... what's amazing is that Konitz is 82 years old now, playing with guys in their 20s and -- well, if he's pacing himself more, he's showing no real shortage of ideas. But Konitz's entree in the jazz world was always in his ability to think on his feet ...
Check it out, and download the concert while you're about it. It's free, by the way, and it's good.
I don't do winter. I hate the cold, and the older I get the less I like it. I've never really been used to winter, and I don't plan to start getting used to it now.
That's one of the reasons I call the South Carolina Lowcountry home. But in my nearly 15 years here, I'm seeing a first. As I write this, snow blankets the ground.
Insane.
Again, I hear all of y'all Up North laughing. Accumulation in my front yard is probably about two inches; in most of the country that's nothing.
I define my life into three main periods, all set apart by geographical location. I spent my first 30 years in southern California, and in all that time I saw this kind of snow twice. If I wanted to see snow, all I had to do was look out my window at the San Bernardino Mountains, where there was plenty to be had. I spent five years in Arizona, and now here.
I did spend a couple of years in Indiana, a couple of years in Tennessee, and a year in the North Carolina hills, so yeah, I know all I need to know about winter. Cold. Uncomfortable. Terrible to drive in.
But pretty, and kind of fun.
I had dinner with a few friends last night, and we hung out inside while the snow fell. I went outside for a couple of minutes and promptly skidded, almost on my butt. I forgot that snow gets slippery. Barbara and her daughter, Elizabeth, both made snow angels while Derek (another expatriate Californian) and I shook our heads at the weirdness of it all.
At home, the front yard is covered. My third-world trailer park never looked better; it's like looking at a black-and-white photograph. My 15-year-old dog is as wonderstruck as I, and for a couple of minutes the arthritic old girl was a puppy again. Snow, she figured, is edible as long as it's not yellow.
A few snow things came back fairly quickly:
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No wonder our civilization is in the toilet -- it's because the coffee around here sucks.
This isn't personal opinion talking; I'm getting this straight from Consumer Reports. The publication, which has helped comparison shoppers for about a million years, says there are no excellent brands of coffee around this year.
From Reuters:
... after tasting 37 different blended coffees, Consumer Reports couldn't find one that measured up to its "excellent" or "very good" ratings, the publication said Tuesday ... ranking at the top of the list of 14 caffeinated blends -- earning a rating of "good" -- are the Starbucks House Blend, calculated at 26 cents per cup, and Green Mountain Signature Nantucket Blend Medium Roast, at 23 cents per cup.
It turns out arabica beans are in short supply this year, and that's the good stuff. So we're having to make do with second-rate coffee.
See, I kind of had that hunch all along. Understand, I'm one who appreciates a morning cup o'joe -- and some in the afternoon and some more in the evening -- so my tastes for the brew are pretty well developed.
For me the perfect cup is black as old crankcase oil, hot, and full-bodied. In short, I like the coffee that tastes like someone left a cigar butt in the pot.
Now hear this:
The West wasn't won on a cup of that insipid watery stuff many folks swear is coffee. I mean, you can read through it. The stuff isn't even strong enough to defend itself.
And though I occasionally like a cappuccino as a treat, let's take a look at culture. The places where the people prefer cappuccino to regular coffee are those very same nations that need the Americans to haul their chestnuts out of the fire every 50 years or so.
I'm ready for a refill. The real stuff, and pour it like you don't own it.
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I was amused to hear the latest political scandal, the one about Sarah Palin giving a speech using crib notes written on her hand.
It's a blast from the past. Many of us can recall writing cheat notes on our hands and wrists back in our school days. I know I did, and it was worth an extra five or 10 points on many tests. I never really gave up the habit after my school days were over, either. I'm quite a notetaker, and I swear by the wonderful low-tech "Hipster PDA" (little more than a bundle of index cards) for my very survival. If I don't have that or a note pad handy, I'm not above using my hand.
Barack Obama takes a lot of ribbing about his love affair with the TelePrompter (I'm still checking on rumors that he has one in the Lincoln Bedroom with a selection of sweet nothings for Michelle loaded in), but that's little more than a high-priced version of the palm-of-the-hand note.
Now, I like Palin. I know she doesn't have a chance of being elected; she's probably the most polarizing figure since Hillary Clinton. I can't think of anyone who is neutral about her. And she takes a lot of crap from the media. Shoot, there are a lot more conservative folks out there, and many politicians tote a lot more baggage than her any old day. There are many more viable targets than her. But she's a threat to the mainstream partly because of the attention she normally gets, but also -- don't discount this -- she seems to be a genuinely happy person. But this bit about using crib notes -- will someone please tell me the significance of that?
Understand, if you're in politics you're going to give a lot of speeches. And if you're a big-name person like an Obama or Palin, chances are you didn't write the speech yourself. High-level politicians hire speechwriters, and sometimes it's a crapshoot because every word loaded into the TelePrompter is a surprise.
Unless you're giving the same basic speech over and over again, it's pointless to try to memorize all this stuff. And forget about speaking off the cuff; the political graveyard is littered with the bodies of those who said the wrong thing just because it sounded good at the time.
I've given talks over the years, mostly back in California. I was a member of Toastmasters then (and am looking to get back on board there), so I'm no stranger to the other side of the lectern. I spoke from fairly skeletal notes, usually no more than an outline and a few key words. Still, I was working from an advantage over your favorite politician because I wrote my own stuff.
One time at Toastmasters I gave a talk, and my notes were written on half-sized index cards, something I could conceal in my hand. I liked that idea because I could then step out from behind the lectern, move around, and still have my notes -- my crutch -- with me.
It worked well enough, or at least I thought so.
My speech evaluator thought differently, but he was the type of guy who, if he noticed you nervously jingling loose change in your pockets, he'd place a bet on how much money you had there. He was just a totally evil person. Anyway, he pointed out that I had my fist clenched through the speech, and he was worried I'd go over and beat someone up.
Man, I know I should have written those notes on my hand.
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(Above: Sarah Palin gets caught with her notes during Tea Party Convention in Nashville. Below: Palin's answer, after the ordure hit the rotary cooling device. Hi, Mom!)
I'm not a big football fan, and I really don't have a team to pull for.
In baseball I have the Los Angeles Angels (a love affair that started in the mid-1960s) and Arizona Diamondbacks. In basketball I have the Lakers (dating back from their Jerry West/Elgin Baylor days) and Phoenix Suns.
The Rams were my hometown team growing up, but that's when Carroll Rosenbloom owned them and they called L.A. home. In Arizona we had the Cardinals, but it was pretty hard to feel good about a team that just pulled in from St. Louis and brought a bunch of lousy players with them. In my Arizona years, the director of the Cardinals offense was quarterback Tom (Pick Six) Tupa, who got his nickname from tossing six interceptions in one game. Pick Six was also a game in the Arizona State Lottery, only you had better odds buying one of those tickets than you did betting on the local team. A sorry lot, those Cardinals back then.
But I spent Super Sunday with my laptop open, banging out some work, with the game playing on the radio. And I nearly screamed my lungs out as the New Orleans Saints shocked everyone and beat the Colts to win the NFL title.
The Saints? Who dat? Who dey? What were they doing in the Super Bowl?
Back when the Rams were still in L.A., the Saints were horrible. They were about the only team those Cardinals could beat. The Aints.
But this year's Super Bowl was the biggest feelgood sports story you're going to hear for a long time. Less than five years ago, their city was torn apart by Hurricane Katrina. The city's population was cut in half from all the deaths, evacuations, and totally unlivable conditions. And in The Superdome, the Saints' home stadium, you got to see all the carnage close up.
Like everyone else then, I practically lived in front of the TV watching the Katrina footage. I saw the footage of riverboat casinos blown across parking lots in nearby Biloxi, and remembered a few friends of mine who worked there. Via the Weather Channel and news programs I saw the flooded streets of New Orleans, the destroyed houses marked with the number of dead people found inside, the looters breaking into stores. And the human devastation inside the Superdome.
I remember thinking that, after Katrina, it would be nearly impossible to get anyone to enter the Superdome again.
People died in that building.
Forget about football; a boy's game was the farthest thing from anyone's mind.
Survival was what it was all about, and the greatest gift anyone could give was a bottle of water.
Like many a good journalist, I'm a sucker for an underdog story. A story of redemption. And sometimes it's a sticky wicket. In the 2001 World Series I even considered pulling for those Yankees just because of 9/11. This is important to consider, because I'd rather eat a live bug than cheer for the folks in pinstripes. Fortunately, sanity -- and the Arizona Diamondbacks -- prevailed, and for the 35th year in a row I was rooting for the Yankees to get smoked.
This year's Super Bowl was a great story, five years in the making. Most of the story didn't happen on the gridiron.
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"Political Correctness is a doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical
minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media,
which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick
up a turd by the clean end."
— Texas A&M Student
