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Odds & Ends: News/Humor (with a "Who Lost the Week?" poll)

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I post a weekly diary of historical notes, arts & science items, foreign news (often receiving little notice in the US) and whimsical pieces from the outside world that I often feature in "Cheers & Jeers".

OK, you've been warned - here is this week's tomfoolery material that I posted.

CHEERS to Bill and Michael in PWM, our Laramie, Wyoming-based friend Irish Patti and ...... well, each of you at Cheers and Jeers. Have a fabulous weekend .... and week ahead.

ART NOTES— an exhibition entitled Judy Chicago: A Retrospective— with 130 paintings, prints, drawings, and ceramics, as well as films and a documentary — will be at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco, California to January 9th.

  Judy Chicago (born 1939)

YOUR WEEKEND READ is this essay by the nonpareil columnist for The Guardian, Jonathan Freedland — highlighting that Eric Zemmour, a far-right candidate in France who has anti-Semitic views … excites the old codger Jean LePen enough to say, “The only difference between Eric and me is that he is Jewish. It is difficult to call him a Nazi or a fascist. This gives him more freedom.”

15O YEARS AGO this week, the Welsh journalist Henry Morton Stanley was sent to Africa by a newspaper to find the Scottish missionary David Livingstone — and when he finally made contact with him on Lake Tanganyika he famously asked, ‘Dr. Livingstone, I presume?'

THURSDAY's CHILD is named Wrinkle the Duck— named after Madeleine L’Engle’s Newbery award-winning novel — a therapy duck who ran (well, at least part of) the NYC Marathon wearing special red ‘shoes’ ……….

     Wrinkle the Duck

……… and was shown prepping for the race three days earlier.

    With the red shoes

WITH THE IMPENDINGretirement of MSNBC news anchor Brian Williams:

On his show “The Eleventh Hour”, a reporter noted that Paul Manafort's attorney at sentencing pleaded for leniency: saying that he suffered from gout, hypertension, psoriasis, diabetes, depression and other ailments.

Brian Williams gave a bemused response: "We have products for nearly all of that …..... in just our first commercial break".

FRIDAY's CHILD is named Mittens the Cat— a New Zealand kitteh who became famous strolling the streets of the capital city of Wellington (even sitting on the bar of a strip club one night until 2:30) whose family now must relocate to the city of Auckland, yet the mayor says with his key-to-the-city: he’s always welcome. 

Mittens the Cat with Key to the City

SCIENCE NOTES— a University of Maryland researcher has developed a knife made from wood almost three times sharper than a stainless steel table knife … and thus more sustainable: since wood is renewable, light, naturally durable and has a life cycle cost lower than most other materials.

BRAIN TEASER— try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC ...… and the usually easier, less UK-centered New York Times quiz.

OLDER-YOUNGER BROTHERS?— two Irish-born entertainers who made-it in the UK: actor Allen Leech (Downton Abbey) and singer Niall Horan (One Direction).

Allen Leech (b 1981) and Niall Horan (b 1993)

...... and finally, for a song of the week ...........................… last weekend, I attended my first concert in two years (with more than, say, thirty attendees) and saw someone I had forgotten about for more than twenty-five years. Stanley Jordan is a jazz/rock guitarist who made quite a splash in the mid-80’s — one saw him on TV and radio frequently — then seemed to drop-off the radar screen, being heard on neither jazz nor rock radio stations (and going ten years without a studio album release). It turns out that he was hiding-in-plain-sight … and deserves a spotlight.

Born in Chicago in 1959, then growing up in the SF Bay area, he began studying piano before focusing on guitar at age eleven. He was a music major at Princeton (even sitting-in with Dizzy Gillespie) then played on the streets of NYC for a time. In 1985, the former head of Columbia Records (Bruce Lundvall) was named CEO of the dormant Blue Note record label, determined to bring it back to its prominence as a jazz label (yet also determined to expand its roster to include soul musicians such as Anita Baker). The first performer he signed ... Stanley Jordan.

And for the next few years: he was a mainstay on jazz radio and on television, appearing with Johnny Carson and other late night shows. His break-out hits were the songs The Lady in My Life (written by Rod Temperton, with a vocal version first recorded by Michael Jackson) as well as the Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby (both of which were played in the recent show of his I attended). And his debut album on Blue Note, Magic Touch spent a record fifty-one weeks on the jazz charts and crossed-over to get some adult contemporary airtime, as well.

What makes him unique is that he uses a guitar pick sparingly: most of the time using a tapping technique with his right hand — his Vigier guitar model has a flat keyboard with extremely low action (to facilitate tapping). And instead of a standard guitar tuning (E-A-D-G-B-E) — he uses all fourths (E-A-D-G-C-F) which also helps his method. What I didn’t know was that his method enables him to sit down at the piano and use one hand on that .. and one on his guitar. Watching him do that was spell-binding: in the men’s room after the show, many jokes could be overheard such as “Frank, I’ll be able to learn that by next week” … with a (rather) nervous laugh afterwards.

Yet by the mid-1990’s, he seemingly dropped out-of-sight. The All Music Guide’s Scott Yanow felt his career had been “surprisingly aimless”, adding “He often wastes his talent on lesser material” — which might explain his radio absence.

It turns out he was touring relentlessly (in sixty countries on six continents), in demand as a sideman (recording mainly with jazz musicians, yet also Burt Bacharach, Chet Atkins and Dionne Warwick) and also on-stage with Les Paul. He was a sideman on the Kenny Rogers version (of the Kenny Loggins-written tune) Morning Desire that was a #1 country hit. In more recent years, he performed with the Dave Matthews Band as well as Phil Lesh and Friends— and so Deadheads saw more of him than others.

After a nearly fifteen-year hiatus: he began recording studio albums in 2008, with a 2011 album Friends featuring noted jazz musicians Kenny Garrett, Nicholas Payton and radio host Christian McBride. His most recent (in 2015) was a duet with guitarist Kevin Eubanks (who was Jay Leno’s bandleader and Kevin is now helping revive the old Groucho Marx show “You Bet Your Life”).

Stanley Jordan has also gone through a stretch of introspection in many ways: he had been briefly married and has a daughter Julia (a singer-songwriter). Today he embraces gender fluidity, saying “Calling me a guy is fine, but it doesn't resonate completely with who I am. I don't have a word for what I am." Living now in Arizona, he is pursuing a master’s degree in Music Therapy, and giving school talks for the American Music Therapy Association on the healing applications of music.

Along with a bassist and his long-time drummer (Kenwood Dennard) he gave a 2-½ hour show including the two songs previously mentioned, as well as Charlie Parker’s "Now's the Time" to Jimi Hendrix’s "Up From the Skies" to Sting's "Fragile" and mentioned that he and his band sometimes perform Jimi Hendrix tribute shows. The feeling I got after seeing him (after not hearing him in ages) must have been when audiences first saw Jimi in 1967, I have to believe. He closed with a rendition of Jimi’s “Red House” that got more than one standing ovation.

At age sixty-two, Stanley Jordan has four Grammy Award nominations and his playing was used as the ‘start-up sound’ for the Power McIntosh models 6100-8100. He has an upcoming show in suburban Philadelphia worth seeing.

Stanley Jordan in the 80’s ...

….. and much more recently

Here he is playing a solo, instrumental version of Over the Rainbow at a festival in Italy — lots of other videos; this one gives you a close-up of his technique.


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