Happy birthday to "Politey"!

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...Politey being the antonymous designation for Rudy, the cartoonlike gentleman who spends much of his life in this apartment window, which is located 7 feet east of a Joe Pye Weed and dwarf coreopsis growing between my driveway and my fence, on West Healey Street in Champaign, Ill. Rudy has inhabited this planet for a full 67 years as of today. Coincidentally, also on this date in 1959, the first episode of The Twilight Zone aired on CBS. Also appropriately, he shares a birthday with Richard III (1452), the allegedly deformed, hunchback English king who served as the objective correlative in the children's nursery rhyme "Humpty Dumpty," and was probably seriously slandered by Shakespeare on behalf of the Tudor monarchy a century after he died; Groucho Marx (1890), who was somewhat less funny than Rudy during his career; George McFarland (1928), the runt called "Spanky" in the Depression-era Our Gang/Little Rascals film shorts; and Maury Wills (1932), a National League base-stealing speed demon during mid-century previous.

Rudy's favorite expression is "What're you doing?!?" His favorite pastimes are lurking in his window waiting for Billy Goat Gruffs to carelessly trespass, reporting hallucinatory sightings of nonexistent species of birds patrolling our feeders, and making shit up as he goes along. He coins at least four neologisms every week, and believes that each and every one of them have been part of The King's English since Humpty Dumpty roamed the earth.

I offer all of the above observations in complete earnest, but without so much as a microgram of disrespect. He is an sweety-pie American Original, and by far the least generic neighbor I've ever had. Happy birthday, Fatso!

Saturday Matinee (Eels "encore")

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Here are E's band intros for the current incarnation of the Eels, recorded about a month ago in "København," as the native Swedish say. This is pretty much how the formality went at the Metro in Chicago on 1 October 2010, and it gives a good feel for E's style of showmanship. Be sure to stick around for "Talkin' 'bout Knuckles," aka "The Knuckles Theme Song."



Incidentally, the band isn't always styled with Ray-Bans and "epic" beards; the look seems to be part of some sort of running gag by or preoccupation of the enigmatic Mark Oliver Everett.

Live Band Introductions and Talkin' 'bout Knuckles, E and The Eels (8 September 2010, from a live performance at Store Vega, Copenhagen, Denmark), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Friday Evening, Way After Hours

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Phone snapshot from a Friday evening field trip to the Metro in Wrigleyville, Chicago, to see The Eels, 1 October 2010.

Dramatis personnae, from left: P-Boo, Koool G Murder, Knuckles, Mark Oliver Everett (E, band leader), and The Chet.

The shorties and I have seen this band four times now. They first caught my ear, and the offsprings', on the University of Illinois college rock station in the late '90s with "Novocain For The Soul." Geezers: you've probably heard something by E in a movie or on TV (click through the Wiki link above). The man has been---and appears to remain---a tortured soul, who has been plagued not only by the loss and alienation well known to anyone who explores so-called romantic love, but traumatic losses to death during more tender years. Two of the performances we've seen have been skewed toward his more introspective, even bordering on maudlin, lyrical compositions. They are outstanding and unique compositions, often voiced with anachronistic instruments like the harmonium, the saw and bow, the autoharp, and even a drumkit fashioned from vintage luggage and (I think) a leather ottoman. I'm biased toward shows with more upbeat content, humor, and electric power. The Metro show fell into that latter category, mostly delivered by three guitars (including E's odd-looking collection of Danelectros), bass, and drums.

I'm not so good at remembering song names by latter-day bands these days, so I can't authoritatively report the set list. (Beer-D or Dutch Boy, Esquire [freshly minted by the Illinois Bar 2 hours before the show], feel free to document it in the comments.) As usual, E provided a little clowning with, apropos of nothing, two summer-themed oldies: "Summer In The City" and Billy Stewart's arrangement of Gershwin's "Summertime" (during which the snap above was, er... snapped). I say "clowning" because during "Summertime," he flung ice cream bars, popsicles, and Drumsticks across the main floor and in the balcony of the small 19th century auditorium. I was trying to catch a Drumstick when I should have been shooting pictures.

Here's a live TV studio performance by the Eels With Strings lineup we saw several years ago at the Park West in Chicago, minus their glamorous eveningwear. This is the most upbeat tune I remember from that tour. Note the drumkit. Also note E's choice of vocal microphone, the classic "green bullet," a vintage-design, low-def analog radio dispatcher's mic adopted by the postwar generation of blues harpists to help amplify their Hohner Marine Band harmonicas.



Hey Man (Now You're Really Living), Eels With Strings (2005, live performance on "Later... With Jools Holland," BBC Two), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

"Taliban Dan" and symmetric political tactics [updated]

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Usually when I see the term "coarsening the political debate," it's usually part of a quote attributed to a member of the establishment political class, including politicians, think tank spokesmen, and celebrity columnists. Both sides denounce the practice, but I think our shared media experience strongly indicates that it's Republicans who systematically began doing this in earnest during the Nixon administration. I remember when Vice President Spiro Agnew, previously the corrupt governor of Maryland, being deployed over the media to tar liberals as the "nattering nabobs of negativism." It was an absurd construct that we teenagers laughed about, but it's my earliest recollection of a politician attempting to demonize a mainstream category of people. There were certainly other, more significant examples that went right past me.

After years of respite during the terms of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, the team that invented Reagan brought with it a whole arsenal of sneaky little tricks to coarsen the political debate in the form of deftly delivered wisecracks aimed at a lost generation of slowly aging hippies who had become ashamed of what they'd been (i.e., yuppies). During the early and mid-80s, I was less tuned into Republican attack politics than what was happening to public policy at their hands. I was paying more attention to the damage being wrought than the "enabling technologies" for that destruction. Still, I assume that there was some subtlety being applied by Reagan's strategy team.

Many of us might agree that Ground Zero of the postmodern "coarsening," yearwise, was 1988 shortly after the Democratic National Convention. Massachusetts Governor Mike Dukakis had won the nomination. He was a short, wonky, funny-looking guy who had performed well in his acceptance speech and was polling extremely well immediately afterward with what appeared to be a GOP-weary electorate. But the diabolical Lee Atwater was on the job for George Herbert Walker Bush, the patrician establishment archetype who somehow remained an utter pussy even after being shot down while piloting a torpedo bomber in the Pacific during World War II. I'm sure that most people over 40 or so remember the "Willie Horton" capital punishment campaign commercial during the 1988 presidential campaign, and the opportunity it set for a debate moderator to ambush Dukakis in one of the debates and finish taking the wind out of sails. The New England blueblood and a cynical South Carolina bigot teamed up to mainstream the coarsening of the political debate. My perception to this day is that Democrats rarely do it, and Republicans do it all the time because it's the best tactic they have for ongoing minority rule: keep average white people terrified of everyone who is different from them.

Democrats stupidly try to counter Republican coarsening with "taking the high road," which is an asymmetric strategy that has driven the party to timidity and irrelevance. Today they only participate in the power structure by giving Republicans what they want and pretending that even their most heinous enemies work in good faith. The last mainstream Democrat I remember pushing back hard against Republicans on the Senate floor, Dick Durbin in 2005, was quickly chastened after his experiment with expressing his unvarnished opinions about the Bush administration's Guantanamo interrogation tactics. He has behaved as if emasculated ever since he apologized for the remark a week after he made it. You see, by noting parallels between federal government activities and Nazism, you are coarsening the dialog... and we can't have that. Unless you're a Republican or a Tea Partier slandering a Democratic president's origin, religion, character, and motives.

Which (finally) brings me to this: a campaign ad by a Democrat that tries the novel approach of proactively using symmetric, not asymmetric, tactics against a right-wing opponent.



Alan Grayson's approach here is very much in the spirit of Lee Atwater. We could deconstruct its sleazy production value, the editing of the "Taliban Dan" clip, and especially the demonization of an already-unsavory right-wing nut with a catchy, ugly nickname shown in a pseudo-Arabic font. But what makes it different than Atwood's work, in my opinion, is that in back of the media packaging the ad's claims are documented and undeniable. They are not overstretched interpretations, lies, or pure hateful mockery as deployed by Atwater so effectively.

Coarse? Yes. But that cat was let out of the bag decades ago by the masters of divide-and-conquer politics. Effective? Yet to be seen. For an early indication, listen for Republican outrage about how Grayson has coarsened the dialog "beyond the pale" or some such thing. Next, note whether a debate moderator asks Taliban Dan live on TV whether he supports any rights for battered wives or whether he still believes God wills wives to SUBMIT to their husbands without exception. Finally, count the votes. There is reportedly some very big out-of-state money from "Big Pill," as Grayson calls Pharma, and other usual suspects. Moneywise, he's outgunned. So how else to fight overpowering opponents but by attacking their weakness... in this case, Taliban Dan. But you attack him using symmetric tactics.

Editor's note: I'll acknowledge Atrios for pointing to Digby's earlier discussion of Taliban Dan's bona fides, which include associations with the Christian Reconstructionists and white supremacist groups.

Addendum: also be alert in coming days for Responsible Liberals to scold Grayson for... guess what...?

Update: after posting this piece I appended with the first link in the fourth graf, which I discovered a few moments ago.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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I'm taking a moment to remember The Day That Zeppelin Died, which coincided with the premature demise of drummer John Henry Bonham, then 32, on 25 October 1980. Bonham is reported to have begun his last full day of life with about half a liter of vodka, "The Breakfast of Champions" (one might say if it wouldn't be overinterpreted as a trademark infringement), and then remained with that general refreshment protocol throughout that day 30 years ago until sinking into his final sleep after midnight.

"Achilles Last Stand" is my favorite Zeppelin track, and I do not believe it can be fully appreciated at much below ear-bleeding level. Try it cranked into some "earbuds" for a dim facsimile, but do listen. It's ambitious and mighty, with all the authority of the best Lummox Rock, but having too much compositional and production complexity to be confined to that category.



As you can hear, Bonzo Bonham put about half a career's worth of effort into this track. But to be fair, so did everyone else.

Achilles Last Stand, Led Zeppelin (1976, from "Presence," Swan Song LP SS 8416), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Friday Night Prayer Meeting

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Buddy Holly performing in a sub-genre that I've christened as "Kennedy Rock":



I have an iTunes placeholder playlist that I intend to populate with Kennedy Rock, which to me is evocative of a period during the dawn of my pop musical consciousness that roughly corresponded in time to the Kennedy administration. To make my playlist, a song must showcase a strong melody performed by a distinctive, youthful pop voice, and is usually accompanied, at least, by a studio chamber orchestra. Additionally, they may display unusual studio production methods that, technologically, are uniquely of that period. An example of the former would be "The Night Has A Thousand Eyes," by Bobby Vee; examples of the latter would include "It Might As Well Rain Until September" by Carole King or "Our Day Will Come" by Ruby and the Romantics. What they all have in common is that most of them bounce and the sister formerly known as Oscar would think they were swell. I imagine these songs to have been marketed to girls graduating from high school during the Camelot era and launching their lives in the typing pool or as homemakers, listening to the radio while ironing their A-line skirts or their husband's monogrammed hankies.

While not a huge fan of Buddy Holly, I don't have anything against him, and do highly esteem a few of his performances, especially this one. It's a highlight, in my opinion, of "The Buddy Holly Story," and the recreation of it in the movie may even be better than his original. Of course it's hard to ignore that this cut is not rock and roll in any elemental sense --- it's adult middle-of-the-road pop performed by a rock idol (which is another way to describe Kennedy Rock, I guess). Nothing wrong with that it the sound is nice, but it makes me wonder what we'd think about Holly today if he'd flown out of Iowa alive in February 1959. Would he have totally fallen into this "pretty" style of music on his agent's advice? And what then, after that --- Vegas? Branson?

True Love Ways, Buddy Holly (1960, Coral 57326/757326), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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Listen for the "chicka-chickas."



It's John Mayall without the Blues Breakers, live at somewhere. The quartet consisted of himself, Jon Mark (guitar), Johnny Almond (reeds), and Steve Thompson (bass). This tune exemplifies what was unique about this lineup: a highly percussive sound without the use of any percussion instruments except Mayall's tambourine here and there. (Personally, I think he should have left the tambourine at home for purity's sake.) To my ear it's remarkable how percussive Mayall makes the "harp," and most of the other percussion sounds come from "chicka-chickas," blowing on the mike, tapping hollow-body guitars, and so forth. Mayall, incidentally, comes from what I call The Dudley Do-Right School of Voice." This is a peculiarity of several British blues and rock performers of the era, and I'll dig a few more up in the future.

Mayall was a giant in British blues and rock in the '60s, but most Americans probably know him more by his proteges than his own self. I'm not well versed in this aspect of pop music history, though, so I won't bother with a bunch of Wikipedia cites for something I know little about. However, I'll bet the 59er may know a thing or two about Mayall and his British associates of the period.  (If you do, S, send me a note and I'll append this post for the information of myself and the Fifty50 community.)

Room To Move, John Mayall (1969, from "The Turning Point," Polydor), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

A riddle for you

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Q: What do you get when you cross a CEO with a cadaver and a rodeo clown?

A: Newton Leroy Gingrich.

Yes, I'm talking about that depraved homunculus who this morning earnestly declared to his Christian disciples at the so-called "Value Voters Summit" in Washington, DC, that we need federal action now to prevent the application of Sharia Law in U.S. courts. Yes, immediate action by the selfsame federal government that Ronald Reagan first vilified as scary, then actually made it so in his own lifetime.

Well, the thing is that the U.S. founding fathers took said federal action 220 years ago by composing and ratifying the U.S. Constitution. If Dr. Gingrich had studied U.S. history more closely, rather than dedicating his salad years to the study of "Belgian Education Policy in the Congo: 1945-1960," we would not be able to excuse him at all for this kind of asshattery.

If I may offer a slice of my personal philosophy here, I could probably be tempted to support an amendment to the constitution banning Sharia Law if the amendment also explicitly banned any and all activities whatsoever by all religions except those conducted inside their "houses of worship." Do I have a second?

Editor's note: today I have provided you a bonus "doke." Please make a note of it.

Nonlinearity and Future Shock

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I stumbled on the post I quote below via the interesting Technoccult blog. It makes some points I've been wanting to get to, as touched upon in this recent post and this one and others. Specifically, I've been working toward some synthesis based on Alvin Toffler's Future Shock and Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine. I heard Klein lecture at the University of Illinois about a year ago, but since her book hasn't risen to the top of my reading list yet (it's very close, though), I've avoided referencing her thoughts directly. But here's an author named Charlie Stross, with whom I'm not familiar, that neatly draws connections between themes from those two books and the nonlinearity I've started trying to understand:

The term Future Shock was coined by Alvin and Heidi Toffler in the 1960s to describe a syndrome brought about by the experience of "too much change in too short a period of time". Per Wikipedia (my copy of Future Shock is buried in a heap of books in the room next door) "Toffler argues that society is undergoing an enormous structural change, a revolution from an industrial society to a 'super-industrial society'. This change will overwhelm people, the accelerated rate of technological and social change leaving them disconnected and suffering from 'shattering stress and disorientation' — future shocked. Toffler stated that the majority of social problems were symptoms of the future shock. In his discussion of the components of such shock, he also popularized the term information overload."

It's about forty years since "Future Shock" was published, and it seems to have withstood the test of time. More to the point, the Tofflers' predictions for how the symptoms would be manifest appear to be roughly on target. They predicted a growth of cults and religious fundamentalism; rejection of modernism: irrational authoritarianism: and widespread insecurity. They didn't nail the other great source of insecurity today, the hollowing-out of state infrastructure and externally imposed asset-stripping in the name of economic orthodoxy that Naomi Klein highlighted in The Shock Doctrine, but to the extent that Friedmanite disaster capitalism can be seen as a predatory corporate response to massive political and economic change, I'm inclined to put disaster capitalism down as being another facet of the same problem. (And it looks as if the UK and USA are finally on the receiving end of disaster capitalism at home, in the post-2008 banking crisis era.)

My working hypothesis to explain the 21st century is that the Toffler's underestimated how pervasive future shock would be. I think somewhere in the range from 15-30% of our fellow hairless primates are currently in the grip of future shock, to some degree. Symptoms include despair, anxiety, depression, disorientation, paranoia, and a desperate search for certainty in lives that are experiencing unpleasant and uninvited change. It's no surprise that anyone who can offer dogmatic absolute answers is popular, or that the paranoid style is again ascendant in American politics, or that religious certainty is more attractive to many than the nuanced complexities of scientific debate.

I'll quibble about the last clause in this quote, because there are also conflicts between "scientific certainty and the nuanced complexities of religious debate" (to use Stross' construct), and also between dogma versus open-mindedness in both "communities." But his working hypothesis, as his post is entitled, corresponds to key points of my own, so I'm happy to have him do some heavy lifting to help me progress on my own synthesis.

Incidentally, these Stross bon mots are extracted from a more specialized question that his post directly addresses: is religious tolerance beneficial? And his answer, similar to mine, is mixed. Yes, religious tolerance is beneficial because the opposite of tolerance never is. But tolerance should not venture up to the point where a "religion" adopts dogmas that dehumanize women, children, and The Other; or where religious proselytizing becomes intrusive, coercive, or mandated by law.

Favorite blog headline of the week

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Chief of International Pedophilia Ring Blames Nazism on Atheism.

The post is worth reading, too.

September 11, 2010 [updated]

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Most commemoration of the violent "Muslim" attacks on New York City and elsewhere, which occurred on the subject date 9 years ago, just leaves me wondering. Ccreeped out and revolted, too.

Most TYPICAL AMERICANS are expected, from what I can tell, to believe that this EVIL MUSLIM  force majeure from the skies "essentially free[d] both parties from liability or obligation [because it was an] extraordinary event or circumstance beyond the control of the parties... [that] prevent[ed] one or both parties from fulfilling their obligations under the contract." That is, THE CONTRACT.

And furthermore, in order to visibly document one's strong approval of how one or both of those parties did perform, even though they didn't, TYPICAL AMERICANS are expected, from what I can tell, to publicly express strong, heartfelt patriotic opinions about American righteousness in the face of those attacks. And in order to meet the approval of TRUE PATRIOTS, though, everyone instinctively knows it is best to pretend, fetishistically, that we are very sad, or very angry, or very defiant, or very solemn about these events even though we, ourselves, were not harmed on that date; and no one we know lost limb or life, either. And even though all of us are constantly indoctrinated by corporate-sponsored media to understand that the East Coast, north of the Confederate States of America, is a decadent hive of scum and villainy. As well as some other places.

Therefore, I strongly recommend that you read this recap, by Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), documenting how mainstream corporate media rapidly volunteered to serve as a cat's paw for America's right-wing "assignment editors" as they fabricated false connections, slanderously, between EVIL MUSLIMS and AMERICAN LIBERALS:

At least one commentator blamed the left for the attacks themselves. Columnist Steven Schwartz (New York Post, 9/12/01) wrote that "the anti-globalist rioters seek to intimidate world capitalism into shutting down altogether, and the distance between breaking the windows of McDonald's to achieve that end and blowing up the World Trade Center is pretty damned narrow."

I think this FAIR article is important because, to me, it undeniably illustrates the core sickness of so many self-identified Republicans, conservatives, Tea Partiers, rednecks, and "patriots" today: the readiness to either seize or create opportunities to slander, silence, and if necessary eliminate people THE OTHER. That is, everyone who looks like they do not belong to THE TRIBE. Routinely, the opportunity to vilify THE OTHER is driven entirely by paranoic fanasy or prima facie hate. And journalists are paid to pretend that they are blind and deaf to this.

In advance, I apologize for the churlishness with which I may respond to any assertion that "both sides do it." No, they don't. In America, they really really don't. But the Kens and Barbies who staff our nation's network and cable news shops pretend that they don't know that. They are key members of the ideological lynch mob that has held this nation in fear and moral atrophy for 3 decades.

Update: here's another example of a perverted lunatic spinning slanderous "theories" about liberals with full impunity granted corporate journalists. Although he immediately quit his position as Georgia representative and Speaker of the House, in disgrace, upon being re-elected in 1998, Newt Gingrich is still highly regarded by the polite establishment as a political visionary. He claims, whether in sincerity or deception, that in effect Barack Obama is de Mau Mau incarnate. His motives mostly don't matter; what matters is that he's still portrayed as a policy expert and political bellwether by the media lie machines.

Editor's notes: (1) Rubber Crutch's decision to post this item on September 12, not September 11, was fully intentional. (2) Yes, he did knowingly begin this counter-commemoration post with a strange but genuine Wikipedia/Fifty50 "mashup." (3) This post is likely to need subsequent editorial review for after-hours booboos that elude detection at this hour. (4) Thank you for your attention to these matters.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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Being a bit lazy here, , for expediency --- going back to my favorite iteration of Blood, Sweat & Tears, masterminded by Al Kooper with very nice, bluesy white-boy vocals and a little psychedelic guitar around the edges. I dedicate it to my old friend, the daughter of a preacher man, who digs horn bands from the late '60s and who was evidently moved by her own political passions to utter the word "fuck" on this very blog a few days ago. Shame on you! Haha!



I Can't Quit Her, Blood, Sweat & Tears (1968, from "Child Is Father To The Man," Columbia CS 9619), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Two roads diverged near a wood, and I...

*...I fucking "augered in," as the top gun pilots say, about 90 minutes later. Augered in how, and to what? one may wonder. On my road bike is how, and into a goddam curb that was supposed to be a curb cut, according to my beautiful mind, is what. Happily, I made the most of the time dilation phenomenon, which is well known to all who have witnessed themselves heading toward an inevitable high-speed calamity. With the grace of an Ed Sullivan acrobat opening for Freddie and the Dreamers, I relinquished the handlebars and handsprung onto the concrete sidewalk, pulling off a maneuver, with my arms, something like what parachutists do when their feet meet the ground too fast for comfort. Strangely, I suffered no hand abrasions from the concrete sidewalk, or any other scrapes except one about a quarter-inch in diameter at the crotchward side of the left knee.

However, I spent the next several days in fairly intensive pain, greatly fearing I'd ripped up my only unsullied rotator cuff. Now, after a negative x-ray and some healing time, it looks like I get off the hook with a moderate-but-manageable shoulder sprain. And that, loyal reader, is why I've been offline for almost a week. It also partially accounts for the muddled portions of my previous post.

Anyway, I took the photo at the early cusp of the photographers' "golden hour" with a highly limited iPhone 3G camera. I do believe that I may get on the bike again on Sunday and try again... but not 76 miles this time.

Hedley Lamarr syndrome

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With respect to the so-called "paralysis of analysis," in the words of Hedley Lamarr:

My mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives.

I haven't lost interest in offering my interpretation of current events, but I've been temporarily exhausted by the effort. From the peanut gallery where I've watched the world turn for more than 5.5 decades, current events are simply unprecedented. Therefore, they are inexplicable from my conventional perspective and analytical framework. Part of my problem, and maybe yours, too, if you have one, is that there are too many sensational data points to comprehend. Analysis --- the process of understanding a large, complex whole by breaking it into smaller, comprehensible parts --- fails us as our daily experience becomes an atomistic horrorshow of disturbing factoids lashed around by Big Lies that are driving half of us to insanity and the other half to impotence. And those factoids, of course, are served up fresh every day by Big Media, and they inflame even those of us who keep our distance from mass media.

During my relative silence here I've been trying to synthesize a big picture or long view that might begin to account for the actual or imminent failure of every major institution this country has evolved over 2.5 centuries. Without abandoning any well considered opinions I've offered here, I've become certain that the die for this epoch was cast 30 years ago and we're now well under way toward Destination: Inevitable, wherever and whenever that may be located. I've been trying to elevate my inquiries to many levels above Mr. President Jelly Bean because I don't believe that America ever was or ever will be all about Him, his homespun values, or his worship of The Corporation as the ultimate organizing principle of society. History will view him as the vulgar homewrecker of U.S. constitutional democracy. I can't see myself disowning those opinions outside of a torture chamber, yet our modern history is no more sacred than the history of the Roman Empire, or Egyptian antiquity, or the rise and fall of Native American civilization. All of us are vessels (or flotsam, take your pick) in a tide of global history, and the tide happens to be rushing out toward the unimaginable ends of the Flat Earth. But it will well up again, after 50 years, or 100, or 200 --- maybe 400 if Western history is any indicator.

Synthesis is where I'm headed; I'm asking myself what this chaos might add up to if we try using a longer view of history to rise above the hurricane of scary-looking events. My first stop is 14th century Europe. Without reading some medieval European history, you'd have no idea how modern the 1300s look to us... or how medieval we look compared with, for example, The Enlightenment. That's where I'm headed for the moment.

Another birthday boy: The Bird (29 August 1920)

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Today Charlie Parker would have turned 90. His birth date has been lodged in my head since 1980, when I listened to a live birthday tribute concert from the Chicago Jazz Festival on WBEZ-FM. It featured Dizzy Gillespie, James Moody, and other luminaries that I don't remember at the moment. Anyway, here's the Bird with big band recorded in March 1952, one of a handful of sessions he did in the studio with a big band, as opposed to small combo or strings.



Yes, it's that "Night and Day," featured on this very blog last night as performed by Earl Bostic. Both sides were recorded within, at most, 3 or 4 years of each other --- one being a dance tune for teen parties, the other being bop in a jazz/pop setting.

The CD compilation on which this tune appears, Charlie Parker Big Band, collects several sessions from the early 1950s. The bands are staffed by both veteran and rising stars of the era. This performance boasts a rhythm section with Oscar Peterson (p), Ray Brown (b), and Freddie Green (g). Another session features Charlie Mingus (b) and Max Roach (d), not to mention Miles Davis french horn blower Junior Collins (from Birth Of The Cool). A third session features Fifty50 hero Buddy Rich.

Strangely, this YouTube clip appears to come from one of the virtual radio stations --- "Jazz Nation Radio 108.5" --- embedded in the Grand Theft Auto video game. And judging from the YouTube comments, at least a few shorties think it's awesome.

Happy birthday, Yardbird.

Night And Day, Charlie Parker and big band (1952, from "Charlie Parker Big Band," track 6; Verve reissue of Mercury 11068), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Central Illinois corn palace

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I spotted this stately yet unassuming mansion this afternoon about 5 miles south of my comfort zone in southeastern Champaign County on the way to Douglas County. I snapped it on the way back into town, maybe about 5:30 p.m., as the sunlight was softening toward gold.

The architect should take a bow for exploiting this archetypal structural form of the rural midwest, penetrating walls and roof with the pairs of twin gables and enormous picture windows (another one on the southern elevation). The place must be full of light and elbow room, and I'd particularly enjoy seeing how the elongated, double-decker gables play out in the interior, function-wise. Hopefully, the designer paid attention to energy sustainability, too. I think this building is miles ahead of the generic, predesigned suburban-style houses with which everybody else feels it necessary to litter our rural roadsides. If I ever had to rebuild from scratch in town, I'd strongly consider using the design. It's aesthetically well matched to our region and, as an extra bonus, it would stir up the pod people in my neighborhood.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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As a birthday indulgence to one Big Hussein Otis on this, his happiest day in the whole wide year, I present an encore performance by Earl Bostic. BHO says he really enjoyed Flamingo, which I embedded as part of this post a few weeks ago. So here's another Earl Jam with the same vibes-infused combo: a swinging up-tempo arrangement of the Cole Porter standard, "Night and Day."



Not my favorite recording of Earl playing this song, but a reasonable facsimile of it probably from several years later. Like you, I have no idea what was on the mind of "Dadreno" when he attached the awful, geezerly railroad slide show to this nice Bostic dance number. Probably ultra-lameness. Don't blame me. Or Big Otis. And especially, don't blame Earl Bostic.

Night and Day, Earl Bostic (1955, King 4765, b/w Embraceable You), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

The origin of Big Otis (28 August 1949)

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See Part I here. Now, Part II (sez Wikipedia):

1511 --- the Portuguese conquer Malacca. That's right, you malaccas: Malacca!

1830 --- Tom Thumb, the prototype steam locomotive with the really cute name, is demonstrated to an investor group; it almost beat a horse-drawn railroad carriage in an impromptu race.

1990 --- Iraq annexes Kuwait... for a month or so.

I know, I know. Boring as hell, pretty much. But wait: I've discovered a new notable born on this very day in history. Year: 1917; world, say hello to The King --- Jack "King" Kirby, that is. Way to go --- much more impressive than Leo "Snooze" Tolstoy! (OMG --- JK!!!)

And at the very foundations of history, in 1949, a star is born:



Yogi: "Hey, Lady! Why the Beard?!?"

BO: "Ya dinna ken who I am?"

Yes, Big Hussein Otis, we do indeed ken who you am. Happy birthday, little fella.

The beauty of peak hurricane season

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There is, I assume, more much more trepidation than beauty experienced by denizens of the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coastal lowlands during peak hurricane season. I think, without an ion of glee, that it may just be the price people pay to live a few miles from white sand beaches and rum shacks, gorge on fresh, affordable seafood at will, and escape the torment of long winters. There are also crosses to bear when emigrating to Champaign, Illinois. It's the nation's most mentally and morally conservative Big 10 university town. Our current alpha creatures are real estate people intent on digging out every last green space in the county to make room for unneeded new townhouses and strip malls in a moribund market. The downsides here are less dramatic than for coastal people, but I'd bet our list is much longer (and beyond the scope of this post).

But hurricane season here is outstanding. The careful observer living in the Corn Belt can often peg the beginning of hurricane season, in all its local splendor, to the week if not to the day. Two groups of people are most likely to take note: farmers (but not necessarily agri-businessmen riding in hermetically sealed, GPS-navigated combines the size of a Gothic cathedral) and road cyclists (bi-, not necessarily motor-).

One leading indicator conspicuous to both farmers and cyclists is the prevailing wind direction, which changes here somewhat abruptly from southwesterly to southeasterly and easterly. Another indicator, somewhat less consistent, is humidity, which drops significantly around the time prevailing wind directions change. The humidity drop happens to be convenient to grain farmers, who want to dry down the corn and beans as much as possible in the fields to promote cost-efficient harvesting and marketing. It's also convenient to cyclists, who appreciate hot sun combined with pleasant evaporative cooling effects. I'm certain these weather shifts are directly related to the overarching climate patterns that originate in the tropical mid-Atlantic at this time of the year, but I'm not a weatherman so I can't document that. It's a correlation observed across decades.

Our "twin cities" had a few previews of the change in wind early this month. But last week --- Wednesday, I think --- the area was abruptly overshadowed by an uncharacteristically gray, gloomy day. From the interior of an over-chilled government building, looking out any window, the vibe was late October or November (and even somewhat chilly outdoors after the "closing bell"). Sometime around that day, either the night before or after, about 1.6 inches of badly needed rain fell on the asparagus garden. Then, suddenly, meteorological glory. Bike riding patterns after work became almost exclusively outbound to the southeast, east, and even north once. The object is to ride into the draft on the way out, not on the way home while the sun is racing to auger into the west horizon. Fortuitously, due to seasonal characteristics related to Terra's orbit around the sun on an oblique axis, last 180 minutes of daylight every day for the past week-plus has fully qualified as the elusive Golden Hour that landscape photographers prize so highly. And, as if right on cue, in the Atlantic and near the Caribbean, a new crop of tropical depressions and storms began to sprout.

This is peak hurricane season in the Corn Belt: made for communing with the genial, sunny Midwestern elements in solitude. Perched on the saddle of a lightweight aluminum touring bike tanked up with water bottles; a power bar in the saddle pack; biosystems exerting straight ahead with the help of endorphins and Advil, to a soundtrack of the wind and other breathing; and a fully charged cell phone that one hopes will have signal were a tire to blow 5 miles south of Villa Grove.

Apologies to commenters

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It seems that over the past coupla weeks, the Yahoo mail spam filter has decided to capture all of the email notifications this blog sends to my personal account instead of sending them directly to me. At first I thought it only affected that guy with a 59 in his name, but its also getting longtime friend "Anonymous" and everybody else. I'll catch up with you all shortly. Please make a note of it.