Chrome

I completely missed that connection ... I had thought the Bernie Mac stuff was referencing that Outkast song (see last line in the article below). But that begs the question of whether Outkast got it from Hank. Anyway, getting mentioned in hip-hop songs, etc., is the new "in" thing for automakers. Automakers Find Hip-Hop Brings Bling To Bottom Line Marketers court young, edgy crowd Automotive News March 01, 2004 By Jason Stein Word up, automotive decision-makers. There's more bling bling on your bottom line. Hip-hop has become music to the auto industry's ears. Mercedes-Benz partners with rapper Jay-Z. General Motors offers the title "King of Bling" to the rapper, athlete or actor who can best customize a Hummer or Cadillac. Ford Motor Co. talks about more "urban" styling. "And urban is directly related to hip-hop," said J Mays, Ford's design chief. "I'm talking about P. Diddy, Lil' Kim, Eminem, droopy jeans, bling bling. It's cool." In their constant pursuit of younger customers, auto executives are devoting large and growing parts of their advertising budgets to hip-hop and urban audiences. As the definition of "bling bling" has grown from a synonym for diamonds and flashy jewelry to an expression of showy style, hip-hop artists have defined certain vehicles as metaphors for their social standing. Their influence on consumers has raised the must-have value of the brands. "It has been a totally great surprise," said Mark LaNeve, Cadillac's general manager. The Cadillac Escalade SUV is a dominant symbol of hip-hop culture. "In terms of generating anything that is targeted to that group, no, we can't take credit for it. We're too busy to know what's cool. We let the kids tell us." Pontiac said it has increased its urban advertising budget by more than 40 percent over the past two years. Last year, Pontiac sponsored the Source Hip-Hop Music Awards, brokered deals to place its products in videos and created a hip-hop song to launch its Vibe sport wagon. "Hip-hop has been great for us," said Mary Kubitskey, Pontiac's advertising manager. "And we're going to get more aggressive. "The hip-hop audience is who is watching TV, surfing the Internet, and who is creating awareness, opinion and consideration," she said. "It's the car buyer we want looking at new Pontiacs." Hip-hop help Other automakers are pursuing similar agendas. Normally staid Mercedes-Benz USA LLC tapped International Creative Management, a talent agency in Los Angeles, to help it fashion an image in the hip-hop world. That strategy includes exclusive music, TV and other entertainment properties. Last year Mercedes used Jay-Z's "The Black Album" in a contest to give away three C230s. Mercedes also included the rapper's lyrics in some of its advertising. Volvo is creating commercials for its new S40 with hip-hop band Dilated Peoples. GMC has partnered with Carol H. Williams Advertising in Oakland, Calif., to develop edgier advertising for its Yukon. GMC is focusing on magazines aimed primarily at young black men, such as Source, Rides and Complex. Hip-hop is playing well with mainstream America, affecting tastes not only in music but also in food and clothing - and cars. Hip-hop's audience is getting older, more affluent and better educated, said Josh Taekman, president of Buzztone, a marketing agency in New York and Los Angeles. "Corporate America has realized this audience has so much influence and so much of an impact-creating buzz," Taekman said. "Hip-hop is providing a lot of media exposure right now. And it's definitely here to stay." 'For better or worse' Ford's Mays says hip-hop "is overt, and it's in your face, and it's a little scary, and it's a little dangerous. It can be at times even a little vulgar. But I think it's sort of the world we live in, for better or worse, right now." According to a study by San Francisco marketing consultant Lucian James, Mercedes-Benz, Lexus and Cadillac were mentioned more than 200 times in top-20 songs last year, the most of any automotive brands. Mercedes had 112 such mentions. James is president of Agenda, a company that produces the American Brandstand list, which tabulates brand mentions in songs on Billboard magazine's top-20 charts. He said the list is a key barometer of brand relevance to youth culture. "I know from the brands contacting us, a lot of car companies are watching their place in the Billboard chart," James said. "I think automotive companies are interested in pop culture. You create the meaning, but in pop culture the audience creates the message you hadn't thought about." Controversy There are risks. Hip-hop lyrics that mention brands also can focus on sex, drugs and violence. 50 Cent raps about rolling up to a club in a Mercedes-Benz with "20 knives." Ja Rule describes explicit sex acts "in the back seat of my Yukon." "We would be vehemently opposed to any lyrics about violence and drugs," Cadillac's LaNeve said. "But we can't control that. Our attitude would be to stay out of it. If something came up that is portrayed as harmful to society or the product image, we would try to look into that." At the same time, automakers might not want their products associated with controversial rappers. "We don't want to identify with a specific artist," Pontiac's Kubitskey said. "There's a risk there. We're going to be careful, but we're not afraid of it. Corporate sponsors everywhere are getting in trouble. But you can't close the door or it will put you at a disadvantage." GM said it does not pay for hip-hop endorsements so that it can keep an arm's-length relationship with artists. James said it's unclear what would happen "when a brand gets really dissed in a music lyric." "Right now (automotive) lawyers are not creating any problems for brands," he said. "But there will at some point be a criticism where the lawyers start to swirl. But then that draws more attention to the brand." 'Bling-bling crowd' When the Escalade went on sale in late 1998, Cadillac targeted an older demographic. Its basic media strategy did not include black buyers. But the Escalade achieved mentions in hip-hop hits and incidental product placements on the TV show "MTV Cribs," in which music celebrities show off their household luxury goods. Cadillac adjusted its marketing of the Escalade to focus on urban settings. "We knew we were fighting the imagery of Cadillac as the country club set," LaNeve said. "But what this means is that the bling-bling crowd has some interesting Cadillacs." Still, when Outkast sings, "Don't want to meet your daddy/Just want you in my Caddy," LaNeve has an honest response: "I'm glad I don't have daughters."

New Aphex Twin disc ... more unsettling than "worst," but ...

Although I wasn't into Tarzan (except for "Tarzan at the Earth's Core"), I was big into the other Edgar Rice Burroughs stuff when I was the same age, too ... I read not only "The Mucker," but "The Return of the Mucker"! I also went through a "Doc Savage" phase, but pretty much stuck to the Marvel Universe when it comes to superheroes: Spider-man, Daredevil, Silver Surfer, original X-Men, Fantastic Four, the Avengers ... I couldn't get enough of that stuff. They just seemed cooler, and looked cooler, then the DC stuff.

Not limited to the music community, either. Has anyone seen/read "Requiem for a Dream"? Both the book and the movie make pretty scary cases against getting hooked. ... and, on an entirely different note: MC5 kicks out the jams, motherfuckers!

For example, I would have thought this might get a chuckle or two out of somebody.

Dan: Don't be so paranoid ... this just struck me as funny. If I had meant to start some kind of political debate over this I would have posted it in a political thread.

My Life, My Cadillac Escalade EXT The New York Times March 05, 2004 By Courtney Leigh Hyan; As told to Dana White. WHO -- Courtney Leigh Hyan, 16, high school sophomore, Yorba Linda, Calif. WHAT -- 2004 Cadillac Escalade EXT I WAS expecting to get a watch for my 16th birthday, but I got a Cadillac pickup instead. All my friends drive trucks. My dad says, "I don't know what it is with girls today; they want pickups." I think it's the feminism factor. Usually guys are the ones who have pickups, but now girls are like, "Hey, we can have them, too." We get one, and the guys think it's cool. So you have this masculine symbol, but at the same time, you get attention from guys. It's a win-win. The Escalade EXT is a luxury version of another G.M. pickup, the Chevy Avalanche. It has satellite radio, leather seats and a navigation system. I haven't used the G.P.S. yet, but I will -- I get lost easily. I'm going to get custom chrome wheels and rims for it. My favorite brand is Lexani. They're so nice looking. I'm a car nut, just like my dad. I'm also an only child, so I guess I'm a little like a son in that way. My dad and I used to buy car magazines at the grocery store and circle the cars we liked. When I was 13, I started to think about what kind of car I wanted when I started to drive. I saw an EXT in a music video and thought, "Hey, having a pickup truck is way cuter than having a car." I started babysitting every week to save money for one. Then I went on the Cadillac Web site and saw how much it cost, and I thought that's a lot of babysitting. Finally, my parents told me if I got a 3.0 G.P.A. or higher on my report card, they'd buy me any car I wanted, within reason. I started working on my dad. I kept telling him, "Have you seen the new Cadillac pickup trucks, Dad? They're really cool." After school I'd drag him down to the dealership in Fullerton to look at them. About three months ago, my dad bought a ranch in Park City, Utah, and I made him go to Jerry Seiner Cadillac, the dealership in Salt Lake City, to check out their EXT's. Dad kept asking me, "Do you really like this car?" I told him I loved it. My birthday was Jan. 3. I wanted to spend it with my friends in Orange County, but my dad urged me to come to Park City. He said he was throwing me a party and inviting my favorite snowboarder, J. P. Walker, so I agreed. The party was at a restaurant called Easy Street, which has a big picture window that looks out on the street. I was waiting at the table thinking, where is this guy? So my parents suggested I open my presents. The last one looked like a watch box, but when I opened it, there were car keys inside. I looked out the window and saw a brand new EXT parked in front of the restaurant. It was the color I wanted: "Out of the Blue." I couldn't believe it. I was like, "Oh my God, are you serious?" I ran outside in the falling snow, climbed into the truck and sat there for a bit. Then I called my friends back in California on my cell. The whole thing was like a car commercial. Driving my EXT makes me feel powerful, safe and very high. I feel as if everybody is looking at it, maybe because the color is so vibrant. You can make the cargo bed longer by folding down the rear seat, lowering a panel and removing the window. My dad said, "Now you can carry hay to the horses," and I was like, "I don't think so." Some people may think my dad spoils me, but he knows how happy it makes me to drive. Cars are my thing. I'm never ungrateful for anything my parents give me. I feel totally blessed. My dad drove my Escalade out to California last week. The first time I drove up to the school, about 25 girls came running out to look at it. "That is so cool," they cried. "We hate you!" It was like a dream come true. I felt like, "Wow, I'm a princess."

Claude ... check out the link from rockefeller ... and I can tell you, as a Mac user, that this is true ... I'm spam-freee.

Thanks ... although it leaves me with the same question raised in the story: why can't Windows do something similar?

I still get plenty of junk snail mail, and someone's paying to send that, so I have to wonder how effective this would be ... Does anyone know why Mac's don't get a lot of spam? How do those machines stop it?

Gates: Buy stamps to send e-mail Paying for e-mail seen as anti-spam tactic Friday, March 5, 2004 Posted: 11:25 AM EST (1625 GMT) Microsoft's Bill Gates, among others, is suggesting computer users start buying "stamps" for e-mail. NEW YORK (AP) -- If the U.S. Postal Service delivered mail for free, our mailboxes would surely runneth over with more credit-card offers, sweepstakes entries, and supermarket fliers. That's why we get so much junk e-mail: It's essentially free to send. So Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates, among others, is now suggesting that we start buying "stamps" for e-mail. Many Internet analysts worry, though, that turning e-mail into an economic commodity would undermine its value in democratizing communication. But let's start with the math: At perhaps a penny or less per item, e-mail postage wouldn't significantly dent the pocketbooks of people who send only a few messages a day. Not so for spammers who mail millions at a time. Though postage proposals have been in limited discussion for years -- a team at Microsoft Research has been at it since 2001 -- Gates gave the idea a lift in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Details came last week as part of Microsoft's anti-spam strategy. Instead of paying a penny, the sender would "buy" postage by devoting maybe 10 seconds of computing time to solving a math puzzle. The exercise would merely serve as proof of the sender's good faith. Time is money, and spammers would presumably have to buy many more machines to solve enough puzzles. The open-source software Hashcash, available since about 1997, takes a similar approach and has been incorporated into other spam-fighting tools including Camram and Spam Assassin. Meanwhile, Goodmail Systems Inc. has been in touch with Yahoo! Inc. and other e-mail providers about using cash. Goodmail envisions charging bulk mailers a penny a message to bypass spam filters and avoid being incorrectly tossed as junk. That all sounds good for curbing spam, but what if it kills the e-mail you want as well? Consider how simple and inexpensive it is today to e-mail a friend, relative, or even a city-hall bureaucrat. It's nice not to have to calculate whether greeting grandma is worth a cent. And what of the communities now tied together through e-mail -- hundreds of cancer survivors sharing tips on coping; dozens of parents coordinating soccer schedules? Those pennies add up. "It detracts from your ability to speak and to state your opinions to large groups of people," said David Farber, a veteran technologist who runs a mailing list with more than 20,000 subscribers. "It changes the whole complexion of the net." Goodmail chief executive Richard Gingras said individuals might get to send a limited number for free, while mailing lists and nonprofit organizations might get price breaks. But at what threshold would e-mail cease to be free? At what point might a mailing list be big or commercial enough to pay full rates? Goodmail has no price list yet, so Gingras couldn't say. Vint Cerf, one of the Internet's founding fathers, said spammers are bound to exploit any free allotments. "The spammers will probably just keep changing their mailbox names," Cerf said. "I continue to be impressed by the agility of spammers." And who gets the payments? How do you build and pay for a system to track all this? How do you keep such a system from becoming a target for hacking and scams? The proposals are also largely U.S.-centric, and even with seamless currency conversion, paying even a token amount would be burdensome for the developing world, said John Patrick, former vice president of Internet technology at IBM Corp. "We have to think of not only, let's say, the relatively well-off half billion people using e-mail today, but the 5 or 6 billion who aren't using it yet but who soon will be," Patrick said. Some proposals even allow recipients to set their own rates. A college student might accept e-mail with a one-cent stamp; a busy chief executive might demand a dollar. "In the regular marketplace, when you have something so fast and efficient that everyone wants it, the price goes up," said Sonia Arrison of the Pacific Research Institute, a think tank that favors market-based approaches. To think the Internet can shatter class distinctions that exist offline is "living in Fantasyland," Arrison said. Nonetheless, it will be tough to persuade people to pay -- in cash or computing time that delays mail -- for something they are used to getting for free. Critics of postage see more promise in other approaches, including technology to better verify e-mail senders and lawsuits to drive the big spammers out of business. "Back in the early '90s, there were e-mail systems that charged you 10 cents a message," said John Levine, an anti-spam advocate. "And they are all dead."

Speaking of steroids ... what's up with the union not allowing players to take tests? I mean they really have something like that in the contracts?

Norman Lear the TV guy?

Anyone ever notice what happens when you spell "Evian" backward?

The Fender Stratocaster turned 50 in February! The golden time of a great guitar The Stratocaster turns 50 Thursday, March 4, 2004 Posted: 10:52 AM EST (1552 GMT) SCOTTSDALE, Arizona (AP) -- The year 1954 was full of pop culture benchmarks. Elvis Presley recorded his first single, the Miss America pageant was televised for the first time, Ernest Hemingway won the Nobel Prize for "The Old Man and the Sea." And in a small factory in Fullerton, California, an inventor named Leo Fender created his Stratocaster. If the general public overlooked that last milestone, musicians do not. In fact, for many it's a pivotal event. "Who knows how many different designs they've used to imitate and top it and nobody's come close," says Nils Lofgren, guitarist for Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band. "It's definitely as beautifully crafted an instrument that you'll ever find and I'm very, very grateful for all Leo went through to create it." The guitar known affectionately as the Strat celebrated its 50th birthday in February. And it's had a busy 50 years. Americans know this instrument, even if they don't know its name, because it's been in so many famous hands and its tones form the foundation of so much of the music we listen to. Jimi Hendrix made it scream. Former Grin and current E Street Band guitarist Nils Lofgren calls the Strat "a work of art." Stevie Ray Vaughan made it cry. Eric Clapton made it rock. Fender was known for incorporating musicians' suggestions into his designs. As a result, the Stratocaster was a collaboration by Fender and his close associates and those who played guitar for a living. "Leo created a work of art that remains useful to millions of players and will always be useful," says Lofgren. 'It became a cultural identity' Says Richard McDonald, a spokesman for Scottsdale-based Fender Musical Instruments Corp.: "He just nailed it right out of the gate. "You measure an instrument's success or failure on the merits of what gets recorded with it," says McDonald, the company's vice president of marketing. "Once huge masses of work were recorded with the Stratocaster, it became a cultural identity." Unlike many guitars of the 1950s, the Stratocaster's body was made of solid wood, making it extremely durable. Hendrix set it on fire, Vaughan and others administered countless beatings. Chris Flemming, a Master Builder at the Fender Custom Shop, plays his hand-built 50th anniversary Fender Stratocaster prototype. "The Strat is like a workhorse, you don't have to baby it," Lofgren says. "You can be gentle and subtle and when you're leaning into it a bit too hard, it doesn't cave early on you. It pushes back a bit. No other guitar I've played allows that." The tonal result of the Stratocaster's solid body is a highly sustained tone that produces a clear, bright sound unlike hollow-body guitars. "I was a young guitarist and mostly played jazz with hollow bodies," say Gin Blossom guitarist Scott Johnson. "When I landed my first pro gig they told me to go get a solid body for the sustain, so I got a Strat." Its historical significance, and international success aside, perhaps 11-year-old Chris Kutcher, who uses a Strat in his guitar class, sums up the guitar's appeal best. "I don't know much about guitars," says Chris, who attends Desert Harbor Elementary School in Peoria, Arizona, "but I know the Stratocaster has a cool sound."

I didn't realize Basie played the vibes ... or is he just goofing around here?

I was lucky enough to find a copy of "Live at the Royal Roost" at the ol' Borders Outlet a few months ago ... highly recommended. According to AMG, Dinah Washington and Anita O'Day, both of whom sing on the disc, hadn't otherwise recorded w/Basie. It's a recording of live radio performances from 1948, but the sound is really pretty good and the band just, well, rocks.

NASA: Liquid water once on Mars Evidence red planet was once 'soaking wet' By Marsha Walton CNN Tuesday, March 2, 2004 Posted: 2:30 PM EST (1930 GMT) (CNN) -- Mission accomplished. NASA scientists say the Mars rovers have found what they were looking for: Hard evidence that the red planet was once "soaking wet." "We have concluded the rocks here were once soaked in liquid water," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University. He's the principal investigator for the science instruments on Opportunity and its twin rover, Spirit. "The second question we've tried to answer: Were these rocks altered by liquid water? We believe definitively, yes," said Squyres. Squyres and other NASA officials made the announcement at NASA headquarters in Washington, after several days of giving tantalizing hints that something significant had been discovered. "Three and a half years ago, in July 2000, we were on stage here to talk about sending two rovers to get evidence of past water. NASA and its international partners have turned those dreams to reality," said Ed Weiler, NASA associate administrator for space science. Scientists used instruments on board the golf cart-sized rovers to study the composition of the rocks and soil on the planet. The rocks' physical appearance, plus the detection of sulfates, make the case for a watery history, and more important, an environment that could have been hospitable to life. Spirit and Opportunity were sent to opposite sides of the planet with the possibility of investigating different types of terrain. Spirit, the first rover to arrive on January 3, landed near the Gusev Crater, which may once have held a lake. But geologists and other researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, were thrilled when they saw the possibilities surrounding Opportunity, which landed three weeks later. It landed inside a small crater in the Meridiani Planum, one of the flattest places on the planet. And its landing site was within driving distance for the spacecraft to reach an exposed slice of bedrock. Since its landing January 25, Opportunity has used the same tools as a human field geologist would to determine the chemical contents of the rocks. Using an alpha particle X-ray spectrometer, a device that can identify chemical elements, scientists have identified a high concentration of sulfur in the bedrock. Another instrument on board, a Moessbauer spectrometer, has detected an iron sulfate mineral known as jarosite. From their knowledge of rocks on earth, scientists say rocks with as much salt as this Mars rock either formed in water, or had a long exposure to water after they were formed. The scientists say these rocks could have formed in an acidic lake or even a hot springs. Scientists say the case for a watery past is further strengthened by the pictures taken by the rovers' panoramic cameras and its microscopic imager. One target rock, named "El Capitan," is filled with random pockmarks. Geologists say a texture like that comes from sites where salt crystals have formed in rocks that have sat in salt water. Scientists say they have gained other clues from the physical appearance of the rocks. They see a pattern called "crossbedding," which is often the result of wind or water moving across the rock's surface. The cost of the two rover missions is about $820 million dollars. With solar panels and lithium-ion battery systems aboard, each rover is expected to function and communicate with earth for about 90 Mars days, known as "sols." That's equivalent to 92 earth days.

I recently picked up "Tough Tenors" with Davis/Griffin ... it's definitely fantastic ... and some more for the Cookbooks!

You know, Ghost, they now have yogurt-filled Poptarts ...

Naughty Rhymes: What Did Jack & Jill Do on the Hill? Tue Mar 2, 2004 08:53 AM ET By Sophie Walker LONDON (Reuters) - Bed-hopping royals. Religious hatred. Teenage sex. Obesity warnings. Tabloid headlines? No, Britain's favorite nursery rhymes. Parents may throw up their hands in horror but a new book says that playground ditties are drenched in sex, death and violence and prove that many 21st century concerns have been around for a long time. "Some were clearly adult rhymes which were sung to children because they were the only rhymes an adult knew. Others were deliberately created as a simple way to tell children a story or give them information," Chris Roberts, author of "Heavy Words Lightly Thrown" told Reuters. "Religion, sex, money and social issues are all common themes and although there is a tendency to look at history through the concerns of the present it was something I was led to rather than sought to do," Roberts said. As an example, one of Britain's most popular nursery rhymes, "Jack and Jill Went up the Hill" is according to Roberts the tale of two young people losing their virginity, Jill possibly becoming pregnant and the regrets that come later. "The interesting bit is that, having successfully 'lost his crown,' it's Jack who runs off rapidly, probably to tell his mates what happened," Roberts said. In an alternative second verse the sexual association of the rhyme becomes even more blatant, Roberts added. Instead of his head, Jack has a different part of his anatomy patched up with vinegar and brown paper. GOLDEN AGE Although some nursery rhymes appear to have their origins in the Middle Ages, their golden age was the period between the Tudor monarchs and the Stuarts. This was Britain's formative age, says Roberts, as it covered among many other things the Act of Union, which brought together Scotland and England, the Civil War and the growth of Empire and trading. The Book of Common Prayer and the King James Bible were published in English rather than Latin and caused even deeper rifts between Protestants and Catholics These were heady topics to cope with, so why not keep it short and tell it in rhyme?" Roberts said. His book grew from research for a series of walking tours around London. Some rhymes like Oranges and Lemons -- a guide to the City of London which also doubles as a saucy wedding song -- cropped up obviously. In other cases geographical research revealed social history such as the fact that prostitutes in the Southwark area of London (where licensed brothels existed) were called 'geese'. Thus the rhyme "Goosie, goosie gander/Where do you wander?/Upstairs and downstairs/and in my lady's chamber" can be read as alluding to the spread of venereal disease -- known as 'goose bumps' because of the swelling. It also tackles a dispute between King Henry VIII and the Catholic church, which owned the land upon which the brothels were operating and profited hugely. From "Mary, Mary quite contrary" and its references to the 'cockles' (cuckolds) believed to be in the promiscuous court of Mary, Queen of Scots to "The Grand Old Duke of York" -- about a former Duke's inept military strategy against the French -- sly digs at princes and popes alike were commonplace, Roberts's book reveals. "Georgy Porgy pudding and pie/Kissed the girls and made them cry" has been interpreted as gossip about a supposedly gay courtier George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham 1592-1628, but more likely was a warning to young men that overeating puts the ladies off. NEW ERA OF FOOTBALL LULLABIES? Increased freedom of speech, literacy and communication, eventually did away with the need for allegorical rhymes. Then came the Victorians, who viewed childhood as an innocent state where 'adult sights' should be hidden. "During the 19th century the rhymes were increasingly written up, illustrated and sold as collections for children. They became more accessible, but also less potent," said Roberts. Many of today's children's songs are deliberately composed as such, making the roots of the next generation's nursery rhymes more anodyne. However, the need for "tribal chanting" as Roberts puts it, is still present, and most obvious in football songs, which he suggests could be tomorrow's lullabies. "They are about the only thing that are 'composed' anonymously and known and sung by thousands of people," he said. "Pop songs still occasionally eulogize celebrities and make social comments but their authorship is known whereas football songs are, in a sense, true folk songs belonging to a tribe of people rather than an individual," Roberts added. "Words change their meaning and associations alter over time so if the person singing the song doesn't know the real (or even perceived) meaning of the song it can be fitted to other uses," he said. "I do know fathers who croon football songs, that are after all rarely complex tunes, to help their children sleep."

I eat the brown sugar cinnamon ones about once a week ... I haven't noticed a change in taste so much as a change in texture ... they're "drier" to me, if that makes sense. Has anyone tried the Spongebob Poptarts yet? I got a box for my kids ... they're flavored with some bizarre pseudo-fruit substance ... "Bubbleberry" or something. Absolutely revolting.

From Slate: A Riff for Sidney Bechet By Stanley Moss Posted Tuesday, March 2, 2004, at 7:42 AM PT That night in Florence, forty-five years ago, I heard him play like "honey on a razor," he could get maple syrup out of a white pine, out of a sycamore, out of an old copper beech. I remember that summer Michelangelo's marble naked woman's breasts, reclining Dawn's nipples— exactly like the flesh I ached for. How could Dawn behind her clouds hurt me? The sunrise bitch was never mine. He brought her down. In twelve bars of burnt sugar, she was his if he wanted her.

Oops ... sorry 'bout that ... but thanks for the answer.

Did anyone see Sting on the Oscars last night? He sang with Alison Krause and he was playing something that looked like, well, I don't know what, but he wore it like a guitar on a strap and used his right hand to spin a handle reminiscent of an organ grinder/jack-in-a-box crank.