Work crises have of course eaten my weekend. And then I have to hop on an airplane to go to Miami for the week. Here’s your links and be grateful, you demanding bastards. And of today’s birthdays, I’ll narrow it to the two most important ones: Harry Houdini and the guy I want to grow up to be, R. Lee Ermey.
Old Guy Music! And someone mentioned Mingus yesterday. Yes, we should always be listening to Mingus, especially when Eric Dolphy and Jaki Byard are around.
Where there’s walls and Banjo’s kids, these’s cleanin’ to do. So while she does that, I’ll be the Linksmaster for the Day. Starting with birthdays, which today include my third-favorite US President (really, third and fourth) Grover “Where’s my Pa?” Cleveland; Oberlin’s finest graduate and surprising prankster, Edward Everett Horton; Austin-based country rocker James McMurtry; and a player to be named later.
Birthdays today include whackadoodle Jew-hater Cynthia McKinney; a three named and all-around fun guy John Wayne Gacy; Stormy “Horse Face” Daniels; the anchor of the Baltimore Orioles, Chris Davis; and an actual good guy, more about which later. In the meantime, let’s see what’s hit the news feeds:
And the good guy birthday I alluded to before was Nat King Cole. And just to remind everyone how amazing he was as a musician, here’s today’s Old Guy Music as proof.
Good morning, Glibs and Glibettes. And any of you non-binary whatevers. We’ve been in a celebratory mode, what with SP passing her first midterm exam with what is, for her, a barely acceptable score (99/100)- but you know the old joke about what you call the guy who graduates last in his medical school class. In any case, a bottle of New Mexico’s finest Champagne has been sacrificed, and I’m raiding the nearby orange grove to gather raw materials for Screwdrivers. So in this brief interlude of sobriety, I’ll drop in a few links.
First, some selected birthdays, and there’s a lot to choose from. Those of us who admire the genius of the US Constitution and sorely wish our politicians would read it every once in a while mark the birthday of its architect and defender against statist pieces of shit like Adams and Hamilton, James Madison; the original #Resist, Georg Ohm; my spirit animal, Henny Youngman; star of two of my all-time favorite TV series, Leo McKern; and legend of real football, Ozzie Newsome. Oh, and someone to be named later.
Old Guy Music, with a short story. The birthday boy I didn’t mention is the great pianist Tommy Flanagan. And he played on one of the most revered of all jazz recordings, the original Giant Steps. GS is easily the most deceptively complex and difficult jazz piece ever written, with two key changes per measure and totally non-intuitive progressions. John Coltrane, as was his habit, came into the studio with the charts and recorded the song with essentially no prep by his band. Famously, Tommy Flanagan struggled with it, and this song is still the basic test of aspiring jazz musicians. Years later, Flanagan had his revenge and recorded it with his own band- after working on it for years- and vindicated himself with absolutely incredible solos. But you judge.
One more bad idea touted by Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, the two worst American presidents, was this Daylight Savings Time bullshit. And now SP and I are free of it. Who the hell knows if it will screw the website’s posting times. I hope Wilson and FDR are feeling nice and warm down there.
I’m amazed at the paucity of notable birthdays today, but we can dig into the ranks of second tier celebrity to come up with noted communist actor Sam Jaffe; literal punchline of many jokes Chuck Norris; and the guy whose name is on the coffee I’m drinking at the moment, Alfred Peet.
But you’re not here for that, you’re here for links to ignore. And I’ll try not to disappoint you.
Meh, let’s have some music. Old Guy Music. And while you could in theory call Three Friends a cover band, it’s a bit more than that, having three members of the original group. But either way, state of the art prog rock, despite the age of the concept material.
Recovering from a small celebration last night. My first product in my new job launched, and of course, there’s two more that have to be completed in the next couple weeks and put into production, so the celebration is brief.
Cherry-picking the birthdays today, I’ll note that it’s 101 years since the birth of George Lincoln Rockwell, the guiding spirit for today’s Democratic Party; 96 years since the birth of Walter Kohn, who inspired my early work in science; and 115 years since the debut of loudspeaker guru Paul Klipsch.
On to the news. I have been so amused the past week, I am coming around to Warty’s point of view that we truly live in the best timeline.
Old Guy Music time. And this is seriously complex and amazing, both composition and performance. And bittersweet; at that ending, I accidentally got some dust in my eye…
And where is Brett? Oh yeah, that’s right, he’s busy at the Happy Lotus Full Release Asian Massage down at the strip mall. Apparently, he’s not Going His Own Way. Fella at the next table is wearing a blue shirt with a white collar…
But you aren’t here to hear about Brett’s tug-job, you want links. So… here’s some links.
And of course there has to be Old Guy Music, and consistent with my latest kick, it’s the late, great Milt Buckner once again. This song oughta perk you up. Damn that guy knew how to play piano.
*** SCHEDULING UPDATE: Tonight – tune in at 1900 for a Monocle Update. Wednesday…..Hat and Hair…day and night (Brrrrr!) Thursday night – SEA SMITH, Friday 1100 – Pie gives us more to think about, 1900 – STEVE SMITH.*** /Swiss Servator
It was the latest of nights. It was the earliest of nights. There was alcohol, Glibertarians, and former Hit & Runners involved. So this edition of links will not be exactly… sparkling.
I will confess to a guilty pleasure: since moving west, SP and I have been on an old Western kick. And our current binge is old Hopalong Cassidy TV shows, mostly condensed versions of the 66 Hopalong Cassidy movies. In its day, these shows were insanely popular, the first major TV westerns, with every red-blooded American kid watching the show weekly, wanting Hoppy merchandise, and cajoling parents into buying stuff from the show’s sponsors. There’s a lot of interesting backstory as well, which I may expand into a full post. Teaser: entrepreneurship, heavy drinking, redemption, and brilliant marketing. At the end of every show, Hoppy’s portrayer, William Boyd, would deliver a message to the kids, usually along the lines of, “Hello, Little Pardners! Make sure you do your homework every day!” or “Your parents love you and care about you. Make sure you listen to everything they say and do your chores with a smile!” But of all of the end-of-show messages, this one is for sure our favorite:
Birthdays today are particularly auspicious and numerous, but I must single out libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard, brilliant author and social critic Tom Wolfe, and the immortal Lou Reed, who will always be with us.
There’s no shortage of non-entities crowding the Team Blue field for 2020. Too bad that this threatens to overshadow the absolute comedy of Warren and Sanders. That said, if Team Blue somehow gets sensible and nominates the staunch anti-interventionist Gabbard, and Team L fails to nominate the amazingly delightful McAfee, I may vote Blue for the first time.
Old Guy Music time. And for whatever reason, I’ve been on a Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee kick lately. And here’s a classic, introduced by the amazingly white and overly garrulous Pete Seeger.
