'Best of TBH Politoons'
Baron Dave Romm
Cajun Culture
By Baron Dave Romm
Shockwave Radio Theater Podcast now up and running! All podcasts also on the Shockwave Radio audio page.
Lake George is slowly being pumped out, but the culture of New Orleans and the Southern Mississippi/Gulf Coast area will take a long time to heal. Here are a few recordings that feature the culture and music of the region.
Here I Stand: Elder's Wisdom, Children's Song records the voices of a time gone by, and good riddance. This Smithsonian/Folkways CD is half spoken word and half singing, and comes with a nice booklet with annotation and pictures. The remembrances include those of a "negro farmer" and the wretchedly poor miners and housewives. The tales are heart-wrenching, all the more because the stories aren't so far removed from today's poor. The songs, generally older people leading youngsters, include old Negro spirituals and gospel.
With luck, the tragedy of Katrina will force the area to take a hard look at how the poor are treated and wipe away much of the culture that still survives in areas that still fly the Confederate flag. We, as a democratic nation, need to grow up, and this is what we need to grow up from.
River of Song: A Musical Journey Down the Mississippi is a two-CD set of songs from the PBS tv series produced by Smithsonian Folkways. The second half of the second CD features Louisiana, Where Music Is King and the journey is worth the trip. Starting up here In Minnesota, with a Chippewa Nation chant and a Swedish song about a Smorgasbord and continuing downstream, the CD traces the many and various cultures that reside on or near the Mississippi. From sea chanties to Dixieland instrumentals to raw delta blues to quirky versions of classic songs, you will find something for you. I suspect this part of New Orleans culture will return to, if not exceed, normal.
When I was in Gulfport, MS in July with my brother and his family, we stopped at the Seabee Museum's Gulfport Annex. We had to get clearance and be escorted to the museum inside the Naval Construction Battalion Center. The base was sufficiently inland that the buildings are probably still there, but I suspect the place was hard hit and the museum won't open again soon if at all. And if it does, the exhibits remaining will be very different. In the gift shop, I picked up a tape Pieces of a Patriot's Heart, which is a twenty-minute tape of soldiers singing about Desert Storm and reciting poetry about their military comrades. I can't find this anywhere on the net and wouldn't mention it at all except to commemorate a trip that I won't be able to recreate for a long time.
There's quite a bit of music from or inspired by New Orleans and the cajuns in the area, far too many to review here, so I'm going to mention two: One you might even have in your collection and another more obscure.
Fiyo on the Bayou, by NOLA fixtures the Neville Brothers, is cool jazz and hot cajun. The classics are given fine treatment: Sitting In Limbo and Brother John/Iko Iko may not be the definitive versions, but they're contenders. The Ten Commandments of Love and Fire On the Bayou and others are reminders of the range of the Nevilles. Highly recommended.
The Bone Tones came to the Minnesota State Fair, many years ago, and I picked up only one of their records. For a Minneapolis group who manufactures their CDs in Canada, they play a Cajun tune like they were fresh from France. Chez Nonc Bob is definitely worth the $0.99 in the used listing. I couldn't find a more reliable source for the CD; you could try e-mailing their manager Doug Lohman, the contact person on the 1995 CD. The songs are mostly in French or fiddle instrumentals. They shouldn't be your first introduction to zydeco, but they will nicely expand a collection.
Baron Dave Romm is a conceptual artist and a noble of Ladonia with a radio show, a Live Journal demi-blog, a very weird CD collection and an ever growing list of political links. Dave Romm reviews things at random for obscure web sites. You can read all his music recommendations from Bartcop-E , and you can hear the last two Shockwave broadcasts in Real Audio (scroll down to Shockwave). Thanks to everyone who has sent me music to play on the air.
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Episode 2 The Wrath of Cons
Dick Eats Bush
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Michael Massing: The End of News? (nybooks.com)
... the campaign against the press is only partly a result of a hostile White House The administration's efforts have been amplified by a disciplined and well-organize news and opinion campaign directed by conservatives and the Christian right. Thi well-funded network includes newsletters, think tanks, and talk radio as well as cable television news and the Internet. Often in cooperation with the White House, these outlets have launched a systematic campaign to discredit what they refer to disparagingly as "MSM," for mainstream media.
Caroline Moorehead: The Warrior Children (nybooks.com)
It has become commonplace to quote the fact that whereas only one in ten of all casualties in World War I was a civilian, that figure has risen to nine out of ten today. A large number of these are children. What is less known is that a growing number of their killers are children themselves.
John Updike: Determined Spirit (nybooks.com)
For sheer viewer discomfort, the show of Van Gogh drawings at the Metropolitan Museum has been topped in my experience only by the once-in-a-millennium assembly of twenty-three Vermeer paintings at Washington's National Gallery in 1995. In both cases, too many people jealously clustered and jostled within inches of hallowed works that demanded close scrutiny. At the Met, the week the exhibition opened, the docile masses straggled in clotted lines, their noses almost grazing the minutely hatched and speckled art, through rooms housing over one hundred drawings in ink, graphite, charcoal, and watercolor, plus a few oil and watercolor paintings.
Rick Evans The magic of being gay (Advocate.com)
For this author, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire can be read as an allegory for gay men who need to claim their own gift and learn how to give back to a sometimes hostile society
DAN AVERY: C'mon, Get Happy! (frontierspublishing.com)
Celebrity potter and designer Jonathan Adler puts the fun in functional with his new home-decor bible
Christopher Stone: Oprah Explores "When I Knew I Was Gay" (afterellen.com)
"Today," Oprah began, opening the show, "you're going to meet people hiding the same secret. Andrew Friedman says he first knew he was gay back in 1969. 'My father was watching the evening news. The announcer said that Judy Garland had died. I fainted. I was nine.'"
Hubert's Poetry Corner
THE FUROR
Purple Gene Reviews
'Manticore'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny, clear & cold - well, cold for these parts.
Schlepped the niece around to some of her favorite haunts. Thankfully, she had no interest in visiting the local mall.
Had lots of fun, as usual, with Erin last night on
KIRO.
Check out the freshly updated Erin Hart Links page.
Black Eyed Peas Rock Halftime Show
Grey Cup
Black Eyed Peas were on the Grey Cup menu Sunday as the Grammy-winning recording artists put on an energetic - and raunchy - hip-hop halftime show before a sellout crowd at B.C. Place.
Led by demonstrative lead rapper Will.I.Am and sultry female vocalist Fergie, the Los Angeles quartet got the crowd of 59,157 out of its seats with Pump It and Don't Phunk With My Heart. Things took a turn for the sleazy when Fergie - adorned in short shorts and a black tank top - suggestively shook her derriere during My Humps.
As she gyrated on stage, Will.I.Am found his way down to the front of the stage, where he mingled with cheerleaders.
R&B singer Jully Black, a Toronto native, performed O Canada.
Grey Cup
Television Specials On DVD
Barbra Streisand
At long last: The Television Specials.
For many fans of Barbra Streisand, the five-DVD set released Tuesday has been the home-video Holy Grail. Three of the five specials produced for CBS from 1965-73 were released on VHS and laserdisc in the late '80s, but never on DVD. The other two, The Belle of 14th Street (1967) and Barbra Streisand . . . and Other Musical Instruments (1973), never received an official video release until now.
AP: Fans have been waiting forever for this. What took so long?
For the interview, Barbra Streisand
Calls Off Engagement To Minor
Kimberly Stewart
Kimberly Stewart and "Laguna Beach" star Talan Torriero say their wedding plans are off.
"It was just too soon to enter into a lifelong commitment," their representatives said in a joint statement. "It is better to have a brief engagement than a short marriage. The couple continue to share their time together and remain open to whatever the future may hold."
Stewart, the 26-year-old daughter of singer Rod Stewart, and Torriero, a 19-year-old star of the MTV reality show, announced their engagement earlier this month.
Torriero's publicist, Jack Ketsoyan, said early Sunday that the two were no longer romantically involved. Stewart's representative, Elliot Mintz, said they "remain friends."
Kimberly Stewart
OLC Students Help With Documentary
Ken Burns
Two students from Oglala Lakota College got a chance to join filmmaker Ken Burns as he filmed locations at Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills for a new project about national parks.
Anthony Brave of Martin and Amber Montileaux of Rapid City helped set up shots and carried camera equipment during a four-day excursion last month. Filmmaker Dayton Duncan was also part of the group.
"What made it nice was that Ken Burns and Dayton were really open and willing to share their experiences," said Brave, 54, who is enrolled in OLC's one-year television certificate program. "They were willing to share their knowledge."
Ken Burns
Professor Studies
Urban Legends
A University of Wyoming associate professor is teaming up with other researchers to study how urban legends and rumors in general spread within groups and what contributes to their longevity.
Martin J. Bourgeois, associate professor of psychology, said much is known how rumors are spread by individuals.
"We know if somebody is anxious or uncertain they're more prone to spread a rumor. We also know negative rumors get passed more easily than positive ones. But at the group level, rumors are more difficult to predict because more complex variables are involved," he said.
The project is backed by a $749,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.
Urban Legends
Statue Vandalized In Bosnia
Bruce Lee
A new statue honouring late martial arts legend Bruce Lee was vandalised hours after it was unveiled in this southern Bosnian city, police and witnesses said.
The life-size bronze statue of the kung fu cinema icon in a defensive position holding nun chucks, part of kung fu equipment, was unveiled during an emotional ceremony here Saturday.
The chain and one of the nun chucks' sticks were missing and empty wine bottles were scattered around the statue in a city park, according to an AFP reporter.
In a rare show of unity some 300 Bosnian Croats and Muslims attended the unveiling ceremony.
Bruce Lee
Flock to 'Crying' Virgin Mary
Believers
Carrying rosarys and cameras, the faithful have been coming in a steady stream to a church on the outskirts of Sacramento for a glimpse of what some are calling a miracle: A statue of the Virgin Mary they say has begun crying a substance that looks like blood.
It was first noticed more than a week ago, when a priest at the Vietnamese Catholic Martyrs Church spotted a stain on the statue's face and wiped it away. Before Mass on Nov. 20, people again noticed a reddish substance near the eyes of the white concrete statue outside the small church, said Ky Truong, 56, a parishioner.
Since then, Truong said he has been at the church day and night, so emotional he can't even work. He believes the tears are a sign.
Believers
Inmates to Process Meat for Charity
Moose
Alaska inmates at a prison work farm are taking on a new assignment: butchering the meat of moose struck by trains each winter along 68 miles of track.
The meat will be processed by prisoners at the Point MacKenzie Correctional Farm, then distributed to soup kitchens and other charities serving the needy, under a joint effort by the state Department of Corrections, Alaska Railroad and Food Bank of Alaska.
The track north of Anchorage where moose will be collected has the highest number of kills in the railroad's 611-mile system, officials said. Snow accumulates so deeply that many of the half-ton animals wander onto the plowed tracks - and into the path of trains.
Last year, trains killed 183 moose statewide. Of those, 63 were in the new project corridor.
Moose
Remains Found In Illinois
Mastodons & Mammoths
"It almost seemed that mastodons and mammoths were falling out of the trees for a few weeks," said paleontologist Jeffrey Saunders, the curator of geology at the Illinois State Museum in Springfield. He's frequently the expert called in to verify and identify the teeth, bones and tusks of the giant Ice Age mammals when they are found in the state.
Saunders was a very busy man in September.
One of his trips was to a site on Sugar Creek in Logan County, where a Lincoln College freshman found two mammoth tusks while studying river mussels. He also went to Pratts Wayne Woods Forest Preserve in DuPage County, where a contractor found mastodon teeth while working on a wetlands restoration project. Saunders' subsequent digging there turned up a rib and tusk fragments.
And on the same day the teeth were found, a man developing a golf course in Kendall County called Saunders to say one of his workers had found a mastodon tooth there, and he wanted to know how much to pay him for it.
Mastodons & Mammoths
In Memory
Keith Andes
Keith Andes, a handsome actor who was Marilyn Monroe's leading man in the 1952 film "Clash by Night," has died at the age of 85.
Andes, who had suffered from bladder cancer and other ailments, was found dead Nov. 11 in his Santa Clarita home, said longtime friend Marshall LaPlante. The Los Angeles County coroner's office ruled the death a suicide by asphyxiation.
Though Andes rarely discussed his career, his apartment walls displayed memorabilia including an album cover from "Wildcat," the 1960 Broadway musical in which he starred with Lucille Ball. A framed note from her refers to the close quarters they shared on stage: "I ate onions, ha-ha, love, Lucy."
Andes got his start in Hollywood when studio head Darryl F. Zanuck saw him perform as the understudy in the Broadway production of "Winged Victory" and offered him a small part in the 1944 film version.
The actor, known for a comforting baritone, appeared in about 20 other movies, including playing one of the brothers in "The Farmer's Daughter" (1947) and Gen. George C. Marshall in "Tora! Tora! Tora!" (1970).
On television he was an amateur sleuth on "Glynis," a 1963 CBS sitcom in which Glynis Johns played his wife, and appeared in the syndicated police drama "This Man Dawson" during 1959 and 1960. He had guest appearances on more than 40 shows, many of them westerns.
Born John Charles Andes on July 12, 1920, in Ocean City, N.J., he was appearing on the radio by age 12. He attended Oxford University, graduated with a bachelor's degree in education from Temple University in 1943 and studied voice at the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music.
In addition to his grandson, Ryan, the twice-divorced actor is survived by a son, Mark, an original member of the rock groups Canned Heat and Spirit, another son, Matt, and two other grandchildren.
Keith Andes
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