As a number of people have said, Mitch McConnell was busy all during the long holiday weekend trying to come up with some version of the appalling Kill The Poor, the Sick And The Old Act So We Can Give Billionaires 7 Million More Dollars Every Year Act in order to get Susan Collins to pretend she's gotten the best bill she could have, so she can run for Governor of Maine and deal with only the carnage in my afflicted state.
It's important to keep up the pressure on the Republicans in the Senate on this issue, I know Susan Collins, I've been observing her for decades, she has to be convinced that she won't be able to pull her usual act on this one. Her statements about not supporting a bill that would trash Planned Parenthood and other claims - her own patented version of conscience as seen on TV - have to be brought up to her. I will be calling her office today.
People with Senators who can be convinced that their reelection or future or, on the off chance that they really care about it, their reputations will be seriously harmed by supporting any repeal of the ACA, any increase in the uninsured, any refusal to maintain and improve on that bill will cost them serious damage. They have to be convinced that this is one fight that will not be over because as soon as the Senate acts people will start losing their coverage, their homes, their livelihoods, their health care and their lives.
Wednesday, July 5, 2017
Tuesday, July 4, 2017
Hall Overton - Piano Sonata (Ethan Iverson, piano)
I always liked Hall Overton's music ever since I played a little piece of his called Mood published in a collection called "American Composers of Today." Back when it was that "today". If I could rouse myself I'd go find my copy of it, as I recall it had an Eagle on the front. I don't know why I never taught the piece, I've taught other pieces from that and similar collections.
His music isn't that easy to come by, which is a shame as he was quite original and good. He died young, right after he completed an opera on Huckleberry Finn. It's one of those pieces I wish I could hear. Here is a piece from the year he died.
Pulsations (1972)
The Ensemble directed by Dennis Russell Davies
As you can hear, he had done extensive work in jazz, which is interesting in itself. His music is very original, all his own, even when you can hear the influence of other composers.
Update: The ACA which produced the performance of these pieces has asked whoever it was who posted the performance to be credited which I am only too happy to do. The American Composers Alliance is a great group who have probably done more than any other to preserve composers' works, scores, manuscripts and to promote their performance. Here is their Hall Overton page.
Bela Bartok - Cantata Profana - György Lehel Conducting
József Réti, the oldest of the brothers
Adrás Faragó, the father
Hungarian Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra
György LEHEL, conductor
This is one of the finest performances of the piece I've ever heard. The solo of the oldest brother who was turned into a stag warning his father not to shoot his sons is wild and bracing, the father's lamenting pleas are beautiful.
I can't find an official English translation of the text online, I suspect all of them except the one below are under copyright.
Here, from an online "virtual exhibition" by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Institute for Musicology, is a page with Bela Bartok's own English translation of the text which he had translated into Hungarian from Romanian (the guy was a real genius).
I copied it and blew it up several times so I could read it but I'm half blind. Bartok's handwriting is as clear as the clearest springs mentioned at the very end of it.
Consider this my July 4th protest against the trashing of the environment here and everywhere. If democracy can't do better than what the Trump regime is doing, it is a proven failure. Only this isn't democracy it's the Age of Lies in which democracy is made impossible.
My Provocation For The Day
I read the article in the Los Angeles Times about how when the fifth president, James Monroe died on July 4th, 1831, after both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the same day in 1926, people thought they saw the hand of God in it. Of course, there's no way to know that. While this passage probably should have been included, it's kind of pathetic that the last part. observing there is no historical evidence to help you decide which to believe, has to be said to adults.
Although scholars are typically weary of analyzing unexplained phenomena, in 2005 historian Margaret P. Battin entertained the meaning behind the same-day deaths of Adams and Jefferson by offering six possibilities,
Coincidence.
Divine intervention.
“Hanging on” to life in order to ensure death on July 4.
Caused to die by others.
Allowing oneself to die.
Causing oneself to die.
Each of these theories, she said, lacks historical evidence.
But I don't much care about what Daniel Webster or other sleeveens like him had to say about the coincidental death dates, I want to kick up some mischief and annoy some poeple over what John Adams is reported to have said shortly before his death.
“Thomas Jefferson survives,” were rumored to be among Adams’ last words from his deathbed in Quincy, Mass. He was unaware that his friend died that day, July 4, 1826, at his beloved Monticello estate more than 500 miles away in Virginia.
It's kind of an odd thing for him to have said on that occasion, considering there were no phones, the mail was extremely slow and unreliable so there would have been every reason for Adams to think that he wouldn't know if Jefferson had kicked the bucket until days or weeks after it happened. And presumably he would have been more fixed on his own soul which he believed was about to be changed in the blinking of an eye as he faced eternity.
I don't recall who it was who raised the possibility that Adams might have been having a near death experience in which his friend who, without his knowledge, had died shortly before, came to him. What he could have been doing is experss surprise that the quasi-deistic Jefferson had survived death, probably a big surprise to Jefferson who might have wanted to share the news with someone he'd written to on religious subjects a lot. If he had a vision of Jefferson already in the afterlife, his statement would make sense more than him believing he knew something he couldn't know on this side of the veil.
That's not an historical statement requiring evidence, I make it only to annoy those who would find such a speculation annoying. I say believe it and annoy the atheists. If you're wrong, they won't be able to hold it over you. If you're right, why wait to the afterlife to crow about it?
Update: Who knows? Adams is believed to have died of a heart attack, I've read. Maybe it was brought on by the shock of seeing Jefferson from the afterlife. Just to annoy the atheists.
Although scholars are typically weary of analyzing unexplained phenomena, in 2005 historian Margaret P. Battin entertained the meaning behind the same-day deaths of Adams and Jefferson by offering six possibilities,
Coincidence.
Divine intervention.
“Hanging on” to life in order to ensure death on July 4.
Caused to die by others.
Allowing oneself to die.
Causing oneself to die.
Each of these theories, she said, lacks historical evidence.
But I don't much care about what Daniel Webster or other sleeveens like him had to say about the coincidental death dates, I want to kick up some mischief and annoy some poeple over what John Adams is reported to have said shortly before his death.
“Thomas Jefferson survives,” were rumored to be among Adams’ last words from his deathbed in Quincy, Mass. He was unaware that his friend died that day, July 4, 1826, at his beloved Monticello estate more than 500 miles away in Virginia.
It's kind of an odd thing for him to have said on that occasion, considering there were no phones, the mail was extremely slow and unreliable so there would have been every reason for Adams to think that he wouldn't know if Jefferson had kicked the bucket until days or weeks after it happened. And presumably he would have been more fixed on his own soul which he believed was about to be changed in the blinking of an eye as he faced eternity.
I don't recall who it was who raised the possibility that Adams might have been having a near death experience in which his friend who, without his knowledge, had died shortly before, came to him. What he could have been doing is experss surprise that the quasi-deistic Jefferson had survived death, probably a big surprise to Jefferson who might have wanted to share the news with someone he'd written to on religious subjects a lot. If he had a vision of Jefferson already in the afterlife, his statement would make sense more than him believing he knew something he couldn't know on this side of the veil.
That's not an historical statement requiring evidence, I make it only to annoy those who would find such a speculation annoying. I say believe it and annoy the atheists. If you're wrong, they won't be able to hold it over you. If you're right, why wait to the afterlife to crow about it?
Update: Who knows? Adams is believed to have died of a heart attack, I've read. Maybe it was brought on by the shock of seeing Jefferson from the afterlife. Just to annoy the atheists.
Bartok Plays Pieces From The Mikrokosmos Volume 5
2 #126. Change of Time
3 #128. Peasant Dance
4 #129. Alternating Thirds
5 #130. Village Joke
6 #131. Fourths
7 #133. Syncopation
8 #136. Whole-Tone Scale
9 #138. Bagpipe
10 #139. Merry Andrew
As I recall there are recordings of him playing things from the earlier volumes, pieces like the fascinating Chromatic Inventions from Volume 3. It's too bad he didn't record all of them, it would certainly be a big help for for students and teachers to know how he conceived them.
Bartok Plays Bartok From Volume 6 of the Mikrokosmos
140, Free variations
141, Subject & reflection
142, From the dairy of a fly
143, Divided arpeggios
144, Minor seconds, major 7th
A long time ago I posted a recording of the first five pieces of volume 6 of the Mikrokosmos as played by someone else. I'd known that Bartok recorded a number of pieces from the collection, as I recall I had it on an LP on the flip side from him and his wife, Ditta, playing the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. I believe it was a recording of a live performance from a radio broadcast, which explains one hesitation I noticed in the second of them.
I'm going to have to buy them on CD, they are a revelation into what a great pianist Bartok was as well as a great composer, the delicacy of the slower and quieter passages bring out a range that you often don't hear in people playing his music. Especially #144 but also in the others. I don't know of any better way to get the right way of playing this music than listening to the composer play it.
And I may as well post him playing the last six of the volume, the often played Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm. If they don't excite you, you should check your pulse for signs of being dead.
I had to change the way I played the first of these when I heard this recording, the passage at about 1:23. I didn't really get how it fit into the rest of the dance until I heard him play it. Even the youtubes show you so much more than you can get by even a careful study of the score and sticking to what it says.
I'd better stop because I'll fill the page with cue numbers with all the points that could be made about these. A hazard of having taught them a number of times, I guess.
Walter Brueggemann teaching Sunday School on Psalm 73 - A Fourth of July Post
I have posted this before but I listened to it again the other day and I noticed an interesting passage starting about 27:55 in which Brueggemann talks about the word "heart" as it appears in psalm 73. In presenting the different verses in which it is found and the contextual meaning of it he notes that in the Hebrew scriptures, the heart isn't merely considered the organ of emotion but it is also the organ of decision making. He said it in passing but it is, I think, a point which is both valid and important for understanding how people are manipulated by people who intend to manipulate them, deceived, convinced that what is a lie is true or that a lie doesn't matter. And several hypocrisies of the managers of our corporate, consumer culture, media and government who are all about the business of manipulating emotions and swaying decisions. And why that, unsurprisngly, works out for them instead of those they deceive by manipulating and creating emotions.
The deeper you go into the scriptures beneath the surface of them, it's astonishing how deep and sophisticated their knowledge of how human beings was. They understood how people really think and act as compared to the idiotic idea promoted by orthodox, "enlightenment" academics who pretend everything can be expressed in a ratio derived from mathematics and logic. They do so even as they, in so many cases, participate in the manipulation of peoples' emotions. If you doubt that look at the history of the social sciences in helping the advertising industry in "creating demand" for worthless and harmful products, in promoting the addiction of people to tobacco and alcohol and prescription psycho-active drugs. When it serves their own economic advancement, they will write a paper about how people who are duped are actually making "rational decisions" exercising their autonomy, even while they and their colleagues deceive and lie to them and present them with emotionally effective associations to dupe them into buying and, in perhaps the majority of cases, harming themselves, their families, their loved ones, their communities and the entire biosphere, making the continuation of life on Earth an ever less likely thing.
This is one of the best things I can think of to post on America under the Trump regime, looking ever more like the the worst president in our history, widely acknowledged to the be the worst, least competent, most dangerous person to have ever gotten the nomination of a major party. He was sold to an effective margin of voters on lies, both told in the American media, especially hate talk radio and the cabloids and through the corruption of the Constitutionally mandated elections, using the self-imposed vulnerabilities imposed on our elections by the Supreme Court in the name of "freedom of speech" and other abbreviated, pat phrases from the Constitution. Just last night I heard a major figure in the media going on similarly even as he decried the results of that enlightenment two-step.
I think it was that other media creation, the totally phony and quite unconvincingly Christian Ronald Reagan who said you could find the answer to everything in the Bible. Well, you can find lots of answers but you find a lot more when you read it very carefully and in a way which is the opposite of self-service and self-interest. As read by Brueggemann, Josahua Heschel, his daughter Susannah Heschel, and others, you find a lot more that is realistic about our situation than you're going to get just about anywhere else. You're not going to find it in the Constitution or get it from those who come up with excuses for doing bad things out of it. That's the Supreme Court and the media hacks who have led this country into disaster.
Monday, July 3, 2017
What Do You Think Of Peter Beinart's .....
While having been published at The New Republic isn't necessarily a sure sign of being a jerk, having edited it, especially during the years it was under the ownership of the racist asshole Marty Peretz, is. The career of Peter Beinart is just a datum that demonstrates that fact. Democrats should have a rule that any advice that comes from a former editor of TNR is probably a good indication that what is advised is political poison and stupid.
First Speak No Ignorance - Turning a Dying Baby Into A Political Football
Like just about anyone I've read on the topic, in the past half hour, I know next to if not absolutely nothing about nucleoside bypass therapy, the American doctor who wants to try it on a dying baby in Britain, the court case his parents brought to the European Court of Human Rights to be allowed to take their critically ill baby out of the hospital or anything else about it. I don't know who is right except to say that Donald Trump getting involved is a really bad idea because if we don't know anything, he is certain to, somehow, have achieved knowing even less. His tweet on the topic is sheer politics, having nothing to do with the baby, his parents or any fact in the case, it is sheer political showmanship which is about as real as his fake TV show which has about as much heart in it as a page of the Neilsen ratings or one of Rasmussen's phony polls
I won't have anymore to say about it except that I quickly scanned this paper, Emerging therapies for mitochondrial disorders, from last June. Especially this section:
A recent systematic review identified over 1300 reports using a variety of approaches expected to bypass or enhance components of mitochondrial function. However, the vast majority of these reports are open-labelled case series with less than five subjects. Although ∼30 randomized trials have been carried out to date, no treatment has shown a clear cut benefit on a clinically meaningful end-point (for reviews see Pfeffer et al., 2012; Kerr, 2013). It is therefore likely that components of the traditional ‘mitochondrial cocktail’ do not have a major therapeutic impact on most mitochondrial diseases. There is therefore a clear need for the field to ‘think outside the box’ when developing new treatments, harnessing the massive increase in our understanding of mitochondrial disease pathogenesis. After preclinical evaluation in cellular and animal models, new treatments showing promise should be studied in patients using a rigorous approach (Pfeffer et al., 2013). This review focuses on these new developments, with a particular emphasis on mtDNA diseases, which were previously thought to be intractable. Here we critically appraise each approach, and highlight areas where there is likely to be traction in the future. This is timely, because both small and large pharmaceutical companies are starting to see the potential market in developing treatments for these so-far untreatable disorders.
Somehow, that last sentence, especially "both small and large pharmaceutical companies are starting to see the potential market in developing treatments for these so-far untreatable disorders." gives me serious pause about anyone thinking they know subjecting a critically ill baby to one is a good thing or, for that matter, a bad thing. Call me skeptical but I don't think the people opining on either side know what the're talking about. Certainly not as much as the various legal officials who have at least had evidence presented to them. I have no idea what Pope Francis might have seen but, for him, at least, the dying baby isn't a political football.
So, that's a long way to say I don't have any response to your challenge to defend the Pope's position on this because I don't know who's right, though I certainly can see how the child is being used by Trump and others. While you're rightly slamming Trump for doing that, don't do it, yourself.
I won't have anymore to say about it except that I quickly scanned this paper, Emerging therapies for mitochondrial disorders, from last June. Especially this section:
A recent systematic review identified over 1300 reports using a variety of approaches expected to bypass or enhance components of mitochondrial function. However, the vast majority of these reports are open-labelled case series with less than five subjects. Although ∼30 randomized trials have been carried out to date, no treatment has shown a clear cut benefit on a clinically meaningful end-point (for reviews see Pfeffer et al., 2012; Kerr, 2013). It is therefore likely that components of the traditional ‘mitochondrial cocktail’ do not have a major therapeutic impact on most mitochondrial diseases. There is therefore a clear need for the field to ‘think outside the box’ when developing new treatments, harnessing the massive increase in our understanding of mitochondrial disease pathogenesis. After preclinical evaluation in cellular and animal models, new treatments showing promise should be studied in patients using a rigorous approach (Pfeffer et al., 2013). This review focuses on these new developments, with a particular emphasis on mtDNA diseases, which were previously thought to be intractable. Here we critically appraise each approach, and highlight areas where there is likely to be traction in the future. This is timely, because both small and large pharmaceutical companies are starting to see the potential market in developing treatments for these so-far untreatable disorders.
Somehow, that last sentence, especially "both small and large pharmaceutical companies are starting to see the potential market in developing treatments for these so-far untreatable disorders." gives me serious pause about anyone thinking they know subjecting a critically ill baby to one is a good thing or, for that matter, a bad thing. Call me skeptical but I don't think the people opining on either side know what the're talking about. Certainly not as much as the various legal officials who have at least had evidence presented to them. I have no idea what Pope Francis might have seen but, for him, at least, the dying baby isn't a political football.
So, that's a long way to say I don't have any response to your challenge to defend the Pope's position on this because I don't know who's right, though I certainly can see how the child is being used by Trump and others. While you're rightly slamming Trump for doing that, don't do it, yourself.
Vote Up Crock
I think there is a rule to be made from the observation that someone who is reduced to accusations of violation of standardized spellings has proven they've pretty much got nuthin'. Only Simps proved he had nothing a long, long time ago. His most recent role of tireless meter maid of spelling leads me to imagine him getting aroused by dressing up something like this:
only old and dumpy. Note the kew-el teal colored electric on the stand. Simps written all over it.
He tried to post that comment here yesterday, too. I don't remember if it was one I posted and answered and can't be bothered to look. I notice it's "liked" by a Howard_Bannister who I don't remember seeing at Eschaton before. I suspect it's one of Simps' many sockpuppets. No "Howard_Bannister" has ever tried to post a comment here or otherwise shows up among those who access this blog. I suspect it's Simps taking the name of a character from an old Streisand movie, one in a series of dreary unfunny screwball comedies of the period, so old I saw it on TV or, at least, part of it. I don't think I ever voluntarily paid to sit through something like that.* I could never much take Ryan O'Neal. Yeah, it's got Simps sock puppet written all over it. If it isn't it's someone equally dopey.
* I got taken on a date to see the really horrible "Murder by Death" which was one of the movies that turned me off to movies. The first requirement of a comedy should be that it doesn't make you depressed from the opening credits. But not in Hollywood, not generally. I don't miss the movies.
only old and dumpy. Note the kew-el teal colored electric on the stand. Simps written all over it.
He tried to post that comment here yesterday, too. I don't remember if it was one I posted and answered and can't be bothered to look. I notice it's "liked" by a Howard_Bannister who I don't remember seeing at Eschaton before. I suspect it's one of Simps' many sockpuppets. No "Howard_Bannister" has ever tried to post a comment here or otherwise shows up among those who access this blog. I suspect it's Simps taking the name of a character from an old Streisand movie, one in a series of dreary unfunny screwball comedies of the period, so old I saw it on TV or, at least, part of it. I don't think I ever voluntarily paid to sit through something like that.* I could never much take Ryan O'Neal. Yeah, it's got Simps sock puppet written all over it. If it isn't it's someone equally dopey.
* I got taken on a date to see the really horrible "Murder by Death" which was one of the movies that turned me off to movies. The first requirement of a comedy should be that it doesn't make you depressed from the opening credits. But not in Hollywood, not generally. I don't miss the movies.
OK. That Post Was A Bit Depressing
Here's something I remember and have watched at a couple of the lowest points in the last five months.
Her last bit of advice is worth remembering when you're feeling really low.
Her last bit of advice is worth remembering when you're feeling really low.
Holiday Announcement
To write or not to write, that is the question.
It's been my blogging experience that holiday weekends, especially the extra-long ones like this year's July 4th, get the fewest readers of the whole year. I've got some kind of lingering malady and have a ton of work to do in my garden - which I am dependent on - so I might not write much new unless I feel inspired.
I might post some music or another radio play or more. I might post on the idiocy of my trolls, especially the one who is like a mix of Captain Ahab and Alexander Portnoy if they knew everything they did from too much American TV, commercial movies and pop-kulcha.
I've got to go do some weeding.
What I won't be doing is celebrating a holiday that the elevation of Trump-McConnell-Ryan has made into a dangerously hypocritical mockery, claiming things that have been disproved by their elevation, imposed on us by a corrupt Constitution being corruptly interpreted by the Republicans on the Supreme Court in the interests of the billionaire class. I'm not going to join in that putrid pantomime.
It's been my blogging experience that holiday weekends, especially the extra-long ones like this year's July 4th, get the fewest readers of the whole year. I've got some kind of lingering malady and have a ton of work to do in my garden - which I am dependent on - so I might not write much new unless I feel inspired.
I might post some music or another radio play or more. I might post on the idiocy of my trolls, especially the one who is like a mix of Captain Ahab and Alexander Portnoy if they knew everything they did from too much American TV, commercial movies and pop-kulcha.
I've got to go do some weeding.
What I won't be doing is celebrating a holiday that the elevation of Trump-McConnell-Ryan has made into a dangerously hypocritical mockery, claiming things that have been disproved by their elevation, imposed on us by a corrupt Constitution being corruptly interpreted by the Republicans on the Supreme Court in the interests of the billionaire class. I'm not going to join in that putrid pantomime.
Sunday, July 2, 2017
Anyone Know?
There's another thing that Arch Oboler wrote and directed that I wish I could see or at least read the script for, an early TV episode called, "Mr. Dydee" which I read about last year. The description of the plot sounds like it could have been lots of fun.
A not-to-bright, small-time horse player inherits a diaper service.
Sounds like O'Neill's "Hughie" in an alternative universe.
Maybe one of my erudite readers - the real stuff, not what's been on display here earlier this morning - might know if it even exists as a video.
Update:
Here's one of the last things Oboler did in radio drama, from the same Sears Radio Theater series I posted from yesterday, from 1979, complete with the vintage commercials and messages and announced by Vincent Price.
Arch Oboler - The Old Boy
A not-to-bright, small-time horse player inherits a diaper service.
Sounds like O'Neill's "Hughie" in an alternative universe.
Maybe one of my erudite readers - the real stuff, not what's been on display here earlier this morning - might know if it even exists as a video.
Update:
Here's one of the last things Oboler did in radio drama, from the same Sears Radio Theater series I posted from yesterday, from 1979, complete with the vintage commercials and messages and announced by Vincent Price.
Arch Oboler - The Old Boy
The Old Boy
Update 2: Yeah, I've heard his Drop Dead LP. You can hear it on Youtube. I have to say that I don't find Oboler's horror and sci-fi stuff as good as some of his other stuff. Oddly, the content he recorded in hi-fi in 1962 seems more dated to me than the stuff he did in the 30s and 40s. I really like some of it but he was churning out a lot of stuff as a working hack writer. It's amazing how much stuff those guys wrote. It's like blogging only a lot longer and a lot better quality.
Just Bob And Ray [7]
Bob and Ray
There's a little of that degradation mentioned below in this recording but it's not very long and it's worth getting past.
Come to think of it, it's not much different from listening on an old AM radio back in the day. Those were always going in and out. Compared to that, this is hi-fi.
Come to think of it, it's not much different from listening on an old AM radio back in the day. Those were always going in and out. Compared to that, this is hi-fi.
There Will Be No "Golden Age" Of Audio Drama, You'll Never Get It From A Zenith
Simels, here and at Duncan's Daycare for Doddering Duffers, accused me of "going on about the golden age of radio" last night. Well, as everything I posted yesterday came from the late 1970s (you'd think that the title, "Afro-Western" would have been a clue, only he's clueless) and 1996 (the two episodes of The Mystery Project), as always, Simps is a simpleton.
I seldom post anything from what is called "the golden age of radio" because either the recordings I can find are too degraded, as in that Arch Oboler play he wrote for Peter Lorre * I mentioned a while ago, or too retrograde in their treatment of Women, Black People, Latinos, Jews, LGBT People, etc. as was not uncommon in the so-called "golden age of radio". And a lot of the stuff from that period is not especially good, that's something I said last winter in about the only mention of said "golden age" I've ever made.
"A while back someone asked me why I hardly ever post stuff from the "golden age of radio". No reason except a lot of what people post from that period isn't very good. They really churned it out."
The one and only other time I posted the phrase "golden age of radio" was the very first time I posted one of them as Saturday Night Radio Drama when I said:
"The past few years I've come to really love audio drama, what used to be called radio drama back when radio aspired to be something other than a way to make money and spread propaganda. I don't mean the "golden age of radio" stuff, though some of that was pretty good, or at least listenable."
I am not doing this as an exercise in nostalgia, I don't post anything based on that kind of stuff that keeps the pop music .... um.... "journalism" scam going and pop singers repeating their moldy oldies into their dotage. Really, I think someday Mick and his old Stones are going to do the "Oxygen Tank Tour" as they'll all have to have one to get on stage. The critics will declare it groovy.
I only post things if they're good or at least interesting. And, as can be seen from what I post, most of that doesn't go into that "golden age" slot.
Simps and the Simpletons were only interesting in so far as they show what happens when people wallow in nostalgia and pat phrases and just a slightly different set of bromides than the ones George F. Babbitt was given. Their discourse is something to be seen through, not something that carries any important revelation of reality. It's an example of how pseudo-liberalism isn't qualitatively that different from its alleged opposite,** which, if presented theatrically, would probably need an Arch Oboler to mess with your set expectations, conventionalized categorizations and collection of pat phrases to do. It wouldn't be in a movie, it wouldn't be on TV or, these days, on American radio. It would be done as an audio-play or a skit. The golden age of that wasn't when Arch Oboler, Norman Corwin and Orson Welles were working in radio. I don't think any golden age of that has happened and the delivery system for that being decentralized, there won't ever be one. You won't ever read about it in nostalgia pieces and magazines. How many times have you ever heard them talking about Arch Oboler other than that silly "Chicken Heart" piece which isn't especially interesting compared with "An Exercise in Horror", linked to above.
* If you listen to it it's worth it to either wait out the long degraded part of the recording or to skip it because this play is a good example of how Oboler could use your expectations to make a point. I wonder if Peter Lorre ever wished he could go back to being a regular actor instead of playing a Hollywood type-cast creepy guy like the one spoofed in the play. I'll bet he sometimes wished that he'd never been in "M".
** Real liberalism is it's direct opposite because it is qualitatively different from both libertarian liberalism and degenerate conservatism. There are evangelicals I trust more than I do the libertarian left.
I seldom post anything from what is called "the golden age of radio" because either the recordings I can find are too degraded, as in that Arch Oboler play he wrote for Peter Lorre * I mentioned a while ago, or too retrograde in their treatment of Women, Black People, Latinos, Jews, LGBT People, etc. as was not uncommon in the so-called "golden age of radio". And a lot of the stuff from that period is not especially good, that's something I said last winter in about the only mention of said "golden age" I've ever made.
"A while back someone asked me why I hardly ever post stuff from the "golden age of radio". No reason except a lot of what people post from that period isn't very good. They really churned it out."
The one and only other time I posted the phrase "golden age of radio" was the very first time I posted one of them as Saturday Night Radio Drama when I said:
"The past few years I've come to really love audio drama, what used to be called radio drama back when radio aspired to be something other than a way to make money and spread propaganda. I don't mean the "golden age of radio" stuff, though some of that was pretty good, or at least listenable."
I am not doing this as an exercise in nostalgia, I don't post anything based on that kind of stuff that keeps the pop music .... um.... "journalism" scam going and pop singers repeating their moldy oldies into their dotage. Really, I think someday Mick and his old Stones are going to do the "Oxygen Tank Tour" as they'll all have to have one to get on stage. The critics will declare it groovy.
I only post things if they're good or at least interesting. And, as can be seen from what I post, most of that doesn't go into that "golden age" slot.
Simps and the Simpletons were only interesting in so far as they show what happens when people wallow in nostalgia and pat phrases and just a slightly different set of bromides than the ones George F. Babbitt was given. Their discourse is something to be seen through, not something that carries any important revelation of reality. It's an example of how pseudo-liberalism isn't qualitatively that different from its alleged opposite,** which, if presented theatrically, would probably need an Arch Oboler to mess with your set expectations, conventionalized categorizations and collection of pat phrases to do. It wouldn't be in a movie, it wouldn't be on TV or, these days, on American radio. It would be done as an audio-play or a skit. The golden age of that wasn't when Arch Oboler, Norman Corwin and Orson Welles were working in radio. I don't think any golden age of that has happened and the delivery system for that being decentralized, there won't ever be one. You won't ever read about it in nostalgia pieces and magazines. How many times have you ever heard them talking about Arch Oboler other than that silly "Chicken Heart" piece which isn't especially interesting compared with "An Exercise in Horror", linked to above.
* If you listen to it it's worth it to either wait out the long degraded part of the recording or to skip it because this play is a good example of how Oboler could use your expectations to make a point. I wonder if Peter Lorre ever wished he could go back to being a regular actor instead of playing a Hollywood type-cast creepy guy like the one spoofed in the play. I'll bet he sometimes wished that he'd never been in "M".
** Real liberalism is it's direct opposite because it is qualitatively different from both libertarian liberalism and degenerate conservatism. There are evangelicals I trust more than I do the libertarian left.
Saturday, July 1, 2017
Dinah Washington - Clifford Brown - No More
Dinah Washington, vocal
Clifford Brown,trumpet
Junior Mance, piano
Keter Betts.bass
George Morrow, bass
Max Roach, drums
Lover Come Back To Me
I couldn't find specifically who was playing on this track but here is the entire list from the album, Dinah Jams
Dinah Washington (vo)
Clifford Brown (tp)
Maynard Ferguson (tp)
Clark Terry (tp)
Max Roach (ds)
Keeter Betts (b)
George Morrow (b)
Richie Powell (p)
Junior Mance (p)
Harold Land (ts)
Herb Geller (as)
Second Feature - The Mystery Project - Becker - The World Of Mary Hunter
and
I figured I should post something Canadian for Canada Day and 150 years of Canadian independence. May Canada always be free, independent and the better (though not perfect) example on our border. Wish I were there.
Saturday Night Radio Drama - Sears Radio Theater - The Afro-Westerner - A 4th of July Special
"The Afro-Westerner" starring Brock Peters and Parley Baer, with Lome Greene, host.
The story of a young African from Liberia who, in 1875, visits Laramie, Wyo., where his grandparents, escaped slaves, had lived for 13 years.
This is the latest series of radio drama on commercial American radio that I ever heard of from the decade that I hold was the high point in the positive depiction of Black people in the American media. I can't imagine Sears as run by an incompetent disciple of Ayn Rand sponsoring something like this, today. Or, frankly, much of anyone else. You'll also hear a next to extinct species, the public service message, something that pretty much got killed of during the Reagan administration.
I also can't imagine anyone making the effort to point out that the 'ol west was not lily white.
We're supposed to have thunderstorms coming through and I expect we'll lose our internet around here so I'm posting it early. If I can I'll post more later. You'll want to adjust the volume, the recording is slightly reverb rich.
More Independence Day Weekend Commentary
I'm looking forward to Kellyanne Conway being hauled in front of a hearing or a grand jury under oath or being questioned by the FBI about her reported role in the collusion between the Trump campaign and the Putin crime regime with this Peter W. Smith scumball as a coordinator of that collusion. I don't think the skank can talk without lying and if there's one thing I cherish it's the possibility of watching footage of her being perp-walked in an orange suit to prison for lying. And if it isn't only her, it's Steve Bannon and that Clovis guy who are mentioned in the most recent disclosures of that effort.
The Republican Party is being exposed as the indigenous criminal class of the United States, the subverters of egalitarian democracy and even the independence of the United States, something we're going to allegedly celebrate in three days. They've handed control of the country to an active agent of a foreign dictator and are doing everything they can, through negligence and through things like the Trump voter intimidation effort to lay the country even more vulnerable to the Putin regime's attacks on our country.
Republicans are the home of treason, unsurprising as they are, by active strategy going back to Richard Nixon, the home of the Neo-Confederacy, the original traitors, having made them Attorneys General and put overt white supremacists and neo-Nazis in positions of power, leaving known agents of Putin, currently the strongest and most ruthless promoter of neo-Nazim and white supremacy in Europe, North America and, perhaps in the world, in power. People like Mike Flynn, heavily implicated in the recent stories, who had his security clearance to the most sensitive intelligence of the country during the interval between Sally Yates informing the Trump regime of his suspected collusion and him being forced out only after he was exposed in the press.
This is dead serious stuff and any part of the media, especially the neo-Nazi sites and the brain toilet that FOX is are in on it. This is what allowing the media to lie with impunity is proven to lead to in that most hard of laboratories, real life. The theoretical virtues of allowing lies under a novel interpretation of the First Amendment is a proven catastrophe. Trump was created as a public figure and put into the presidency by the media, by their phony show-biz, ersatz "reality" and the lies they told with impunity. Something has to be done to incorporate the hard lessons of the Trump attack on democracy or we will lose it and it will not be automatically restored by some balance of a natural system. This depends entirely on us, our facing real reality and our choices.
The Republican Party is being exposed as the indigenous criminal class of the United States, the subverters of egalitarian democracy and even the independence of the United States, something we're going to allegedly celebrate in three days. They've handed control of the country to an active agent of a foreign dictator and are doing everything they can, through negligence and through things like the Trump voter intimidation effort to lay the country even more vulnerable to the Putin regime's attacks on our country.
Republicans are the home of treason, unsurprising as they are, by active strategy going back to Richard Nixon, the home of the Neo-Confederacy, the original traitors, having made them Attorneys General and put overt white supremacists and neo-Nazis in positions of power, leaving known agents of Putin, currently the strongest and most ruthless promoter of neo-Nazim and white supremacy in Europe, North America and, perhaps in the world, in power. People like Mike Flynn, heavily implicated in the recent stories, who had his security clearance to the most sensitive intelligence of the country during the interval between Sally Yates informing the Trump regime of his suspected collusion and him being forced out only after he was exposed in the press.
This is dead serious stuff and any part of the media, especially the neo-Nazi sites and the brain toilet that FOX is are in on it. This is what allowing the media to lie with impunity is proven to lead to in that most hard of laboratories, real life. The theoretical virtues of allowing lies under a novel interpretation of the First Amendment is a proven catastrophe. Trump was created as a public figure and put into the presidency by the media, by their phony show-biz, ersatz "reality" and the lies they told with impunity. Something has to be done to incorporate the hard lessons of the Trump attack on democracy or we will lose it and it will not be automatically restored by some balance of a natural system. This depends entirely on us, our facing real reality and our choices.
"You Don't Have A Sense of Humor"
What do you want, pies in the face? Seltzer down the pants? An idiot cue telling you to laugh? A laugh track? An emoticon? (the inter-nit equivalent of one). That's not the Maine style of humor. We don't have to be told when something's funny. We know it.
I think one of the best things I heard last week, something I wish I could say I'd come up with, was Steve Colbert calling it the "Nyuck Times". You know, as in Curley, who played the stupidest of the 3 Stooges? I think I'm always going to think of it as "The Nyuck-nyuck Times" from now on.
Though laughing at you guys as you unwittingly generate low comedy has been a part of this week, as it is whenever my attention gets drawn to you.
Update: Simels is in a swivet because I misspelled "Curly". Yeah, that's going to keep me up nights.
Update 2: I'm going to hold Simps' latest rant in which he accuses me of not having heard recordings I've posted. I assume he means that undying hit by the Roulettes, Tell Tale Tit, as in me posting the performance of Candida a few weeks back he doesn't seem to understand that I was the one who posted those things, not his Simelsness. He just can't believe that someone in the sticks could have heard something. You see, there was this thing called "radio"......
He's so funny when he tries to run on empty, which happens whenever anyone challenges him. And it happens a lot. If there's one thing that Simels is, it's challenged.
I think one of the best things I heard last week, something I wish I could say I'd come up with, was Steve Colbert calling it the "Nyuck Times". You know, as in Curley, who played the stupidest of the 3 Stooges? I think I'm always going to think of it as "The Nyuck-nyuck Times" from now on.
Though laughing at you guys as you unwittingly generate low comedy has been a part of this week, as it is whenever my attention gets drawn to you.
Update: Simels is in a swivet because I misspelled "Curly". Yeah, that's going to keep me up nights.
Update 2: I'm going to hold Simps' latest rant in which he accuses me of not having heard recordings I've posted. I assume he means that undying hit by the Roulettes, Tell Tale Tit, as in me posting the performance of Candida a few weeks back he doesn't seem to understand that I was the one who posted those things, not his Simelsness. He just can't believe that someone in the sticks could have heard something. You see, there was this thing called "radio"......
He's so funny when he tries to run on empty, which happens whenever anyone challenges him. And it happens a lot. If there's one thing that Simels is, it's challenged.
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