Happy Halloween!

Good luck sleeping after these videos!

In case you don't know who Fever Ray is, here she is receiving the prize for 2010's best dance artist at the P3 Gold awards show in Gothenburg.

A Note from the National Affairs Desk

In something you can't say everyday, today the former campaign manager of the sitting American President surrendered to the FBI.

To go even further, so did the campaign manager's business partner.  Both were charged with conspiracy against the United States of America.

Also today, a former advisor to the president was arrested for lying to the FBI.  About his connections to the Kremlin.

Yes, it's been a bad day for the short-fingered vulgarian, and to make matters worse, on top of all that a court today overturned his ban on transgendered persons serving in the military.  

In unrelated news (or is it?), today Netflix dropped the Kevin Spacey series House of Cards following discovery that Spacey sexually molested a minor.   

Yes, the noose of justice is slowly tightening beneath the many chins of little Donald Trump and his pussy-grabbing ilk (or Ball Palmers, as the case may be), and lest you think by the "noose" reference we're advocating death by hanging for them, consider this:

"He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the lord." - Deuteronomy 23:1

A Note From the Sports Desk

This season's success by the Georgia Bulldogs football team has not gone unnoticed here at WDW.  Yesterday, the then No. 3 Bulldogs beat Florida by a commanding 42-7, and to make things even sweeter, No. 2 Penn State lost to Ohio State.  Today, the AP rankings have Georgia at No. 2, right behind No. 1 Alabama.

The 8-0 Bulldogs have a good chance to go undefeated this season, and at this point., it seems almost inevitable that they'll face Alabama in the SEC Championship Game.  That will most certainly be a tough game to win and if they do they should be ranked No. 1 in the country, but here's the rub: it's not entirely impossible that given Alabama's success, and even more their reputation, that if Alabama loses to Georgia in the SEC Championship, they may only drop down a few spots in the polls and still be ranked No. 3 or 4 in the country.

That would mean that Georgia would have to play Alabama a second time.  If Georgia is No. 1 and Alabama No. 4, they'll play each other in the National Championship Playoff Game, facing each other again for a second consecutive game.  Two Georgia-Alabama games in a row!  If Georgia is No. 1 and Alabama No. 3, and Alabama wins their playoff game against the No. 2 team, then Georgia and Alabama will face off in the National Championship (assuming of course that Georgia wins its own playoff game), which will basically mean that the National Championship Game will be a repeat of the SEC Championship.

In other words, for Georgia to be national champion and the No. 1 team at the end of the season, they may very well have to beat Alabama not once, but twice. The road to the National Championship for the Bulldogs apparently goes through Tuscaloosa, then turns back around and goes through Tuscaloosa again (both games will actually be played here in Atlanta, but you know what we mean). 

Of course, if Georgia does lose a game this season, including the SEC Championship, the chances are good they won't still be ranked in the top four and all the above considerations are off (they don't enjoy Alabama's reputation and weren't ranked No. 1 for the entire season like the Tide).  If Georgia does lose and finishes out of the top four, predictions are they'll probably face Miami in a bowl game, provided that Miami, who are having a remarkable, undefeated season themselves so far, doesn't wind up in the top four and in the National Championship playoffs themselves.  It will be especially interesting if Georgia and Miami do play in a bowl, as it will be a revenge match for Coach Mark Richt between his current team (the Hurricanes) and his former team (the Bulldogs, who let him go two seasons ago).

So yes, it's not all music and meditation here at WDW, and we here at the Sports Desk have been watching these games and keeping a close eye on things, and what with this season's success of the Georgia Bulldogs, and the New England Patriots seeming to regain their poise after a few early-season hiccups, it's not a bad year at all here at the Sports Desk.    

Back to you, Shokai!

Addiction

For almost a year now, I have been addicted to playing video games.  I know that sounds like an over-statement, and I don't want to belittle the very real struggles and problems facing those with worse addictions, say to opioids, but game-playing has become a very real compulsion and I've spent untold hundreds of hours the past year playing at the expense of many other things in my life.  About two weeks ago, I finally stopped cold turkey and have been amazed at how many other things I've gotten done since quitting.

Once again, sincerely and unironically, I blame Trump for my addiction.  I started playing right about at the time of last year's election, and I found the news, not just of his election, but the press coverage, his interviews, his tweets, and his rallies, not to mention the inevitable naming of a cabinet and so on, so dispiriting and depressing, that the escape to virtual worlds of post-apocalyptic zombies, medieval dragons, and charging rhinoceri was a welcome relief from the soul-crushing news coming over the television, web sites, and my phone.  Even before the inauguration, I found myself jumping into the games just as soon as I got home from work, and playing all evening until way past my normal bedtime.  On weekends, it was not at all unusual for me to spend 12 to 16 hours each day playing games, even at the expense of preparing meals, housekeeping, and paying bills.  I even didn't go to shows for which I had already bought tickets so I could stay home and play, and if that's not addictive behavior, what is?

Oddly, the moment of clarity that led to my going cold turkey wasn't a realization of the effect it was having on my life, it was frustration with the game playing of Far Cry 4.  In many ways, the game was possibly the most compelling and exciting of the games I had played earlier in the year (Minecraft, Fallout, and Skyrim), and arguably the most beautiful (above is an actual screenshot from the game), but so many of the "quests" one has to complete in order to progress through the game are so tediously difficult, having to be played over and over again in order to complete them just right, that it became more frustrating that fun.  That, plus the fact that if you stopped playing during a quest, even if only to get some sleep and resume the next morning, you'd have to restart the whole quest from way earlier in the game and repeat all the battles and tricks and parkour moves necessary just to get back to that tedious, frustrating task you couldn't perform the previous night.  I've blogged here about this problem before. I hate to quit at anything, but finally I admitted that it just wasn't fun anymore and that I had enough, and just like that, I went cold turkey for two weeks now.

I cleaned the house, I got my finances back in order, and I took care of the water leak beneath the house.  I downloaded some music and went out to a few shows.  Life was normal again.

However . . . . there was a sale on Steam (a PC game app) and tonight I relapsed and purchased The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, another medieval fantasy game,  and Wolfenstein II, a World War II game set in a fictional  America controlled by German Nazis.  These games take several hours to download and install, so I probably won't be playing tonight, but if I don't return phone calls tomorrow, you'll know why.  

Look at it this way - if I'm going to suffer through this addiction, I might as well suffer playing games that are fun.

This incredible piece was recorded during the same 1972 St. Louis recording session as Dogon A.D., but only released later on Hemphill's subsequent 1975 LP, Coon Bid'ness.   I don't know why it was shelved, because the funky soulfulness of Abdul Wadud's cello and the inventiveness of Hemphill's soloing take this composition to the next level, and the combination of composition and improvisation, not to mention its epic length, arguably make this the most remarkable cut from that historic session.

I've got 99 problems, but listening to The Hard Blues makes them seem less significant.  RIP, Julius Hemphill (1938-1995), you mad genius.

True Story (Life Blogging)

There's a drain, there's always been a drain, from my hot water heater down through the floor to direct water away from the house in case the appliance ever overflowed for some reason.  The drain discharged out behind the house as it was originally built.

The house was apparently expanded at some point, and the new master bedroom, my bedroom, was built out over the original foundation wall and above the discharge point for the hot water overflow. The funny part, the really hilarious part, is that they didn't extend the discharge line to out beyond the new exterior wall when they built the extension, but left it right where it was underneath the master bedroom.

That apparently worked fine for some 30 years or so, as the hot water heater apparently didn't overflow.  However, it stopped working about a year ago and I had a replacement installed.

The installation didn't go well and that's a whole other hilarious story that we can get into some other time, as it will just distract us for now.  But the point here is that when they hooked up the new hot water heater, the plumbers never bothered to see where the discharge line went but just hooked it up as it was, so that the outflow was still beneath my bedroom.

Next, in probably the most obvious inevitability imaginable, the new hot water heater began to overflow.  Apparently, the incoming pressure valve for water to the house failed, then the water pressure in the house got too high for the hot water heater, so the heater's pressure-relief valve blew. That stopped the pressure of hot water in the holding tank from building up too high and kept the tank from exploding (that's a good thing), but it also allowed hot water to start pouring out the drain line and discharge beneath the bedroom.

I didn't notice anything at first.  I still had hot water for showers, dishes, etc., so everything seemed normal,.and besides I had some kick-ass water pressure.  But I did sometimes notice a trickling sound late at night when everything was very, very quiet, and then I noticed that the floorboards in my bedroom were starting to warp for some reason, and finally, when the seasons changed and I didn't need to run the AC any more, the whole house started becoming uncomfortably humid. And then I got the monthly water bill. $425.

A new plumber came by today.  He diagnosed the problem, determined the history above, and redirected the discharge line away from beneath the bedroom and for some reason out to the front of the house right by the front door, where it's ugly a.f.  He replaced the two busted pressure valves and the house is already noticeably more comfortable.  But he told me that there's massive mold buildup beneath the bedroom, that the wood down there has been severely damaged by the water, and by the way, did I notice that my floorboards are warped?  

To add injury to insult, his bill was $850, and I've got another $400-plus water bill still coming my way (I checked on line), plus whatever the mold abatement, foundation repairs, and floorboard replacement are going to cost.

I blame Trump for all this because why not?  This sort of thing never happened to me when Obama was president.

Pickwick at The Earl, Atlanta, October 23, 2107

So this happened: after a four-and-a-half year absence, last night, Seattle's Pickwick (the best band you've never heard of) played a near-empty Earl. Where the hell were you?  

Before we get to that, though, we had a set by Toronto's The Elwins.  The Elwins play fun, high-energy rock 'n' roll, but to my tastes, they sound just a tad bit too much like some house band from an Orlando, Florida Sheraton Inn or from some suburban Chicago roadhouse, who've developed an adoring but local fan base due to their frequent appearances at said Sheraton or roadhouse, but who, when they have to stand on their own in front of an audience not already predisposed to partying down with them, don't really have that much to offer.  Don't get me wrong - they were fun and they were energetic; unfortunately, they were also fairly generic.   

So, Pickwick.  The band's gone through some difficult times and as noted above, it's been almost five years since their last record or last tour.  The last time we saw Pickwick was at the 2014 Bumbershoot Festival in their hometown Seattle, where they played unquestionably the best set I've ever heard by them, and with a five-man horn section backing them up to boot.  The last time they played Atlanta was at this very same  Earl back in April 2013.

They played a great, 60-minute plus set of their blue-eyed soul set at The Earl last night, including a cover of the Talking Heads' Take Me To The River, despite the fact that there were only 20 or so people in attendance, a heartbreakingly small turnout for such a great band. And only about half of that 20 were really into it, watching from near the stage for the entire set.  I don't know if it was a lack of publicity by the promoters, the nearly 5-year absence by the band, or a general lack of knowledge by the Atlanta community of this band, bu I've seen more people in the clubs for open-mike karaoke nights. 

We can do better than this.  We are better than this.

To rub it in a little, here's what you missed:

We've been calling Pickwick "the best band you've never heard of" ever since we first heard them back in 2011, but we didn't mean it as a self-fulfilling prophecy.  If you don't discover this band - and soon - you're only depriving yourself.

Perspective

from John J Fugelsang.

Dogon A.D.

The Dogon are an ethnic group living in the central plateau region of Mali, in West Africa, south of the Niger bend, near the city of Bandiagara, in the Mopti region. The Dogon are believed to be of Egyptian descent and their calendar goes back thousands of years to 3200 BC. 

According to their oral traditions, the star Sirius has a companion star which is invisible to the human eye. This companion star has a 50-year elliptical orbit around the visible Sirius and is extremely heavy. It also rotates on its axis.  The star, known now to modern astronomers as Sirius B, wasn't even photographed until it was discovered by a large telescope in 1970.

The Dogon claim they know of the twin star from the Nommos, a race of people from the Sirius star system that visited Earth thousands of years ago. The Nommos were amphibious beings that resembled mermen and mermaids. They also appear in Babylonian and Sumerian myths. The Egyptian Goddess Isis, who is sometimes depicted as a mermaid, is also linked with the star Sirius. According to the Dogon legend, the Nommos landed on Earth in an "ark," and they informed the Dogon of the existence of Sirius B, as well as the four major moons of Jupiter and Saturn's rings, discoveries not known to Westerners until Galileo invented the telescope. The Dogon also understood the heliocentric nature of the solar system.

But that's not the point.  The point is that back in February 1972, the musician Julius Hemphill went into a recording session in St. Louis, Missouri and performed a composition called Dogon A.D.  We used to listen to this song on the radio very late at night while studying or pulling all-nighters back in college. Forty five years later, we still consider the song to be one of the most thrilling, not to mention coolest, pieces of music ever performed. Props go out to Abdul Wadud's powerful cello on this piece as much as to Hemphill's brilliant alto and Baikida E.J. Carroll's trumpet.  

We've seen Hemphill perform live several times over the years at various jazz festivals and concerts, usually with the World Saxophone Quartet, but although we were always hoping he'd break into Dogon, A.D., we never heard him perform the piece (we think you'd really need to have Wadud on board to perform it properly).  Sadly, Hemphill reached the other shore back in 1995 at the age of 57. 

In case you don't know how to listen to this kind of music, don't just play it in the background and then go on about your day (or night).  Give it your full attention, and if you try to hum or sing or whatever along with the saxophone lines, you'll better understand the way Hemphill was expressing himself and who he was and what his spirit was like.  And when you understand that, it will transform you, just like reading a novel by a brilliant author infuses your own consciousness and changes the way you are.

What we're trying to say (and here's our point) is that if you listen to this closely enough you'll hear some strange and wonderful things, and if you listen closely enough times, you may become someone strange and beautiful yourself.  

Give it a chance.

And for Donald Trump - How to view your penis without a microscope as it nears Melania tonight

Meanwhile, Back In the Military/Industrial Complex . . .

To the soldiers, out standing in their field!