Kevin Ayers / John Cale / Brian Eno / Nico - June 1, 1974

I try to listen to this album every year on June 1st. It's a tradition! This year is the forty-second anniversary of the concert itself.

Pretty good crew, this. And they put together a very happening back up band. Ollie Halsall was new to me, but I became a fan immediately. Overall, the chemistry is good between the participants, and I still think the results are top notch.

So happy June First!

Howling Wolf - How Many More Years (original 1951 version)

Just loving the Wolf here. I was thinking of another song, but I came across this one, and I figured, why not?

1951 . . . let that sink in for a minute. And who guided Wolf's career? Who was that A&R man? Why, that would be Ike Turner! Old Ike, a tempestuous man for sure, and not without his faults, but the world is a better place because of his talent and his achievements.

Oh, and Howlin' Wolf. One of the founders himself. I love Howlin' Wolf.

Stephen Colbert's Awful Suits

Who is dressing Stephen Colbert? He's been wearing the worst suits in television history since his first day on this run of shows. His stylist should be fired, at least, or ideally imprisoned on Devil's Island for a few decades. What the fuck is going on?

These "Fashion Forward" suits only work on a fraction of a percent of the male population. Worn by 99 point umpteen percent of men they only succeed in making the man's shoulders look very narrow, and the man's hips and ass look very big. Did I mention they make the man's legs look short? Not to mention that the suits themselves look ridiculous, folding and creasing and clinging in all of the wrong places.

Why would Stephen wear these things? Can he not see himself? They only serve to make him look plump and old and desperate. It's unnerving.

Is CBS involved with this fashion assassination? I'd like to think that Stephen would never pick those suits for himself, or hire a stylist that would pick them. I think that he would fire a stylist that would pick them.

If I knew how to start a mass movement, I would. Somebody save Stephen Colbert from these suits!!!

Thailand: The Florida Connection

I am not ashamed to admit that I have a touch of the insect fear. I see movement out of the corner of my eye and I go on attack alert. It could be one of the little six legged intruders that requires killing, with extreme prejudice. My last apartment in New York was in a city housing project in Queens, and roaches, and other bugs, were our constant companions. You can’t kill them all, you can’t chase down all of the ones that live in the walls, especially the wet walls connecting to the kitchen and the bathroom. But one must do what one can, if only to feel busy and maintain one’s pride.

Before coming to Thailand I had had extensive experience of Florida. I had assumed that Thailand would be a lot like Florida on the subjects of heat, and bugs, and palm trees. In the event, the two places are not very similar at all. Florida is actually hotter when the heat is really in bloom. The temperatures are similar, but Florida is much more humid, making it more exhausting and uncomfortable. Thailand is usually down around seventy, seventy-five percent for humidity, which is a lot better. So that’s good. On the bug front too, Florida comes out the loser. Florida is a miracle of bug culture. The bugs in Florida are huge and various, and for some reason they are much more aggressive about moving into your residence. Moving into your corn flakes box, even. I don’t see much of that in Thailand.

Early on in my Thailand experience I noticed that the packaging for corn flakes and cookies was nothing like the solid, metallic, bullet-proof packaging that was used in Florida. I wondered if this was an oversight on the part of South-East Asian marketers, but no. There’s no need for it. In over ten years I have yet to see so much as an ant in my corn flakes. My only guess is that they find plenty to eat outside.

Florida has a particular bug called a palmetto bug, which is as big as a baseball. Their preferred environment is the palmetto bush, and around dusk they can be seen sallying forth to do whatever it is that they do. Find water, probably, and food. Your food, in your house. They get into your cabinets, and it’s amazing to wonder how they could accomplish that, being so huge. But they do. Thailand has some pretty large roach like bugs, but I don’t think there’s anything here to match the Godzilla like majesty of the palmetto bug. Here in Thailand, they stay mostly out in the woods, and not in your kitchen, your swimming pool, or under the dashboard of your car.

Incidentally, although the mosquitos here in Thailand are impressive and well organized, they do not match the mosquitos of the east coast of America for either size or aggressiveness. Dengue fever notwithstanding, they are a manageable annoyance kept in check by aggressive vector control on the part of government entities at all levels. There’s lots of spraying and smoking going on, and it’s very effective.

The palm tree situation was a big surprise for me. Thailand is a tropical country, and I was expecting lots of palm trees everywhere. But no, that’s not the case. In the north and the east, you hardly see palm trees at all. In the southern peninsula there are more palm trees around, but still not as many as I expected. Florida, hell, Los Angeles, California has lots more palm trees than Thailand. There are lots of tropical trees in Thailand, and they are beautiful, but not that many palm trees. Most of the trees in Thailand feature beautiful flowers, and there are some strange intermediate trees that exist somewhere between deciduous trees, ferns and palms, but here too, not like Florida at all. It might be soil conditions. Florida is really just a sand bar jutting southward into the ocean.

Florida is America’s tropical paradise, but it cannot be used as a template for the tropics in general. Your experience of the real tropics will be different, and I think that that’s a good thing. Actually, I never really cared for Florida. Thailand is a much nicer place. 

CGI Animated Shorts HD: "Fortress/Крепость"HD: - by Dima Fedotof

Boy, there's a lot of interesting stuff on the 'Net now. Like this short video about a ghost bomber attacking a ghost city in some future dystopia.

I don't know much about this one, but it might be one of the new "proof of concept" short features. I guess these days any talented kid in the Ukraine or someplace that has a good computer set up can put something like this together.

Our brave new world! Like I say, look for the entertainment in our world of shit. It's there, and we need all of the help that we can get.

Jimmy Fallon, Sia, Natalie Portman & The Roots Sing "Iko Iko"

Just for a point of reference, I like Jimmy Fallon, and I like the Roots, and for that matter I like Natalie Portman too (although I'm not sure how she got into this video). Sia, well I've never heard of her at all, and nothing here particularly recommends her to me. But . . .

The point is, this video has six million views, and within a few months, too. It's entertaining, but not overly so, and it's certainly not great art. That Jimmy Scott video down there, anybody with any musical sense at all would find that wildly entertaining, and great art besides. 421 hits.

It all begs the question: in our new Twitterverse, has quality been discarded altogether as being totally obsolete? Can anyone under forty-five-years-old even hear the difference anymore?

Just wondering.

Jimmy Scott - Time on my hands (1955)

And then there's tone like this. There's never been anything like Jimmy Scott, Little Jimmy Scott, Crying Jimmy Scott. Ray Charles's favorite singer, and mine too, right up there.

421 views. Maybe more people should back away from the Beyonce (sp) and look around a bit. There's a whole 'nother world out there, y'all.

Slaughter on 10th Avenue performed by Mick Ronson

Another tone giant.

Just Taking A Negativity Break Here

It's been a little quiet around here, and it's my fault. Believe me, no one wants to read anything that is based on the way that I'm feeling these days.

But the wave of negativity will break soon. The sooner the better as far as I'm concerned. My mood should return to sweetness and light any day now. (That sound you hear is the laughter of people who really know me.) Well, at least my mask will be back in place.

Me, I can't wait. Bring it on! Anything but more of this.

Phil Manzanera - Diamond Head

I mentioned Phil M. recently in connection with another guitarist. I said that Phil was a guy who tried to make the guitar sound like other things. Well, here is Phil working his magic.

I love the guys who concentrate on tone and texture. There's a real musical idea here, sure, and good content, but the real benefits accrue from the tone colors.

It's all in the hands, and the ears. You can't fake this stuff, either you've got it or you don't.

The whole LP is great, by the way, and it's all up here on the 'Tube.

Brigitte Bardot - "Moi Je Joue"

French pop music in general is an abomination, but they do get one thing right. If the pop singer in question is a woman, the French can be trusted to give the gig to a beautiful woman.

If the pop singer in question is a man, the preference seems to be a man who is neither handsome nor capable of carrying a tune. Pop music is a strange business in France.

Viet Con: Mr. Fish (Political Cartoon)

Well, since you put it that way.

I had been focused on how wonderful it is that we can be friends now. I have been mightily impressed for years at the ability of the Vietnamese people to overlook our shared past and treat individual Americans with forbearance and acceptance. Thanks for that.

And that shared past went on way past 1975, too. That's quite a list of horrors in the cartoon. All Vietnam did to "deserve" it was fight for their own rights in their own country.

I'm grateful every day that people around the world can separate American people from the American government, and direct their negative feelings appropriately.

Oh, yeah . . . the cartoon. (From Truthdig.com)

Viet Con: Mr. Fish: - 2016/05/24

Thelonious Monk Piano Solo - Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

A good friend of mine is wild about this song. I thought that I'd give her a sense of how many different acts have done the song since it appeared in the Broadway show "Roberta" in 1933. Guess which version she liked best (after the Platters 1958 hit that is)?

That's right. Mr. T. Monk!

Stubborn All Stars - Open Season

I found this cut on a Hepcat Records sampler quite a while ago. Still does it for me.

My Brother-In-Law Is A Reader

This month I paid a visit to my sister and her husband in Arizona. I like my brother-in-law; he’s a good little reader. In fact, he’s a BIG reader, the biggest reader that I know. He’s big in both volume and content. As a reader, to paraphrase Wes Montgomery talking about jazz, he “goes way up and stays there.”

Here are some book titles that I picked off of his shelves:

Schopenhauer-Essays and Aphorisms.

General Economic History, by Max Weber.

Theory and Application of Infinite Series, by Knapp.

Engineering in the Ancient World, by Landels.

The Peoples of the Hills: Ancient Ararat and Caucasus, by Burney and Lang.

Introduction to Semimicro Qualitative Analysis, by Sorum

A History of the Ostrogoths, by Burns.

Introduction to Theoretical Meteorology, by Hess.

Who’s Afraid of Schroedinger’s Cat? By John Gribbin.

A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (Volumes One and Two).

Frederick II, by David Abulafia.

Mohammed and Charlemagne.

The Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia.

Elementary Matrix Theory, by Eves

Teach Yourself Sanskrit (!!!)

Arabic Grammar (Two of them, big ones).

Towards a New Philosophy of Biology.

He has a science background, and he’s always been interested in history and languages. “Interested” sounds too mild; he swims pretty deep in his interests. Nice guy, too, and a good husband to my sister. All in all, he’s worked out pretty well for the family. 

Lloyd Price - Just Because

Not only a charming pop hit, but also an almost unique melody line. Almost any song that you will hear has a melody line in the vocal that starts somewhere, goes up a bit, and comes back down. This little gem starts at the top of the melody and comes exclusively down.

Please forgive me if I have already pointed this out to you. I'm famous for repeating myself.

Our Different Worlds

Everyone’s world is different from everyone else’s. We all see the world differently; we experience it differently. As a result, all judgments are subjective, and personal.

No two people outside of ourselves see us quite the same way, and none of the outsiders see us the way that we see ourselves. This can lead to social and psychological tensions.

In my world, in my own view, I am a reasonable man; responsible, if not overly so; neither particularly lazy nor energetic; not, perhaps, the sharpest tool in the shed, but more useful than many in intellectual matters; more friendly and considerate than most; and deserving of a place at the table of men. In your world, I would probably rate less.

Recently I was again reminded of what some other people think of me. It was not pleasant. My wife and I divorced about a year ago, and it has led to a shit-storm of obloquy being directed at me.

I’d like it to stop, but it’s got a lot of wind in its sails. I don’t try to fight it, because it’s not a war, after all. I love the woman, she’s great. I deeply appreciate all of the things that she has done for me over the decades. We got divorced, which is certainly not unusual these days, even among people our age. Why must it be an opportunity to place blame?

Somewhere it says, “judge not, lest ye be judged,” or words to that effect. It’s a good sentiment, and one need not be religious to catch the rhythm of it.

So I say to my detractors, please lay off. Recall that no one knows what goes on in a marriage but the two spouses. I’m not some social science experiment that must be commented on. We all make our own way in the world, and I do the best that I can. Isn’t that all that any of us can do?

Now forgive me if I go back to my real life and try to be happy. Living well would be the best revenge, now wouldn’t it? 

Foster Brooks Roasts Don Rickles

These "Friars' Club Roasts" were the rage about forty years ago, and Foster Brooks was a regular.

Take a minute to get past the now declasse drunk act. The guy's hysterically funny. The jokes are great. He totally kills this stage full of pros.

A Common Complaint, Revisited

Our leaders, what are they good for? I always complain about how our political leaders do nothing to help us. They always seem to me to take baby steps when a good idea comes up, and they always seem to react too slowly when something dangerous presents itself. They spend our money foolishly. A large portion of them seem to work only on self-enrichment and self-aggrandizement.  The world is rushing off to hell in a handbasket, and they, after all, are in charge of day-to-day operations. Maybe it’s a fair complaint, but maybe it’s possible that they do all that they can do, all that is in their power. Clumsily, usually, but maybe I’m overestimating their ability to affect change or control events. Perhaps it’s all out of control for another reason altogether.  

Question: who performs the actions that really form, or could affect change in, the world?

It occurred to me that the flow of history may be formed by a much larger group of entities, including individuals and groups from not only politics, but also from the business community and from society itself. It may be formed by the actions of selfish, local entities of all types, acting individually and reacting to the same or similar stimuli.

Identifying these groups gets out of hand quickly. It doesn’t have to be limited to political or economic groups that wield real power. It wouldn’t be only governments and corporations. Any individual who is truly rich would certainly qualify. So would powerful families. But why stop there?

It might be all of us that share collective guilt for the mess our society is in. I mean the society of human beings here on the earth. Autonomous humans, acting in what they perceive to be their own best interests, doing things.

Things like eating steaks; electing foolish politicians; having children; playing golf; discarding unpleasant facts; keeping a lawn; driving an automobile; embracing supernaturalism; flying commercial; fighting zero-sum battles for resources; backing wars; embracing nationalism. Just about everything that we do has a consequence in environmental terms, it all has some impact on the future.

What would it take to impose order on this chaos? Authoritarian solutions always seem to bring their own chaos, becoming counterproductive rather quickly. Democracy can’t do it, because it lacks the power to accomplish anything that would be unpopular with powerful interests or a recalcitrant general public. Enlightened rulers come along occasionally, but they are usually treated with love but not respect by their unenlightened subjects. Could we turn the world into one vast Denmark? Probably not, because there would be too many competing groups that would be too suspicious of one another.

I wonder how they did it on Star Trek. That Star Trek universe is certainly a dream of order, until the Ferengi or the Borg show up, anyway. Left to its own devices, the Star Trek world is a peaceful, prosperous place. Everyone is working, and happily, too. People have children. Diversity is embraced. There’s general health and income security. The environment seems clean and healthy. There doesn’t seem to be much of a government at all. But didn’t they build that world only after some vast military/environmental catastrophe? After enormous violence and loss of life? Maybe they started an authoritarian technocracy of philosopher-scientists. That might work in a fictional narrative, but it wouldn’t in the real world. Absolute power really does corrupt, absolutely. We’ve seen that happen often enough.

The only possible conclusion in all of this is darkly pessimistic. The train is out of control, speeding up at an alarming rate, and closing in on the final collision with the inevitable solid object. The current plan is obviously to push the pieces forward slightly from where they were yesterday, and I don’t think that anyone believes that that will work out well at all.

So, pessimism then. Not a bad way to go, after all. If anything but the worst happens, it’ll be a pleasant surprise! 

ADRIAN BELEW big electric cat 1982

I love Phil Manzanera, guitarista for Roxy Music, and later on, 801 and at least one solo LP. I remember him saying in an interview that he was most interested in making the guitar sound as little like a guitar as he could manage. You know, make it sound like something else. He wasn't the only one.

Johnny Ramone said one time that he tried to make the guitar sound like pure energy. I'd say that he came pretty close. RIP.

But Mr. Belew, Mr. Adrian Belew, succeeds in most spectacular fashion in making the guitar totally disappear. I play guitar myself, and listening to Adrian is a "wait . . . what?" moment. How is he doing that? What is he doing? What the fuck is going on here?

We may never know. But it's all very musical, and it's fun to listen.

At The Airport, Bangkok Edition

The security check before my international flight turned into a Marx Brothers routine.

I always pack a few 80 milliliter Listerine bottles of vodka for those long hauls, just to relieve the tedium of sitting around and waiting. It’s legal according to TSA and international rules, as long as the individual containers are 100 milliliters or less and it all fits into one of those plastic bags. Yes, even the vodka part. You can even pack those small whiskey bottles with the labels on if you feel like it. No one had ever said anything before, not in America or anywhere else. Sometimes they make me put it on the tray separately, but that’s it. I’ve always gotten through okay, without a word.

I got through in Bangkok this time too, but only after this give-and-take (all in Thai):

Nice young man: what’s this? (Indicating the bag of little bottles.)

Me: Oh, it’s okay . . . you can do this.

NYM: But what is it?

Me: It’s in the bag, less than 100 milliliters.

NYM: Yeah, but what is it?

Me: I fly all the time. It’s okay . . . America . . . all countries.

(By now there’s three of them, young men and women, all smiling.)

NYM: But what is it?

Me: Medicine.

NYM: Medicine? For the stomach? Not alcohol?

Me: Well, it’s medicine to me.

(Laughs all around.)

NYM: Okay.

It’s kind of amazing, but according to their own rules, while they won’t let you take a 500 milliliter bottle of water through the checkpoint, they will let you take 500 milliliters of water through if you put it in little bottles and put the bottles in the little bag.

That’s how little all of those rules mean. All of that jumping through hoops like a circus dog. It’s all for nothing. 

THE BOSSA NOVA YEARS (6) ASTRUD GILBERTO

I know, thirteen minutes, it's like homework or something. But this YouTube extravaganza contains such great versions of the songs included that it is worth every minute.

A great singer singing great songs with a great band in a great mood equals great entertainment.

LAX Sucks

On a recent puddle jump from Los Angeles to Tucson, my experience at LAX was typical.

My airline was Delta by Compass, or something. Our gate was changed three times. The first time was across the room; the second time was a bit of a walk; the third time it was a seventeen minute hike to a neighboring terminal, through a dream-like tunnel lined with fun facts like “did you know that the Dutch are the tallest people in the world, with an average height for men of over six feet and an average height for women of five feet, eight inches.” Well, yes, I did know that, but a couple of the others were new to me.

Our departure time was moved back a few times, from the original time of 3:55 pm to 6:17 pm. We finally took off at about 6:30 pm.

It all seemed a bit disorganized. Delta made this announcement for a couple of their flights:

“We are in an oversold situation for Delta flight number (fill in) to New Orleans. We’re looking for three volunteers to take a later flight. We will pay $500 to anyone who agrees to take the non-stop flight at either 12:45 am or 9:00 am tomorrow.”

At least there was a bar, where I had a couple of drinks and got to know a lovely couple from Tucson. The flight itself was uneventful.

I fly short haul here in Thailand all the time and I must say it is a much more pleasant and predictable experience. I fly out of Bangkok, so all domestic flights are short haul, you can reach anywhere in the country within an hour or so. We almost always take off on time and land early, and I only recall one gate change in ten years.

With airline travel, as with many other things, the self-professed “Greatest Country in the World” should do better.

Maybe I’m being too harsh; maybe it’s a question of volume. But still, none of it is a surprise, and better planning is an option. 

The Kinks - Cadillac

Pictured is the Canadian cover for this LP. Maybe it was the English cover, too. Who knows? Not me.

I'm watching "The Day the Sky Exploded," a 1958 Italian sci-fi movie, and some scientists just drove by in an early '50's Cadillac. This song jumped into my head. Now it's jumped into your head. Don't worry. It's science!

Good movie, by the way. International cast. Wi-fi TV rocks.

Interesting Things About Starman

No, not the Hollywood movie. Googling “Starman” brings up lots of diverse materials. You have to punch in “starman japanese movie” to get to the old Japanese Starman films. They’re pretty interesting.

Recently I watched Evil Brain from Outer Space, featuring Starman. I hadn’t seen a Starman film for ages. I mean literally ages; most of the trees now adorning the world were mere potential in the bowels of the parent trees the last time I watched one. That was in the small Japanese movie theater west of Times Square in New York, somewhere in the mid- to high-Forties, in the late 1960s. The one I saw this month was different, somehow.

Evil Brain was entertaining as it was. The living brain of the evil genius Balazar wants to take over the universe. (Balazar comes from the planet Xemar.) Not only the universe, he wants to take over the “entire universe.” Very ambitious. Of course he wants to start with the earth, specifically Japan. Some other planet called The Emerald Planet sends Starman, the Man of Steel (callback alert), to thwart Balazar’s efforts.

There are monsters galore and mutants with “cobalt claws” that can even hurt Starman. There are also human bad guys that kill earth scientists and rob jewelry stores to cover their overhead. There are lots of very hot female actresses organized to decorate as many scenes as possible. Starman prevails, but it all looked curiously innocent this time around. Not like I remembered it at all.

The big climactic fight at the secret base looked just like my clear memory of it, except that all of the shocking brutality had been hoovered out of it. I recall scenes like Starman actually pulling the eyes out of a bad guy and then displaying them for the camera, laughing a disturbing triumphant laugh. 

There was none of that this time around.

What, I wondered, had happened? Did they shoot two versions of the Starman movies? Was it all cleaned up later on for Japanese, or American, TV? Professor Google to the rescue!

They were originally filmed as shorts for Japanese theatrical release. That was what I had seen first time around, some of the original shorts. Starman was called “Super Giant” in Japanese, or “Super Giants,” even though there’s only one of him. The studio was Shintoho, which was the non-union arm of Toho. They were shot around 1958. An American outfit bought the rights to the shorts sometime in the 1960s, cut them up, and made Evil Brain and several other films. They obviously cleaned them up too.

The ultraviolence might seem out of place in a series modeled after the American TV show Superman, and Starman was intended to be a children’s show. But it is a Japanese product, after all.  You get your cuteness and your grand guinol and your sentimentality and your rape and your elegant beauty all mixed up in a typically Japanese salad in Japanese cinema.

I’ve seen something like 500 Japanese movies of all genres by now, so I’m well beyond being surprised by what I find there. It’s a fascinating culture. Evil Brain should be enough Starman to hold me for a while, but if I come across any of the original shorts I’ll be sure to tune in. 

Fleetwood Mac - The Vaudeville Years - Madge Session #1 (Rare)

This the original session, before it was edited down to the two Madge cuts on the Then Play On album. It's nice to hear it with the ebb and flow of the jam, and the more relaxed build up.

Thanks to my friend Phil C. for the heads-up. On Facebook, it was! (Phil and I have been friends since phones had wires and sat on small tables next to a stick chair, but we're Facebook friends now too.)

See? Facebook is good for something after all!

The Wingate By Wyndham Hotel At LAX

Nice enough place. The free breakfast was excellent, but they’ve out-sourced room service to another company. The menu looked nice, but pricy. Watching Deadpool would have cost me $17.95. I passed on that (and then saw it free on the return plane trip!). The most interesting thing about the hotel was the van driver.

His name is Talal. He speaks Arabic. On my first trip to the airport it was just me and an Arab guest. They had a lively conversation. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have known Talal was an Arab. I don’t ask those questions anymore, because too many people ask for the wrong reasons these days. I have no idea what country he’s from.

He probably left the area as a refugee, though, because he spent a few years in the Philippines before making it to America. He’s a nice man, soft spoken, with kindhearted instincts. He has a friendly, knowing smile. He’s probably seen a lot.

Talal obviously appreciates it when a guest reads his name tag and calls him by name; stops by sometimes to talk with him; and tips. I’m glad that he has joined the American mosaic.

Talal, by the way, has a huge scar on the right side of his forehead, high up on the scalp. The wound is old, but you can see that it was deep enough to shatter some bone. I’d love to have asked him about it, and when I was thirty-five years old I would have. Now I just leave myself to wonder about such things.

He’s probably about fifty-five years old. He takes blood pressure medication and tries to keep his weight down, with limited success. He does the best that he can, like the rest of us.

Bon chance, my friend. I wish you well. 

Ken Boothe - Set Me Free

From the USA, the beat made its way to Jamaica, and this song, too, and then this amalgam came to be. By now the whole hybrid has made its way back to us on YouTube.

And a very nice hybrid it is, too. Great job, Ken, and thanks, YouTube.

Another Google Translation

Or, another attempted Google translation of Thai into English.

Thai gives computer translation programs fits, as I have previously mentioned. Thai is a language of words made up from either one syllable or from several several syllables making compound words. Then it is written in sentences with no spaces at all in between the letters (a "continuous" language). So it's easy to understand the problem.

Often the translations make no sense at all, but on other occasions it comes out rather poetically obscure. Like this one:

Because a wide horizon.
The more learn the hottest like endless
Best walk to find the edges tails. Far, far away.
But we're not tired of two things.

It doesn't carry the meaning of the original, but it stands pretty well on its own, doesn't it?

Alert The Media! Waldo Found!

I've been traveling around and spending time at airports. Among other adventures, I clearly saw Waldo at LAX, thus answering the question, "where's waldo?"

Oh, it was Waldo alright. Waldo, with his tall, gangly frame, his unruly hair, his black-framed goggle glasses, his red and white striped shirt and his cargo pants. No smile though, Waldo was serious when I saw him.

I worried about Waldo's lack of good cheer. Then I discovered that he was on the boarding line for a flight to Detroit. That would make anyone serious.

Spin Easy Time!: Who's Afraid Of A Cocaine Negro?

This old post has been getting hits of late. I'm glad for that. I'm kind of proud of it.

Spin Easy Time!: Who's Afraid Of A Cocaine Negro?: Everybody’s afraid of something, and different cultures have different patterns tracking these fears.  Some societies are very sensibly afr...