Sold!

The Chicago Tribune is reporting that Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is planning to appoint former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris to fill Barack Obama's Senate seat:

The action comes despite warnings by Democratic Senate leaders that they would not seat anyone appointed by the disgraced governor[,] who faces criminal charges of trying to sell the post, sources familiar with the decision said.

Shortly after Obama's Nov. 4 victory, Burris made known his interest in an appointment to the Senate but was never seriously considered, according to Blagojevich insiders. But in the days following Blagojevich's arrest, and despite questions over the taint of a Senate appointment, Burris stepped up his efforts to win the governor's support.

I've added the comma and emphasis. I'll also add —

[here it is]

— a moment of baffled silence. After the arrest, after the disclosure of the content of Blagojevich's telephone conversations, Burris pursued the Senate appointment with greater fervor! I would like to doubt that he had much competition.

The Trib cites Burris as acknowledging that he has lost many Democratic primary elections but has "never lost to a Republican." If he is seated, I suspect that that loss will come in 2010.

Freddie Hubbard (1938-2008)

Sad news from the Associated Press:

Freddie Hubbard, the Grammy-winning jazz musician whose style influenced a generation of trumpet players and who collaborated with such greats as Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins, died Monday, a month after suffering a heart attack. He was 70.

Here, via YouTube, is a sample of Freddie Hubbard's musicianship, a performance of "Body and Soul," with McCoy Tyner (piano), Avery Sharp (bass), and Louis Hayes (drums). Keep listening: it's "Body and Soul," for real.

T. MONK'S ADVICE (1960)

[Click for a larger view.]

These scans of aphorisms and precepts attributed to Thelonious Monk, now appearing online, are said to be from a notebook belonging to soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy. I can find no explanation as to where these scans originated or when the pages themselves were written. (I latched on via a Google Alert.)

Lacy, a longtime interpreter of Monk's music, played with Monk for four months in 1960, and several of these texts appear, with slight alterations, in Lacy's foreword to Thomas Fitterling's Thelonious Monk: His Life and Music, trans. Robert Dobbin (Berkeley: Berkeley Hills Books, 1997). If these scans are the work of someone amusing himself at the expense of Monk fans, we can trust at least that the following aphorisms and precepts, recorded in Lacy's foreword, come from the source:

Thelonious would not tell me what to play, but he would stop me if I got carried away: "Don't play all that bullshit, play the melody! Pat your foot and sing the melody in your head, or play off the rhythm of the melody, never mind the so-called chord changes." Also, "Don't pick up from me, I'm accompanying you!" Also: "Make the drummer sound good!" These tips are among the most valuable things anyone has ever told me.

Some of T.'s other bits of wisdom:

"The inside of the tune [the bridge] is what makes the outside sound good."

"A genius is the one who is most like himself."

"It's always night, otherwise you wouldn't need the light!"

"Whatever you think can't be done, someone will come along and do it."

"Monk = know = 'Always Know' (where you are)."

"When you're swinging, swing some more!"

"You've got to know the importance of discrimination, also the value of what you don't play, the use of space, and letting music go by, only picking out certain parts."

"A note can be as big as a mountain, or small as a pin. It only depends on a musician's imagination."

If I learn anything more about these scans, I'll post it here.

*

March 15, 2024: Mick Wright informs me that in Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (New York: Free Press, 2009), Robin D.G. Kelley suggests in an endnote (page 531) that the document may be “a poor attempt at a forgery” or something that Lacy himself wrote long after 1960. Neither Mick nor I pretend to understand why someone would forge a document and pass it off as written by Steve Lacy. At any rate, this document’s provenance remains a mystery.

Jack Cella on decent bookstores

Today's Chicago Tribune has a column by Julia Keller on the Seminary Co-op Bookstores. My favorite bit, from the Sem Co-op's general manager Jack Cella:

"If you're in a decent bookstore, you can look at any shelf and realize how little you know."

Domestic comedy

"You like nice in that getup."

"Getup?"

Related reading
All "domestic comedy" posts

Comics and newspapers

Stephen Pastis, creator of the comic strip Pearls Before Swine, is worried:

"Newspapers are declining," he says. "For a syndicated cartoonist, that's like finally making it to the major leagues and being told the stadiums are all closing, so there's no place to play."

The Comics Are Feeling the Pain of Print (New York Times)

Patsis sees online distribution as the future of comics. The Times also cites Brian Walker, part of the team behind Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois, who thinks that comics are best appreciated on paper.

(Thanks to Jason Scott for pointing me to this article. Thanks, Jason!)

Harvey Pekar, opera collaborator

Harvey Pekar is writing a libretto:

Pekar and former Cleveland Heights jazz saxophonist Dan Plonsey will premiere Leave Me Alone! on Jan. 31 at Oberlin College's Finney Chapel. The performance will be webcast. . . .

Pekar has a simple reason for accepting the job with the Real Time Opera Company, a New Hampshire-based performing-arts organization formed in 2002 to promote new opera.

"The Real Time Opera Company offered me money to write the libretto for an opera, so I figured 'Why not?'" Pekar said. "These days, I hate to turn money down."

Harvey Pekar teams with saxophonist to stage jazz opera (The Plain Dealer)

Read more:

Leave Me Alone! (Real Time Opera)

Related posts
Harvey Pekar on life and death
Harvey Pekar's The Quitter

[Note to the Real Time Opera webmaster: "Streamed Live 1/31/2009 8 PM" will leave many people wondering when to watch. Please, add the time zone. Thanks!]

[Update: It's 8 EST.]

Trixie? TRIXIE?? (Hi and Lois)

No doors? No mirrors? No seat belts? No problem! A hologram for a driver? C'est okay! But where's Trixie?

Trixie was last seen on Christmas Eve, playing with a box beneath a goth Christmas tree. But come Christmas morning, she was gone. "You don't cut back on Christmas," Lois said, but you do cut back on the number of characters in the strip, I guess. These are tough times, and we all must make sacrifices.

Is there a storyline shaping up here? I mean, one whose name is something other than Cher Carelessness?

Related reading
All Hi and Lois posts

The New York Times on Christmas

If you look back at the photos of Christmas 50 years ago — not that long a time, really — you can see what a simple place it once was. What you wanted for Christmas was a very short list of possibilities, and what you got was usually the single most possible thing on the list, plus a few of the articles your mother thought you needed. The intent was the same as it is now, more or less, but the means were so much fewer.

From an editorial on Christmas then and now (or then and then again):

When Christmas Comes (New York Times)

A Louis Armstrong Christmas

Here's Louis Armstrong reading Clement Clarke Moore's "A Visit from Saint Nicholas" (aka "The Night Before Christmas"), at home in Corona, Queens, New York, February 26, 1971. It's Armstrong's last recording:

"The Night Before Christmas" (YouTube)

"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night."

[Discographical information from The Louis Armstrong Discography.]