The Daily Growler Apologizes

Everything's Based on Secret Goings On
Yes, Allen Greenspan did shoot his mouth off yesterday in Hong (Commie China) Kong about the US going into a recession that will flush our economy down the toilet to make us the largest excrement-producing country in the world; yes, old crotchity rich bastard Allen did say that, yes he did, drooling a lot, yes, but he did say it. "Hey, at least we stayin' numb-er one at sumthin'," replies a typical Amurican Yahoo...BUT, I'm told by my millionaire-plus betters that nobody listens to old creaky Allen Greenspan anymore and that the stock market decline yesterday that was plunging so fastly down it caused the NYSE's computers to blow up momentarily--because somebody was dumping stocks by the barrelsful yesterday so fast the system wore itself out--BUT, I'm told by my millionaire-plus betters, those one-shot teevee market experts (there are millions of them) hee-haw that the stock market tumble yesterday was merely the rich cats selling off their excess stocks for profits--what ever the hell that means

First, let me inject a little envy here: all the commentators on the major US news networks are millionaires--Katie Courec, ex-cheerleader/cute piece of ass (now pruning up due to age, by the bye) is worth 40 million-a-year; Meredith Viagra (who I do think is cuter than Katie by several longshots and who though is also pruning up a bit, is still more vibrant and down-to-earth (she's from Rhode Island; I know a lot of good weird types from Rhode Island, my kind of peeps) than the ex-cheerleader Courec, though Viagra could be an ex-cheerleader, too, for all I know. Meredith Viagra was already a millionaire from her Bah-bah Walters ass-kissing job on The View; even the network weather guys make a million-a-year at least, like big, getting-fat-again, fatheaded Al "Fathead" Roker or even that obnoxious Dave guy on CBS--that hurts to think he's a millionaire --plus, Tim Russert and all those know-it-all, pencil-necked geek-commentators make millions or they are already well-heeled from their families. Most of these fops now on teevee aren't even communications majors, certainly not journalism majors--what the hell are they; well, maybe Katie C's pretty high up on the scale as an ex-cheerleader in terms of qualifications.

And, yes, the stockmarket did miraculously recover both here and in Shanghai, Commie China--Praise the Lard! I love when these broker-blokes talk about "market correction," you know, like the stock market is a living entity and occasionally automatically corrects itself--again, whatever the F that means.

For a brief moment yesterday I totally forgot my backward logic when it comes to understanding what is happening at this time in my life here in New York City as a bona fide Americano Blanco but in a world that is gradually turning a tide against me, first, and I guess this country after the first wave wipes me out. I'm not complaining; I've lived a superwonderful life--no strife, a good wife, at one time excelling in throwing a knife, the life, looking for a favorable wind on which to ride my ass out of here; may I borrow your broom, ma'am?

Backward logic says that if Allen Greenspan says we're going into a recession that really means we're not going into a recession or really it means, who the F knows what the hell they or we are doing?

And now, I just heard, Condo-leasing Rice is shooting for a Nobel Peace Prize by announcing today she's set up a meeting between Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the Saudis, the Jordanians. I remember the VietNam Peace Talks--it took them how long to decide at what kind of table they were going to sit at, finally agreeing to a round table because at a round table everybody is on eye-level with everybody else; plus round tables are easier to hide weapons under.

I live in a backwards world; and it's got me in a whirl; I'm beginning to find salvation in whirling...like a Dervish, hell yeah.

ahastilyhurryinggrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

Holy Allen Greenspan! The Son of a Bitch Sells Us Out to Commie Chinese

JESUS X. CHRIST
I just heard on the Rhandi Rhodes Show that Allen Greenspan shot his blabbermouth off last night in Hong Kong--why was he in Commie China Hong Kong? Well, it seems like this piece of ancient (he's about 90 isn't he?) crap said in Hong Kong that the US economy was heading for a free-fall. That recession was right around the corner. That son of a bitch. As a result, and it's true, folks, the Commie Chinese panicked and sold off 9% of their US holdings in the Shanghai-ed Stock Market and as a result of that, our wonderful infallible official US gambling casino, the stock market was tumbling like the superstructure of America is falling down. That son of a bitch Greenspan. And that son of a bitch, Bush, it being revealed now that Bush is aiding Sunni insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, I assume, with direct connections to his precious Al Qaida; Bush is giving our tax dollars to Al Qaida Sunnis to kill Shi'ites. Why? Why do you think Unka Dick ain't been around lately--they almost got his of "dyin'" ass in Kabul--and what the hell was that son of a bitch doing in Kabul? And what was he doing in Indonesia? Where else has he been since he was summons to Ryadh and told what to do by the Bin Ladin/Saudi Royal muckitymucks who, along with the Commie Chinese, the Brits, the Japanese own our asses lock, stock, and barrel. Holy shit. It's too much for my old ass. I may be headed for the hills and my wolf relatives. I mean, YOU'D BETTER GET YOUR MONEY OUT OF MUTUAL FUNDS! You'd better get your money out of the stock market. You'd better start beating Congress's door down...Holy Shit, I'm gonna get to see CHAOS! "Hey, Henry Miller, you bastard; you died too soon; CHAOS was just around the corner! Holy Shit, Henry, I'm gonna get to see CHAOS come to pass. I don't know if I got the guts to face it. Old Doctor Hunter S. Thompson and my nephew out in the Mojave Desert who blew his brains out recently may be right that there is no hope; no reason to live and face a horror not of your making and not of your want. We may all be cowards at heart. It would be good to learn from the old Berlin Jews who knew to get the hell out of Naziland before Hitler needed a scapegoat for his own bad blood how they knew it; how they knew it was time to get the hell out of there.

By the bye, Freedom Lovers, this may mean that Beijing Real Estate Company that was gonna rent that coming pink elephant Freedom Tower of Commercial F. U. being built on that what-should-be sacred ground down there at Ground Zero, which in reality is a cemetery not a piece of commercial real estate will pull out of their leasing deal now and leave that meant-to-be middle finger against the terrerists a sore thumb empty, an expensive tombstone over those sacred graves of all those ground together human identities, which is all we really are anyway, just foul dust. The ashes of my nephew of Mojave suicide fame came the other day. Just a jar of ashes and not that many ashes either. Like on South Park when Kenny got killed, the bastards, and they creamated him and Eric found the urn and thought Kenny's ashes looked like Ovaltine, you know, a chocolate drink mix, so that's what he did, stirred Kenny into some milk and drank him down. When asked later why he was looking so weird, he said, "Damn, sometimes it's as though I'm Kenny--god-damn, no, I feel like Kenny, dammit."

So anyway, hard times are coming. The dollar is collapsing. The equity market could then tumble. [Go to the tailend of this post for the US Dollar Index--you can watch the dollar trading around the world kind'a minute by minute--it is, experts say, dropping but slowly--you better hope it keeps dropping slowly--if it drops fast, get ready to jump out your high-rise luxury apartment window. "Look out below!" This is a book, the last book in a trilogy by a dude named Chalmers Johnson. He's a doomsayer, a masterful one, and his outlook as to the future of this country (he calls it an Empire) is pretty damn bleak. The country of tomorrow, to Johnson, he's bias in that his main interests are Japan and China, is the People's Republic of China, a country he says that is being very rationale in their shaking loose from their Stalinist past (Maoist, same thing, I guess) and entertaining Capitalism in a nationalistic way. Commie China currently has a ready army of 800,000. Wow, at least four times greater than any army We the American Empire can put together. Of course, our Military Industrial Complex has us scared out of our skulls over these invisible but invincible boogiemen that are laying in wait to attack us and destroy "our way of life," whatever the hell that means. There are certainly better ways of life in this world--I'm checking out a nice little place in Bordeaux, France, right now as I type this that looks like it offers me a better way of life than staying on and trying to survive in what once was the greatest city in the world but is now a playground for tourists and beaucoup rich foreign investors--no more independent communities; our little-man billionaire mayor is intent on destroying NYC neighborhoods and so far only Chelsea has been able to hold out somewhat against this little bastard's utter hatred of poor people, especially renters, shitcan scrubbers, jakeleg war veterans living in the street, bag ladies--they're just about gone from the streets, mental patient rejects, anyone who isn't superrich. I sometimes feel after listening to this little man mayor that I am an imbecilic child and that this privileged little rich fart has to dress me down and tell me how I have to act to be one of his kind of New Yorkers--and this little asshole didn't have a pot to piss in till he came to New York City and got that damn Bloomberg Network dropped in his damn lap.

How Many Military Bases Does the USA Have on Foreign Soils?
I was thinking about that recently--I knew we had a lot of bases all over the world but I wasn't aware that it was as many as it is. According to Chalmers Johnson, there are 737 US military bases in 130 countries around the world! WOW! Let me say that again: there are 737 US military bases in 130 countries around the world. We have 37 bases on the Island of Okinawa alone! They hate the US in Okinawa. Remember the rape and murder cases that had the Okinawans up in arms a few years back? Of course, Japan hates the Okinawans so they gladly make all kinds of military deals with the US including the old treaty that keeps the USA in Okinawa. Can you imagine the expense of all of this pompous bullshit! How dare this country act like it owns the world! Actually, if you remember history, this all started with John Foster Dullass, the Sec'y of State under Dwight David "Fore!" Eisenhower, a real fop of a army idiot who got us involved in a hell of a lot of shit around the world including Iran! It was during the Eisenhower fiasco presidency that the CIA, the president's private and very secret army (in order words they do his every command, even if that be the assassination of someone they don't like--these guys are ruthless!! God-damn I'm growling mad.

Johnson says we're doomed; we're trapped in this Military Industrial Complex's supergrip. We the People can retaliate against it. No member of Congress, no president, no nobody can bring it down. You try to close a military base in this country and watch the Yahoos react by ballyhooing and whining about them losing the source of their income. My hometown, once a booming railroad, oil, cattle, cotton, and truck farming center is now totally dependent on a large SAC Air Force Base that has been in the same location where it was originally built at the beginning of WWII. If they close that base, my hometown has no viable industry anymore.

The two leading Congressional champions of military bases because their states have the most military bases of all the states are Kay Baily Hutchinson of Texas (a rightwing political madame) and Diane Feinstein of California--and who the hell gave Diane a political career?--all those gays and lesbians in San Francisco, all those San Andreas Fault-straddling liberals out there, too, a lot of New York rationalizers out there, too, in Northern California--with of course some rednecks thrown in for bad measure up there in the redwoods.

Johnson says we need a "renaissance of the citizenry" in order for us to ever break the jail term this idiotic military empire shit is sentencing us, too. It could be a death sentence.

Yes, check it out, the CIA is the president's own private little army--same as Blackwater is his own little private army, too. The CIA has murdered, assassinated, massacred, destroyed, drugged, ruined in an insanely bungling inept way that has left horrid death and disruption in its "Sherman Through Georgia" way of operating--at the direction of the president of the USA, the only person the CIA respects; WE the People are not allowed to know anything about the CIA--it's all secret stuff--and think of the billions of dollars and thousands of lives this CIA has cost WE the People. Two thousand nine hundred poor working stiffs, CIA operatives, FBI operatives, Arab real estate moguls, investment brokers, telephone operators, Mac operators, graphic arts directors and artists and computer service people and waitresses and waiters and cooks and saladmakers and jewelers (remember the tons of gold supposedly kept underneath the WTC?) and nightwatchmen just coming off their shifts and security guards, et al.--in retaliation for those 2900 people (all of whom were not US citizens) being killed that grim day in this wonderful city, 3150 dead soldiers (men and women), 10s of thousands of soldiers missing arms and legs, with serious head injuries, some with missing genitals, some with their faces burned off--all of them psychologically damaged beyond repair--that I guarantee you from having close friends who survived VietNam--the nightmares, the cold sweats, the enemy only they can see, one of whom was found frozen to death one cold February morning down in now rich and fashionable Tribeca, and it is now estimated over 600,000 Iraqis have been killed since this War began, plus 2 million Iraqis have been displaced and are refugees in Jordan, Iran, Syria, places where they're really not wanted. Mission Accomplished, however.

It's scary when you think of the power Georgie Porgie Puddin' Pie G.W. (Georgie the Wimp, Jr.) Bush has. Hell yes he can just ignore Congress. He could simply declare himself Chancellor for Life, put us all under marshall law (hell, all the police forces and fire fighters around the country love this little defense contractor pimp) and bugger We the People--in other words, bend over, folks, we're all gonna get a good fuckin' when the bills are all called in and the Big Stick Collection Agencies come to collect (that's Commie China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and Britain--that's right, folks, Britain has invested heavily in its little upstart colony, real estate, banking--it's British Petroleum whose drilling in our Alaskan Wilderness and pumping our own oil down to us at a profit.

And you think it ain't about oil?

Here ya go, here's the US Dollar Index:


www.fxstreet.com/rates-charts/usdollar-index/


thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

The War On Iraq--Did It End Today? Plus, Pappy's New World Order Speech

Giving Away of Iraq's Oil to Exxon-Mobil/BP/Chevron/& British Shell Passes Iraqi Parliament (I Say, Blokes, Here's the Way Me Sees It)
So the Iraq Parliament has passed the bill overwhelmingly giving their oil away to a consortium of old-time Standard Oil companies, the reasons the Limeys fought so hard against the Dullheaded Turks back in those glorious days when the Union Jack waved so royally and fairly and democratically over all the world, bringing, I say, civilisation to the woggies, the wooly-boolies, the yellow peril, the White Man's burden, the Hottentots, the Bantu, the Pygmies, the Bushmen, the bloody Boors, the shanty Irish, the froggies, yassuh, yassuh, yassuh, with the sun never setting on the glorious Empire and the dandy ladies who were their queenies and the whacko Nazi-kin Prussian men that consorted with those queenies and one of those queenies's worthless sons and his anemic offspring, one of which abandoned the throne for a commoner and the other who sympathized with Nazis, his relatives, during WWII, he and Pope Pius over in Nazi Rome--ah, it's all so vellie British still, isn't it?--and yet Tony "the Coward" Blair is pulling out of Iraq--"Mission Accomplished," he says, passing his losing baton on to the Great Decider as he rereads his Georgie Porgie-signed copy of My Pet Goat for the fifth time. "Blimey, I still don't see how President Bush developed his winning tactics in Iraq and Afghanistan out of this damn kids's book, blimey!" Then he was heard rationalizing, "I see no military sense in this damn book, though I can't get that bloody nanny off me bloody mind; I mean, check her out, lads, I swear on me ole mother, she's hotter than the Mizzez Blair...hell, she's hotter than Helen Mirin...heh, heh--sorry, fellow Brits, I've been hanging around Georgie Porgie Bush, the phony American Colony president, too much; I'm developing his sense of humour, don't you see, old twits?"

So, hell, now all of we analysts here at The Daily Growler agree that soon Bushy Baby will announce that the War in Iraq is a success, the Iraqi numbskulls can now take over and finish their bloody civil war--except we're now supplying Al-Qaida with weapons to use against our enemy in Iraq, whoever the hell that is now. It's for certain our goofy soldiers can't tell who's the enemy and who's not. "Towelheads all look a F-ing alike to me, " said Sergeant Billy Buck Lambthrob of Oozlin', Iowa. "I see a towelhead, I shoot first and ask which side of Mohammad's dick he's suckin' later. Hell, sometimes it's kind'a fun. 'Sides, I always did like handling guns and killing dumb animals--I mean, these towelheads, they're just dumb animals to an old corn-fed boy like me." "Gee, kid, I like your spunk. I just hope you don't get a couple of your limbs shot off or your skull dented by shrapnel or somethin' and if you do, I hope they don't send you to Walter Reed when you get home...er, if you get home."

So now, you see, Bushy Boy will announce the Mission is now finally accomplished--you see, he's not only the master of Decision but he's also the master of Deceit, don't ya see? You see, that "Mission Accomplished" bullshit out in San Diego Harbor was to throw Al Qaida off guard. Get it? They thought, "Aha, Bin Laden Brother Georgie Porgie Bandar Bush did trick job on we Al Qaida. Caught us with our guard down and god-damn beat us at our own game. We are now going to have to trot out our Osama actor--remember all of our Saddam Hussein doubles and actors and shit we pulled on your stupid asses?--oh we get big laugh out of that--'Hey, stupid dick, American, Saddam's still alive, look, there's five of him overthere.' Hah-hah, we get big laughs out of watching Georgie Porgie Bandar Bush acting like he's tough motherfucker. 'Bring him on!' Hot damn, I could be on American stage as funny man. Hey, American comedy clubs, you need funny Sunni on your teevee funny shows? How about Bin Loony the Sunni. We joke of course."

So here's the scenario. Bush declares the War in Iraq over. He announces he's turning security and running of the country over to the Iraqi Parliament and Army (Hah!). But, of course, he'll have to leave about 50,000 troops there--that's the normal amount of troops we leave in countries we make dependencies, like South Korea--there are 50,000 troops in South Korea. There were 50,000 troops in the Philippines after WWII and then the Viet Nam War when the Filipinos kicked our asses out. There are probably 50,000 US troops in Germany. Italy I don't know, but of course we do have troops in Italy--though Italy wants to kick us out. Why we have troops in 50,000-troop batches all over the world, even in Central Asia--we used to have a big base at Ankara, Turkey; you don't hear much about that anymore. Of course there are probably 50,000 of our troops in Bosnia, Serbia, the new Yugo, whatever the hell it's called--interesting how Albania, a commie country, and Montenegro, once the mountainous home of the Greek commies that Hairy Ass Truman sent the Marines to Athens to quell right after he desegregated the army, are members of the Coalition of Fools. And do you know why Hairy Ass Truman desegregated the armed forces, don't you? Like you already know that Hairy Ass would have never been elected to Congress without the Kansas City black vote. After the KC party boss told him if he wanted to win, he'd better get his little guy ass down to Darkie Town, which Hairy did and the black vote got him sent to Congress. Of course, after WWII, our armed forces were pretty beat up; we needed all the fresh blood we could get--remember, Hairy had a little Police Action in store for us in the future as the domino theory was getting trumpeted and the commies were marchin' in to take over the freedom-loving country of Korea. John Foster Dullass predicted all those Southeast Asian countries would fall like a line of dominos if we allowed the Commies to take them over. Remember, Lyin' Ass, Tricky Ass, Tricky Dick Nixon saying we had to bomb all those countries back to the stone age, especially Hanoi--on which Nixon even boldly discussed dropping nukes--and Cambodia--and Laos--and Nixon sent his swift boat boys over those borders in preemptive attacks--oh hail our great Chief Tricky Dick Nixon and his alcoholic wife Pat. "I got it down Pat, boys, so come on now, on your knees, pray with me, even you Henry, you Jewboy, on your knees."

Hairy Ass Truman had no compunction about dropping two Atomic Bombs on already beaten Japan; do you think Georgie Porgie will have any compunction about dropping some nukes on Iran? Hell no. He's going into Iran. We have some payback against those bastards; remember, they captured patriotic Americans and held 'em hostage back in them days when gas prices tripled and the price of meat tripled and rents tripled in the country. Remember those days; remember gasoline lines at filling stations? People were killing for a gallon of gas for their gas guzzlers--not the Wolf Man, dammit, I drove a Gremlin in those days. You don't remember those days, back in the late seventies--the hostages were taken on Jimmy "Peanut Boy" Carter's reign (the oil companies hated Jimmy Carter; he's the one that put the Windfall Profits Tax on their asses) and remember how stupidly inanely our armed forces tried to rescue those poor bastards--some of them probably were spies--and then remember how suddenly Ronnie the Raygun, the man who could fly from New York to Tokyo in 3 and 1/2 hours, did some dealmaking with the Iranians, and then why lookie there, old Pappy Bush was the Vice-chairman of underhanded tricks and bamboozling (Pappy was also head of the CIA once) then? And, son of a bitch, there was Unka Dick there, too; and Rummy Rumsfeld...oh my God, it's the same jokers. OIL, OIL, OIL, as I've been growling at the meanest level of my growling for over 300 posts now--it's all about oil; these are all rich-off-oil men, even Unka Dick; Halliburton is a company that has always been an oil well service company, a tooling outfit, out of Ardmore, By Gawd, Okie-homa--they made their fortunes off the stolen oil properties of the Native Americans of Oklahoma Indian Territory back in the days of the wildest of oil times! All of Pappy's West Texas life was based on oil in the Perminan Basin out in far West Texas, once one of the richest oilfields in the world until these greedy bastards milked it not dry but milked all the top gas off of the deep oil and now the oil is so deep, it's too expensive to drill and it's too expensive to pump oil up from that depth, all those oil and gas wells out there in those old oilfields were capped. Check out oil prices, they're still based on West Texas crude prices.

I grew up with oilmen. You did not get successful in the oil business by being above board. Shenanigans were the standard in the oil business in West Texas and East Texas--slanted drilling for instance; or putting in a pipeline at night from your neighbor's storage tanks into your storage tanks--siphoning.

My mother and dad had a couple who had been their friends since they'd gone to high school together. He raised beautiful Hereford cattle on his small ranch west of town; she ran a hat shop in the town's best department store. One day, a Standard Oil geologist came to this couples home and said they had been taking samples on their land and possibilities of oil looked good and that a SOHIO agent would be calling on them--and he did, coming down from New York City one weekend, checkbook in hand, lease-deal in hand, mineral rights transfer in hand--and at the end of that conversation, this couple, my mom and dad's old pals, were worth more money than the budget of nearly every city and town in that part of the world. The woman once showed my mother a dividend check from SOHIO for 100,000 US smackers, and she said in a whisper, "We get two of these a month!."

I grew up with the sons and daughters of oilmen. I've dated girls whose fathers were surely multimillionaires; two of my best friends's fathers were oilmen-ranchers, one of my friends inheriting while he was in high school a 1600-acre Hereford working ranch as his part of his father's trust. When this kid got twenty-one, I'm sure he became a millionaire--and he was a great friend, too; not at all a spoiled brat like Georgie Porgie--I mean, this guy loved cattle and ranching--he drove army surplus Jeeps and wore pegged jeans and dirty boots like the rest of us--what a life! And all of these guys were really and truly worthless--in terms of what they were going to do, like going to college: they didn't give a shit; most of them didn't have to go to college. Oilmen. Petroleum clubs. Geologists. Suppliers. Well Testers. Red Adair, hell, he was from Odessa, Texas, where Pappy and Mammy Bush migrated to after Pappy was discharged out of the Air Force--remember, he bailed out of his "failed" mission before all his troops were out of the plane--Pappy perhaps forgot the rules momentarily. At least, Bootlegger Joe Kennedy sacrificed his favorite son in that wahr!

So Georgie Porgie leaves 50,000 dog soldiers and jarheads in Iraq--to, of course, join Blackwater in guarding the oilfields and the pumping stations--and also, somebody has to guard the fashionable Green Zone, the world's largest Embassy--our Embassy in the United States Dependency of Iraq (I'm sure Halliburton has a private army stationed there, too).

Forget Afghanistan? Oh hell no, Bushy Boy is sending some more poor ole tired dog soldiers and jarheads overthere, too--a little surge there, but a necessary surge since we are the NATO forces there--such a joke.

OK, so here's the plan. He's got the ships in place around Iran's coastline--especially a couple of big hot-damn aircraft carriers--and you know what they use aircraft carriers for, don't ya? And you see, we haven't used our Navy and Air Force up yet like we have the Army and the Gyrenes, so we have plenty of equipment and cannon fodder in those brances to level Tehran--what'a you think--WWIII maybe? Hot damn, the Christian Juju Bead crowd is jumping up and down and shoutin' glory--it means Armegeddon. Jesus is coming. It's 11:59...it's nearly that Midnight Hour! Praise the Lard and Holy Hog. Hot damn, blood up to the bellies of the horses the armies are going to be riding--I suppose Iraq and Afghanistan have used up all our combustible engine vehicles; it's time to bring the Calvary...oops, I mean the Cavalry back. Lighthorse Georgie Porgie Bush the Great Decider could decide just to flatten Baghdad with a minor nuke as he turns his ass on Iraq and then, boogie with a 100,000 or so dogs and jarheads right on over into Eye-ran! Those devils. Those sorry sons of Islamic bitches; why they want to destroy our precious Dependency of Israel. Such bullshit, though it really isn't a joke.

Horrible bombings in Baghdad yesterday and today. They went totally unreported. I mean, we had to know about the Oscars, that phony-baloney Hollywood ballyhoo bullshit. Hell, John Wayne, one of the cornballest actors ever won an Academy Award. Or how 'bout Mumbles Bogart; he wasn't a great actor, but he won an Academy Award. Need I mention Katie Hepburn? She won one--"Spence! Spence! I need you to batter me around or else I'm going to bang Howard Hughes on his yacht." Such bullshit.

And as for Al Gore now being the poster boy for the Liberals--come on, he's a god-damn loser; the Dumbos always pick the WRONG candidates--they always do--look at Gore-Lieberman!!! Look at Kerry-Edwards!!! Losers. Hillbilly Hillary and Obama? Never. First of all, Hillary's a racist probably and second she's a controlled numbskull, controlled by numbskull Howard Dean and her pork-porking husband, Slick Willie. Why, she's even using Slick Willie-isms now. Why she's talking about everything except what's everything on Americans's minds--Get us the hell out of these god-damn WARS. Put these crooks in prison or in the heavy heart-attack zone like old Kenny Boy Lay ended up in. What a bunch dumb ruthless bastards--which means we in this country must be a bunch of really dumb ruthless bastards!

Not I, said thegrowlingwolf gnawing away at a fresh-killed young elkling's meaty thigh bone readying to howl at that old Bilbao Moon--"I must have whiskey or I die...." How quickly Kurt Weill has been forgotten.

So it looks like the scenario is: 50,000 troops left to guard the oilfields, the pipe lines, the pumping stations, and the Green Zone. The rest of the 100,000--100,000 there already to slip into Iran and start a civil war there--oh yes, plus the 20,000 troops coming over to participate in the surge--plus another, you know, 20 or so thousand he'll just sneak in overthere--who the hell's countin'?--Bushy Boy said "40,000" in one of those War speeches that nobody listened to or remembered even if they did listen.

It's all laid out for you in Pappy Bush's famous "New World Order and Thousand Points of Life" speech. Little Bush Baby spoiled brat rich oilman's son phony president knows it by heart. Oops, I forgot, he ain't got no heart, has he? Maybe he's pumping off Unka Dick's programmed heart.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

What's This: The Crux of Pappy's New World Order Speech---Yahooooo!

Our commitment to peace in the Middle East does not end with the liberation of Kuwait. So tonight let me outline four key challenges to be met. First, we must work together to create shared security arrangements in the region. Our friends and allies in the Middle East recognise that they will bear the bulk of the responsibility for regional security. But we want them to know that just as we stood with them to repel aggression, so now America stands ready to work with them to secure the peace. This does not mean stationing US ground forces on the Arabian Peninsula, but it does mean American participation in joint exercises involving both air and ground forces. It means maintaining a capable US naval presence in the region, just as we have for over 40 years. Let it be clear: our vital national interests depend on a stable and secure Gulf. Second, we must act to control the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the missiles used to deliver them. It would be tragic if the nations of the Middle East and Persian Gulf were now, in the wake of war, to embark on a new arms race. Iraq requires special vigilance. Until Iraq convinces the world of its peaceful intentions – that its leaders will not use new revenues to re-arm and rebuild its menacing war machine – Iraq must not have access to the instruments of war. And third, we must work to create new opportunities for peace and stability in the Middle East. On the night I announced Operation Desert Storm, I expressed my hope that out of the horrors of war might come new momentum for peace. We have learned in the modern age geography cannot guarantee security and security does not come from military power alone. All of us know the depth of bitterness that has made the dispute between Israel and its neighbours so painful and intractable. Yet, in the conflict just concluded, Israel and many of the Arab states have for the first time found themselves confronting the same aggressor. By now, it should be plain to all parties that peacemaking in the Middle East requires compromise. At the same time, peace brings real benefits to everyone. We must do all that we can to close the gap between Israel and the Arab states – and between Israelis and Palestinians. The tactics of terror lead nowhere. There can be no substitute for diplomacy. A comprehensive peace must be grounded in United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 and the principle of territory for peace. This principle must be elaborated to provide for Israel’s security and recognition, and at the same time for legitimate Palestinian political rights. Anything else would fail the twin tests of fairness and security. The time has come to put an end to Arab-Israeli conflict. The war with Iraq is over. The quest for solutions to the problem in Lebanon, in the Arab-Israeli dispute, and in the Gulf must go forward with new vigour and determination. And I guarantee you: no one will work harder for a stable peace in the region than we will. Fourth, we must foster economic development for the sake of peace and progress. The Persian Gulf and Middle East form a region rich in natural resources with a wealth of untapped human potential. Resources once squandered on military might must be redirected to more peaceful ends. We are already addressing the immediate economic consequences of Iraq’s aggression. Now the challenge is to reach higher – to foster economic freedom and prosperity for all people of the region. By meeting these four challenges, we can build a framework for peace. I’ve asked Secretary of State Baker to go to the Middle East to begin the process. He will go to listen, to probe, to offer suggestions, and to advance the search for peace and stability. I have also asked him to raise the plight of the hostages held in Lebanon. We have not forgotten them, and we will not forget them. To all the challenges that confront this region of the world, there is no single solution, no solely American answer. But we can make a difference. America will work tirelessly as a catalyst for positive change. But we cannot lead a new world abroad if, at home, it’s politics as usual on American defense and diplomacy. It’s time to turn away from the temptation to protect unneeded weapons systems and obsolete bases. It’s time to put an end to micro-management of foreign and security assistance programs, micro-management that humiliates our friends and allies and hamstrings our diplomacy. It’s time to rise above the parochial and the pork barrel, to do what is necessary, what’s right and what will enable this nation to play the leadership role required of us. The consequences of the conflict in the Gulf reach far beyond the confines of the Middle East. Twice before in this century, an entire world was convulsed by war. Twice this century, out of the horrors of war hope emerged for enduring peace. Twice before, those hopes proved to be a distant dream, beyond the grasp of man. Until now, the world we’ve known has been a world divided – a world of barbed wire and concrete block, conflict and cold war. Now, we can see a new world coming into view. A world in which there is the very real prospect of a new world order. In the words of Winston Churchill, a "world order" in which "the principles of justice and fair play ... protect the weak against the strong ..." A world where the United Nations, freed from cold war stalemate, is poised to fulfil the historic vision of its founders. A world in which freedom and respect for human rights find a home among all nations. The Gulf war put this new world to its first test, and, my fellow Americans, we passed that test. For the sake of our principles, for the sake of the Kuwaiti people, we stood our ground. Because the world would not look the other way, Ambassador [Saud Nasir] al-Sabah, to-night, Kuwait is free. Tonight as our troops begin to come home, let us recognise that the hard work of freedom still calls us forward. We’ve learned the hard lessons of history. The victory over Iraq was not waged as "a war to end all wars." Even the new world order cannot guarantee an era of perpetual peace. But enduring peace must be our mission ...

Verbal Abuse

It's Time For a Little Rabelais

The Inscription Set Upon The Great Gate of Theleme

Here enter not vile bigots, hypocrites,
Externally devoted apes, base snites,
Puffed-up, wry-necked beasts, worse than the Huns,
Or Ostrogoths, forerunners of baboons:
Cursed snakes, dissembled varlets, seeming sancts,
Slipshod cafards, beggars pretending wants,
Fat chuffcats, smell-feast knockers, doltish gulls,
Out-strouting cluster-fists, contentious bulls,
Fomenters of divisions and debates,
Elsewhere, not here, make sale of your deceits,

Your filthy trumperies
Stuffed with pernicious lies
(Not worth a bubble),
Would do but trouble
Our earthly paradise,
Your filthy trumperies.

Here enter not attorney, baristers,
Nor bridle-champing law practitioners:
Clerks, commissaries, scribes, nor parisees,
Wilful disturbers of the people's ease:
Judges, destroyers, with an unjust breath,
Of honest men, like dogs, even unto death.
Your salary is at the gibbet-foot:
Go drink there! for we do not here fly out
On those excessive courses, which may draw
A waiting on your courts by suits in law.

Lawsuits, debates, and wrangling
Hence are exiled, and jangling.
Here we are very
Frolic and merry,
And free from all entangling,
Lawsuits, debates, and wrangling.

[From Chapter 50, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Rabelais, 1928 Modern Library Edition]

"A horse is a horse, of course, of course..."

"...I am Mister Ed"
As you should know, we here at The Daily Growler read the obits like other people read the comics and we especially are attracted to the obits of those who to us are special Americans but who to you might be listed in the "Who Cares?" column of your interest. Hey, come on, we reported on Lew Burdette's death t'other day--day before yesterday--we don't know; we long ago lost track of time here at the beautiful The Daily Growler high-floor offices in one of the cob-shaped towers of the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota--that's right, folks, the building our offices are in is made out of corncobs--"Hey, Popeye, we got a corn crib that beats sixty," and we refer to William Faulkner's Popeye and not Popeye the Sailor or Popeye Doyle.

Anyway, we here at The Daily Growler happily/sadly celebrate/mourn the passing of the cat who wrote "Mona Lisa" [Nat "King" Cole's biggie] and "Que Sera Sera," [Doris Day's biggie from Hitchcock's Man Who Knew Too Much, a great one with Jimmy Stewart playing Jimmy Stewart the way Hitchcock wanted him to play Jimmy Stewart and those evil people in that weird London church. That movie gets a fistfuls of Wahooos! from Rex X. Greed, The Daily Growler ecstasy-addicted film and string theory critic and who gallivants around town with the seedily lovely Gracia Maison, the woman in his life he met at a boarding school for amputee equestrians--WOW, she's also the World Record Holder in the one-legged ski jump (a 500-foot straight down splat-landing beauty that brought the crowd to a thunderous standing-on-two-legs ovation though it left her face a bit mucked up) and the one-legged 26-mile marathon (her longstanding and seemingly unbeatable 101 hours and 59 minutes)].

Jeez, like thegrowlingwolf , we drift easily off the subject-- and the subject is Ray Evans--and onto an inane sideslope--but, hey, hey, hey, this dude also wrote the theme to Bonanza--Wow, come on, that's one of the great ones--but, also, dig this, this dude wrote the "Mr. Ed" theme song; that's right, the one sung by Mr. Ed himself on that old pre-digital teevee show. Here's his obit:

Oscar-winning songwriter of "Mona Lisa" dead at 92

Ray Evans died late Thursday, February 15, of heart failure at a Los Angeles hospital. Lyricist Evans collaborated with melody writer Jay Livingston for more than six decades, earning seven Academy Award nominations and winning three—in 1948 for "Buttons and Bows" in the film The Paleface, in 1950 for "Mona Lisa" in the movie Captain Carey, USA, and in 1956 for "Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)" from The Man Who Knew Too Much. The duo wrote songs for dozens of movies and two Broadway musicals, as well as the theme songs for Bonanza and Mister Ed, and the Christmas standard "Silver Bells." Evans changed the title of his most-beloved creation from "Prima Donna" to "Mona Lisa" on the advice of his art-loving wife, Wyn. Jay Livingston died in 2001 at age 86. Ray Evans was 92.

Sources: Yahoo! News, IMDB.com

It seems thegrowlingwolf is taking the day off...Way Off!

Watch out! Kids gangs are recruiting on the Internet. Such bullshit.

thestaff
for The Daily Growler

Why Don't We the People Merge?
Check this merger out--what bullshit:

Why would General Motors (NYSE: GM) consider buying DaimlerChrysler AG's (NYSE:DCX) Chrysler unit? Is GM lacking scale? Has anyone accused it of not being big enough or broad enough? Hasn't it already acquired many brands over the years and still run up against superior Japanese and German manufacturers? Will acquiring Chrysler help rebuild its own brand? Does GM need Chrysler? The obvious answer is no, it does not.

What GM needs is better car design, improved and more uniform quality control, sharper focus, better vision, more efficiency, streamlined management structure and less overhead burden. How does Chrysler solve any of these problems? It doesn't!

GM has spent the last year addressing many of these issues and its stock performance has reflected this, as the best performer among the Dow Industrials. It should continue to refine the company in this manner and not deliberately go out looking for new and unwarranted challenges. If Daimler is selling, GM should not be buying!

From www.bloggingstocks.com

"Blowin' the Blues Away"

Gold Among the Silver
I woke up early this morning--I can't sleep late anymore since they've started construction on this god-damn hotel two long blocks away from me though it sounds like it's in the room with me. The noise of that construction begins promptly at 7:30 so there's no sleepin' after that--the noise is atrocious and it seems archaic to me in this the 21st century when the most powerful engines in the world run in almost silence, with the exception of compressed-air driven destructive tools like jackhammers--oh, I complain too much--it's progress and progress is noisy and destructive and that's all there is to it--case closed--anyway, so I woke up cranky, a little morbid, whiny, you know, like the disgruntled wolf I naturally am. I needed relief. A relief beyond the relief of coffee and orange juice, which I need every morning just to get my eyelids unstuck.

So I woke up early this morning in a disturbed state, eyes glued shut, pried open by coffee and orange juice--and I moped around the apartment like a caged wolf, the noise of the construction jiving louder and louder--"Up your peace with this!" it was thundering, then finger-flashing adding, "I'm gonna get worse 'fore I get better"--I respond with whimpering, "I know; it's like being in a prison of noise; I know, I concede to prepare for your continuance, oh Mighty Chaotic Prince." I figure I've got to serve at least a year's sentence of this punishing noise, which, as my little Junco Partner taught me, "ain't no time."

He said "Six months___that ain't no sentence/
One year___that ain't no time/
I got friends__ seems they were born up in Angola/
They're doin' nine right on up to ninety-nine."

["Junco Partner" as sung by Little James Wayne from his LP From Texas to New Orleans.]

And, yes, friends, you gotta be tough to survive Angola, which is still running so privately democratically to this day in the great state of Lawsbanana, or Louisiana as you educated fools know it. [Excuse my throwing some "Groovie Boy" language at you--"Laws-bah-nanah" being the way Louisiana was pronounced by the Groovie Boy, the afternoon drive-time deejay at KWKH in Shreveport, Lawbanana, back in the "white" glorious 1950s when the Groovie One was black. Lawsbanana was Louisiana. Alabanana was Alabama. Get it? Fi-fo-fanna-banana.]

So as I was prowling the walls of my den early this morning coffee-ed up and jitterbugging against the outside noise, I out-of-thin-air spotted a CD I had not heard in a host of years; it just popped out at me from within a stack of about 500 CDs I have sitting beside my Mac computer. It was the CD issue of a 1959 Blue Note LP called Blowin' the Blues Away and featuring the Horace Silver Quintet and Trio, an album put together out of three different '59 recording sessions. What led me further to this CD was noticing Blue Mitchell's name on it--this was Horace's longest-running quintet--with Blue on trumpet, Junior Cook on tenor, and the trio, Horace on piano, Gene Taylor on bass, and the master drummer Louis Hayes on the tubs. Wow, I hadn't heard Blue Mitchell in years, that's for sure, so I put the damn thing in the CD tray (damn that sounds funny--I'm used to "putting them on the turntable"--"stackin' the changer"--hey, there's one for you hi-fi fans) and gave it a listen. And lo and behold, a blessed miracle, from the first tune on, "Blowin' the Blues Away," I was captured by that sound again, captured by that inevitable sound, that inimitable sound of Horace Silver comping and chomping away at his signature pianistic-percussive romp while these genius sidemen musicians give motion and energy to the whole panorama of Horace's Afro-Americo-tanged innermost blues expression, and, by God, folks, it worked again as it did before the last time I let it grab me and it soared me out of the dumps and into the realm of satisfaction, a satisfaction that even started even enjoyin' the noise. Praise the Lard and the Pig, from whom all blessings flow.

You know that's what kept jazz exploding, yes, its being foundated in the blues; it was the anti-improvisationalists who filtered the blues out of jazz, who filtered the "blackness" out of jazz, you heard me; jazz became routine, predictable, written down, assumed, and taken for granted; same as classical music had already become--remember, white folks and some black folks consider the blues "the Devil's music" and so do I and so has the blues all these years, every true blues man knowing, just like white European composers knew it, too (see Tartini's The Devil's Trill and Stravinsky's L'histoire du soldat), that if you wanted to be the best in your field you had to meet the Devil down at the famous Crossroads--Percy Mayfield called it "Dirty Work at the Crossroads"--where you sold your soul for the ability to master your instrument and thereby master your music and song, and the mastery of the blues included the eventual mastery of jazz, r and b, and certainly white rock & roll, which the Brits drained the blues out of with their lily-white versions of American originals, like their disgusting cover of the great Larry Williams's "Slow Down"--God, that music out of Houston, Texas, back in those days of Larry, and Paul "Hucklebuck" Williams, and Johnny "Guitar" Watson, and Gatemouth Brown, and Albert Collins, and Johnny Acea, and Ivory Joe Hunter, and Lightnin' Hopkins, and Buster Brown ("Fanny Mae" one of the good ole good one blues), and Little James Wayne, and Herman Parker, Jr.

But then we sold our culture to the highest bidders back in the 70s--first thing to me horrible that happened was that Leo Fender sold Fender Guitars to CBS who then sold them to the Japanese--this including Harold Rhodes's wonderful Rhodes Electric Pianos--again old Leo Fender getting richer since he had bought Rhodes and it was Fender-Rhodes and then CBS got the electric piano that then ended up, yep, in Japan, and then, of course, Japan became the bosses of electronic keyboards (Yamaha, Korg, Roland--American genius--we invented the insides of these machines--produced in Tokyo and Osaka); and, don't forget, we sold all our recording industry to the Japanese, Sony in particular and we sold all our film archives to the Japanese, again Sony the major owner now of a lot of our old films...crap, here I go growling into thin air again. I've got to muzzle myself.

And, damn, there on Horaces blowin' my blues away was "Sister Sadie"--bop--da-da-da-da-da--da--da! And soon I was dusting off my other pieces of Silver and soon I was dancing about the room and getting some serious work done. The noise! Hell, I was makin' the noise now.

Another Cut on Blowin' the Blues Away Was "Baghdad Blues"
And, yes, again today there were tons of blues being wailed in old Baghdad, with US and Iraqi troops going about kicking in doors--oh shit, let's blow away a couple of towelhead families, and, yes, some of our combine policing forces managed to wipe out a couple of Sodr City families, oh hell, I forgot, we water down civilians deaths in this War (this phony war that is really killing human beings by the thousands), so I suppose we can say 10 Sodr City families were massacred today by patrolling squads of brigadiers (remember Georgie Porgie, our phony president, talking about his "brigades"--a part of his brilliant "surge" military stategy that will soon accomplish the mission God gave him back before 9/11 for the soon to be US Dependency of Iraq; after all, he is Commander and Chief of our Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines and now our National Guards--they are his to use as he so commands (wishes)--he's the boss and they're his henchmen; they are hoodwinked into being ready to die for him; they're military taught and in the military if you ain't Commander in Chief, then you ain't nothin' but cannon fodder, so keep your F-in' (oh yes they use foul language in the God's US Christian military--I was once called a fucking jackanape by a little guy sergeant from Okie-homa while I was stationed in the hillbilly hills of Ozark Missouri--I thought that was clever and laughed like a hyena when he called me that--"You fuckin' little asshole. Give me 20 god-damn pushups, you motherfucking sissy man. And, by God, if I don't see you in chapel this Sunday morning, I'll be god-damn if I don't put your college-boy ass on permanent KP, you sniveling piece arrogant middle-class crap"--no problem, like Junco Partner said, "That ain't no Dozens a real stepper can't rebutt."

Bush's feelings about US soldiers are the same he has for those soldiers in his fastly developing private army, the Blackwater private army of 20,000 trained soldiers of fortune; both the US Army and the Blackwater Army (you know it's subsidized by the Pentagon) volunteer soldiers are paid to put their asses on the line for the wishes of the Bossman, the head of the old Plantation, Mr. Georgie Porgie "Whitey" Bush and his Miss Pickles--oh my goodness gracious, look, Massah Bush is using Guantanamo terrerists and Mexican immigrants as his slaves--and, remember, following in the steps of his idol, Abraham "Ship 'Em to Liberia" Lincoln, Georgie will eventually send all his blacks back to Africa. Blackwater can escourt them overthere. [By the bye, Blackwater formed a "national security" company today, offering the same kinds of services the CIA and the FBI are currently involved in to both corporate and government firms (doesn't that sound like good ole National Socialism?); this company will include spying on American citizens and databanking all sorts of info on We the People, like files of our fingerprints, medical records, grade school-high school-college records, employment records, bank records, phone records--and, of course, hi-tech Internet spying, too! Can you imagine Blackwater breaking down your door and kidnapping you based on information they have gathered that intimates you're sending money to a terrerist organization--like the Saudi-Arabian government maybe--the Blackwater gang has that power now; they are a private arm of the government run by ex-CIA goons all led by a right-wing Christian nutjob and, of course, billionaire, which is why he has the privilege of putting together his own private army--Blackwater has an army of 20,000, folks, keep remembering, I kid you not.]

I am not a soothsaying wolf, however, folks. I am conjecturing, maybe lycophantically, and afterall, I am a fictional writer who is a writer of fiction, though to a fiction writer fiction is reality, yes, we will bomb Iran. Unka Dick proved by his statements in all the foreign countries he was in this week that he is an out-of-control tyrant without a "heart" or a "soul," a ruthless old temporary human--I mean he's gonna die soon--I predict that; yep, he's a drinkin' man besides having had about 20 heart attacks. Buddy Rich had several massive heart attacks and he kept playing the drums until cancer got his ass. See what I mean? Though, Jesus, I feel bad about using poor ole Buddy as a reference to Unka Dick--Buddy was a tyrant, but at least his tyranny gave us exciting, inspiring, and elevating good music, groove, and amazing virtuosic showmanship. Unka Dick on the other hand can't even kill an old pal even when he shoots him dead in the face with a shotgun--like Little Walter Jacobs threatened to do to his baby in that great old blues, Just Your Fool.

If you ever leave me/ for someone new/
I'm gonna buy me a shotgun/ shoot dead at you/
I ain't lyin'/ no used to jivin'/
I'm just your fool.

Winnie the Pooh Churchill
I have been wanting of late to slam down the late Brit fop-half-American, Winnie "the Loser" Churchill--the desire hitting me after I watched a PBS (our US Public BritishBroadcasting System) special on Winston the other evening and it amazed me how truly stupid this man was, how wishy-washy and totally self-centered this half-bred snob was, and yet how he got people to trust his leadership even though most of his military plans led to grave failures over and over from the time his privilege as the son of a Brit Peer got him involved in the military affairs of early 20th Century Britain on through until his Last Hurrah when in his sixties he became the WWII Wartime Prime Minister of England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the Commonwealth, and the Empire of India and found himself foundering on the brink of Nazi takeover until he used his American blood as a hole card to sucker his American cousins into saving England once again just as we had done in WWI when we shipped arms to England on our protected cruise ships, like the Lusitania--remember the Lusitania?

But I can't bring myself to concentrate on Winnie long enough to picador him properly afore I apply the muleto downward into that hump at the back of his bully neck.

By the bye, you know the "Peace Sign"? Two fingers held up in the air followed by the utterance of "Peace...shhhhhhhhhh peaceful." Winnie started that. It was "V" for Victory--or dot-dot-dot-dash in Morse Code, standing for "V"-Victor, then transposed onto the four opening notes to Beethoven's 5th Symphony, that became--DOT-DOT-DOT-DASH! The hippies started using it to mock the old Vets and shit who used to come out and try and bash our filthy hippy heads in, hating our long hair, mine at one time hanging down to my ass, I swear, even though we kept mocking these fools with "Hey, creepos, Jesus had long hair and you worship his ass--here, worship this" and then you'd throw 'em the Peace Sign--which does contain the middle finger, remember--so ya see, the way the hippies used the V for Victory sign, the Peace Sign, was like flipping the bird at the War Hawks, the puff chested generals, and "search and destroy" FBI agents and agents provocateurs, and the local fat-bellied cops, and the Southern gentlemen racist clowns in their white sheets and hoods, looking for some helpless "kneegrows" to string up--or some Jew kids from that Jew York City to maybe seal up in a dirt dam on the old Pearl River--"Ain't that the same river we dunked Emmett Till in?" Hot damn it's fun when you can kill with impunity.

Killin'--we are killer animals. It's the meateater in us.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

And Speaking of Baghdad
Hey, it's as though someone at BuzzFlash has been reading The Daily Growler

In many ways, the road to Baghdad began symbolically at Little Rock Central High School, which was desegregated 50 years ago after armed federal intervention.

It was one of the milestones of the Civil Rights era -- and a sign to the white southern male that the era of plantation style entitlement was finally coming to an end. It's hard even, today, to realize that some people felt that they were closer to God and civilized standards because of the color of their skin. It's hard, because some people -- although not publicly proclaiming the belief -- still harbor it.

In fact, one could argue that the entire Bush Administration -- black window dressing like Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice aside -- is about white male entitlement.

The mystery of what Bush and Cheney mean when they endlessly proclaim that GIs must die to accomplish the honor of "our mission" and achieve "victory" can be resolved with an understanding of white man's rules.

Bush and Cheney have offered us so many different "missions" for Iraq that they remind one of a toy terrier on speed.

But they have a different "mission" and definition of "victory" locked inside their heads, one that they dare not speak out loud. It's quite simple: the white man wins. For the white man to lose -- as the South did in the Civil War -- is to be shamefully dishonored.

Haven't we been babbling all along that that's what all this is; well certainly thegrowlingwolf has just recently written about this being the last stance of white male supremacy in this turning-brown country--and we've been sayin' all along that Capitalism works best when you have slave labor. The full editorial is from:

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/editorials/125

Immortals Do Die

Lew Burdette Dies at 80
Burdette would pitch in the Major Leagues for 18 seasons, going 202-144 with a 3.66 ERA. The bulk of career was spent with the Braves, though he also pitched for the Cardinals, Cubs, Phillies and Angels, including going 7-2 as a 39-year-old in 1966 for California. He was a two-time All-Star and the MVP of the '57 World Series.

[from Major League Baseball News]

Ironically, I happened to be cataloging a 1951 Three I League baseball I'm selling that comes from the Quincy Gems, a Yankees affiliate who were league champions that year. In looking up info on the Gems, I came across Lew Burdette's name--he was signed by the Yankees in '47 and was sent to the Three I League to the Quincy Gems. Burdette's record in Quincy was so impressive he was brought up to the Majors. He pitched his first season for the Yankees; Warren Spahn was on that team, too, but then Lew was traded to the Boston Braves, where he pitched uneventful ball for a couple of years until the Boston Braves became the Milwaukee Braves when the whole team caught fire in the middle '50s, when Lew had his best years, winning 20 games two years in a row, 1958 and 1959.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/b/burdele01.shtml

From 1956 to 1961, Lew won 114 games; he was MVP in National League 56, 57, 58, 59. Burdette was in two World Series, 57 and 58 against the New York Yankees, winning in 57, Lew was the MVP, and then losing the next year. After the 58 World Series, it would be 33 years before the Atlanta Braves finally got back in the World Series.

So old Lew Burdette is dead. There was nothing like watching the Milwaukee Braves in those days, with big Eddie Matthews and a guy named Hank Aaron hitting mighty homeruns and Warren Spahn and Lew Burdette led the majors in pitching--plus when the Braves moved from Boston to Milwaukee, the Braves set a National League attendance record.... Goodbye, Lew.

I Had Meant to Write About Babble
Babble. I always assumed it came from the Tower of Babel (in Akkadian it’s bab-ilu (accent over the “a”) meaning “gate of god”) fable as spieled out in that great Jewish tome the Christians turned into their Holy Babel...oops, Bible in the grand Book of Genesis, said to have been written by Old Holy Moses himself (what’s this “book,” 20 pages? and what did Moses write it on? and where was Moses’s library? uh-oh, I’m reverting back to my days of reading Thomas Paine, especially his great piece of skeptic thinking, Age of Reason, in which he totally destroys whatever little reason there was for such a fabulous history in the first place—all, by the bye, woven from the ancient cloth of Mesopotamia myth.

[A The Daily Growler aside: There are now in Afghanistan daily suicide bombings all over the country; it is said Afghanistan before Georgie Porgie Bush decided it was the ‘cause of 9/11, even though there were no Afghanistanis involved in the attacks seldom if ever, even at the height of the struggle against the Soviets (where all of this actually comes from--why even Brother Osama was in Afghanistan; how the Taliban got control of the country—it takes more than growling to get at what’s happening to all of us these days—it takes going for the throat, going for the sure solution, dammit…WHEW. I gotta shake like a just-wet wolf---shake it out. I mean all of this bullshit is nervewracking. Reason tells you this is all done on cardboard—like a cartoon comes from being cardboard sketches early day painters used to get an idea of what their final canvas should look like—even when cartoons became comic strips they are done on cheap sheets of newsrag—newspaper paper is watered down cardboard…OK, I’m beating a dead horse.]

Babble is defined as “1 a: to talk enthusiastically or excessively b: to utter meaningless or unintelligible sounds” (from my good ole Webster’s Collegiate, 10^th edition). Aren’t words without definition—or even sentences without definition “unintelligible sounds”? Like a Christian preacher preaching—it’s the same as a dog wildly barking—you have to be able to define the babble of it all to get any point to their need of attention.

And it’s all about a need for attention. Why am I wasting so much of my valuable time posting this shit every day—and I’m up over 300 postings now—and they are beastly long postings, too; I’m so full of babble—“growling enthusiastically” and certainly perhaps excessively. [I suddenly have the urge to play the piano—tickling my plastic ivories into melodious babble.]

thebabblinggrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

Progress Is Disturbing My Peace

What New York City Needs...Another Hotel
I came to New York City because I didn't want to go to Los Angeles. Where I come from it's natural if you leave home you go further West, and if you think you're talented or if you want to cop a good-paying job you go to L.A. Since I grew up doing the opposite of what my parents wanted for me, rather than be a top scientist and going to Stanford so I could get a job at Livermore, I decided I wanted to be a writer and a musician and all the writing and music I was into was coming out of NYC--the best jazz was up here and the best publishers were here and NYC represented the highest level my ambitions could carry me to. I mean when I came to NYC, the Village Voice was still an independent "Greenwich Village" newspaper, started by Norman Mailer and another guy down on Seventh Avenue right before you came to Sheridan Square, the heart of the serious Village. The Village was still affordable, though it already was going up in real estate value, but for $400 a month you could still get a cool apartment down there.

When I moved to NYC, there was also an alternative newspaper going, The East Village Other, or the EVO, right up the street from the Fillmore East, still in business then, and I went there a couple'a times, once to see Miles, and another time B.B. King (wild!)-- and Slugs was still in business, and Jaki Byard was the house pianist at an East Side drinking establishment called Stanley's.

When I moved to NYC, SoHo (South of Houston Street) and the A.I.R. (Artists in Residence) lofts were just coming on-line as the old factories and industries moved off of Greene, Mercer, Prince, West Broadway streets--leaving all those wonderful old tin-facade buildings vacant. After the machinery had been removed, you were left with big wide and high loft spaces, with tons of great windows letting in great light and high ceilings with fancy tin insignia, and underfoot, wonderful plank wood floors--and SoHo soon was cooking with artists and musicians--a bar called Nick's on Broome, just down from Kenny's Broome Street Bar (still going), and the Prince Street Bar, and then on over by Broadway the fabulous Fanelli's, and old Mike Fanelli was still alive and always standing at the end of the bar, and there was always crackers and great cheese available as tapas or you could order great Italian dinners with tons of garlic bread--and the walls were still full of boxers's glossy 8 x 10s or race horse-related paintings and photos. Fanelli's is still going but it's now a trendy, show-offey, full of cell-phone-important nerds and nerdettes, stars and streaking comets place, a gathering of fools who consider themselves all-important, which they express in overloud jabber palaver and exaggerated body language. What I'm trying to say, this new freaky breed in the Apple sees NYC as a mountain of gold and come here to live lives of conspicuous consumption, going into where the artists and musicians had created a great community with these fabulous lofts, and taking them over with wheelbarrels of cash, which, of course, when the artists and musicians made these lofts popular, hell yes, the F-ing greedy Old World European landlords began selling out to the highest bidders, the corporate lawyers and stock exchange crunchers and hustlers and the young interns that work the Stock Exchange floor--big money quick during stock markets that are propped up like the current stock market, currently topping off at a Dow that is through the roof--12,760 today--which means that 100s of millions of shares of stock are trading every damn weekday--it seems impossible to me how one can base anything on such numbers to crunch--there must be at least 5,000 ways to scam and swindle at the Stock Exchange--you know, it's all computerized so some computer nerd must know ways to hack into large accounts and skim off maybe cents--or you know, make phony sales and shit, charging coming and going fees by selling and rebuying and reselling several times during a 100 million share day. Surely somebody down there does this, don't you think? I mean, check out something as simple as your phone bill; look at the ways the phone companies can scam you for pennies--you wouldn't know if your phone bill was padded, would you? Just a couple of cents maybe. I accused a world-renown bookkeeping (euphemistically now called "management consultants") firm of skimming pennies off my paychecks. I once naggingly asked a human resource person why my checks were'n't exactly the same every two weeks; why one check would be for $3, 256.36 and the next check might be for $3, 256.29. Dig? A difference of seven cents. Multiple 7 cents times 5,000 employees. Aha, a tidy little sum if you know anything about creative accounting.

The Lower East Side is pretty much being ruined by speculators as I type on this. There's still a community down there, though not like it used to be when it was Polish, Jewish, and Ukrainian, full of great delis and the Janette Diner and the Kiev with its great pirogies, but now...well, it's a lot of Buffalo wing places, a lot of bars and nouveau cuisine joints--no punk bars anymore; no Electric Lady freaks boogie-ing around stoned out of their gourds. Now there are nerd bars on St. Mark's Place and where there used to be poetry readings there are now loud cell-phone conversations between the bourgeoisie self-important. The Lower East Side will soon be getting its 55-story luxury apartment buildings--oh the developers love the Lower East Side; it's a low-level building area, free of gaudy skyscrapers--but not for long. The developers have their eyes on all of the Lower East Side, especially over along the river, over below where back in the 70s they built a shoddily built old ex-Mitchell-Lama apartment complex with affordable apartments based on people's incomes--most of those early tenants there were school teachers, Con-Ed employees, social workers, city workers, you know, union people, too--but now, oh no, now, it's under new management and apartments go for way over 2,000 a month--but they'll get it because those towers have magnificent river views and soon the money-soaked foreigners, the Saudis, the Asian kids, the Euro-trash will be buying NYC apartments and selling them in Europe as time shares--yeah, they do that; New Yorkers don't know that though; we're stupid and so busy trying to make big bucks so we can continue to live here. You have to make at least 100,000 a year to just survive in all of NYC. I just read that Manhattan County, that's Manhattan Island, has the highest salary levels in the US of A at $738.00 a week--I don't know if that's take-home pay or not, but if it's take-home pay, yes, that's damn good, though not if it's before taxes pay. Taxes in NYC are triple high since they take city, state, and federal taxes out of your check (the government stealing from your earnings--very unConstitutional, but Amuricans are total wimps when it comes to standing up for their rights)--you end up getting robbed of around 25 to 30% of your gross--which, based on $738 a week, comes to about $225 a week OUT, leaving you with 500-plus bucks a week, chickenfeed in NYC, I guarantee you.

Young people come here and gaggle up in some of these luxury buildings 4 to a great high-story studio with great views, great for partying, $3500-a-month, but divided by four it becomes $900 a month, and, hey, that's an amount Love Me Daddies won't mind paying at all--I mean, hell, he's paying 20,000-to-30,000-a-year for NYU or Columbia tuition so what's another $10, 500 a year to him. Besides, there's student loans and Love Me Daddy has given them cell phones and credit cards, so, shit, that's who has the good life in NYC now, STUDENTS! Kids of very rich parents; and there are thousands of these kids coming to NYC from all over the world; NYC has tons of colleges, man, all up and down the Island, City University and all its branches; Columbia; Baruch; John Jay; Pace; the Fashion Institute; Parsons School of Design; Hunter; Fordham-Manhattan; NYU--and across the East River is Brooklyn College, Queens College, LaGuardia--God-damn, and all these students romping all over the Village now, the Lower East Side, spending money like it's water--the scene in this once-great city has totally changed, from one of great culture, great neighborhoods, great chance, and great industry to one of service jobs, sales jobs, highly competitive creative jobs in advertising or publishing--it's all SERVICE--SERVANTS--SERVANTS to the lucky rich or the established rich or the corporate rich. Artists? Yeah, there are still artists working in NYC, but there is no movement alive here anymore--it's art for art's sake. The music--NYC has regressed so much Irish music, Latin music, and Reggae are still going strong. Rap is, too, but that's another extension of the music I came to NYC to learn and learn to appreciate. Classical music here? I don't know; last classical event I attended was Eliot Carter's 90th Birthday Concert with thedailygrowlerhousepianist, many moons ago now. I haven't been to Carnegie Hall since the 70s. I haven't been to the Metropolitan Art Museum in 35 years. It's true. I find old art boring now--oh, yes, don't get me wrong, I'm still amazed by Van Gogh and Gauguin; and, yes, Turner still amuses me; and, yes, I really was into Claude Monet and the French Impressionists at one young time. I must admit I never got totally into Picasso. Vlaminck? Yes. Man Ray? Yes. And I loved Ravel. Some Debussy. Honneger. But, I don't need to go gawk at them any more--except maybe for some of the old, old masters like Fra Lippo Lippi, especially a nice little one Hemingway introduced me to in one of his books that used to be in the Metropolitan.

The worst thing that has happened to Manhattan, however, is our little billionaire mayor and his developer giveaways of land that really, according to the Constitution of the Commonwealth of New York State belongs to the people of the State of New York--yep, New York is a Commonwealth state, like Massachusetts--in a commonwealth state, land is owned by the citizens of NY State and leased to developers who either improve it or lose it--instead, the current private land ownership in NYC leads to total areas abandoned by land owners and left sitting fallow and unproductive for years and years as it's held by the city or county--Jesus, it's complicated--but anyway, our mayor has visions of building his own Bloomberg Mall, which is going to gut the West Side of Midtown Manhattan and his redeveloping of the Jacob Javitts Center area--he wants seven or eight luxury hotels overthere around that white elephant piece of crap architecture that was the folly of our great "How'm I doin'?" mayor, Ed Crotch, an old gay who stayed in the closet--he did try to come out straight one time by dating nutjob American Jewish Princess princess of the year first Jewish Miss America Beth Meyerson--later becoming a famous shoplifter, but that failed to gain the seriousness of anybody, so old Ed kept his gayness in closet and is now, though ancient, living a swell life, worth millions of soaked bucks. Ed Crotch got beat by NYC's first black mayor, David Dinkins, who tried, but NYC is a racist town, it's a brown town ruled by whites who think they're superwhites because some of them are among the richest human beings in the world--our little man vulgar mayor included--and the head of the MTA and the heads of the Port Authority, filthy rich white swindlers, and scammers, and bullshitters, lining their own nests, living well off the stupid conspicuously consuming tax paying New Yorkers.

I am looking away from New York City these days and I thought I'd never say that when I first came here. It's still probably the best city in the world, but these rich M-F-ers are determined to ruin it. Our little man billionaire pompous mayor--he's giving away NYC development rights and changing zoning laws for and shit like that to his big developer friends, like the bullshit rich asshole who's forcing the mediocre New Jersey Nets basketball team on the citizens of Brooklyn. The Nets were once the New York Nets--residing out on the Island as the basketball side of the New York Mets baseball team, the New York Jets football team, and the New York Islanders hockey team. Doctor J was the star of the New York Nets. But then they decided they could scam more money off the fools of New Jersey and they moved to the Meadowlands out in the middle of a great old wetlands--full of mosquitos--oh no! (The Meadowlands even put the great old Yonkers Raceway (harness racing) out of business.) Well now, they're comin' back to NYC, to Brooklyn, and not just to Brooklyn but right in the smack-dab middle of downtown Brooklyn, wiping out huge chunks of square blocks of that mellow old downtown--putting up the tacky basketball arena--Madison Square Garden is a terrible eyesore right up the street from me--and, of course, the hotels and luxury apartment buildings that will be developed around it--hey, it'll put Brooklyn on the map again, the mayor is saying. He doesn't really give a shit about what the citizens of Brooklyn think and want--he's forcing it down their throats. He tried to force the New York Jets back on us, too, wanting to build a 57,000-seat stadium right in the smack-dab middle of West Side Manhattan (57,000 is the statistically correct number of seats a sports team needs these days to pretty much meet every game in order to make a profit on season and general tickets--check it out, every new stadium foisted on the people of sports cities every 20 years or so, is now of 57,000 capacity. I remember when Yankee Stadium held 75,000; so did horrible old Cleveland Muni Stadium--the one they built facing Lake Erie--one of the coldest ballparks ever; so did the Polo Grounds. Teevee changed that. It doesn't look as good on teevee when 57,000 fans are in attendance at a 75,000-seat stadium--I mean that's 25,000 empty seats--it looks bad on teevee. Only the rasslin' shows use graphic-art fan fill ins to make it look like their events are packed to the gills--they also run canned crowd noise during their phony shows.

And now, the number 1 industry in NYC? The Tourist Industry. Oh shit. That's it. NYC is now a tourist trap. Why would anyone want to come to this city on their vacation? I mean the average hotel room goes for $575 a night and a cheap meal in a restaurant is $25, which means tourists all eat mostly at Burger Kings and McDonald's, the same food they eat out on their corn farms or pig farms or meat-processing plant areas of the old bald prairielands; I'm not kidding.

Tourists can also get rooms in these old remodeled crack hotels that dot every block of this city, most now bought up by Indians (they're expert hotel operators; they were taught well by the snooty Brits when they were woggy native boy servants to them--Gunga Din! Gunga Din! Bring me water! "I say, woggy lad, where's my tea, dammit? You will hurry or I'll whip your smarmy ass white." "Yes, sahib!" Walking out backwards bowing. We'll soon be doing that in our New World Order State that will soon be formed by Georgie Porgie, our phony president, and his puppetmeister, Unka Dick, who is crowing vulgarly loud against the pansy Dumbocrats not wanting to increase our troop numbers in Iraq and Afghanistan and back our nuclear war attack on Iran. You are a terrerist to these guys if you are for peace.

As a result of the Tourist Industry and the progress it is making taking over this city my peace these days is being shatteringly disturbed--they are starting construction of a billion-room skyscraper hotel off behind me two blocks over on Sixth Avenue, but the site is totally opened to the view out my windows and the sound from the site, the blasting, the jackhammering, the explosive rackets that go on from 7:30 am to 5:15 pm every day come dancing madly right straight in through my windows. My neighborhood will sound like a normal day in current democratic Baghdad for the next year or so.

I'd say something totally put down about Winston Churchill here, but I'll save that for another attack on the Brits.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

Tributes

Oscar Brown, Jr.
I first remember Oscar Brown, Jr., from a teevee show called Jazz Scene, a Steve Allen produced show from Los Angeles that ran in the early 60s, of which he was the host. Great shows; I've got as many of them on VHS as I could find: Jimmy Smith, Phineas Newborn, Frank Rossolini, Stan Kenton, Shelly Manne and his Men, so far; 30-minute shows with live audiences, too. He was teevee cool with a perfect speech, you know, kind'a kindly phony, that tone of voice that is programmed, and Oscar Brown, Jr., had learned the radio and teevee business at an early age, as an 18-year-old on a radio program out of Chicago called Negro News Front as a broadcaster. From there he went to the WMAQ-Chicago radio drama Destination Freedom, written by the famous black radio drama writer Richard Durham.

Oscar ran for the House of Representatives in Chicago when he was 22 years old, in 1948 (born in '26)--Paul Robeson came and sang and spoke at one of his rallies.

OBJr came to New York City in the 50s with a Broadway-type show he'd written called Kicks & Company. Got his break when he sang some of his tunes from this show on Dave Garroway's Today Show (yes, the original Today Show) and Garroway was from Chicago and into jazz and gave Oscar his chance. His show was taken over by Lorraine Hansbury's [A Raisin in the Sun] husband, Robert Nemiroff and Art DeLugoff and then OBJr got an album contract from Columbia and his first album Sin & Soul and then Max Gordon gave him a night at the Village Vanguard and Oscar was on his way. The tune "Dat Der," off this album I remember was covered so specially by Horace Silver on one of his Blue Note albums. Also, Oscar Brown, Jr., wrote a clean version of "The Signifyin' Monkey," which was from an old black prisoner way of communicating called "The Life"--rhyme--this Life poetry being an early form of rap--In fact, hell, Oscar Brown later became a King of the earliest way of rapping with his "Bid 'Em In, Bid 'Em In," where he pretends he's a white slave trader auctioning off his new batch of slaves down on the old New Orleans Slave Block, the largest slave block in the USA; even larger than the one at Charleston, South Carolina [down in New Orleans, the old slave block was located in the Vieux Carre on the site of Aunt Sally's Original Praline Shop, and I remember Aunt Sally's when I first went to New Orleans as a kid and had my photo made in front of the huge Aunt Jemima statue that stood out front that was supposedly an authentic replica of Aunt Sally, a large, happy faced, black woman who became famous in the Vieux Carre for her pralines, wonderful candy patties made from molasses and cane sugar and filled with pecans and then allowed to crystalize--later developing into the local wonderful peanut patties we down South used to eat while washing them down with R-O'C Colas [that's a Royal Crown Cola and I'll bet either you've never heard of RC Cola or at least haven't seen an RC (we pronounced it R-Oh-C) Cola in many a moon; last I saw one was in a Safeway Store in bargain cans next to Safeway's own cheap-ass cola brand Shasta. I know the original Royal Crown Cola Bottling Company was bought by old Art Linkletter--anybody remember him? He got rich off his radio shows in the 40s and then off his House Party teevee shows in the fab 50s. One of his sons, a dumber version of Art (a Canadian Christian preacher boy), Jack, got to do a lot of teevee shows until he died while still young; Art's daughter, I'm pretty sure, OD'd on drugs--she became a hippy, see, rebelling against her old strict-hypocrite daddy. I once bought an Australian oil stock because of Art Linkletter--I read where he was buying it so I immediately bought a thousand shares of it--Santos Drilling--my ex-wife ended up with them when we got divorced; that stock was worth 50 grand then. Why do I bring such things out of my past up? It has to be self-abuse].

Oscar also became famous for his great "40 Acres and a Mule," the same sort of narrative sing-song as "Bid 'Em In."

There's a PBS tribute to Oscar Brown, Jr., that you can check out and hear Oscar telling his own story. By the time he died in 2005 he was totally into doing these long rap/rhyme things like "Bid 'Em In" and "40 Acres and a Mule"--brilliant powerful performances, spoken while his pianist, Floyd Morris, backed him up with some choice blues progressions. I'm sure you can find Oscar Brown doing one of those on YouTube. Check him out; he's quite an American phenomenon who no one probably really remembers today and tomorrow he may be long forgotten.

The Signifyin' Monkey
Here's the version I memorized back when I used to perform it at private parties. Then I owned a rare little paperback called The Life; I bought it off an old friend who used to work at the famous Gotham Bookmart (now demolished) on 48th Street (Diamond Alley) in NYC; it's also pretty close to the version I had previously learned from the great raconteur and registered reverend, Johnny Otis, of the Johnny Otis Show fame--Little Esther was one of his discoveries--Shuggy Otis was his son--he was white but claimed he was black; I first heard Johnny's version of "Signifyin' Monkey" one night high on Emerald City (crystal meth) at the apartment of a saxophone genius and great friend of mine:

The Signifyin' Monkey told the Lion one day/
There's a bad motherfucker back down the way/
He's talkin' 'bout yo mamma and yo little sister Lou/
Why he's even talkin' 'bout how yo ole granny can screw/
He's talkin' 'bout yo papa and yo sissy brother Joe/
He said he thinks you eat pussy, but he isn't for shore...

Watch out for that monkey__________and all his off-the-wall jive.

Well, the Lion took off like a jungle breeze/
Knockin' coconuts down and giraffes to their knees/
He came upon this elephant and he said/
Hey, big bad motherfucker, I hear some shit about you/
'Bout all these bad things you s'posed to do/
The elephant looked the Lion out the corner of his eye/
And said, 'Hey, man, why don't you pick on somebody yo own size?'/
Well, then the Lion jumped up and made a fancy pass/
But the elephant simply kicked him right square in his ass/
Well, the Lion got up and he swung from the ground/
But the elephant knocked his old ass right back down...

Watch out for that monkey_______________and all his off-the-wall jive.

Well, the Lion came back more dead than alive/
And that's when the Monkey really started his jive/
He said, 'I thought you called yourself the jungle king?/
Why, man, you don't show me a god-damn thing/
Why, my old lady told me 'fore she left, she said/
I could probably whup yo ass my motherfuckin' self...

Watch out for that monkey______________and all his off-the-wall jive.

Well, the Monkey got happy, started jumpin' up and down/
His little left foot missed the limb and his little ass hit the ground/
The Lion was on that monkey's ass with all four feet/
Like a bolt of lightnin' and a streak of heat/
Then the Monkey started bawlin', 'Please, Mr. Lion, let my nuts out the sand/
And I'll stand back and fight you like a natural man'/
So, the Lion got up, got back, got ready to fight/
And the Monkey said, 'Bye, Motherfucker_____________/
And ran dead out of sight...

Watch out for that monkey_____________and all his off-the-wall jive.

The Only Video of Charles Parker, Jr.
You can surely find it on YouTube; it's the only complete performance by Charles Parker, Jr., ever found. He and Dizzy are guests on Broadway columnist Earl Wilson's early days, '51 (?), teevee show. They are on the show with Leonard Feather [another Brit who became a self-declared expert on America's jazz music] who represented Down Beat magazine and gave old racist Earl a couple of plaques to give to Chas and Diz as winners that year in the Down Beat jazz poll for best saxophone player and trumpet player--the Down Beat jazz poll and the album reviews used to make or break jazz musicians in the early days of "modern" jazz--both jazz rags, Down Beat and Metronome had jazz polls and album reviews but Down Beat's were the gold standard for the genre.

Most folks know the video but few know who the sidemen are on that film. Here they are, folks: Sandy Block is the bass player; Charlie Smith (a great drummer who was on Max and Mingus's Debut label) was the drummer; and Dick Hyman was the piano player. Dick was once a fairly famous organist and pianist. He played in a lot of styles from Ragtime to Dixieland to Boogie to Be-Bop, though we boppers never accepted him as a real jazz man; he was too commercial for our taste, though Dick Hyman was involved with a lot of jazz albums. He could play pretty good block chordal things, a la Milt Buckner, Lionel Hampton's piano player in his great WWII 40s band that featured Arnett Cobb and Herbie Fields in saxophone battles on Lionel's "Flyin' Home" (he wrote it with Charles Christian though Benny Goodman put his name on it, too; hey, Benny got a little piece of all the action written while a member of his band--Benny couldn't write for shit; that's why he kept the greatest arrangers of his day in his band, especially Fletcher Henderson--the original pianist in the Benny Goodman Trio, Fletcher, Lionel Hampton on drums, and Harry Goodman, Benny's brother, on bass).

One of the first LP albums I ever bought was a Lionel Hampton reissue of a bunch of all-star sessions Lionel had led in the late 30s and early 40s on RCA Victor using members of the Basie, Calloway, and Ellington bands, like Chu Berry--they do Chu's "Hollywood Shuffle"--Chu was a hero of Chas. Parker, Jr.'s; in fact, Parker named his son, Leon, after Leon "Chu" Berry. Also Ben Webster was there; Johnny Hodges; Clyde Hart, the great pianist who died very young; and the first recorded solo of a young trumpet player from Cheraw, South Carolina, named John Birks Gillespie--he does a muted solo on a tune called "Hot Mallets"--a blistering piece that turns total be-bop when Dizzy comes in blowing.

From the American Composer Lou Harrison About Charles Ives
"I got the idea intellectually from Mr. Ives of inclusivitiy--that you don't do exclusively one kind of thing. I really like what Henry Brant calls the 'grand universal circus,' and I think that Charles Ives was the great creator musically of this, just as Whitman was poetically. After all, not one thing is everything. ... It seems to me that the Ives achievement is total. It's complete, it's grand, it's world-scale, and it's there forever." [Lou Harrison interview in Charles Ives Remembered, Vivian Perlis, Da Capo Books, 1994, p. 200.]

It's So Nice to Not Have to Talk About Something as Beneath Me as WAR.


thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler