Author: jbenton

What is this world coming to, if Ornette Coleman, one of the most brilliant saxophonists in the history of jazz, can’t get a record contract?

My transplant story made it into today’s paper.

Says Alice: “I’d totally forgotten about the time my parents accidentally sent me to a summer camp. For mentally retarded children. I wish there was more to that story, but I was so young, about all I remember is the sound of my mom’s voice: ‘So that’s why it was so cheap.’ I think what happened was, one of the counselors approached her and started talking about how ‘bright’ and ‘quick’ I was, which naturally aroused my mom’s suspicions, which led to a Three’s Company-esque resolution of tenuous comedic merit. How long was I there before anybody realized the mistake? I’m afraid to ask.”

Speaking of Paul Harvey, that link below has a great excerpt from a Garrison Keillor story some years back. Seems Keillor met Harvey at some formal dinner somewhere:
“When the salad plates were whisked away and the entree brought in, he leaned over toward me and said, ‘Page … 2,’ just like he does on the radio. In fact, Mr. Harvey was exactly as he is on the radio. He read me a number of stories from a script in his pocket, most of them about ordinary Americans and their struggle to deregulate industry and give large corporations the freedom to do good in the world, and during all of this, he sold me a tin of liver pills and a utensil that dices, slices, chops, minces and prunes.”

When I was in high school and college, I had a reflexive distrust of people who planned to become a doctor. It seemed to me to be the first refuge of anyone who wanted to make lots of money and be guaranteed a prominent place in society. A lot of them didn’t really want to be doctors; their parents had just pressured them into it as a prestigious, reliable career. Part of me still feels that way. (Exceptions are made for people who want to go rid Africa of ebola or do some such good work. So stop typing that email right now, Fiona!)
Anyway, every once in a while something comes along to counterbalance that bias. I just got off the phone with the father of a 37-year-old woman with a hole in her heart, and the surgeon who just completed a triple-organ-transplant to give her a new heart and new lungs. After years of fainting, oxygen tanks, and life forever on the edge of physical collapse, she’s going to be able to live a normal life. The doc said how odd it is to do one of these heart-lung transplants — once they take out the old organs, there’s just an empty cavity where they used to be. I can’t imagine what that must look like. <Paul Harvey voice> For the rest of the story, </Paul Harvey voice> look in tomorrow’s paper, probably deep inside the metro section.

World’s shortest bylined story.

A contrarian view, from the Washington Post: Young and old — we all love Harry Potter. All that magic! All that imagination! Whee!
Enough. Here is a warning flare that is long overdue: America, your kids have become major dweebs. (Thanks, Kelly.)

Tonight I feel like Elvis longing for his long lost twin.

Some morning terrorism links. George W. Bush’s initial reaction to the WTC attacks: “That’s one terrible pilot.”
White House Sought to Soften Anti-Terrorism Legislation for Tobacco Companies.
A LA Times piece on my favorite post-9/11 cliche, “If something something something, then the terrorists have already won.”

For new readers: Everybody is welcome to participate in our upcoming CD Mix of the Month trade. The deal: you burn a CD mix of a bunch of music you like. I do the same. We swap CDs; joy ensues. If people are interested, we can also start swapping amongst ourselves (e.g., Person A and Person B don’t just trade mixes with me — they also trade with each other.) Let me know if you’re interested, via the contact page or in the comments below. And to be clear, you don’t have to be in Texas to play.
For those of you who have already emailed me about participating, email me again to let me know if you’d be interested in doing the broader swap mentioned above, which would mean you burn a few extra copies of the disc and get a few extra mixes in return.