J Larsen

For about a year I thought the title of that record was "Monkey Jungle". Then, one day, I pulled the CD and finally noticed there was no "k".

Uh, I was actually hoping you'd get us a 77th story floor-through in Manhattan....

That is VERY impressive, GoM. I definately have to visit that building some day. According to historiclandmarks.org, they're only asking $32MM for that building, which is about 2/3 of what someone just paid for a 76th floor apartment at Columbus Circle in Manhattan.

Yes, that's the one. Somehow I didn't think to name all my buildings: The first one is the Tramway Gas Station in Plam Springs, which last I heard was no longer operating and was in danger of demolition. The second is the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan, two blocks west of the NW corner of central park. The third is, of course, Falling Water in Pennsylvania.

Is it too cliched to mention this home?

For two years, my north-facing living room windows had spectacular views of this building, which was directly across the street. From the picture, you can't really tell how large this building is. It is the third-largest church in the world. The picture is of the west side of the cathedral. My view was of the south side, but I haven't been able to find a picture from that perspective yet.

Unfortunately, this is the best photo I can find on the web of what I believe to be the world's coolest gas station:

One of the coolest homes I've seen never really existed: the home on top of the hill in North by Northwest.

Hands down the best web site I know for this kind of thing is www.greatbuildings.com I've spent many, many hours on this site.

Maybe the surgical spirits were applied for the specific purpose of discouraging the patient from farting on his doctor.

You have the story a bit mixed up. When people started downloading the videos like crazy from waxy.org, they started developing a conscience about having posted them in the first place, so they started a fundraiser for him and raised over $4000 US, which they used to purchase him a 30GB IPod. They claim to have sent the rest to him as a check, although there was a rumor that they had used the extra to buy him a G5 and the family claims to have never received a check at all. Now the family is suing waxy.org for $225,000 Canadian, and is threatening to do the same to any other site hosting the videos. In my view, these lawsuits are completely without merit, but they have successfully discouraged sites from hosting the videos. I'm sure you can still find them, but it isn't quite as easy as it was before. Meanwhile, waxy.org is offering refunds to everyone who donated money to the kid.

Thanks. That's actually a relief.

As an aside, any idea what the complete Monk BN on vinyl goes for? I'd consider selling if it's pricey.

I've run in to several musicians in NYC record shops, but none of my encounters can top the time my girlfriend wound up on an airplane with James Brown and his entourage from LA to NYC. Not jazz, I know, but pretty damn cool.

It wouldn't surprise me if I were. Due to my girlfriend's reluctance to pay rent, I live in a fairly low-income area. I honestly don't think that any of my neighbors even have computers, and I'm dead serious about that. According to http://bandwidthplace.com/speedtest/ , my connection speed is over 300kbs, which is faster than what I pay for. BTW, that 300kbs is just for file-sharing and downloads. That site says my communications speed is 1.5MBs.

I've been downloading tons of cds I already have just because with my cable modem, downloading the MP3s is faster (about one second per four minute song) and more convenient than importing the songs into my computer. I guess I'll be getting one of those letters soon.

The Mingus record has been reissued at least twice in the past few years and is currently available, as far as I know. With the disclaimer that I am known for having a tendency to use the surpurlative, it's one of the greatest records of all time.

If I had to wake up to music, I'd want to wake up to something really lousy. I'm not a morning person at all. I'm typically severely grouchy for the first hour that I'm awake, and the process of waking is usually pretty traumatic for me. I wouldn't want those feelings associated with anything I like. But that's just me.

Hang in there and feel better, man.

Emusic has two related items: Flatfoot Sam by Mike Morgan and the Crawl You Can't Love Me by TV Slim I don't think the Mike Morgan cover would be JSngry approved. The later is non-offensive, but it's pretty much run-of-the-mill 60s R 'n B. Not that that's such a bad thing.

I can see why you said "colleague" and not "friend".

On my stereo-component burner, I just set it to analog mode and record the album. I don't do anything fancy at all. I think my vinyl burns sound great. Maybe the HK deck just doesn't do analog mode very well?

I'm super-squeezed for time right now, but I couldn't resist making this contribution to the conversation: not mentioned in this article is the fact that this technology was orignally developed to help fully "locked-in" patients (ie patients fully paralyzed and without the ability to speak) comunicate with the outside world. There really IS such a thing as "brain waves" -they are the background EM waves emited as a risidual effect of the electrical activity in the brain. What is extremely surprising, given that brain waves are something of an emergent phenomenon (that is, a phenomenon that is the risidual effect of many other elementary effects), is that patients really can be trained to control the form of their brain waves well enough to use specially designed word-processing software to compose sentences. There was a fascinating article (I think it was in the NYer about a year ago) about a fully paralyzed man who wrote a complete novel using such software. I guess my point is that, while the whole "17% improvement" bit is a head-scratcher (how the hell are they coming up with THAT???), the technique isn't as whacked out as it may seem.

Yep, spaced out on that one. Great album.

Noj, you're on emusic, aren't you? Why don't you just download them to try them out? They're both there. FWIW, I think an ideal intro to Ellington would be getting discs from a few different periods that Ellington is actually on. It's really hard for me to recommend specific discs since they're, for the most part, all really good in their own way and I think it takes many albums to really paint a full picture. The 40CD History set is only about $75 and covers the 1910s to early-mid-40s really well. For the 60s and beyond, I like Money Jungle, New Orleans Suite, Latin-American Suite and And His Mother Called Him Bill. I'm a bit weak on the late-mid-40s, 50s and early 70s, but I think the 70s material might ultimately suit you the best. Just a hunch.