If a person is looking to find out what Cyrus Chestnut is all about, this is the perfect record. It is thoroughly modern, but his influences are all there. It is jazz, but blues and gospel are never far away. It is clearly improvised, but never lacks direction. The album was recorded live at Smoke,…
In part one of this post, I talked about how difficult it is to use rights as the basis of an argument and proposed some ways we can make the discussions involving rights more fruitful. Now, I’m going to talk about what got me thinking about this in the first place, guns. There are two…
This started out as a post about gun rights, but as I thought about it, I realized that post wouldn’t make much sense without a more in depth talk about rights. So, I’m going to attempt my first ever two part post. This one will deal with rights in general and the next one will…
I went to see Eddie Izzard the other night. It was a very funny show. He did one bit about how Myanmar, Liberia and the U.S. are the only countries that haven’t converted to the Metric System. It was a funny bit. And it got me thinking. Personally, I’m glad there are three countries that…
Update: Wendell Holmes died today from complications due to pulmonary hypertension. This isn’t surprising since he posted this open letter a few days ago. In honor of his life, I thought I’d re-post the piece I wrote in January when we lost Popsy. Willie “Popsy” Dixon died on Friday of bladder cancer. For those who…
The new class of the baseball Hall of Fame was announced today. Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson, Craig Biggio and John Smoltz were all elected. I was a fan of all four players, so their enshrinement makes me happy. Unfortunately, baseball writers seem determined to take all of the fun out of this. Whether it is…
As we come to the end of the year, there is a lot of talk about New Year’s Resolutions, diets, weight loss, etc. I have good news for you. I know the answer to all of your questions about diet and exercise. Are you ready? Here it is. . . All of the above. I…
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,600 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 43 trips to carry that many people. Click here to see the…
I was lucky enough to attend the final Allman Brothers Band concert at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. When I first found out I was going, I thought I might write a review and post it here. But, I soon realized that to write a review correctly, I would need to take notes…
I am all for not shopping on Thanksgiving. I think it’s a shame that stores are open and people have to work. If I had my way, certain holidays would be holy (If I really had my way, I’d have a weekly, secular sabbath). Everything would be closed and no one would have to work. …
