Larry Kart

Probably not: "Judge John Kinsella has a different background from the other candidates. His father painted houses for a living, and the judge worked in this business him- self while young. His legal career spans 25 years, working as a prosecutor with Jim Ryan and current States Attorney Joe Birkett. He held the post of Deputy Chief in the Criminal Division, among others." I sure do remember John Kinsella the swimmer. I went to New Trier H.S., which dominated the sport, along with Evanston, until Hinsdale came along: "John Pitann Kinsella (born August 26, 1952) was a standout at Illinois swimming powerhouse Hinsdale Central High School in the late 1960s. As a 16 year-old, he was the silver medalist in the 1500 meter freesyle at the 1968 Summer Olympics, finishing second to U.S. teammate Mike Burton. Kinsella was a member of the gold medal-winning 800 freestyle relay team at the 1972 Summer Olympics. In 1970 he was awarded the Amateur Athletic Union's James E. Sullivan Award for outstanding amateur athlete. In that same year he became the first person to swim 1,500 meters under 16 minutes. Kinsella, Mark Spitz and Gary Hall Sr. were part of James Counsilman's legendary team at Indiana University, which dominated men's college swimming in the early 1970s. Kinsella was the NCAA Division 1 champion in the 500 and 1650 freestyle events in 1971, 1972 and 1973. After college, Kinsella went on to swim professionally, setting a time record for swimming the English Channel. He is a member of the International Swimming Hall of Fame. Following his swimming career, Kinsella attended Harvard Business School, and joined RBC Dain Rauscher firm as an investment officer."

Medtner, in my experience, is about as performer-dependent as a worthwhile composer can be. For instance, in Marc-Andre Hamelin’s hands, Medtner’s Sonata Reminiscenza sounds like perfumed sludge (here's one of several YouTube examples of Hamelin massacring Medtner): The same piece from Emil Gilels, however, is a tragic drama: And here's Nairi Grigorian (different from Gilels, but she also gets it): Don't miss Maria Yudina’s Sonata Triad: or Benno Moisewitsch’s Sonata in G Minor Op. 22: Medtner’s own recordings of several of his works can be found on YouTube, but it sounds like 1947 (he was age 67) was a bit too late for him in the solo works, though not so, oddly enough, for the two piano concertos (of three). I’ll just link to the first movements of each, but all movements of both can be found on YouTube; the first movement of Concerto 2 is quite something, both as a composition and as a performance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DViuq6yViyM...feature=related All my Medtner CDs are inaccessible to me right now, but I recall liking in particular Irina Ossipova’s Forgotten Melodies (Arte Nova) and a set of the Violin Sonatas by Alexander Shirinsky and Dmitri Galynin.

Not for you, I guess. I admit it's no thigh-slapper, but I find the combination of dryness and madness in this story (and the headline, too) irresistible.

Keep tuned, and we'll probably find out. BTW, Michael have you ever tried any Medtner? Speaking as a listener, not a player, he's a late-in-life favorite of mine.

Assuming that Mary Halverson is the guitarist in question, you're what sex again, Chauncey?

Dan and Chris: Obviously, your mileage does vary, but what I liked about the headline was its sound and rhythm -- especially "...STOLE PUPPY BLEW POT..." and the dying fall of "...[comma] POLICE SAY." As for the story itself -- yes, some stupid criminals do tickle my funny bone, and surely I'm not alone in this. First, the idea that this goof would think it was good idea to blow marijuana smoke into a dog's face. Second, this passage: "Lopez told Kinsella that 'the dog didn't pass out right away; he passed out later.' "'Is there a difference?' Kinsella asked." I mean, who thinks it's a mitigating factor that "the dog didn't pass out right away; he passed out later"? Further, I'm drawn to the sheer unlikeliness (to me) that someone who's dumb enough to think that saying this to the judge would be a good idea would actually do the necessary conceptual work beforehand -- that is, run through everything that occurred and select "The dog didn't pass out right away" as a potential point in his favor. No, I don't think I find animal abuse inherently amusing, but there is a sliding scale, as with human beings. For example (and no play on words intended), lots of people laugh when they see someone slip and fall, but those laughs are stifled should the fallen party be injured and in pain. In this case, if the dog weren't alive and OK now... Finally, it's that it's a two-pound Pomeranian. OK, Dan, you're right -- I'm an incipient sadist and am turning myself in before I do more harm.

TEEN WHO STOLE PUPPY BLEW POT SMOKE IN ITS FACE, POLICE SAY By Art Barnum | Tribune reporter 7:14 PM CDT, July 2, 2008 A Plainfield man who stole a $1,500 Pomeranian puppy and who blew marijuana smoke into its face until it passed out was sentenced Wednesday to 60 days in the DuPage County Jail. Judge John Kinsella also placed Emanuel Lopez, 19, on 30 months' probation and warned him that after he is released from jail, he will be subjected to frequent drug testing: "Bottom line is that you are a thief and we lock up thieves. Saying you were enticed is nothing more than an excuse. You're an adult." Lopez pleaded guilty in May to stealing the puppy on March 21 from a Petland store in Naperville. The dog was returned to the store three days later and has since been adopted. Prosecutors brought up the alleged abuse Wednesday as an aggravating factor in the theft. "The bottom rung of humanity abuses animals for their amusement," Kinsella told Lopez. "Anybody who abused animals for their own amusement has a problem." Assistant State's Atty. Mary Cronin said Lopez was asked to participate in the theft by two store employees. "One of the employees distracted the manager and the other made sure the coast was clear," Cronin said. Lopez stuffed the 2-pound puppy under his sweatshirt and walked out of the store, she said. Naperville Police Detective Richard Arsenault testified Wednesday that after stealing the dog, Lopez and some friends drove around the area, "blowing marijuana smoke in the dog's face until it passed out." Lopez told Kinsella that "the dog didn't pass out right away; he passed out later." "Is there a difference?" Kinsella asked. In seeking the 2-month sentence, Cronin noted Lopez has two previous theft convictions, for which he received court supervision. Cronin countered claims that Lopez was lured into the theft. "But no one enticed him to abuse the puppy," Cronin said. There's "no excuse for what he did to the puppy." One of the two former employees, Karlie Pellock, 19, of Plainfield pleaded guilty in April to theft and was placed on court supervision. The case against the other former employee, Anais Marquez, 19, also of Plainfield is pending.

Not so amusing back then. It did, however, allow Lenny Bruce to say right after the assasination of JFK: "Whew, Vaughn Meader." That's a Yiddishy "Whew," as in "Think about the poor man." It also reveals how often the basis of Lenny's thinking, even perhaps the real basis of what he actually felt, was to place or see everything at the level of showbiz at its greasiest. Meader, of course, played JFK on The First Family album, and what Lenny was saying, accurately as it turned out, was the Meader's career was, overnight, over.

That was on GNP, right? I used to have that one... The Fantasy, you say it was suppressed? Does that mean before or after it was on the market for a while? In other words, how difficult might it be to find a copy today? "Anyway ... Onward" was on Mercury. The later one on GNP was "Sing a Song of Watergate." IIRC, "Anyway ... Onward" was much better. The stuff about personal interactions between LBJ and Humphrey makes you believe that Sahl had to have been there in the White House on a visit that day, as he claims to have been, though the very convincing story he tells on "Sing a Song of Watergate" about interaction between JFK and himself on a plane full of reporters during a bout of very bad weather is in fact an adaptation or appropriation of an exchange between JFK and a reporter, not Sahl. "Mort Sahl at Sunset" was out for a minute or two before it was withdrawn. I assume it's hard to find and expensive. I have it on a cassette that a friend made for me.

Also, through an incredible piece of luck, a friend and I (both way underage) bullshitted our way into Mister Kelly's in (I think) 1959 and caught Lenny Bruce there in vintage form. The feeling of being in the same room with Bruce at work was something else -- like being in the same room with a ticking time-bomb. Lenny even made up or debuted a routine that night, the not-that-great one about Gov. Long of Louisiana and the stripper. One knew that was the case because the last key step in the real-life drama -- when Louisiana's state director of mental health had Long committed, and Long then fired the state director of mental health -- was in that morning's paper. Far more striking though was a dialogue of some lengtb that Bruce engaged in with a passing Mister Kelly's busboy. Don't recall the content of what passed between them, but it was clearly utterly real and spontaneous (you could tell by the busboy's initially deer-caught-in-headlights response, though he eventually stepped inside Lenny's irresitible vibe wholeheartedly), and further by the intense, what-the-hell-is-he doing? anxiety visible on whichever of the club's two owners, brothers George and Oscar Marienthal, happened to be there that night.

I once was going to write a book about so-called hip comedy, having written about comedy so often for the Chicago Tribune over the years and having interviewed virtually every still-living figure in the field, and went so far as to take a month off and write a sample chapter, about Mort Sahl. In the course of all this I discovered Sahl's first album, "Sahl at Sunset," which he had had suppressed because it was taped surreptitiously (at a 1955 concert at the Sunset Auditorium in Carmel that Brubeck and Sahl shared) by the Weiss brothers of Fantasy Records -- the Weisses, in addition to whatever financial shenanigans they may have engaged in here, infuriating Sahl because in order to get his whole set onto one LP they sped up the tape, so Mort's voice is noticebly more high-pitched and his delivery is even more manic that usual. In any case, IMO this is the Sahl record. The common complaint about him, unfair or not, is that Mort (as some feel was the case with George Carlin) could be clever, caustic, etc., but how often was he actually funny? Here he is -- explosively -- in part because much of the audience doesn't quite know who he is and/or what to expect from him, and Lord does he feed off of this. Terrific, too, in an utterly different way, is "Anyway ... Onward," which in part recounts Sahl's supposed visit to the LBJ White House in the latter days of that administration. The portrait of LBJ the tyrannical schoomzer in action is worthy of a very good political novel, and it's funny too.

Here's a link to the cover of "Collaboration": http://singinandswingin.blogspot.com/2007/...dre-previn.html The colors are a little washed out, though.

Was RCA doing LPs in 1951 or before? RCA Victor began issuing LPs in 1950. Nice to see another Flora cover. Wish I still had my old LP of the Andre Previn-Shorty Rogers "Collaboration." IIRC its cover was a Flora masterpiece and perfectly suited to the clever-goofy music.

Lord Buckley recorded "The Naz" and other routines on two LPs for the Vaya label in 1951. He also recorded a 10-inch LP for RCA before that. One cut, The Lord's version of Marc Antony's funeral oration ("I came here to lay Caesar out, not to hip you to him..." etc.), was re-issued on a RCA comedy compilation album. Don't agree Lehrer was only "singing short songs." His act was those songs and the persona they created.

Don't know about Mosse recordings from Europe. All my LPs are inaccessible right now, but memory tells me that "Tickle Toe" is the best Mosse on record; he's fully digested and refined his second-generation Pres legacy. On his earlier recordings IIRC, on he sounds a bit shy at times, if you know what I mean. The very best Mosse I know, though, by a slim margin (or maybe it's just different, a bit more on the muscular side), is a very-good sounding cassette tape I made in a Chicago club in 1969 of him with pianist Stu Katz (on electric piano) and drummer Wilbur Campbell (this was among Wilbur's first gigs after returning to the scene from prison). Don't have the cassette in my possession right now, but it's a joy. And Wilbur is in great form too.

ISRAELI MDS CALL HALVAH ARAB PLOT Claim population will be too obese to fight Sesame industry issues firm, tasty denial

The first Tom Lehrer album ("The Songs of Tom Lehrer") came out in 1953 and was a sensation in some circles.

Thanks -- yes I am. Just need to find things that catch my attention, like a 1992 Buck Hill album, "Impulse," where he plays clarinet on three tracks in a non-sensational but unique and deep manner. Hard to describe, but he sounds great and different from any other clarinetist I know, though he certainly is in tune with the character of the instrument and not just laying his saxophone conception on top of it. Does anyone know of more Hill clarinet work on record? The liner notes touchingly mention that these clarinet performances came after "fifteen years of self-taught teaching" on the instrument.

Both Sandy and Cy are in fine form -- the former reminding me as much of vintage Allen Eager as of Al Cohn, Cy probably a better player in '81 on a good day like this than he was 25 years earlier at the time of "Keester Parade." Sandy, who didn't have much time left, played his heart out. If you don't know him, he needs to be heard if you dig personal offshoots of Pres. Long, long, melodies, full of real choices. A few diffuse moments (some tracks, e.g. "Alone Together," are a bit too long), but lovely, soulful, swinging music. Slight glitch in the liner notes/credits. The former refer to Cy as the composer of "Keester Parade"; it was Johnny Mandel's tune. Compounding that, the tune is on the album under its later title "Centerpiece," and credited to Harry Edison and John Hendricks. As Dan Morgenstern recently explained, Sweets, who was on the original Touff/Kamuca "Keester Parade" recording, copped the tune from Mandel and retitled it "Centerpiece" for a recording under his own name a few years later, Mandel not minding because he liked Sweets and didn't need that bit of extra dough himself. Hendricks, still later, wrote words to "Centerpiece" for a LHR version.

The Chicago Jazz Fest had significant sponsorship from one of the major tobacco companies when that was still possible IIRC. Chuck and others will no doubt remember which one. And of course there was the Kool Jazz Fest in NYC.

from today's NY Times Business section: "Black Caucus Seeks Limits on Menthol Cigarettes"

I like this recording of Lennox Berkeley's three string quartets: http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.570415 In fact, while Berkeley is not a "great" composer, I like every work of his I've heard -- and I've heard a lot.

The fun part is that Bell for some time unknowingly played the same violin that had Gordon played. Even more fun (for snarky former-journalist me) was the sentence that Weingarten writes after he mentions this fact: "For 11 years, Bell's fingers held the same ancient wood." Truly, the conventions of corny feature writing don't change. But shouldn't Weingarten have written: "For 11 years, Bell's fingers caressed the same ancient wood"?

What Jim said. Your move, Morehouse.

Don't mean to ignore Matthews' solo work, but his comping on Teddy Edwards' "Ladies Man" (High Note) is special: http://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/music/.../Ladies+Man.htm Actually, at times (especially on the ballads) it's more like he's soloing alongside and underneath Edwards, in perfect sympathy/empathy. Almost an orchestral effect.