Hell in a Handbasket - US Edition

“If I were 25 or 26 and getting married, a bracelet, necklace or matching earrings would be fine,” she said. (click on post title)

Hell in a Handbasket - China Edition

“Keeping your grip is the hardest part,” she said. “It’s really easy to slide downward.”
And people say the United States no longer has anything to export... (click on post title)

NFL Ticket Prices

A colleague at work is selling his season tickets to a few Patriots regular season games this season. His seats are in the corner of one of the end zones. He's asking $468 for a pair of tickets (face value for the pair: $234). Even if he were selling them for face value, who could afford to take a son or daughter (or even himself and a friend) to a game? Outdoors in New England on a late December Sunday night (game time 8:30PM), against the St. Louis Rams? After paying $35 for parking and God knows how much on food and drink? And why would you want to, if you could watch it at home on a 42" plasma high definition television, with all of the cool network camerawork and replays? I don't get it -- but then I never got tailgate parties and getting fall-down drunk, either. I'm just a fan who loves to watch the game.

Irony?

It WOULD be irony if contained in a thought-bubble above a charicature of Rush Limbaugh or Michael Savage. Instead, it serves as catnip for those who already think the Obamas are Manchurian Candidates

Girls Like Us

As I read Sheila Weller's great new book "Girls Like Us" (weaving together the lives of Carole King, Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon into a Sixties tapestry) I recalled a concert Gail and I went to in late 1969, at an old theatre (long gone) between Kenmore Square and the Boston University campus. (Weller places it in Cambridge, but it was Boston.) Joni Mitchell was the headliner, known to us through covers of her songs by Judy Collins and Tom Rush. Her opening act (and, according to Weller, main squeeze) was a very young James Taylor, making his US debut after recording his first album in the UK for The Beatles' new Apple label. The buzz about him in Rolling Stone had been building for some time. It was something special -- two of the finest singer-songwriters ever in an intimate setting for about 500 people. They did separate sets, and a couple of duets; James really was the opening act. The vibe in that room was so powerful that you didn't need anything artificial to generate a high.

Great White Wonder

I bought my first bootleg LP, "Great White Wonder," almost forty years ago at a head shop on Mass Ave in Cambridge MA, halfway between Harvard and Central Squares. I paid $6 cash, which was a lot. (The head shop is now a store for gamers)
"Great White Wonder" was the first of what would be many Bob Dylan bootlegs to appear (and the first bootleg rock album), and we had all read about it in Rolling Stone -- our newspaper of record. The double LP (which I sold on eBay a few years ago for $125) was a collection of live performances and basement tape stuff with The Band. I bought three copies -- one for myself and copies for two of my co-workers at a bookstore on Boylston Street in the Back Bay. The trip and purchase ate up my lunch hour and my lunch money for the week, but the album was selling out everywhere and we had to have it.
The sound quality was pretty good, and there was something exhilirating about the whole experience of acquiring it -- sort of like early Napster.
I was thinking about this the other day, while listening to my second bootleg recording -- "The Rolling Stones Big Bang Boston 08-21-05," which captures the entire opening night concert at Fenway Park, one of the best concerts I've ever attended. The recording is pretty good, considering that it was captured surreptitiously from somewhere in the audience that night.
I bought it on eBay for $9 with PayPal -- a process that was less exhilirating but a whole lot more convenient.