Today’s post continues last week’s meditation on Miles Davis, Tony Williams, and incontinence among jazz musicians.

A quick recap:  Recall that Absurdity and Despair govern our world. Recall further that these overlapping magisteria often surface in the realm of jazz music, particularly whenever someone conjures the words “Miles” and “Davis.”

Last week I discussed this phenomenon in the context of a performance by the late, great Tony Williams. This week, we move from a surly drummer to a no-nonsense bass player.

Enter Richard...

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Tags: Michael Cade's audio files by Michael Cade
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Mega producer Ivan Reitman has been producing and directing comedies for over 30 years. He directs and produces a standard romantic comedy here, and that is not such a bad thing. No Strings Attached is amusing, even if it is predicable. But Natalie Portman and a remarkable cast of supporting actors give this unremarkable comedy added laughs and energy. [Read more →]

Tags: Gail sees a movie by Gail D. Rosen
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Many of you may accuse me of hasty floccinaucinihilipilification for this, and claim that I’m being harsh, but…

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Tags: politics & government by Mike McGowan
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Why are the NFL players threatening a strike next season? Was it about unity? Or money? Or injuries? I’m confused, because the two more noble of those causes seem to have fallen by the wayside. Players praise themselves for standing together and they condemn the league for trying to injure them, but the players are the ones stabbing each other in the back. [Read more →]

Tags: diatribes, sports by Dan Sterlace
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Remember Dickens’s Thomas Gradgrind, with his meaty, square-ended finger pile-driving into his lectern as he tells the kids in his classroom that the world has no room for “fancy”? — that “fact” is all that matters? Well, he is alive and well. There are people walking around who think that imagination and creativity are extraneous human endeavors. Of course, they probably think this because they often witness artistic idiots skipping around and scattering rose petals up to the harsh winds of reality. It is a cultural snake that eats itself, really. [Read more →]

Tags: artistic unknowns by Chris Matarazzo, education by Chris Matarazzo
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Mark Vernon recently posted three quotations on his excellent blog Philosophy & Life.

The first was from physicist Carlo Rovelli: “The notion of ‘scientifically proven’. Nearly an oxymoron. The very foundation of science is to keep the door open to doubt.” [Read more →]

Tags: science, that's what he said, by Frank Wilson by Frank Wilson
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On Monday, I helped an 88-year-old man move a Coca-Cola vending machine from the floor of an industrial warehouse to the back of his pick-up truck. He was buying it for the employees at his scrap metal business in Houston. The owner of the vending machine was out of town, and I had agreed to meet the old man and help.

Alas, I wasn’t much use. I soon discovered that even if I pushed the vending machine very, very hard with my shoulder, it wouldn’t move. Fortunately there was a man across the street with a forklift truck. If he hadn’t been there, the Coke machine would still be standing in the original spot, or perhaps the 88-year-old man and I would be lying under it, two bloody smears on the warehouse floor.

And so the week began with a new discovery: VENDING MACHINES ARE INCREDIBLY HEAVY. Reflecting upon this, I wondered what other things I had learned from Coca-Cola which, like the air we breathe, is a ubiquitous part of modern life.

So: what else has Coke taught me? [Read more →]

Tags: ends & odd, travel & foreign lands by Daniel Kalder
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This week I am teetering closer and closer to my first nervous breakdown. I am knee deep in graduate school work, we have an uninvited “mouseguest” problem, and my little boy bounces off the walls until midnight every night. My sleep is messed up, I’m out of shape, unmotivated, and out of sorts. The realization of my problems came to a head last night when I hazily sat through 1/4th of the movie “You’ve Got Mail” with my girlfriend and was actually getting into the storyline. My cure-all for this is time traveling in my mind back to the glorious mid-90s. The band joining me on this journey is the much misunderstood band The Goo Goo Dolls.     [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, Marty digs, music by Marty O'Connor
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Some athletes just don’t get it. I guess it’s because of how far removed their lives are from those of the average fans. When you make millions of dollars a year for playing a game, it must be easy to lose sight of what it’s like to have to save to take your family to a game. That’s the only way I can explain comments like those made by Kobe Bryant this week, discussing the fact that Carmelo Anthony is being booed by his home fans in Denver. Bryant called the fans of the Nuggets “stupid” for daring to boo Anthony, the team’s star player who is trying to force a trade to the New York Knicks. Apparently, those fans should stay quiet about the giant middle-finger that Anthony is sending their way. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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10. “Oprahsourced”

9. “Gayle King and I”

8. “Saturday Night Oprah”

7. “America’s Got Oprah”

6. “Extreme Makeoprah: Home Edition”

5. “Dr. Phil’s Crap-a-Thon”

4. “$#*! Oprah Says”

3. “The Bold and the Oprah”

2. “The Stedman from Atlantis”

1. “The Story of O”
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: art & entertainment, Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, television by Bob Sullivan
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