Vandalizing the capital building?

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As seen on Eschaton, an AFL-CIO blog accuses "Governor Scott Walker" of welding capital windows shut to prevent outsiders from passing food through to protesters who have been occupying the building since Sunday.

True? Who knows? I haven't heard a peep about this elsewhere. But if it is, this tactic would seem to violate any reasonable state life-safety standards and possibly cross over into the realm of criminal damage to property. Unless state governors are allowed to do whatever the fuck they want when their "subjects" assemble to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Yesterday, Paul Krugman noted the eerie silence of mainstream (i.e., corporate) news shops about the historic political demonstrations in Madison---crowd sizes unprecedented since the Vietnam era. Getting to smell a lot like Red China around here these days.

Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

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Here's a sound that my friend Gurlitzer might enjoy; a jazz waltz of sorts. From a surprising source.



Gurlizer knew me back when I thought it was hip to smoke blueberry Tiparillos and wear railroad-striped bell bottoms. And that was when Frank Zappa recorded this song, a year or two after flower power had flared into full-fledged revolt in some major cities. But I was "enjoying" all that at a distance during high school, vicariously, through music, underground comix, black-light posters, incense, and other lifestyle accessories. This was the same general timeframe when a Mothers concert in West Berlin ended in a fairly violent riot instigated by German revolutionaries affiliated with the Red Army Faction, not to mention the Altamont Speedway deaths and mayhem. This recording was actually left over from the Hot Rats sessions, which produced a late 1969 jazz album of the same name. It's an odd inclusion in the Burnt Weeny Sandwich album, which is mostly avant garde rock-jazz with some straight-ahead comedy blues and other miscellany.

Zappa could have written sweet, lyrical compositions like "Twenty Small Cigars" until the cows came home. Not that he should have, necessarily. And furthermore, he might have authorized his effective but ethically dubious manager of the time, Herb Cohen, to spread around some payola---or at least some fellatiola---to get tracks like this aired on FM "underground" stations during the late '60s and early '70s. By all accounts I've read, though, Zappa always refrained from payola. But maybe he shouldn't have. And so now, maybe because he shied away from his gentle side and mostly wrote compositions better suited to frame his endless social satire and raunchy comedy, Zappa is remembered by the general public not for his astonishing writing and performing capabilities, but for novelty songs like "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow," "Dinah-Moe Humm," and "Valley Girl." And also for eating one of his own turds live on stage during a mid-'60s concert. (The last item being someone's invention, of course, and one that annoyed FZ.)

"Twenty Small Cigars" belongs to a very small category of Zappa recordings that not only documents songs that he composed with emotion, purely for beauty of melody and setting, but also performed without any of the clowning or sarcasm that marred most recordings of such compositions. There are few others like this one in Zappa's catalog. I think it's a gem

Twenty Small Cigars, Frank Zappa (1970, from "Chunga's Revenge," reissued 1995 as RykoDisc RCD 10511), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Today's doke

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Haha!

But our Republican stalwart might not even have wanted that government job, anyway. I'd think he would have felt morally compromised by having those taxpayer-funded healthcare and paid holiday benefits forced upon him against his will. Farewell, asshole.*

Furthermore, a thought experiment: Imagine how much faster Rachel Maddow or Bill Maher would have been gone than this guy if they'd even thought of wisecracking about labor protesters expressing their Second Amendment rights at Madison.

* Even worse for Mr. Former Indiana Deputy Attorney General Jeff Cox: he was not a political appointee, as I'd assumed---he was in "career status," meaning that he might have some difficulty being rehired in the public sector. And I'd think that even conservative firms would probably want to keep hands off his resume, just to demonstrate "civility."

Separated at birth?

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Here's a riddle for you on a lazy late-winter night:

Q: What do former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum and fading Libyan Strongman Moammar Gadhafi have in common?

A: They both accuse their homegrown protestors of being on drugs.

PS: "Santorum." Hehheh heh. Heh heh....

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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A lyric emblematic of the nation I've lived in for the past 10 years. [End of pseudo-topical but not insincere political lead-in hook.]



Oddly, and apropos of nothing, in the back of my mind this song always reminded me vaguely of Jesus of Nazareth. No, really. It may have something to do with the upbeat treatment of the narrator's comeuppance, and my derivative interpretation that Bobby Fuller was somehow really telling us that the law really didn't win.

And in the case of Fuller's 1966 death, the law really didn't win. Accounts of his demise indicate that the investigation was seriously inconclusive, and the purported cause of death (self-asphyxiation by gasoline in a closed but unlocked automobile) seems a bit farfetched as a suicide mode for a successful, rising rock star. Some theorize that Fuller was done in by the notorious LAPD due to his relationship with a mob-connected girlfriend, but if we want to theorize it would seem to make more sense that the mob might finish him off, perhaps for "dishonoring" his young lady or maybe because he accidentally ended up with some dangerous information. Not exactly JFK at Dallas, of course... but then there is that Lone Star connection with Texas native Fuller. Hurm.

Anyway, this is a neat performance from Hullabaloo. I like the rocky jailhouse set, but I think that a few more imprisoned go-go girls are called for here. As always, I wait with anticipation for the crowd-pleasing, percussive six-gun sextuplet (over a whole measure). As a kid I imagined performing this passage with a quintuplet over the measure, instead of six, to indicate a bad round in one of the revolver chambers... perhaps in order to help explain how the law beat down the irrepressible Bobby Fuller.

Personal indulgence detour: As I watched the close-up of Fuller strumming the rhythm solo at the bridge (about 1:20 into the clip), I was reminded of an occurrence at Blackburn College during fall 1977, shortly after I returned there to complete my bachelor's degree. I had dragged my thrift store 45 record collection with me to Carlinville, Illinois, stuffed in a thrift store physician's bag, and came to share many of these '60s sides with an interesting kid named Bruce Pavitt, then from Park Forest, Illinois (near my hometown). I will take credit for first exposing Pavitt, who later went on to found Sub-Pop Records in Seattle, to a number of proto-punk sounds from my 45 collection, in particular "Talk Talk" by the Music Machine. I can't remember if I actually introduced him to "I Fought The Law" or if he previously knew it, but I clearly remember that he was absolutely awestruck by the bridge; as an interested but not highly motivated guitar noodler, he confessed that he had no idea how Fuller played that solo. We listened to it over and over on the third floor of Butler Hall during my "salad days."

I Fought The Law, The Bobby Fuller Four (1965, date unknown, live performance broadcast on the pop music variety show Hullabaloo, NBC-TV), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Addendum: double-dig the groovy band intro provided courtesy of The Serendipity Singers!

Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

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A reader (I think I know who he is) planted a link to this Phil Ochs performance in the comments section of last evening's post. I feel that the lyrics of this song are much more timely now than they were in the late '60s.



I was never a big fan of folk-type singers as a youth being as my predilection was for big powerful urban sounds, so people like Dylan, Neil Young, and others flew under my radar. But whenever someone refers me to a Phil Ochs lyric I come away ever-more impressed with his mind and somewhat disappointed that I was never able to connect with him at the same time a few of my high school pals did.

This song, unlike so many of the era, is not about "recreational" revolution or a vehicle for radical chic, but (to my ears, at least) a very impressionistic thought experiment of what it might be like in this country when a majority of disenfranchised people come to one clear mind about who is the real enemy of America: the parasite class and its vassals. The galactic levels of wealth accreted to these winner-take-alls is setting the stage not for another glorious 1,000-year reich, but for the onset of decadence along every axis of human endeavor. Their heirs will not inherit their drive for earning, investing, and stealing because they will already have plenty of free money in the vault. The parasite class cannot possibly keep a lid on their laissez-faire paradise if they don't even possess the skills to change a flat tire on the BMW. The tipping point---which nobody should believe will lead directly to a New Morning In America---will be defined by the congealing of a common awareness. This will be embodied in the emergence of a new story line about what has really been going on here since the 1970s; a plot that is Occam-simple and explains pretty much everything that has happened, from the repudiation of the social contract to the dissolution of American civic comity to the end of our illusion that anyone can be "middle class" if they work hard and play by Ronald Reagan's rules.

I don't necessarily believe that the parasite class will literally come to the end envisaged here by the lyrics of Phil Ochs (read them on the YouTube page where this video comes from), but I am certain that the metaphorical content is prophetic. Hopefully in my lifetime, but if not, then certainly by the time my offspring are writing blogs in order to forestall Sudoku and crossword puzzle hell. Not that I'm a big fan of flames and violence and the like, but rebirth and renaissance are welcome concepts.

The Ringing of Revolution, Phil Ochs (1966, from "Phil Ochs in Concert," Elektra Records [catalog number not available]), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Aside to AnarchistOpposition: if you are who I think you are, then I owe you a treat from the Lummox Rock files as soon as I can come up with a worthy surprise.

Barometer of pathos

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I live in a Big 10 university community, which I believe to be the lamest in the conference. I've always been amazed by how little this town has going on for itself in any respect---musically, artistically, socially, politically. But just how pathetic is it? Well, my friends, these twin cities, occupied by close to 150,000 souls, can literally generate only two Craigslist "missed connections" ads a month... and one of them is usually spam!

This city typically has about as much life as you might expect in a place like Tuscola. The leatherfaced men gaze hatefully through dead cinder eyeballs from under the visors of NASCAR baseball caps; all women seem to be upholstered with cottage cheese and cud. I see more fire in the eyes of a single Amish lady on her quarterly field trip to Target than I can sense upon walking the entire length of Green Street in campustown, where the girls seem to use Photoshop instead of makeup, and boys roam in herds from bar to bar dreaming of their next opportunity for date rape.

Take, that, Garrison Fucking Keillor!

The Cheesehead Revolution

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From completely off my radar I'm now reading about a state governor who has ordered the state police to round up members of the Wisconsin legislature. TPM reports:

...the state's Democratic senators have left the state entirely, putting them out of the reach of the state police who have been ordered to round them up so that Republicans have a quorum and can take up Gov. Walker's union-busting budget bill.

There's a whole separate discussion we might have about the state's power to legislatively "bust" labor unions. But the thing to think about is this: since when in the United States can the executive branch of any state "round up" members of the legislature and make them participate in a session? That is how a junta works, not a democracy.

Can the governor also order the state police to round up members of the opposition party for any other reason? What is the legal theory that justifies an apparent violation of the separation of powers in any state of this union? Does the 10th Amendment permit states to establish forms of governance that are forbidden by the U.S. Constitution? What specific law are the Wisconsin legislators violating here?

An interesting aspect of this executive coup against workers' rights in Wisconsin, again according to TPM, is that

...Scott Fitzgerald, who is ordering the state police to track down the wayward Democratic senators is the son of the head of the state police, Steve Fitzgerald, who in turn was appointed to the top spot by Walker. Steve Fitzgerald is also the father of the state's speaker of the House, Jeff Fitzgerald.

The denial of a quorum by a minority group of members is a legitimate parliamentary maneuver. It's no more obstructionist than what happens in the U.S. Senate when the minority party filibusters bills that clearly have support of the majority. It's no more obstructionist than Ronald Reagan's famous "veto pen," which he smugly wagged into the Kliegl lights the many times he shot down laws passed by both chambers of Congress in the 1980s. So the issue shouldn't be whether obstructionist tactics are legal, because they are, and Republicans are much more adept at using them than Democrats.

The issue is this: is an obstructionist parliamentary maneuver by members of a state legislature illegal in the State of Wisconsin? How about in other states?

This is going to be really interesting. Wisconsin was an incubator of American progressive politics in the first half of the 20th century, and the tradition persists. Nobody knows how this will play out in terms of union busting, but it should give a significant stimulus to the concept of union solidarity in the Cheesehead state.

And in my opinion there is not a single working man or woman in this nation who has any smidgen of "enlightened self interest" in rooting for "Governor Scott Fitzgerald." "Governor Scott Walker" (duh).

For Marginalia

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In previous comments, Marginalia reminisced about an O.V. Wright single, "Gone For Good." I'd never heard of Wright, but thanks to YouTube I found the song in question. Unfortunately, the poster disabled the embed code so I can't display it on this page. But here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuCrSDFK0vk

Give it a listen. The band sounds very "Memphis," and Wright reminds me strongly of someone---Otis Redding, maybe? I like it: this sound has the unmistakable sound of a very specific place in time, and it makes the intervening years fade from memory for a coupla minutes.

And you're right, Marginalia: you really were cool listening to Stax while your pals were listening to the Rockin' Berries. (Nothing against the Berries, but I never heard them until a few minutes ago on YouTube; don't remember them ever charting in Chicago, but then there was a strong regional rock and pop scene that may have crowded them out where I grew up in the mid-60s. I'm guessing from the sound of those guys that they were a group the girls really "dug".)

Aside to Marginalia: I notice you've adopted an alias. I hope this doesn't mean you've had to enter the witness protection program....

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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I'll wrap up my current mini soul fugue, as prompted by a flash from Big Hussein Otis in last night's Fish Fry comments Thread. It's my favorite cut by the pride of Harvey, Illinois: The Dells!



Most Chicagoland kids who listened only to the city's two Top 40 stations never heard of The Dells until 1968, with the release of their first crossover single, "There Is." Several more big hits crossed over to Top 40 playlists over the next year, including "Stay In My Corner," "Oh What A Night," and this one, "Wear It On Our Face."

What we didn't know was that The Dells had been around since 1952, and were masters of doo-wop, jazz, and R&B in addition to the soul mode they hit big with in the late 1960s. And what I didn't know until tonight is that they provided backing vocals for the likes of Ray Charles, Dinah Washington, and Barbara Lewis. Neither did I know that the omnipresent Quincy Jones worked with them to help refine their sound.

As inferred by Big Otis in the comments, the Dells were at least indirectly part of the same galaxy that spawned the Twinight label in Chicago, all of them working in the orbit of a large independent soul and R&B promotional firm that handled groups signed to Chess Records, including subsidiaries Checker and Cadet (not to mention national labels like Atlantic, Motown, and Stax). But these guys were the old timers of the scene, all members having been born during the Great Depression---some of them were practically 35 when they released this side, fer crying out loud!

Wear It On Our Face, The Dells (1968, original 45 rpm release Cadet 5599, reissued on CD compilation "There Is," Chess [MCA] CHD-9288), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

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Maybe the love I'm looking for
Is just a wayward dream
Oh yeah...



Tonight I feel like going back to another Twinight Chicago soul recording from about 1970, which I have in my library on a CD reissue set. These compilations of little-known vintage soul recordings by The Numero Group, which I wrote about a coupla weeks ago, represent something important to me: that first-rate talent grows almost everywhere, and us ordinary citizens would get our fill of swell entertainment without Hollywood, Madison Avenue, Time-Warner, Sony, Disney, and so on.

Listen to the horn attack after the little four-bar guitar intro. That's some top-drawer shit! And the string arrangement is not merely there for "sweetener," but to help sound out the poignant atmosphere created by the plaintive vocalist, Annette Poindexter (the girlfriend of Syl Johnson, the record's producer).

The band is The Pieces of Peace, a congregation of somewhere between five and eight musicians (not clear from the skimpy documentation I've read), which was hired as the house band by the Twinight label during summer 1969. I was entertained to learn, from the Numero liner notes, that this is pretty much the complete band you hear on Young-Holt Unlimited's 1968 hit "Soulful Strut," before PoP signed with Twinight. According to the notes, "neither Isaac Young nor Redd Holt played on that session." (!)

The arrangement was powerful and beautiful, the lyrics innocent and bittersweet. I can think of only one reason, other than possibly a failure of payola, why this track didn't climb high on the soul charts, and that reason is Ms. Poindexter's performance. I don't mean that in a assily critical sense, though, because I personally enjoy it and try to dig in a bit deeper each time I listen. To the casual pop-listener's ear, Poindexter may sound like she's landing north, south and east of every other pitch, and those are the ears that promoters and radio DJs are always surrogating for. So nobody at a Top 40 or Soul powerhouse broadcaster in the mid-60s would likely give her quirky performance, ornamented with gospel sensibilities and half a dozen different kinds of blue notes, the time of day. Sides like this and others issued by Twinight in its heyday were given the "time of night," however, to brighten the hours "east of midnight" for third-shift factory laborers, cabbies, and young African American nightflies in general. In the radio business, this domain used to be known as the "lunar rotation." It was essentially a promotional "limbo" for local musicians, but probably no more hit-or-miss in quality than whatever rocketed up the national pop charts fueled with rolls of hundred-dollar bills.

Wayward Dream, Annette Poindexter and The Pieces of Peace (1970, original 45 rpm release Twinight Records [catalog number not known]; reissued on "Eccentric Soul: Twinight's Lunar Rotation," Numero 013-B), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

February thaw

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Hi. Remember me?

Reintegration of the shoulder bone has been going well, and I'm probably a week ahead of schedule in terms of physical therapy progress. Reintegration of my headbone back into the work cycle has been more difficult.

And regarding my absence from here, it's not as if my mind isn't brimming with verities that I need to share with everyone. What's going on is that it's still fairly hard to align my thoughts into sequences of words that comprise coherent sentences; takes me 45 minutes to squeeze out a 20-minute post still, at least if I want it to apply some craftsmanship.

Also, the house has sort of devolved into a virtual turd mine, and my usually pitiful organizing skills are still in the sub-remedial zone. And although I'm actually a fan of fairly robust winters, this current one has sucked rocks beyond decades of memory. It's been a miserable, bitter, relentless winter just like the ones I remember in the Chicago south suburbs as a paper boy, wearing crappy JC Penney winter jackets made out of stiff polyester and primitive fiberfill, with my skin blanching toward Edgar-Winter white on face and under under useless mittens and footwear.

But even then, we always got a February thaw. Ours here in central Illinois would appear to be on the way in the upcoming week, starting tomorrow. I'm hoping that when I kick back the slabs of compressed ice pellets we've been walking on for almost two weeks I will feel tumescent shoots drilling skyward through the scalp from my mental bulbs. I've about had it with living like a ghost.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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You'd be blue
Without a neighbor next to you



This is a Chicago band, The Notations, from 1971. I may have heard a snippet of this track while surfing the AM dial when Chicago's two Top 40 stations were either playing the same song at the same time... or crap at the same time. Edging up the dial into "police band" territory I'd sneak a listen to Chicago's mighty soul giant WVON-1450---"The Voice of the Negro." Sadly for me I never stuck around long in that radio neighborhood for it to become a habit. Having been acculturated as a South Side/south suburbs kid starting in the mid-1950s, I absorbed by osmosis the idea that there was something "wrong" with, and even "dangerous" about, listening to the negro stations at the frontiers of the dial, including Chicagoland's thousand-watt jazz beacon in Harvey, Illinois, WBEE-1570. (Fortunately for me, I rediscovered WBEE after dropping out of college in 1973, and this listening experience accounts for a considerable amount of my jazz "ear" knowledge.)

The Numero Records Eccentric Soul reissue series is a compilation of "lost" recordings from America's regional and farflung soul music markets, including (believe it or not) Columbus, Ohio; Tallahassee, Florida; and Phoenix, Arizona! This side is reissued on "Twinight's Lunar Rotation," an outstanding two-disc set of singles issued by the top Chicago local soul label. This Numero compilation is the best of the crop that I own, but there is lotsa strong stuff on the other half-dozen Numero compilations of different soul labels that I own. There are numerous tracks on this and the other compilations that were certainly worthy of charting nationally, and many others that might have charted but for a vocalist who was out of his or her league with top-drawer material.

There is no legitimate reason why "A New Day" should not have charted nationally, in my opinion. There were probably two problems, one being failure to tap into the crossover market using progressive promotion techniques (i.e., payola) and the other being that this sound is very reminiscent of hits by The Esquires (e.g., "Get On Up"). In the case of the latter problem, the issue would probably have been the "dated" sound because the top-charting Esquires hits came and went in 1967. You see, 1971 was probably thought to be light years beyond the 1967 soul style in the ears of the national labels. Nevertheless, here it is: a gem of upbeat, feelgood soul---a flawless performance, in my opinion. These Numero compilations feel like a glimpse into the soul music scene from a closely parallel universe. There's lots more where this came from.

A New Day, The Notations (1971, original 45 rpm release Twinight Records A4KM 2409; reissued on "Eccentric Soul: Twinight's Lunar Rotation," Numero 013-B), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Microeconomics

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President Barack Obama made a unilateral commitment to economic stimulus Tuesday evening before a joint session of Congress by delivering the largest shovel-ready project of his two-year administration to date: the 2011 State of the Union address.

Today's doke [updated]

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Shared with permission from Married To The Sea, 18 January 2011. The authors, Drew and Natalie Dee, give away digital carloads of "humour" for free on their website. If I wore wacky tee shirts, I'd probably buy 20% of my wardrobe there.

Update: this is a self-referential "torn rotator cuff" doke. Please make a note of it.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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Following a bit on last night's subtext, here's another band and song for "purists" to hate---this time, "rock purists."



Yes, I know the costumes and slap-happy comedy was lame, and certainly performed for edification of the emergent teeny-bopper cult. Also, while I don't know anything about their production methods, it would not surprise me if most of Paul Revere's big hits were laid down by studio musicians even though the lads could play their instruments. But the hard rock sensibilities of the Raiders jab holes through the facade and production value. It would have been very uncool to admit to anyone that I liked Paul Revere upon my arrival as a buzzcut nobody at Hillcrest High School in 1967. But as I began collecting 45 rpm singles in the 1970s I could hear, through more well informed ears, that lots of pop acts---including this band and the Monkees, for example---had much more going on for themselves than the era's longhairs would ever acknowledge.

I don't think a person has to listen too hard to hear some Stones-like guitar and energy in "Good Thing" and other Raiders tracks from the mid-60s. Of special interest to me in this tune is the movement of parallel fourths and/or fifths both in the vocals and guitars---they're the odd-sounding harmonies that sound vaguely oriental and a little incomplete, which Aerosmith and many others made heavy use of decades later and to this day.

The most capable dancer, which some of the YouTube commentators seem to think is Goldie Hawn, is featured near the front of the set and distracts attention from the weird gunplay subplot that ends up getting under another dancer's feet. "Good Thing" was issued in Chicago about this time of the year in the winter of 1966-67, when there was a shortlived pop music style fascination with the Victorian and Roaring 20s eras, which accounts for the dancers' flapper-style dresses in the midst of American Revolution drag. Anyway, it's a bit of flavor from an eclectic time in American pop music; three minutes of upbeat full-color rock, dancing, and tomfoolery.

Good Thing, Paul Revere and the Raiders (1966, from "The Spirit of '67," Columbia Records CL 2595 [mono], via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

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As I've maybe mentioned here before, many self-described "jazz purists" either dislike or make excuses for Charlie Parker's interest in large band and orchestra formats near the end of his life. I don't share either of those views. The quality of each recorded effort varies, of course, just like in real life. And the observation---not a profound one, really---that Parker did these performances to sustain or enhance his income is immaterial to me. As they used to say in England during the Renaissance, "Shakespeare got to get paid, son."



Entertainment corporations tell us that rock and roll is "the soundtrack of our lives," but I'd argue that for individuals born before, say, the Kennedy administration, this style of music is every bit as much a part of our "soundtrack" as rock is (at least those of us who grew up in a major urban area). I'm not saying that Parker, specifically, was necessarily a component of our collective unconscious, but rather the orchestral setting for musical treatments of jazz standards and show tunes that our parents used to have on the car radio, during folding and ironing time, and so on, was endemic and burned deeply into our little neuro nets.

To the postmodern youthful ear, which often hears pop music from the past through a filter of campy irony, this cut may sound like something that "Mad Men" used to boink the secretary to after hours. But the best of the lush sounds from this era---say 1950 through 1960---have a deep resonance to those of us who were innocent kids waiting to be fed homemade burgers and fries on Saturday night or cruising southwest down U.S. highways toward a vacation in the era immediately before rock ascended into prominence. So to all those ultra-hip jazz purists who look down on Bird's big band and orchestral digressions, I say "fuck you, asshole."

My feeling is that this track could have been the outstanding gem of Parker playing in a big band setting were it not for one inexcusable "clam" that would have sent Buddy Rich on a spree with a butcher knife had he been conducting the band. It's in the last 10 seconds of the track; should be easy to hear. The perp, Danny Bank on baritone sax, was not slaughtered after the session, however, and went on to record an estimated 10,000 tracks in his distinguished career.

I Can't Get Started, Charlie Parker with Big Band (1952, originally issued on 78 rpm single as Mercury 11096-B), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

I want a space bike!

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Space bikes aren't yet available to the American consumer---they didn't even have them on Star Trek TNG, fer chrissakes! But thanks to the Retro Thing blog I see that some progressive companies are now marketing a cunningly hybrid technology torn at the same time from the annals of the past and future. It's called a velocar, a human-powered personal vehicle built around a recumbent bicycle frame. Recumbents have been around for a least a century, and velocars almost as long. Some historians, in fact, propose that the first velocars date to a much earlier era (Illustration 1). I'd guess that they originally failed because neolithic engineers could not effectively design a power-transfer train using only rocks, pointy sticks, and animal hides.

The concept of robust human-powered vehicles, however, was both sound and feasible. Now, 21st century entrepreneurs have improved on the historic mobile phallus motif by applying advanced materials to both prehistoric and modern designs (Illustration 2).

I'm partial to the Velomobiel Quest (Illustration 3), which is faithful to its weenie-type roots while purportedly applying many simple but powerful design concepts. One big improvement, if well executed, is the isolation of the drive train from the elements in order to avoid heavy maintenance requirements. Also, the tires can be changed without removing the wheels. Another improvement is the snappy road speed made possible by using computer-assisted aerodynamic design in combination with ultralight materials, including removable weathertight hardtops.

Illustration 3. Velomobiel Quest.

Obvious issues to investigate would be user safety and theft prevention, but these are already live issues for anyone who commutes by bicycle. Retro Thing commenters complain that the vehicle is too expensive because they're "just recumbent bikes with canopies," and that you can buy a new economy car or used luxury car for the $8K--14K price tag. I feel that these concerns are too dumb to rebut directly. But consider the benefits of a weathertight, ultralight human-powered car that has enough cargo space for some groceries or a small shopping trip to the strip mall.

After manufacture and shipping, these vehicles would eliminate the burning of fossil fuels and, therefore, local carbon emissions. Human-powered commuting would inject a significant cardiovascular exercise routine into driving chores. Insurance costs should be much lower because, presumably, a velocar driver can't achieve the same level of slaughter or property damage that a drunk can behind the wheel of an SUV or a town car. One other huge, but less tangible benefit: this vehicle is probably very much owner-hackable like any bike, and like most cars were through the 1950s. Sustainable transport could reopen a niche in the citizen-engineering world, recalling a time when many ingenious Americans were more interested in playing with carburetors and crankshafts than passive entertainment and recreational shopping.

One might wonder why the fuck we ingenious Americans would have to look to the Danes to market solutions for affordable, sustainable transportation considering that the U.S. has zillions of underemployed trainable workers, lots of low-interest cash theoretically available for lending to startups, and supposedly a surplus of entrepreneurs who would like nothing more than to make some money "putting America back to work again." Caveat: I do not consider "it's not as simple as that" to be a valid response. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

A Petraeus scenario for 2011

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Longtime readers should remember my cheeky piece of 2007 political speculation which put General Dave Petraeus at the center of several presidential campaign scenarios. I evolved it to account for certain unfolding actions, but I still think any of them was sound enough to have been worthy of exploratory development by wealthy GOP "thought leaders." In all of its forms, my Petraeus speculation was based on certain non-farfetched assumptions. Not to belabor them at this time, here is the gist:

1. To win back the White House, Republicans need to stick with the strategy of nominating someone who hasn't left a long trail through Washington or the public media, because quite apart from their professed ideologies, the field of "possibles" is littered with the unappealing and the unsavory. The reason that GOP officials or their pundits can launch trial balloons for people like Barbour, Bloomberg, and Huckabee is because launching them for the likes of Boehner, Christie, and Jindahl is, prima facie, preposterous.

2. The establishment's favorite political narrative is that our nation needs "bipartisan" solutions as put forth by "respectable moderates." It is desperate to find us candidates that can "rise above partisan bickering" to continue cramming the Reagan/Bush agenda down our throats.

The GOP is so bereft of candidates who are attractive on even a casual personal level that I was convinced then (and still am now) that their only hope to win the 2012 presidential election without stealing it is to appoint a "standard-bearer" who is cut from a completely different mold in terms of superficial appeal. I believe the Republicans will quickly discover that the time is ripe for General Petraeus to step forward. First, a general has "gravitas" with the American people and, as usual, US political culture makes people stop and think real hard before criticizing a soldier. Second, I believe that Republican power brokers and rank-and-file voters consider him telegenic, and potentially even "sexy." (I may have more to say on that later assuming I don't get skeeved out thinking about it.) And third, many people perceive military general officers as dutiful public servants who are not distracted by ego and ambition, so Petraeus would be helped to whatever extent Americans are looking for a Man On Horseback to "deliver" us from our troubles.

All of that is arguable, of course; I'm just saying that for a number of superficial and calculating reasons, Petraeus would be comparatively easy to sell to the "middle wing" of our body politic. I'll tackle this topic, hopefully, in small pieces as time passes instead of continually trying to formulate "unified field theories" like I did during 2007-08.

I'm dusting off this scenario, though, because certain people in the GOP seem to be thinking along approximately the same lines. For one thing, there is a group that thinks Petraeus is entitled to some rank inflation to put him on a par---militarily and in terms of visibility---with history's handful of five-star generals such as Dwight Eisenhower. And for another thing, this right-wing "Vets for Freedom" group is already trying to push Petraeus into the limelight in preparation for a presidency bid.

Starting rehab this evening

*

Hello everyone. Thanks for your attention to the matter of me and torn-up appendages thereof. Beer-D gave you a simple accounting of surgical success and my general quality of life following the event. He was not able to share with you the feeble state of my willpower and low functional achievements since Tuesday. I've found little enjoyment in being so helpless in the face of an obvious fact, which is that my body is at least 90 percent functional. Cognitive inaction takes a greater toll than an inconveniently located mashed-up shoulder. So I've decided to begin rehabilitation tonight at levels higher than clavicle.

I will catch up with greetings and throw in a handful of bon mots to prevent adhesions as I putter around the demesne tonight.