Chicken in a box

Shortly after we picked her up at the post office, and shortly before we released her (and her sister) into our yard.

I feel like I'm going to have to write a chicken-themed song soon.

Maybe I can use it as a tour vehicle

Here's a spam message I've never seen before (must be new, cuz it made it past the filter):

Directly from our yard, we are please to offer you following for immediate transaction:

SECOND-HAND
- M/V TONG YU, 1002dwt Chemical Tanker (Built 1988 in Japan), USD 680,000
- M/V DONG HANG, 1600dwt Container General Cargo Vessel (Built 1993 in China), USD 850,000
- M/V ZI HANG, 1983dwt Gearless Cargo Vesse (built 1992, Japan), USD 1,000,000

IN POPULAR:
- 7,500dwt Oil Tanker (Built Nov, 2008 in China), USD 9,500,000
- 6740dwt Chemical Tanker (Built Nov, 2008 in China), USD 11,000,000
- 10,800dwt Bulk carrier(Built 2009 in China), USD 9,500,000

BRAND NEW FROM OUR YARD
- 9000dwt MPP (Built Sept, 2009 in China), USD 18,000,000
- 17,000dwt crude/product oil tanker(Built May, 2009 in China) , USD 23,000,000
- 19,800dwt Bulk carrier(Built May, 2009 in China), USD 17,500,000
- 23,800dwt Bulk carrier(Built May, 2009 in China), USD 23,000,000
- 32,000dwt Bulk carrier(Built May, 2009 in China), USD 28,000,000
- 38,000dwt Bulk carrier(Built May, 2009 in China), USD 35,000,000

Feel free to drop us an email or call for any question.

Well, I can honestly say that I have a shitload of questions. And I must admit that the idea of the IJG doing a world tour in a used chemical tanker has a certain appeal...

I love stuff (a stream of consciousness)

Mostly musical stuff, of course (although I did collect bottle caps as a kid). I love the artifacts (CDs, LPs, books) of my addiction.

I know it seems messy to you. But, in the words of WB: "what else is this collection but a disorder to which habit has accommodated itself to such an extent that it can appear as order?"

Yes, I love collecting, and (somewhat related) I love cataloguing my own compositions. (I love making lists of the tunes I've finished. It gives a concrete quality to the accomplishment.)

And yet increasingly I find this approach compelling too. Enough to create a fairly significant level of cognitive dissonance.

Every item is now judged harshly as a major burden that better have a damn good explanation why I should carry it around with me everywhere as I travel.

Of course, I wonder if one has to have been incredibly successful in the "material world" (as the good Mr. Sivers no doubt has) before one can come to this "enlightened" perspective.

Also of course, at some point in the near future we might not even be having this debate:

Very likely, in the near future, I won't "own" any music, or books, or movies. Instead I will have immediate access to all music, all books, all movies using an always-on service, via a subscription fee or tax. I won't buy – as in make a decision to own -- any individual music or books because I can simply request to see or hear them on demand from the stream of ALL. I may pay for them in bulk but I won't own them. The request to enjoy a work is thus separated from the more complicated choice of whether I want to "own" it. I can consume a movie, music or book without having to decide or follow up on ownership.

Maybe the real question is whether it is possible for we humans to "value" something that we don't actually "own."

Or maybe that's a stupid question, I dunno.

Ain't nothin' better...

...than a bad album cover contest. And though the jazz guys sometimes get downright embarrassing, let's face it: it's really the heavy metal dudes who have perfected this particular art form.

Exhibit A:



Need I say more?

The circle of life, or something

My 4-year-old daughter helps our 94-year-old neighbor with his garden:




I'm still trying to figure out what this guy's longetivity secret is.

All the muthas in the house say yeah

SNL steals my shit:



Well, conceptually, anyway. (It's cool, guys, I won't sue ya.)

Here's the IJG's take on the subject:



It's a bit more lo-fi, I guess. With any luck, a snazzier, easier-to-hear version will end up on the new album.

The lyric, for those of you who are interested in such things, can be found here. Also the personnel.

Anything can be anything!

Wonkette never lets me down:

You may have read on the Internet that this week’s big movie release is the “new” original Star Trek movie, and it is going to make millions of dollars. It is the latest manifestation of Hollywood studios’ race to abandon all creativity: after a popular movie series like Batman or Superman has run its course, just start over and make the first one again. Critics then praise the director’s “new vision,” and political writers note that all of the characters are famous politicians, secretly, in real life. Everyone remembers last year’s important Wall Street Journal column, “George Bush Jr. Is The Bat Man.” This year’s version? “Barack Obama is the Spock.” Steady yourself…

This is followed by two generous excerpts from articles in Newsweek and Salon, both of which make the aforementioned comparison.

But my favorite part comes in the wake of all this, with NewsBusters' critique of the Newsweek reading. NewBusters:

Finally, we get Bill Clinton compared to the scarred and withered version of Star Trek’s Captain Pike, the man that commanded the Enterprise before Captain Kirk did in the TV series. Bill Clinton is like Pike because he was “so talented, so promising… so damaged.” And this too is a bad analogy. Pike is nothing like the disloyal, womanizing Clinton. All Captain Pike fans should be telling Newsweek to shove it.

Wonkette:

“All Captain Pike fans” probably have bigger issues to deal with than the Newsweek magazine.

Keep it coming, Internet!

Gigs you want to go to

If you don't know who Diane Moser is, you should.

Check the link while I cut to the chase: she's dealing with some health issues, and -- surprise! As a professional jazz composer / pianist / bandleader, she is in no position to handle the costs alone.

There is a blog where you can donate, and also where you can learn about the two benefit concerts that are happening next week (May 11 at Trumpets in Montclair, NJ; and May 12 at our own beloved Dizzy's in San Diego, CA).

Did you see some of the folks on board for these gigs?

Again, if you don't know Ms. Moser, you should (I myself met her the first time the IJG toured the east coast, in 2005 -- she offered a lot of helpful advice that facilitated the experience for me). A glimpse of her personality comes through in this blog post:

At some point in my hospital stay, I had an echocardiogram-my first one ever-and I thought it was pretty cool-the sound it made. So when the cardiologist came in after wards-I asked him if I could get the "music" from that echocardiogram. Obviously he looked at me with a funny look on his face (by the way-I think he looks like Peter Sellers and my oncologist thinks he looks like Stanley Tucci)-so I told him I was a composer, and I was wondering if they could burn a cd with the sounds from my echocarigram test-becuase I wanted to use it in a composition.

She's an awesome lady. Help her out, fer crissakes.

* * * * *

If you don't know who Darcy James Argue is, you should.

But who am I kidding? You do know Darcy (and his band, Secret Society) by now, don't you?

What's that, you say? You don't read Newsweek? Well, fuck you, then.

But seriously, the CD release show for the much-anticipated debut recording from this totally bitchen ensemble is tonight. If you still need convincing, here's the streaming version.

Personally, I've been convinced for some time now. Though I have to say that checking out the new recordings online is a bit like being introduced to the band all over again -- especially since, by the sound of it, Darcy had the good sense to recognize that the studio itself is, basically, another instrument. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that's kind of a rare thing in jazz. Anyway, the results are very tasty. Very tasty indeed.

Don't listen to my occasional griping: it's a really exciting time to be in this damned business.

Bees rock

My wife recently talked me into getting chickens (I swear, two hens are on a cross-country trip to our house, even as I type). Someday I hope to talk her into getting bees.

In the meantime I may just have to be satisfied with giving the little buggers as a gift.

What do Superman, Orson Welles, and Mars have in common?

Apparently, this comic -- which I am sure I read as a kid but am now rediscovering in the process of introducing Thandie to various superheroes.



You've got to click to see the fine print, but here's part of it:

What on earth, or should we say, "what on Mars" is Orson Welles doing wearing that outlandish, ancient costume, and duelling with the fantastic huge-headed inhabitants o another planet? It all started in Italy, when the film "Black Magic," starring Orson Welles, was being filmed. Then a firecracker series of fantastic events blasted Orson Welles to Mars! Here he found himself fighting frantically to warn the world of a Martian invasion, this time a real one!

War of the Worlds has the synopsis:

The story featuring Orson Welles is called "Black Magic On Mars" and this does offer a clue that Welles or his publicists had a hand in the creation of the comic, for just as is recounted in the comic book, Welles was in Italy at the time, acting in a movie called "Black Magic". So this may well have been an early piece of creative cross-promotion, or equally plausible, the writer may just have read about Welles' project and decided to incorporate it. The story opens in Italy, with Welles atop a rooftop in the period costume of 18th century France, and just as in the climax of the film, Welles takes a fatal plunge.

Dusting himself off, Welles and his co-star Nancy Guild (she also was in the film playing Marie Antoinette), set off to attend a fancy dress party in their costumes. Driving through the Alps, they suddenly come across a rocket ship with its hatch open. As any fan of the science fiction of the period will know, this was a pretty common occurrence. Absent minded scientists were always building rocket ships in obscure locations and leaving the door open, and sure enough, curiosity gets the better of Welles, and he finds himself trapped in the rocket as it sets off for Mars.

Two hours later (that was some rocket engine), and Welles is stepping out onto the surface of Mars, where he is swiftly assailed by the Martians and brought before their leader, the Great Martler. The Martians speak English and goose step about like Nazi's, for Martler is an admirer of Hitler and has modelled his dictatorship after Nazi Germany, in which case, why don't they speak German? This linguistic peculiarity aside, Welles has arrived on the eve of a Martian invasion, and turning down Martler's offer of a job as propaganda minister on the soon to be conquered Earth, he uses his prop sword to seize control of a radio and broadcast a warning. Of course no one believes a word of it back on Earth, for as the listeners say, Welles has fooled America once before with his earlier broadcast. But Superman is not about to take any chances and speeds off to Mars, arriving just in time to prevent Welles getting disintegrated for his troubles.

The story goes into overdrive from here on, with Superman facing a fleet of one hundred thousand warships. It's a mighty challenge even for the Man Of Steel, but Orson has a plan, and a pretty insane one at that. Plucking one of the moons of Mars from its orbit, Superman fashions a slingshot from the thousands of miles of runways used to launch the fleet. Wrapping it round the moon, he sends it careering into the path of the invasion fleet, where they are helplessly snagged by its gravity and go harmlessly into orbit about it. Welles then sits a comatose Martler on his knee and performs an impromptu ventriloquism act to persuade his followers to give up on the plan of conquest. The Earth is saved, but poor Orson will never be believed.

So not the most realistic story imaginable, but enormous fun in its simplistic disregard of the laws of physics and nature.

Indeed!

RIP Dom DeLuise

The words were so alike

It was a crappy morning until I saw this typo in my inbox, c/o Amazon.com:

"We've noticed that customers who have purchased or rated Love Cry by Spyro Gyra have also purchased Live On The Riviera by Albert Ayler."

Because, 1. you know, I love Spyro Gyra, and have actually purchased albums by them from Amazon.com -- said albums help me feel all tropical and shit; and 2. Albert Ayler and Spyro Gyra are so very similar. Ayler was a terribly, terribly big influence on the Spyros...

(Wow, that was quite snark-tastic, even for me. Sorry, it was a long night...)

You're never alone with a saxophone

As if you *need* another version of this one.

In any case, this is the rendition we did at Dizzy's in San Diego (April 5, 2009), which I post here because of our very special sub: Jim Romeo sitting in for Damon Zick on tenor sax. Since I didn't know Jim would be playing with us until a few minutes before the gig, I didn't have time to revise this intro to include his name. But Jill and Tany (with some help from the band and the audience) took the liberty of revising it on the fly, and the result is particularly, gratifyingly silly.

(I also neglected to mention, with respect to the other video of this tune, that the Dore version included the immortal line "Damon Zick / he's such a prick!" [Editor's note: not "suck a prick," as I originally had it in this post -- though that would have been funny too. Thanks to TL for catching that typo.] I really want to take credit for that -- it did occur to me to write it in the first place, since it seems so inevitable, and it rolls off the tongue so effortlessly. But its actual inclusion was Tany Ling's idea.)

Anyway, for those of you running original big bands in other parts of the country: you really want to find yourselves someone like Jim. He has been pretty much single-handedly responsible for our last four or five San Diego trips -- overseeing such mundane details as booking the gigs, making sure the band gets paid, taking the band out to lunch, sitting in with us at the last minute, and so on. For the record: I really wish there were more cats like him in this damned business.

Footage by Matt Lichtenwalner; camera c/o Tany Ling.

Vocals: Jill Knapp and Tany Ling.

Yeah, I dunno

Funny: it has never bothered me all that much when people (i.e., bands) send me emails telling me about a show in a city I am way too many miles away from to actually attend.

First, I am very well acquainted with the "delete" key and have no qualms about using it when necessary. And second, if I like an artist well enough to have actually opted into their mailing list, then I am genuinely interested to know that they are performing, whether or not I can, in fact, attend. (I also appreciate the opportunity to peek at other people's PR language.)

Still and all, this (which defines the above-referenced gig announcement situation as a faux pas) is a pretty excellent list of band email strategies, etiquette, etc.

Wow, I suppose I need to really get on this one:

Always talk to them [your email recipients] without swearing. It may be part of your 'persona' as a band, but some people don't like that language. The Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Yahoo mail, hotmail, AOL, etc don't like it either, and your message will go directly to the junk box. You wouldn't talk to your grandma that way, would you?

To this last question I can only respond: you don't know my grandma very well, do you? But the point is well-taken, as are all of the others it comes with. (Really, don't be dissuaded by my sarcasm -- the article is a good read for those of you interested in the business part of the music business.)

Wednesday evening economic meltdown music

Speaking of self-absorbed blog posts, this tune (from this album) is sort of like that, I guess.

On the verge of a nervous breakdown I decided to fight right to the end / But if I ever get my money I'll be too old and grey to spend it / Oh, but life goes on and on and no one ever wins

Did I ever tell you how much I love the Kinks?

Breaking the law, breaking the law

Whoops! If this is a (broad) rule of jazz blogging, I guess I violate it a lot:

It is generally easier to discuss someone else’s music than your own. (I freeze up when I have to write about The Bad Plus.)

(Source: Ethan Iverson's advice to new bloggers (as part of the excellent contest you may have heard about).)

There is some basic truth here, of course. Hence another statement I pompously dispensed to the MTC attendees a few weeks back: "I'm the least-qualified person to say anything valuable about my own music."

And yet what, other than "I like it" or "I don't like it," can I usefully say about other people's music? F'r'instance, when it comes to the well-known critical trope of innovation --

[Artist X] is the first to do [musical strategy Y]. Hooray!

-- isn't the real question this:

Why do you or do you not like [musical strategy Y]?

And when you peel away the layers in an effort to answer that question, aren't you really just saying that you like it because you like it? (Or, maybe worse, because of some brain chemistry process that you may not completely understand?)

Which is not to say it's not fun to read excellent writing about music. Just that, these days, when I make the effort at third-person criticism, I usually end up feeling stymied by the ultimate tautology of it all.

Which is also not to say that I'll never use this blog to write about other people's music again. Just that I'll spend a fair amount of time (maybe too much time) writing about thongs and mustaches too.

But you knew that already, right?

And the stupid interludes just keep on coming...

Oh, so we're back to this again, are we?

Yeah, I guess we are. While I ponder the annoyance of having to redo the audio to that last film, I offer up the companion piece to our "Introducing the Brass" bit, as performed during the first show of our April 2009 tour, recorded live at the Dore Theater in Bakersfield. (Cinematography by Matt Lichtenwalner, camera provided by Tany Ling.)

In case it's not clear what the impetus for these interludes is: inevitably, I am bored by the sort of patter that bandleaders / frontmen / frontwomen have to do ("and this next number is called..."). Somehow setting that patter to music seemed like the best way to avoid said boredom, while still getting the necessary information out.

I should also make it clear that I typically throw these little songs at Jill and Tany a few days before they are to be performed. It's very much an eleventh hour endeavor. And as a result, for instance, you get little lyrical flubs, like the mis-statement about Brian Walsh playing soprano instead of tenor that comes partway through this version.

But what can I say? When it comes to these interludes, which are pretty stupid to begin with, I usually find such flubs more endearing than anything else. In any case, both ladies deserve a ton of credit for being willing to dive right in with this stuff, despite the obvious risks involved. (The band also deserves a ton of credit for being willing to be, uh, spotlighted in this way.)

Note that the band is wearing the mustaches that figure prominently in another new tune, which I'll be posting soon: "Theme for a Cable News Show."

Oh yeah, and: there is an alternate, San Diego version of this, in which Damon Zick is replaced by Jim Romeo. Coming soon...

Friday morning economic meltdown music, continued again

Alternate post title: Another Side of the IJG.

Specifically: a new thing called "Hard Times / The End of Money."



It's still a bit of a draft -- in particular, I think I overcompensated for some of the problems in the live recording -- but what the hell.

We actually introduced this at our New Year's Eve show this past December. What can I say? The real-world context has become more dire in the ensuing months, and so I ended up putting together something that has a certain melodramatic flair. Not sure if that's good or bad.

It still has that absurdist IJG stamp, of course. Particularly in the juxtaposition of scenes of honest-to-goodness poverty with scenes of bourgeois consumerism, or whatever you want to call it. Again, I probably went overboard. So sue me (I have no money, so you'll get nothing!).

The opening chorale is an arrangement of the Stephen Foster chestnut, "Hard Times." With particular deference to the following lines: "While we seek mirth and beauty and music light and gay / There are frail forms fainting at the door / Though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say / Oh hard times come again no more."

The rest of the tune is my fault.

Unlike most of our other videos, footage of the band (c/o Matt Lichtenwalner, via Tany Ling's camera) plays a pretty minor role in this piece -- mostly it's ephemeral cinema from my usual treasure trove, the Internet Archive. Sources include instructional films about economics, documentaries on rural poverty and suburbia, and a slew of old television commercials.

Make of it what you will! Just remember it's a work-in-progress.

(The sillier side of the IJG will return in the next video, I swear.)

Audio recorded by James Dethlefson and crew at CSUB (thanks again, guys!), during our show on April 3.

Reeds: Gavin Templeton, Cory Wright, Evan Francis, Brian Walsh, Damon Zick, Gabriel Sundy.

Brass: Dan Rosenboom, Kris Tiner, Joshua Aguiar, Ian Carroll, Mike Richardson.

Rhythm: Dan Schnelle, Oliver Newell.

Vox: Tany Ling, Jill Knapp.

Composition / conducting: Andrew Durkin.

I don't think I can make this any clearer...

Thursday morning economic meltdown music

Sometimes it's surprising to learn just how blatant propaganda used to be. Even in the case of one of our better presidents.

Yes, this is (a somewhat bedraggled) Jimmy Durante (and did you notice one of the Three Stooges playing an audience member?).

Somehow the notion of a "schtick" seemed to work during the last Depression. For a good cause, by and large, but still... we're smarter now, aren't we? We're immune to political song and dance, right?

(Sigh.) As if.

(Here's where I got this video, incidentally. In case you have problems viewing it in the post...)

The tyranny of the new

So here's one of the central tensions for an independent big band helmed by an easily-bored composer who can only afford to take everyone on the road maybe three or four times a year. Specifically: figuring out how to strike a nice balance between the following things:

1. the need for artistic growth and freshness, and

2. the need to have played a given tune enough times that the band feels the requisite level of "mastery" to perform it with conviction, and

3. the need to promote the tunes that are actually on the album you're selling to an audience that may never have heard them before, and

4. the need to make sure the band doesn't get too "comfortable," cuz comfort tends to obscure the adrenaline-intensive place that can incite the best performances, and

5. the need to make sure the audience is not too disoriented (thus the need to avoid the total lack of familiarity that would obtain if we unleashed an onslaught of new tunes every time we did a show).

I have never thought that I balance these competing needs particularly well. Indeed, if anything, I err on the side of novelty, the hard-to-satisfy impulse to always keep things moving full-speed ahead, and damn the consequences. It's not unlike how I listen to music, in fact: I much prefer to dig into a new album rather than pull out something I already know I like. For me, successful listening -- as I pompously described it during the Meet The Composer talks I did as part of this latest tour -- is a quest for astonishment. (Sometimes I feel like I am more interested in the possibility of astonishment than I am in the guarantee of pleasure from a recording I already know and love.)

The charitable way of looking at this is that I'm a musical (and cultural) omnivore, one whose tastes and temperament are perfectly suited to the Library-of-Alexandria-esque smorgasbord that characterizes our digital age. A less charitable way of looking at it is that I have very fickle, and even superficial tastes. In either case, I fear I'm terribly, even unfairly impatient with audiences who come to a show wanting to hear the songs they already know. Of course, I bear no grudge against that desire, and of course I want to provide some kind of stable ground from which to proceed. But, as I said, I'm impatient.

Goddamnit if Fiona Apple (who I hadn't realized was still making records until IJG drummer Dan Schnelle re-introduced her to me during one of the recent tour-related road trips) didn't nail, in the above YouTubed tune, what I think (again, terribly and unfairly) is going on with the desire for repeating the "tried and true":

Give me something familiar
Somethin' similar
To what we know already
That will keep us steady
Steady, steady
Steady going nowhere

"Nowhere" indeed.

Anyway, normally I try to be pretty incremental in the process of introducing new tunes, bringing in a new one or two per tour, and adding it to the stuff that is already working well. But you keep adding and adding, and eventually you have some pretty outsized sets. So this time I decided to bite the bullet and gut the show of the tunes that have been staples of ours for 3-4 years now: "Howl," "PDX LIX LAX," "Bongo Non Troppo," "Fuck the Muck," and "Big Ass Truck." Sure, it felt a little like sitting them all down on an iceberg and pushing them out to sea. But I think it was the right thing to do.

And with that, I think the band is now officially in a "new phase," which means there will be a new album soon. More on that later... in the meantime, watch this space for yet still even more videos of the new tunes, of which there are four.

Ah, what the hell, here's a preview: a little sample of our "Theme for a Cable News Show," recorded by someone in our San Diego audience (warning: at one point it becomes very thong-centric):

"The Job Song" as you've never heard it

C/o Ms. Knapp.

If you don't know the actual tune from whence this comes, it can be found on the IJG Facebook page (the tunes are in the lower left-hand column), or at the IJG ReverbNation page.

The little Republican pin is an especially nice touch.

No comment

I haven't really had a huge interest in making any remarks about this "tea-bagging" business (although I do feel a few political posts brewing, just because of all the crazy shit that is happening in general). Honestly, what can one say about it? The whole thing is so misguided and stupid.

It's funny, I get that. But it's also sad. And when one grows tired of laughing at it, and feeling sad about it, and then one notices that it is still there, like a canker sore that won't go away -- then the vibe starts to get a little scary, too.

I don't know, it just feels like the premise is too simple to support all of the jokes it has spawned (and believe me, I'm all for milking a good joke). I basically agree with this brief, effective summary from the Rude Pundit:

Ah, fuck this. Fuck the puns and the mocking. It's just too fucking depressing. Somewhere, Karl Marx is laughing his bearded ass off. Because what is this but classic exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie? It's a bunch of rich fucks, beginning with that tool Rick Santelli on CNBC and ending with the slavering profitmongers at Fox "news," making the poor idiots, who are desperate from fear of or actual job loss and heath insurance loss and home loss, do their bidding. Look at the people attending. Bedraggled Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin wannabes, clinging to the image of those who create the illusion of the working class without the work or the class. Ignorance is such bliss, man.

Yeah.

Of course, the sadist in me was disappointed that no one (as far as I know) bothered to undertake the only appropriate response to the various "parties" that were held around the nation today. To wit: hire some out-of-work porn actors to show up at a protest and start actually tea-bagging each other. (Important: the actors should appear confused and / or hurt when the bona fide protesters express outrage at said actual tea-bagging. "What's the matter? Isn't this what we all came here for?!")

But as I suggested, the joke is getting old.

The funmaker

Since I took my very first piano lesson in a Wurlitzer store in the 70s, it seems poetic that I managed to score a (gratis!) Wurlitzer Funmaker Custom Series 545 Organ yesterday.

You know, the one with the Leslie speakers! And the foot pedals! And it's in near mint condition!



Talk about luck: I had no real plan for getting this hefty beast home, and was unexpectedly assisted by the kindness of not one but two strangers in the process of getting it into and then back out of my Volvo station wagon.



A big shout-out to my awesome and beautiful wife for allowing my to drag this damned thing into our dining room. (She may or may not have seen it as a kind of "fee" for the chickens that are on their way to our house at this very moment.)



I can't be sure, but I suspect that this may be the very instrument used in soundtracks to many of the sci-fi and horror B-movies I seem to be addicted to these days.

And the kid likes it too!

The Truth May or May Not Hurt

Don't let all this blogging, facebooking, twittering, youtubing, myspacing, and flickring (etc.) -- not to mention this 16-piece bandleading! -- fool you. I'm fundamentally an introvert. Always have been.

Not sure what that means? Or how to explain that contradiction? Here's a primer.

(Okay, apparently this has been around for a while, but I just learned about it via @sivers.)

Particularly comical bits and pieces:

Extroverts are easy for introverts to understand, because extroverts spend so much of their time working out who they are in voluble, and frequently inescapable, interaction with other people. They are as inscrutable as puppy dogs. But the street does not run both ways. Extroverts have little or no grasp of introversion. They assume that company, especially their own, is always welcome. They cannot imagine why someone would need to be alone; indeed, they often take umbrage at the suggestion. [...]

Are introverts oppressed? I would have to say so. For one thing, extroverts are overrepresented in politics, a profession in which only the garrulous are really comfortable. Look at George W. Bush. Look at Bill Clinton. They seem to come fully to life only around other people. To think of the few introverts who did rise to the top in politics—Calvin Coolidge, Richard Nixon—is merely to drive home the point. With the possible exception of Ronald Reagan, whose fabled aloofness and privateness were probably signs of a deep introverted streak (many actors, I've read, are introverts, and many introverts, when socializing, feel like actors), introverts are not considered "naturals" in politics.

Extroverts therefore dominate public life. This is a pity. If we introverts ran the world, it would no doubt be a calmer, saner, more peaceful sort of place. [...]

With their endless appetite for talk and attention, extroverts also dominate social life, so they tend to set expectations. In our extrovertist society, being outgoing is considered normal and therefore desirable, a mark of happiness, confidence, leadership. Extroverts are seen as bighearted, vibrant, warm, empathic. "People person" is a compliment. Introverts are described with words like "guarded," "loner," "reserved," "taciturn," "self-contained," "private"—narrow, ungenerous words, words that suggest emotional parsimony and smallness of personality. Female introverts, I suspect, must suffer especially. In certain circles, particularly in the Midwest, a man can still sometimes get away with being what they used to call a strong and silent type; introverted women, lacking that alternative, are even more likely than men to be perceived as timid, withdrawn, haughty.

[...] We [introverts] tend to think before talking, whereas extroverts tend to think by talking, which is why their meetings never last less than six hours. "Introverts," writes a perceptive fellow named Thomas P. Crouser, in an online review of a recent book called Why Should Extroverts Make All the Money? (I'm not making that up, either), "are driven to distraction by the semi-internal dialogue extroverts tend to conduct. Introverts don't outwardly complain, instead roll their eyes and silently curse the darkness." Just so.

Personality is a hilarious thing...

Street date: your Mom!

Another of the interludes that peppered our most recent tour. This one was the show opener. I was going for a self-deprecating dada-Broadway vibe, and I guess I got a little carried away.

The video is a composite of a pre-gig rehearsal (in Bakersfield, April 3) and our live performance at Dizzy's in San Diego (April 5). Hence the discrepancies in sound quality. Footage by Matt Lichtenwalner.

The "libretto" doth proceed thusly:

Jill: Oh, crap here we go / it's another IJG show...

Jill and Tany: I've heard this band, they blow / You never really know how low they will go...

Jill: How low, low, low, low, low, low!

Tany: You never know how to act --

Band: Is it ironic?

Tany: When they dispense with wit and tact --

Dan R.: What's tact?

Band: Dinner at Applebee's! [a reference to our tactless tune, "Il Ponderoso / Apropos of Nothing"]

Jill and Tany: In the end we always end up feeling sorry for them / Pitiful, miserable jazz musicians!

[Evan's Kenny G. imitation]

Tany: Trying way too hard to make a point.

Jill: There is nothing real about this joint.

All: Speaking of joints, the new record's dropping soon!

[Gavin quotes "PDX LIX LAX" over the bassline for "Gonna Make You Sweat"]

Jill and Tany: But why should we take the time to hear this band?

Mike R.: Street date: your Mom!

Jill and Tany: Do they think we really need to understand --

Ian: We tweeted about it!

Jill and Tany: -- whatever truly ponderous thing they have planned?

All: But wait: there's more, if you act now!

Dan S.: It slices! And it dices!

All: And sounds pretty!

Tany: Oh, let's just get it over with...

* * * * *

And there you have it.

I promise I'll get back to uploading the "real" tunes soon.

The pause that refreshes

Wow. Cool. That was simply a great experience all around. (I'm talking about the most recent tour, of course.)

I'll have something more in-depth to say about it by and by. For the moment, as I ponder the highlights, and review the recordings, and examine the footage (and the footage, and the footage) -- I am, in spite of my manic nature, taking a moment to enjoy the glow.

Inane, I know. Now is no time to rest, Durkin -- there is so much yet to be done!

Duly noted. Gonna go put the laurels back in storage now. In the meantime, speaking of inanity (which, as you know, I don't consider an entirely bad thing), here's a flavor of the sort of Broadway-musical-from-hell vibe that informed our show this time out. Be sure to stick around for the thong:



Much more to come. I promise it's not all that stupid.

We're coming, we're coming, we're coming, we're here!

This is tour week for the IJG: we'll be doing our annual jaunt through the land that gave birth to the band: mystical, zany southern CA.

I've been thinking about that detail lately. It's odd: I'm extremely happy that I no longer live in LA. I adore Portland. In some ways, I still identify as an east-coaster (since that was where I was born and raised). But when it comes down to it, the IJG will always be a California band, at least in spirit. I can't imagine having started the group in any other place. And my impressions of the region are so deep and strong that I suspect they will continue to inform my writing for years to come.

In any case, I find it a stroke of almost unbelievable good luck that I managed to end up in LA for long enough to (almost by accident) get into the wacky jazz business -- which, it turns out, is my kind of business! I don't really believe in fate or anything like that, but yeah. I feel pretty damned lucky.

So I just wanted to say: thank you, CA. See you in a few days!

His what now?

I love Frank Rich, but his latest essay hits the ground running with an absurd premise (which Rich borrows and amplifies):

It would be foolish to dismiss as hyperbole the stark warning delivered by Paulette Altmaier of Cupertino, Calif., in a letter to the editor published by The Times last week: “President Obama may not realize it yet, but his Katrina moment has arrived.”

Huh?

Whatever you think of what Obama is doing to try to fix the economy, at least he is trying to fix the economy. (Wasn't the "big story" a few weeks back about how he suddenly has gray hair?) Maybe his solution is wrong, maybe he is being unduly political or cautious, maybe he's just trying to shore up things the way they were, maybe he's secretly in the pockets of the already-entrenched powers-that-be. Or maybe he isn't. But at least he is taking action. And at least he demonstrates a basic level of empathy and concern about the issue.

Bush's Katrina sins, lest we forget, were of a different stripe altogether. When the hurricane hit, Bush was oblivious, incompetent, and criminally cavalier, all at once. His "response" was inaction, and the impression he created was that he did not give a flying fuck. What emergency, remember?

Am I crazy to think there's a difference?

Concerns about privacy...

...can sometimes lead to weirdness.



Ganked from "The Best of Google Street View" at the Times Online.

The caption: "Automatic face recognition obscures a Bobby Sands mural in Belfast." Does this mean the painting was so realistic that the machine thought it was an actual face? Maybe we'll never know.

Part of my (hopefully brief) foray into pseudo-photo-blogging. (This time it's not my photo.)

Illogical on its face

So as I'm processing the hype surrounding Glenn Beck's "The 9-12 Project," I have just one simple question.

Mr. Beck: if time travel is your thing, why the hell don't you choose to go back to 9-10 instead of 9-12? That way you can, you know, use your power as a "person of the future" to stop the attack before it happens.

(To your credit, I'm sure that that this is just an oversight on your part, and that you're not exploiting a national tragedy for your own political gain.)

Read the fine print, cont'd

Ack! This is becoming the blog o' silly pictures. It's as if I thought a photo blog was the greatest thing since "slicded bread":



Backstory: I was in the store yesterday and had to decide between sourdough or French rolls. I went with the sourdough because of this downright delicious typo.

Upcoming, part 2

With any luck, these will make a guest appearance during our upcoming CA tour. On the band, on the audience -- everywhere!

(I'll be returning to more substantive posts soon, I swear.)

Upcoming

A VERY STUPID, hastily-edited little promo spot about our upcoming tour, done in the style of the bombastic action movie trailer. (All that's missing is the deep masculine voice-over.)

Does this make you want to see one of our shows? Please?

Friday, April 3 (Bakersfield) - Cal State Bakersfield's Dore Theater. 8 PM.

Saturday, April 4 (LA) - El Cid. 10 PM.

Sunday, April 5 (San Diego) - Please note the new venue! We are now at Dizzy's in San Diego! Mesa College Big Band at 6 PM, PLOTZ! at 7 PM, and IJG at 8 PM!

More info at the IJG website.

Friday morning economic meltdown music, continued

John Mellencamp covers Woody Guthrie.

Keep off the grass

And while you're at it, be as delicate as possible in your piano-playing:



A sign directed at my students by a well-meaning adult (not me). Click the pic for more detail.

I'm having a hard time explaining to them how to play the instrument without running their fingers across the keys. Little Richard would be shit out of luck! Ah well.

Recently

(Apologies to those of you who have already seen these via Facebook.)

Below: one "produced / edited" IJG video, one "raw feed" IJG video. Fuller commentary is available at the relevant YouTube pages (just click the videos to get there).





Enjoy 'em if you can!

Now that's what I call bricolage

(What's "bricolage," you ask? Check here.)

More Friday morning economic meltdown music

The immortal Nina.

Hang in there, people!

The intelligence of a box of parrots

This burns with the white-hot fire of eleventy-billion awesome suns. Do you too "find cheap populism oddly arousing"? Watch it.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

CNBC Gives Financial Advice

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

Sometimes it feels like a shit-storm juggernaut

In the last 24 hours or so, I have learned two very depressing things.

1. The Cave, Alan Jones' great new-ish venue here in Portland, has closed. Tom D'Antoni has the story.

It was a potential scene-maker, that place. Loose enough, I think, to allow for the sort of artistic percolation that is necessary for new things to grow.

I was just there with Andrew Oliver a few weeks ago, fer chrissakes. They were doing a brisk business. On a Thursday night. In this economy.

As Tom puts it:

Are you feeling the same, and increasingly (nearly daily) anger and disappointment and frustration as I am? It used to be that we all could go back to day jobs when times got lean and nobody was buying our words or hiring us for gigs. Now there aren't even any day jobs. I wish I had some answers.

Me too.

2. Rocco Somazzi is ill.

Any of you who have ever asked me about the history of the IJG or how we got started in LA will know the high esteem in which I hold this guy. He was an early supporter at a time when we really needed support.

It's kinda too much to ponder at the moment, so I'm just going to point you to the above-linked piece by LA Jazz Collective member / pianist Gary Fukushima. Of which the following section is particularly apt:

I’ve held a theory for a while now that the act of successful improvising requires that the improvisor needs to suspend most of the brain functions that normally govern our lives, things like being hungry, feeling physical pain, being depressed, worried or nervous. All you have left is an intense focus on the next three or four seconds, where your entire life exists in that moment. And when you actually do something that works in those three or four seconds, it’s really all the life validaition you need at that moment. Your life is complete, and it is abundant. For three or four seconds.

I find that I tend to live my entire life, sometimes to my detriment, similar to how I improvise. I’ve never had much of a long term vision about how my life is supposed to work, you could say I’m improvising my way through this world, just trying to focus really hard on the tasks right in front of me. I tend not to freak out about the future, but I can certainly panic when life starts to catch up with me (just like when the changes do the same), be it paying bills, meeting writing deadlines (like the one for this article), getting to a gig or rehearsal on time. I tend to get lost and absorbed in whatever I am doing at that particular moment, which can lead to some semi-dysfunctional episodes…

[...]

I get the sense that I’m not the only jazz musician that has this outlook on life. I wonder if its a defense mechanism of sorts that keeps us from getting overwhelmed by the struggles of surviving by doing what we do. I do believe that we can enjoy little instances that happen, we can relish the funny and unusual things that can happen from day to day, gig to gig, evident by the propensity of jazz musicans to tell great stories. We always seem to be laughing, even while we play, and definitely when we’re hanging out off the bandstand between sets.

For me, this is the Abundance of the Moment.

Which brings me to Rocco Somazzi. Now Rocco isn’t a jazz musician, but he might as well be one, for I think he thinks the way we do, only more. I don’t know of anyone who is more enthusiastic about things he likes and who gets more excited when talking about music or art or food or Ferraris or kung fu. His enthusiasm led him to open up several jazz clubs in Los Angeles, where he always created a welcoming, supportive environment for creative jazz musicians and their music. Like many of us, Rocco’s enthusiasm can get the better of him, as witnessed when hard times sadly forced him to move and then close his establishment, leaving him bankrupt and homeless for a time.

Best wishes for a speedy recovery, Rocco.

Read the fine print

The pooping pets are bad enough, but it's really the pooping owners you have to watch out for.

The plastic sleeve makes this extra hilarious!

(I discovered this on a recent walk around the neighborhood. I was accompanied by my pet, who never poops.)

Two great tastes that taste great together

Holy cow! Science and music: together again!

Rock-It Science is a musical event celebrating the interface between music and science. Rock-It Science is the brain child of Dr. Joseph LeDoux, and the event features scientists and academics who are also active performers of music (and science-friendly guest stars).

Rufus Wainright and Dee Sinder on the same bill? I am so there!

(Oh, wait, it's 3000 miles away. Damned scientists-who-haven't-invented-teleportation yet...)

A momentary lapse of reason

Stupid guitars, on the internet. Have yourself a break! (Some are NSF, and some are downright creepy.)

What Lil Beck said

Via my (increasingly pointless but occasionally entertaining) Twitter feed:

"respectfully disagrees w/ Gov. Jindal & the right wing. how can we afford to NOT fund a flying train?!"

Precisely. How long are we supposed to wait for the future?

The big rah rah

Do you ever feel like maybe you were born on another planet, and were mysteriously placed here merely to observe the weird rituals of this crazy, beautiful phenomenon called humanity?

No? Well, I do.

Example given: I dug the "pseudo state of the union" tonight as much as anyone could -- those of you who follow this blog with even passing regularity know the generally high esteem in which I hold our new president, and it was a pleasure to hear him lay it all out in no uncertain terms. I continue to maintain that he is more or less exactly what our country needs right now.

But the generalized, bipartisan, chortling, back-slapping, wheeling/dealing processional that preceded the speech -- the long masturbatory buildup that has in fact attended every one of these I can remember, going back several presidents -- well, this isn't the first time I've asked myself: honestly, what is the point of that? If there's anything more unseemly than the sight of politicians blatantly trying to win votes, it's the sight of politicians blatantly trying to impress each other while on national television. What are they clapping about? Ain't nothing been fixed yet, mofos.

In other words: less pomp, please, and more focus on the circumstances of our current dilemma.

(Of course, I also think it's absurd that Congress has to dress so formally all the time. So many of our senators/representatives seem to have spent their careers building elaborate facades around themselves -- I wonder if they could keep up that illusion if they had to come to work in their pajamas every once in a while?)

Oh, yes, and: sweet christ in a cummerbund, what possessed MSNBC (and maybe CNN too, I dunno) to employ the much-maligned (and rightfully so) "focus group emotional tracking device" (or whatever the fuck it's called) in "real time" as the speech was happening?

Can we let the campaign go for even thirty seconds?

Hmmm. For some reason, I seem to be cranky tonight.

Boozey rides again

IJG, live in Olympia, WA, in September of 2008.

Things I'm trying to reconcile

1. My sense that the Internet, in its many manifestations, is the structural element / organizing principle of the still-emerging 21st century music economy, and that "winning at the internet" is a key technique for making a living with your own music,

and

2. My sense that Internet addiction is a real phenomenon, with real negative physical and psychological consequences.

Ugh.

Halloween in February

In an effort to buffer some of the stressful politics-oriented reading I've been doing lately, I decided to start making my way through Oliver Sacks's Musicophilia today. Bad idea:

Dwight Mamlok was a cultivated man of seventy-five with mild high-frequency deafness who came to see me in 1999. He told me how he had first started to "hear music" -- very loud and in minute detail -- ten years earlier, on a flight from New York to California. It seemed to have been stimulated by the drone of the plane engine [...] and, indeed, the music ceased when he got off the plane. [...] The pattern changed when he flew to California in the summer of 1999, for this time the music continued when he got off the plane. It had been going on almost nonstop for three months when he first came to see me. [...]

When I asked Mr. Mamlok what his internal music was like, he exclaimed, angrily, that it was "tonal" and "corny." I found this choice of adjectives intriguing and asked him why he used them. His wife, he explained, was a composer of atonal music, and his own tastes were for Schoenberg and other atonal masters, though he was fond of classical and, especially, chamber music, too. But the music he hallucinated was nothing like this. It started, he said, with a German Christmas song (he immediately hummed this) and then other Christmas songs and lullabies; these were followed by marches, especially the Nazi marching songs he had heard growing up in Hamburg in the 1930s. These songs were particularly distressing to him, for he was Jewish and had lived in the terror of the Hitlerjugend, the belligerent gangs who had roamed the streets looking for Jews [pp. 60-62]

Certainly not the first time I've ever heard of the weird things the mind's ear can do as it ages (or responds to injury) -- but it spooked me all the same.

This is actually a fascinating book -- if I get my shit together at some point I'll write a more detailed commentary.

How The New Yorker is different from The New York Post

Since the IJG dabbles in musical satire and potentially offensive comedic bits from time to time, I try to cut other similarly-inclined artists a lot of slack. Many of my own cultural heroes have pissed somebody off at some point, and I get how that's an occupational hazard for anyone interested in playing around on the fringes.

That's why I didn't say much about the New Yorker cover that caused such controversy during the last presidential election. I mean, on the one hand, I could understand why people were so offended by it.

But I also understand that while politics is a field that calls out for clarity, good art, alas, is often ambiguous. I don't know if the New Yorker cartoon was good art, but it was certainly ambiguous, in that multiple interpretations could be credibly attributed to it. One of those interpretations -- that Obama was a terrorist looking to destroy the US -- was indeed offensive and racist. And the last thing anyone needed at that moment in the campaign was another instance of a fundamentally stupid assumption recklessly tossed into an already volatile discourse. The fact that there was an alternate interpretation of the same cartoon -- a Cleavon-Little-in-Blazing-Saddles interpretation, in which Obama, looking directly at the viewer, seemed to be saying "excuse me while I whip out, and taunt you with, every ridiculous preconception you have about me" -- was less important than the fact that the very people who didn't understand that Obama wasn't a terrorist in the first place would probably never understand that take on the cartoon.



In any case, the bigger point is that with the New Yorker cartoon, at least there was a credible alternative to the racist interpretation. Which is more than can be said for this travesty published by the New York Post.

When pressed about the possible comparison of Obama to a dead chimpanzee, Post editor, Col Allen, provided this rationalization:

The cartoon is a clear parody of a current news event, to wit the shooting of a violent chimpanzee in Connecticut. It broadly mocks Washington's efforts to revive the economy.

Allen is right that sometimes the juxtaposition of seemingly unlike things can lead to witty social commentary. I seem to remember a political cartoon from the 1980 presidential campaign, in which Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Walter Mondale were pictured as the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion, singing, respectively, "If I only had a brain," "a heart," and "the nerve." But that cartoon worked because there was a connection -- a surprising, funny connection -- between the three candidates and their three unexpected doppelgangers from the Wizard of Oz. In the end, the illustration eloquently and elegantly summed up some of the political criticism that was floating around at the time.

The Post cartoon also makes a connection between two seemingly unlike things, but it is not the connection the paper so disingenuously claims -- that both stories merely happened to be in the news at the same time. Any idiot could create a cartoon using that technique -- and, say what you like, the cartoonist in this case, Sean Delonas, doesn't seem to be an idiot. (He does, however, seem to be a bit of an asshole.)

No, the specific juxtaposition speaks volumes. I mean, shit. Instead of a dead chimp, why not choose other topical and current images of demise? Why not the geese that flew into the engines of the Hudson plane, for instance? Why not the latest kid to get booted off American Idol? Why not the (unfairly) disgraced Michael Phelps? Couldn't the caption "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill" have worked equally well in any of those scenarios?

No, there was a particular reason Delonas chose to link the chimp story with the story about Obama's stimulus package -- which was, incidentally, how the bill was described ad nauseum in the weeks leading up to its passage, so no claiming that the unnamed author of the stim is actually Pelosi (as if murdering a different politician would somehow be more palatable). The idea of a "police shooting" comes ready-made with certain associations. The idea of using a chimpanzee as a stand-in for a human being comes ready-made with certain associations. We may not want to admit those associations to ourselves. We may want to pretend that they refer to ancient history. But pretending and denying are not viable (or sane) responses to pathological phenomena.

And don't kid yourself: if we still have this sort of thing floating around in our national psyche, then "pathological" is really the right word.

Festivalin'

Hey! I have a new tune -- "Et Tu, Tutu?" -- premiering tonight (Tuesday, February 17) in the Portland Jazz Festival, as part of a set by the esteemed Portland Jazz Composers' Ensemble.

7:30 PM at the Old Church, in downtown. More info at the PJCE website.

Hot dog!

Everything suddenly got less interesting, and then more interesting again

Everybody's favorite left-wing, named-after-a-rock-guitar-god, Zappa-loving radio host is now off the air. Again.

I understand that some people hate her, and some people love her. But in terms of the overall picture of media bias in this country (which leans pretty far to the right once you get out of the big cities), I'd say on balance that this is a bad development. Though I imagine RR will soon be broadcasting again from somewhere else. The woman is clearly a survivor.

In other news, porn star Stormy Daniels seems to be engaging in a kind of performance art. Hooray for performance art!

(Or maybe it's for real? Nothing wrong with that, in principle. I mean, if this guy can be president...)

Part v. whole

The always-astute Seth Godin hits upon one of the issues facing those of us who work in genres (like jazz composition) that depend upon the development of an idea, as much as the quality of that idea:

The web has become a giant highlights reel... [...] We can skim really fast now. [...] As consumers of information, though, I wonder if the best parts are really the best parts. [...] the parts you miss are there for a reason.

Real change is rarely caused by the good parts. Real change and impact and joy come from the foundation and the transitions and the little messages that sneak in when you least expect them. The highlights of the baseball game are highlights largely because the rest of the game got you ready for them.

Oh, the irony! Did you notice how I highlighted key quotes from a post about the dangers of highlighting?

But it's true, and he's right. One of the, oh, I dunno, 5 million reasons I adore Frank Zappa is that he understood there was a certain aesthetic value in, well, momentary boredom, and that sometimes you have to let dumb shit happen on tape for a little bit in order to make the beautiful sections of an album really stand out.

The web, for all its potential as a tool for focusing our attention on the specifics of something (I guess "cropping" would be the main metaphor here), is also a deep hit of short-term gratification (cue Louis CK noting how quickly impatience can morph into ingratitude).

To put all that another way: for independent musicians, it's great how sites like CD Baby and eMusic offer browsing customers an opportunity to hear 2 minute clips before actually purchasing an album. But honestly -- how would you go about selecting a representative 2 minute clip from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony? Or Coltrane's "My Favorite Things"?

Don't look down

Don't want to freak you out, but have you seen this?



Via John Cole and Time.

Your pork is my bacon

Got up this morning thinking that if I had to hear one more talking head spew sound-byte-y BS about the stimulus bill, I would simply have to tear my hair out. Or, uh... you know... gnash my teeth.

How grateful I was to discover Steven Pearlstein bringing some (sarcastic) clarity to this issue:

"This is not a stimulus plan, it's a spending plan," Nebraska's freshman senator, Mike Johanns (R), said Wednesday in a maiden floor speech full of budget-balancing orthodoxy that would have made Herbert Hoover proud. The stimulus bill, he declared, "won't create the promised jobs. It won't activate our economy."

Johanns was too busy yesterday to explain this radical departure from standard theory and practice. Where does the senator think the $800 billion will go? Down a rabbit hole? Even if the entire sum were to be stolen by federal employees and spent entirely on fast cars, fancy homes, gambling junkets and fancy clothes, it would still be an $800 billion increase in the demand for goods and services -- a pretty good working definition for economic stimulus.

Right. The underlying point here is that "wasteful spending" is often code for "spending that immediately benefits someone else," or "spending that offends my ideology in some way." But c'mon: spending is spending. And it's always stimulative somehow.

Pearlstein goes on:

Meanwhile, Nebraska's other senator, Ben Nelson (D), was heading up a centrist group that was determined to cut $100 billion from the stimulus bill. Among his targets: $1.1 billion for health-care research into what is cost-effective and what is not. An aide explained that, in the senator's opinion, there is "some spending that was more stimulative than other kinds of spending."

Oh really? I'm sure they'd love to have a presentation on that at the next meeting of the American Economic Association. Maybe the senator could use that opportunity to explain why a dollar spent by the government, or government contractor, to hire doctors, statisticians and software programmers is less stimulative than a dollar spent on hiring civil engineers and bulldozer operators and guys waving orange flags to build highways, which is what the senator says he prefers.

Yes. These sorts of comparisons seem absurd to me.

And, in that vein, why are we supposed to assume that government jobs aren't really jobs? Par exemple:

Henninger weighed in with his own list of horror stories from the stimulus bill, including $325 million for trail repair and remediation of abandoned mines on federal lands, $6 billion to reduce the carbon footprint of federal buildings and -- get this! -- $462 million to equip, construct and repair labs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"What is most striking is how much 'stimulus' money is being spent on the government's own infrastructure," wrote Henninger. "This bill isn't economic stimulus. It's self-stimulus."

Actually, what's striking is that supposedly intelligent people are horrified at the thought that, during a deep recession, government might try to help the economy by buying up-to-date equipment for the people who protect us from epidemics and infectious diseases, by hiring people to repair environmental damage on federal lands and by contracting with private companies to make federal buildings more energy-efficient.

Anyway, now it appears we are on our way to a deal... we'll see what happens.