All The Best

Here's wishing everyone a safe, happy and warm holiday, and a productive, proserperous and peacful New Year.

Happy Holidays

- The Viscount

Christmas Time Is Here

Blue Girl and Neddie teamed up over the 'shpere to record a very nice version of the Charlie Brown (Vince Guaraldi) classic.

He did the playing and the arrangement, and she did the vocals.

Beautiful job.

My Friend Hates Me

Stuck in Dallas this week. The week before Christmas. Got sick on a Caesar Salad on Wednesday night.

Then, last night out of the blue, I received an email from an old friend. He lives in another state, but over the years we had maintained a relationship via the internet and telephone. I saw him a couple of times when I was in town on business. Out of respect for his privacy, I won't print it verbatim, but the gist of it was that he felt like I thought of him as beneath me and not a peer, that I was condescending, and that he wanted to terminate our friendship.

In the words of Vic Ferrari, "Hard to feel good after that."



This came as a shock, and I was taken aback by it. I don't think of him that way, and I told him so. I feel pretty badly about the whole thing.

Anyway, it reminded me of this song (which is essentially a live demo) by P. Hux.

The War on Reason - A Rerun

[Originally Published 9-Dec-2005 - I still feel the same way and have little to add, except that maybe this year there is some room for hope and a few less people watching Fox News.]

The War on Christmas is already old news. The fact that people actually discuss it doesn’t surprise me anymore, but it only adds to my post-outrage fatigue. How is that people in this 21st century, living in the wealthiest nation on earth, with access to instant information can be so willfully ignorant? How many people know that Constantine and The Church decided to merge the winter pagan celebration and other European customs with the birth of Jesus for political reasons? How many Christians have ever even heard of Yule?

The very idea that mega-corporations are bowing to pressure from “secularists” because their advertisements say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” should be classed as satire. Does anyone who truly understands the teachings of Jesus Christ actually believe that he would condone the way our culture celebrates his “birthday?” That he would prefer that the corporations who, in order to increase their wealth by appealing to the greed in his potential disciples use the term “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays”? That he would turn a blind-eye to the suffering of so many at the hands of so few and actually promote the corporate agenda whose only purpose in life is to generate wealth through exploitation? That the actions of our president and our government and our corporations and all of us are perfectly acceptable but the words “Happy Holidays” are offensive?

Please.

Courtesy of Mr. Fish

This cartoon sums it up for me. The one thing that could have made me happier the day after election day would have been the words "Senator Elect Ned Lamont."

It was not to be.

More by Mr. Fish.

Reg Kehoe and His Marimba Queens

Self explanatory.

Al Kooper on "Like A Rolling Stone"

Al Kooper Interview

Great story.

Some relevance here to my previous post.

Al Kooper was a driving force behind "The Blues Project." You can read about his many accomplishments here, but I thought it was interesting to hear out of his mouth the story behind him "bluffing" his way onto Dylan's "Like A Rolling Stone" and contributing one of the most famous organ licks of the 60's.