I regained my sense of time after several minutes, and had only scrolled about a third of the page. This is a huge list of podcasts, books, movies, foods, music, experiences, and ideas. You’ll recognize some of them, and think the list is smart, so you’ll keep scrolling to find more familiar items. In the meantime, you’ll find out about more things worth checking into. An honorable time sink.
Jill and Kevin’s Wedding Entrance Dance. Certainly blogged by half the web, more than 12 million views, I’m behind the curve, blah blah. I felt terrific watching this. I’m this happy being married to Ellen!
Just picked up our food for a hotel-room picnic from Papillote French Cuisine To-Go, a lovely little French kitchen near our hotel. I picked a mushroom soup (not creamy) to start, duck confit for me and a salmon and asparagus quiche for Ellen—both come with green salad and the chef’s ginger vinaigrette—and for dessert the merangue Ellen demanded. (Demanded! Yes!)
The charming Ariana made choosing the food very fun. She offered tastes of the soup, explained what was in the different dishes, told me of her (yet to be visited) relations in France, and made the whole experience a real pleasure before we’d eaten a bite.
While Ariana got everything ready for me, I walked down to the SCAD box office for tickets to the Battle Royale, the culmination of a very prestigious competition among several top-notch high school jazz bands—two from California, two from Washington state, one from Oregon, three from Florida. (See the extended quotation below.) this is some serious business, and we’re going to see the finals. Excited.
The winners of our fourth annual SWING CENTRAL High School Jazz Band Competition & Workshop, three of the finest high school jazz bands in the country, open the show with the music of Thad Jones, Benny Carter and Johnny Mercer.
Then, prepare yourself for an event of unbridled skill and improvisation. For decades, jazz musicians have pushed the limits of conceptual music: engaging in friendly competition known as “cutting.” BATTLE ROYALE pits masters of the art of improv going head-to-head. Selected student musicians from SWING CENTRAL are also featured.
Marcus Roberts Trio vs. The Clayton Bros.
Wycliffe Gordon vs. Andre Hayward
Scotty Barnhart vs. Terrell Stafford
Jeff Clayton vs. Mace Hibbard
Update: Excellent. The three bands were crisp and solid. The third place band got a challenging ballad which though subtle didn’t impress the way the more upbeat songs from the other two bands did. I believe the song didn’t serve them well. Very enjoyable. Then came the cutting: the bands and players they name above were just amazing, and that word is used on purpose. Amazing. Jazz lives, friends.
One of the would-be idols rendered a pale shadow of Pete Townsend’s Baba O’Reilly this evening. Which sent me back to the original, full strength. And then Won’t Get Fooled Again. Sometimes, I go back to the music that shaped me, and this was an essential part of the soundtrack for me.
Other authors have described this album and its essential songs, and you can find their words with a minimum of searching. I’ll just tell you to listen, loudly.
Our local CompUSA has reached the 30%-50% off, all-fixtures-for-sale stage of its closing. I found the RocketFM from Griffin Technology forless than $9, so I can broadcast any audio from my computer over low-power FM. With this hack I extended the range to the clock radio at the far end of the house… which means much more variety than the usual meager fare on the local airwaves.
In the first of an occasional series in which the greatest recording artists reveal their favourite records, Tom Waits writes about his 20 most cherished albums of all time. So for the lowdown on Zappa and Bill Hicks, step right up…
Here’s that take on Bill Hicks:
bq.15 Rant in E Minor by Bill Hicks (Rykodisc) 1997
Bill Hicks, blowtorch, excavator, truthsayer and brain specialist, like a reverend waving a gun around. Pay attention to Rant in E Minor, it is a major work, as important as Lenny Bruce’s. He will correct your vision. His life was cut short by cancer, though he did leave his tools here. Others will drive on the road he built. Long may his records rant even though he can’t.
I need to consolidate the music I’ve accumulated on the laptop drive and on one of my external backups, and boom, I come across this hint at macosxhints.com – Easily move music between drives with iTunes 7 – in my usual semi-daily Mac news browsing. Tomorrow night, it will be done. Life is good.
It’s here: The Free iPod Book 2.0, by iLounge.com! Weighing in at 194 pages, this revised and expanded second edition of our popular Book is your one-stop answer to every major iPod and iTunes question… plus much, much more.
There’s a large fillet of wild-caught salmon smoking on the grill, a very light snow is falling (nothing will stick, but in Atlanta, that’s cool), we’re drinking good red wine, a Gershwin special is on the radio, and we’re going to watch Almodovar’s Talk to Her. I feel rich.
...with crab cakes! Ellen and I had the house, and New Year’s Eve, to ourselves last night. We had homemade crab cakes, asparagus, salad, and peach sorbet, with a nice 2003 merlot. We welcomed the new year listening to H. Johnson’s Jazz Classics on our public radio station. His show has been on for more than 20 years, and it’s one of the many things that make Atlanta a great place to live. First song of the new year: Ray Charles’ America the Beautiful. Nice.
A very good, very clever friend of mine was delighted to receive his first iPod this Christmas. He ripped open the package, turned the iPod on, and immediately set the language to Chinese. He does not read or speak Chinese. Rather than read the fine print in the manual, he called me to learn how to reset the iPod. He also had lots of other questions about how the iPod works – the same questions we hear everyday at Small Dog Electronics. Because many people will be receiving the iPod this holiday season, I decided to dedicate this article to answering six of these very common questions. If you are the person that all your friends call when they have ANY computer problem, hang on to this article for them!
Jimmy Page Was My Co-Pilot –
“My English teacher’s assignment was an oral report on a book of our choice. I had no trouble selecting a book, because I had just read the definitive work on one of my favorite topics: Led Zeppelin. Stephen Davis’s cheesy Led Zep biography, Hammer of the Gods, had just been published, and I probably read it front to back the day it came out.”
I loved Led Zeppelin myself. Loved them. I know they didn’t define Rock Star Excess, but they practiced it and burnished it to an excessive gleam that virtually no other band has been able to touch. Despite this and innumerable other flaws, I revere some of their early power blues, and some of the great stuff on Physical Grafitti still makes me drive fast. From Panopticist: Cultural Surveillance.
Saw the Johnny Cash biopic tonight (spoiler: he marries June and sings at Folsom Prison). E and W liked it more than I did, and I liked it, but it was too… patterned. A.O. Scott describes it well in his comparison with the Rac Charles biopic: Walk the Line”offers more tribute than insight.” I recommend it, but it won’t blow you away. You will want to buy some Johnny Cash music afterward.
We watched the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular this evening at the Fox Theatre. The show was fun, the precision dancing was impressive, and the Fox is a great venue for this kind of old fashioned entertainment. My favorite part was how impressed the little kids were. One little boy walked by during the intermission and said, “It’s a great show!” He was right.
made choosing the food very fun. She offered tastes of the soup, explained what was in the different dishes, told me of her (yet to be visited) relations in France, and made the whole experience a real pleasure before we’d eaten a bite.
