Adam Gopnik writes about it here.

Also, yesterday was Julie Nipp’s birthday.  Guess her age and win a KISS shirt.  She’s Paul Stanley in this clip, if that helps. 

“I’d been getting bored with the stereotyped changes (harmonies) that were being used all the time … I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes I could play the thing I’d been hearing. I came alive.”
– Charlie Parker (1930-1955) on his personal stylistic breakthrough, quoted in: Nat Hentoff and Nat Shapiro ed., Hear Me Talkin’ To Ya (1955)

I was trying to find out who Reese Erlich profiled today on “Jazz Perspectives.” It was a repeat — a Brubeck-style pianist with a self-named quartet, just couldn’t remember the name. I went to this site to look and got Jon Faddis. Not who I was looking for, but what a lovely surprise.

Click here. I mean it, do it right now. If you’re in a hurry just listen to the first few notes, it will make your day. He is just so pretty.

A. and I saw Faddis (Helen surprised us with tickets) at Avery Fisher Hall a few years ago. It was James Moody‘s birthday, and a bunch of his friends, all giants, were there blowing and banging away. Faddis, though, stood out, and not just because he’s tall. He and Bill Cosby, who threatened to steal the show with his star turn toward the end on drums. (Not bad for a comic.)

Next month A. and I are going to the Blue Note (with M. and D.) to see some of that same group again in the Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band. No Faddis, but James Moody is on the bill, Roy Hargrove, Slide Hampton, Jimmy Heath …

None of this is helping me find the Brubeck guy.

If I had $50 and an hour to blow on iTunes right now, by the way, I’d download Ornette Colman’s Pullitzer Prize-winning “Sound Grammar” and something from The Bad Plus because I’m curious. As for you, don’t be afraid to do it yourself, cut me the CDs and send. Chop-chop.

More later. Go blow your own horn.

G. is a much better writer than I. Here’s what she’s done while I’ve dallied and dithered and shirked.

THE BEAR and the LION

Chapter One

Once upon a time there was a little bear. He saw a cloud that looked like a lion. It reminded him of his friend.

So he walked to town and looked for him and soon he found him. Then they played together at the park. When they were done they ate a little snack and then took a nap in their sleeping bags. After their nap they went home to tell their parents about the new friend they had made.

(More chapters, plus illustrations, to come.)

Thanks, A. for the link. Kurt Vonnegut talking to In These Times four years ago. He describes our sad-sack leaders as: “Upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka ‘Christians’, and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities or ‘PPs.’”

ITT: Do you have any ideas for a really scary reality TV show?

KV: “C Students From Yale”, it would stand your hair on end.

My web stats tell me different words and phrases that lead you to my site.  “Top gun” is the leader this month, followed closely by “fishopoly“, then (curiously) “rosebud butt plug”. 

Rosebud butt plug. 

“How on earth,” I thought to myself, ”did ‘rosebud butt plug’ get attached to my sweet little innocent site?”  Now I see, (read Comment #2). 

That’s all I have for you.  I spent 20 minutes putting auto text messages into my phone to bug A. with.  “Draw the line at goats”, “Only Nixon could go to China”, “Leave the gun …” that sort of thing.  Maybe I’ll add “rosebud butt plug”. 

I’ll never make it big.

I’m still annoyed with Leslie Bennett and I don’t think, last week, I said it right. I have no problem with her opinions or her book, “The Feminine Mistake.” What I wanted her to shut up was her soggy monotonous whine about people (stay-at-home moms, actually, a fortunate opportunity to draw this stupid irrelevant line deeper in the sand) calling her names, primarily in chat forums and on blogs.

Uh, Hello, Leslie? Don’t read them. It’s like you’ve never walked out the door before.

Btw, someone called me a name last week and you don’t see me whining about it. G. and I were eating lunch and two guys at the table next to us kept saying “fuck.” I let a whole bunch go before I walked over and asked them to stop saying “fuck” so loud in front of my 5-year-old daughter. So then one guy said, “Okay, fucking smartass,” and the other guy said, “bitch.”

And I haven’t even published my book yet!

La de da. Eat a quarter cup of Goji berries and call me in the morning.

I began the morning in a CNN story, and then M. heartlessly yanked it away. Que sera.

I’ve got real work to do today, not that that’s an excuse for anything, but I won’t be bothering you with anything serious like all that drivel below.

Instead I’ll steal a Picasso anecdote from Timothy Noah’s piece in Slate about stealing.

Picasso’s at the home of a big art collector, who proudly shows him his Picasso. Pablo examines the piece and declares it a fake.

“You didn’t paint it?” Asks the horrified collector.

“No, I painted it,” says Picasso. “But it’s a fake, I often paint fakes.”

Ha, ha. Don’t kid yourself, I’m painting fakes, too.

Next Thursday is National Clothesline Day, so put your clothesline up. I don’t have trees, just bushes. And a fence, maybe I can rig one in a corner of the fence. When I was a kid we had the fancy kind of clothesline, it was a pole. A pole with a square top that spun around and had lines of wire. Anyway.

Apologize, today, for your racial slurs, before anymore Governors get hurt. Don’t say I didn’t tell you.

For very articulately telling Leslie Bennetts to “shut up, already!”

Put a book out, do the press, go home and check your Amazon rank, Leslie, but for goodness sake STOP WHINING about the mean things people say, in of all places … [GASP!] … Blogs! Whine. Whine. Whiney-whine.

Mommy wars, schommy wars, salami and ham, anyway. Who cares? Who cares about any of it? I have no ball in the game, other than being a stay-at-home mom who works. Doesn’t matter. There’s nothing enlightening about contemporary writing on the subject. Friedan let bored moms offload some guilt, but no one has written much that’s interesting since. It’s hard to be a mom, it’s hard to be a Dad. It’s hard to be a mom and go to work, or stay home, it’s hard to be a Dad and do those things, too. La di da.

The only interesting thing I’ve read on the “wars” since becoming a mom was Sandra Tsing Loh’s (sorry Sandra, for the mean things I said that day!) take in The Atlantic (link TK). “Miss Gretchen” does a good job of revisiting Loh’s points in her comment on Powells.

All of these arguments (why are there arguments again?) are tired, stale, boring — who are they talking to? I’d rather clean the oven with my college diploma, while barefoot and breastfeeding, than hear any of them.

[By the way, when my book comes out I'll be completely incensed if you don't say mean things about me and buy it.]

Crikey.

This Imus thing is ridiculous. Damn those Rutgers girls, and moreso their coach. They had the chance to impress the hell out of us by blowing it all off. He’s a stupid old man, they might have simply pointed that out.  They’re young, strong winners, who cares about him. Sticks and stones can’t hurt remember? Drawn-out nothing sagas and melodramatic press conferences, however … that’s another story.

Now the logical next step is to shill the whole stupid business to the Queen of Tragedy — the self-appointed arbiter of contemporary mores, the mighty exploiter of feeble minds, herself! Whee!

Grow up everyone. You too, NBC. The man makes you money by being outrageous. He went too far, he gets the point, move on.

Sigh. And then, Kurt Vonnegut. Some people shouldn’t get to die until they have appointed suitable replacements. He did leave me a little story.

Worms jump in my pool when it rains. The bottom is lousy with them and all their lost hopes and dreams.

I have pink eye, it won’t go away, and a really crummy cold. Send your best chicken soup recipe here, then go call people names.

Update:  M. argues that the good from all of this is getting types like Imus off the air.  He argued it more elegantly than that, and with curse words.  I’ll post his case right away when I find the email.

Sorry for leaving you “indignation” all those days but I’ve been very busy deleting SPAM.  (Thank you, btw, Katherine Swartz for your good advice about my penis, and Jennifer I’m sorry but I won’t be able to hook up tonight.)

We sat outside last night, with friends and wine, until very late and now my throat is sore because it was cold.  Outside.  Had nothing, I’m sure, to do with the wine. 

I have little to say. 

I’ll say this — How ‘bout those Yankees?  Birkhead is the father.  It’s raining in Indiana. 

I’m here all week, folks.  Try the veal.