Now's my chance!

I think the position of 23rd-most-trusted person in American will soon be vacated... why not me? Now I just have to dig up some dirt on Denzel...

Before the episode, Mr. Williams long had been considered one of the most trusted people in not only in the news business but in the country as a whole. He was trusted by about three-quarters of consumers, making him the 23rd-most-trusted person in the country, according to the celebrity index of The Marketing Arm, a research firm owned by Omnicom. That places him alongside the likes of Denzel Washington, Warren E. Buffett and Robin Roberts.

Return to Return to Forever...

... well, more like Mahavishnu revisited, in little Dana Street Cafe in Mountain View CA, of all places. The proprietor, Nick Chaput, has some very musical friends, most notably the extraordinary drummer Scott Amendola, who brings some of his buddies in to play every few months. Last night it was a truly all-star quintet, including Jenny Scheinman on violin and the idiosyncratic guitar god, Nels Cline.

I'm usually not a big fan of fusion anything, but this was jazz-rock of a high order. Amendola is a master of freewheeling polyrhythmic pulse and swishingly propulsive brushwork, but he also loves to rock out and pound the skins. I might have preferred more pulse and less pounding, but what a joyful noise, especially when co-guitarist Jeff Parker ratcheted up the reverb, and you could feel the waves of overtones as they bounced around in the small space's humid atmosphere. Over to the left, lean and lanky Scheinman seemed a little lost and badly under-mixed during the first half, but she made up for it after intermission with a couple of ferocious Paganini-possessed solos, at sufficient volume. Across the "stage," Cline generally looked relaxed, his back against the cafe's front window, fingers flying, a man who can coax any sound in the world from an electric guitar. And in the middle, Amendola, having a ball.

My King Zephyr

The King Zephyr model sax was produced by the H.N. White Co. in Cleveland during the mid-century. My alto, serial number 292223, dates to 1947. As a player, I suck, but I love this old sax. It is supposedly quite close in design and quality to the King Super 20 that Bird played on some of his recordings. Mine lacks the original double-socket neck, but the sound is sweet, and the fingering is comfortable. I have a book of Bird solo transcriptions, and I can play a few of them... at around 1/8 speed.

Oopsies...

One of those emails you hope not to receive but have to expect, sooner or later...

To Our Members:  

Safeguarding your personal, financial and medical information is one of our top priorities, and because of that, we have state-of-the-art information security systems to protect your data. However, despite our efforts, Anthem Blue Cross was the target of a very sophisticated external cyber attack....

The Hip Hop Family Tree

Always a pleasure... and the video clips at the end are always a kick...

Bob sings (?) Frank

Umm... Bob Dylan is an American musical genius somewhere up there with Armstrong or Holiday or, yes, Sinatra. And I don't doubt that Dylan reveres Sinatra as much as many of us do. But...

Don't drill

Obama, keeping hope of compromise alive, throws a bone to the GOP and the carbon lobby with his proposal to drill for oil and gas off the East Coast. But as Martin O'Malley argues: don't go there. In some constrained benefit-cost calculation, Obama is right: if you have to drill, baby, drill, this may be the drilling you want to do. But we don't have to. Carbon is priced at well below marginal social cost, so every decision should be stop until we get closer to the margin. Ditto Keystone XL. Not a big disaster in itself, just another small tack tapped into the planet's coffin.

Freakin' Serena

“I just threw up, and I had to run back on the court, and I thought, I’ve got to hit an ace,” she said. “For me there’s no other option. That’s my game.”

And so she did. Oof.