I once drew a parody cartoon of Calvin and Hobbes, never published, using the name of two other political thinkers. Calvin ends up being institutionalized by his distraught parents, where he meets up with Dennis the Menace. Here’s a decidedly more twisted take on Calvin’s fate.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2009/JUL/CalvinHobbes.flv 400 300]
That’s Rush Limbaugh on the left, and Karl Rove on the right. See the difference? No? Neither do I.
Am I the only one who thinks right-wing columnist William Kristol — who gets everything wrong, but is still on TV — looks too much like Bob Woodward? Even more unsettling, Woodward’s politics look too much like Kristol’s.
Like George Tenet, Woodward traded integrity for access. Woodward recently attempted to salvage his legacy by distancing himself from Bush and his policies, but he did that only after it was obvious the Democratic tide was coming in.
I’m not a huge Jazz fan. Somewhere along the line, for my taste Jazz became so much about improvisation there wasn’t enough structure left to hang onto. Sunday evenings there’s a radio show on WGBH in Boston I enjoy, called The Jazz Decades, hosted by Ray Smith, who by now must be in his 80’s. He specializes in music from the 20’s and 30’s, playing both original recordings from then, as well as more recent renditions of old songs. When necessary, Smith resorts to vinyl, as he did tonight.
The audio player below has 35 minutes of The Jazz Decades show. I was going to offer only 10 minutes of it, but tonight’s selections were interesting, so I let it roll. I was surprised to hear my town, Hopkinton, MA, mentioned. Apparently, there was a legendary place here called The Sticky Wicket, that featured live Jazz until about 15 years ago, which is news to me.
There are some splices in this recording. The first 24 minutes were taken from the FM tuner in my PC. Then, for contrast, right after he says, “This is Ray Smith,” I switched over to WGBH’s live streaming Net audio. For the 1930’s recordings, the loss in sound quality isn’t all that apparent. But I still look forward to the time when all live Net radio is at least 128 Kbps.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Sounds/Wordpress/DEC06/JazzDecades.mp3]
PBS has put many of its Frontline shows online for free! Let’s hope this isn’t a temporary situation, and is the start of a trend. Click here unless you’re on a dialup connection!
Audio Adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of OZ, Crown Publishers, Inc., 1961
