, but still the whole program was designed to show that the Mint still mattered. And why all this tampering with coins and bills since 1995? I don’t think there were any changes at all since the Kennedy half dollar through about 1995 (well, 1976) and now every year they come up with another coin promotion. Eric

This thread brings back vivid memories of going to a real Chinese restaurant in SF's Chinatown. I am a strict vegetarian (not vegan) so I bowed out of almost everything. There were some truly amazing items on the menu: duck tongue soup, beef tongue, brains, various kinds of feet. Then came the mixtures. I can't remember them all because it was making me kind of ill, but there was some kind of pie with beef tongue, pork and fish.

This reminds me of the time in the 1970s when researchers "proved" that plants -- and yogurt cultures -- had feelings. That said, I remember a cool shop that had a lamp wired to a bush, so you touched the leaves to turn the light on and off. It would be quite a downer though, to come home and find that your speakers had died because you forgot to water them.

I know this sounds like a total hoax (opening locks with a pen), but the biking community has discovered this and put it up on the web really just a day or two ago (and thieves have known for a while, which helps explain the number of locks just left around poles, etc.). It will probably be making mainstream news in a few weeks. Disclaimer - I haven't tried this myself but the videos and testimonials are pretty convincing. I'm at the office, and we are looking for a Bic pen now. I will be heading over to a bike shop tomorrow to see what they think about this. Apparently, if you call Kryptonite customer service, they do take this seriously. Busted lock movie Busted lock newsthread

We keep going round and round this issue, i.e. whether public domain is legitimate and what are its consequences. I suspect that BN would still issue some items that go into pd in Europe, but perhaps only in the US. Most consumers are not going to go out of their way to get these technically illegal imports, though this may be changing with Amazon. To me, there is one major difference with the medication analogy and that is BN and other labels don't keep all their items in stock at any particular time. Once it goes OOP, there is no difference from the labels' and the artists' perspective from buying something used on Ebay or from burning it, though you might feel morally better about the first option. To me there is a major catch-22. BN and others don't have this incentive to keep items in print, but then if they don't keep it in circulation, then I can't reimburse them for their product. And I don't have much incentive to wait and see if they happen to bring it back. I'll go with the p.d. source. For instance, I am interested in acquiring the Gil Melle BN sessions. It doesn't appear BN is going to reissue it at all. Most times it goes for $40-50 on Ebay. But in two years, everything will be p.d. in Europe, so that will probably be the route I will go. I would prefer to get the legitimate items, but that just isn't viable in a lot of cases. As far as Proper remasterings, they sound ok to me, but when you buy 4 CDs for the price of one, it really isn't quite the same as buying a fancy hardbound book and the expectations need to be kept in perspective. Caveat emptor and all that.

I would cut the passengers some slack. Up until that point, all training about hijacking was about minimizing conflicts in the air, since the hijackers obviously were rational and planned on landing someplace. Probably the stewards actually told people to stay calm and not to actively resist. Well, the old assumptions proved to be tragically incorrect. My understanding is that the passengers on the 4th plane only started actively resisting once they heard the news about the other three planes and it become clear they were dealing with fanatics. I still feel sick about it, mostly because of the loss of life, but also because of the aftermath (the rise of the neocons and more loss of life). It really will be a turning point in US history.

Yeah, I was there too. I was working out of offices on 34th St. with a view of the WTC. We saw pretty much the entire thing from the second strike on. It was certainly gruesome, especially as we had clients in the building and my boss was going to visit them the next day. Then our building had a few bomb scares over the next week, as everything came unglued. Of course, I will never forgive those who committed the act, but I also hate those who have exploited 9-11 for their own gain. These so-called patriots are beneath contempt.

This was discussed earlier, but is still pretty obscure: Al McKibbon Black Orchid

I also ordered this from Daedalus. It was pretty good, but not super memorable. I can't give you the details, since it is packed away, and you will probably have your copy before I get mine unpacked. But maybe I will add some further impressions later.

Ok, a little obscure. I'm working my way through the Tal Farlow set, and I see a liner note that they decided against including an 8 second false start ("a flub") that was included on a Verve CD. But then I notice that Disc 4 and 6 have quite a number of breakdown takes (not alternates), which isn't the way Mosaic often presents music. Was this done because Verve is going to also produce some of these sets? How did they work this out and decide what to leave out? I'm picturing MC arm-wrestling OK (or whomever is doing the Verve reissues now) to get him to drop these precious 8 seconds. If only he had lost ... Maybe we should demand a limited edition CD of the 8 second breakdown take.

The equivalent in N. American terms would be if the U.S. decided to dismantle all its barbed wire fence along the US-Mexico border, invited Mexicans to become part of the U.S. and then guaranteed to bring their standard of living up (maybe not quite to US standards but much higher than they had been previously). Probably more than 25% of Americans would be opposed to such a move. (Or maybe we will just keep it to Southern California, Texas, New Mexico and all the other territory unified under the Mexican flag many moons ago.)