Dave Garrett

I ordered a book from a rare book dealer in Amsterdam in mid-May. It was shipped via PostNL and took a little over five weeks to reach Texas.

Are you thinking of deus62's Mosaic discographies page? I think he used to be a member here, but he revamped his site some time ago and the discographies are no longer available on it. The old URL was http://deus62.com/download-mosaic-records-discographies/ , and if you go back to snapshots that are several years old on the Wayback Machine you can pull up the page, but the actual PDFs of the discographies don't seem to be archived there.

Anyone who thinks the young are immune from serious effects of the virus should read this. Hey, so I got #Covid19 in March

The cofounder of Real Gone Music, Gordon Anderson, was also the guy that started Collector's Choice Music.

I have a Carl Reiner story that I hold very dear to me

We have a mixture of disposable, single-use masks and reusable cloth ones. We wash the cloth ones after every use and discard the single-use ones. I tend to prefer the cloth ones.

I haven't had any packages go missing lately (yet), but I am seeing lots of inaccurate or outdated tracking information more often than was previously the case. Had one package delivered a couple of weeks ago, but the tracking info is still indicating "awaiting delivery scan". OK, they forgot to scan it before dropping it off, but I have it, so no problem. Another one just showed up today, shipped via FedEx SmartPost, and both the FedEx and the USPS tracking numbers still show that they're awaiting receipt of the package after the label has been created. I'd just about given up on that one and was surprised to see it on the porch this morning. The one that really had me pissed off was a UPS SurePost package I was expecting earlier this week. The day it was supposed to be here, the USPS tracking number showed they were awaiting receipt of the package from UPS, but when I checked the UPS tracking number, it showed that it had been delivered less than an hour previously, signed for by someone at "front desk". There's no front desk at my residence, so I called UPS. After a painful journey through their phone menu, I finally got a live person on the phone who said that yes, it appeared that the package had been delivered, but if I didn't have it, it must have been misrouted to the wrong address and I would have to file a claim to initiate an investigation. The next day, USPS delivered it, so the UPS "delivery" was clearly to the post office, something I'd suggested to the UPS rep, but she insisted that it was not. All things considered, I suppose I'd rather have shitty tracking info and packages eventually showing up, as opposed to accurate tracking info and packages getting routed all over Hell's half acre or getting lost.

Ulysses - listen to the epic RTÉ dramatisation

Thanks for the link, an interesting review. I think this quote from it sums up the point I was trying to make: "Hofstadter definitely does not see anti-intellectualism as the corrupting serpent in the American Eden. Instead, as he demonstrates, it has been deeply ingrained in the national culture from the very beginning." I don't think his concept of intellectualism as nuanced and ever-conflicted is necessarily at odds with the concepts I was responding to, but like you, it's been many years since I read it, and you know the old saying about memory being the first thing to go...

Still just as relevant today as it was in 1963:

That, I can't say, as I didn't get a good look at it (it was after dark and I only saw it from a distance). But now that I know what the deal is, I'm definitely on the lookout for more representatives of the Penske-yellow, crypto-UPS package delivery revolution.

No, the Katy Trail State Park's in Missouri. The trail near me is on the Texas end of the line.

We were out walking around our neighborhood last night and I saw a Penske truck parked in front of a house with its flashers on and rollup door open. I wondered if someone at that address was moving in or out, but my wife said no, look, he's delivering a package. I was like, wtf, is Penske in the package delivery business now, but now the mystery's solved.

There is an abandoned M-K-T rail line near where I live that cuts right through the heart of the neighborhood that grew up around it. At some point within the last 15-20 years it was converted into a hike and bike trail. We walk our dog along it frequently, and whenever we do so I always think back to its origins and imagine trains running on it back in the day.

Glad you like it! There are a lot of surf music compilations out there but it's hard to go wrong with this one.

Not so sure about that. On one of the neighborhood message boards, there are always a lot of complaints about mail service. Someone who went to the local post office and talked to the guy in charge there said he was told that the USPS is struggling nationwide even more than usual because they have thousands of postal workers who've been quarantined for exposure to Covid, so they're shorthanded in many locales and having to send workers from other locales to fill in for those who are out. Anecdotally, it wasn't unusual to see temp carriers on our street whenever the regular carrier was on vacation, but it does seem like we've had a lot more temps since the start of the pandemic.

They're actually using silverware? Around here many/most of the restaurants that have reopened have switched to sealed, disposable plasticware. Many have also removed plastic drink cups and ceramic coffee mugs and are instead providing single-use paper cups.

On Fire: This blazing Van Halen club show is their earliest known live recording

I think the versions streaming on Amazon Prime are old, PD versions, not the new restoration. At least, that's what appears to be the case from an admittedly cursory search I just did there. IIRC the restoration was based on a 35mm release print, none of which had been previously thought to survive. The PD versions are sourced from dupey 16mm prints.

Unless Comcast is charging different add-on rates for different parts of the country, the add-on package in question is $10 per month. That said, I have yet to bring myself to pony up for it, despite the fact that I watched TCM on a near-daily basis. Our cable + internet bill is already obscenely high, and it doesn't sit well that a channel I'd had for over twenty years as part of the regular channel tier was suddenly moved to a premium tier, especially when the reasons cited by Comcast for doing so were somewhere between contradictory and outright bullshit. However, I am concerned for TCM's long-term viability, given that I read somewhere that a pretty big chunk of their viewer base gets the channel through Comcast. I've read lots of online comments since the change from people who have likewise refused to pay the extra $10 despite being longtime viewers. I can easily see a situation developing where TCM gets caught between a big subscriber drop-off from Comcast customers on one side, and pressures from the new corporate overlords at WarnerMedia that were installed in the wake of AT&T's purchase of Time Warner on the other. TCM's always been more of a prestige channel than a highly profitable one, and AT&T didn't make any bones about the fact that even the profits from Warner theatrical blockbusters were small change compared to what AT&T was accustomed to dealing with. I'd hate to see TCM disappear permanently as a result of all these factors. But Comcast doesn't have much incentive to play nice about it, given that as the owner of NBC Universal, they're already direct competitors with Warner, even before you get to the much bigger competition with AT&T at the telco/internet level.

Yes, I have several of their other sets, and they're a treasure trove of stuff that's off the beaten track: https://www.discogs.com/Various-So-Cal-Speed-Shops-Hot-Rod-Classics/release/12194993 https://www.discogs.com/Various-Los-Nuggetz-1960s-Punk-Pop-And-Psychedelic-Music-From-Latin-America/release/4755470 https://www.discogs.com/The-5-Royales-Soul-Swagger-The-Complete-5-Royales-1951-1967/release/11767705 https://www.discogs.com/Various-Pulp-Pop-Culture-Box-Vol-1/release/5078013 https://www.discogs.com/Various-Groove-Grind-Rare-Soul-63-73/release/7903529 All of the above sets are also nicely packaged in 7"-8" square book-style packaging that contain the liner notes booklets as well as the CDs (with the exception of the Pulp & Pop Culture one, which is a regular CD-sized clamshell box).

This one's a great compilation. The original version pictured above packaged the 4 CDs in a book - it's out of print now, but has been reissued in a regular jewel case minus the book.

I haven't ordered much of anything in the past couple of months, but I did preorder a book a while back from a publisher in the UK. It showed up about a week ago, less than two weeks after I received a shipping notice. And that was via standard Royal Mail. Not too bad at all - I've had orders from Amazon UK take over a month to reach the US, and that's during non-pandemic times.

Tribute from last night's show.

Hip-O also released a third set that went up to 1974, Have Mercy: His Complete Chess Recordings 1969 - 1974. Given the asking prices for the Hip-O sets now, if I didn't already have them and was looking to get a comprehensive set of Berry's recordings I'd probably opt for the big Bear Family box instead. I haven't heard it, but I've read generally positive things about it (although the mastering on some BF sets can be a contentious subject). Chuck Berry: Rock And Roll Music - Any Old Way You Choose It - The Complete Studio Recordings ... Plus! (16-CD & 2 Bücher)