more June Christy YouTube - Imagination

All God's Children Got Rhythm

Takin' a Chance on Love

with Nat King Cole & Mel Torme - How High The Moon

I wish I could go live in these album covers...

mention of Miss Christy in an essay on California Cool in the new Atlantic:-

"Similarly, what the critic Whitney Balliet called the “pervasive suavity” of West Coast jazz—an understated and cleanly articulated playing that stayed close to the melody, tempered improvisation with control, and shunned blatant virtuosity—developed in response to the raw expression, the ostentatious and athletic displays (along with squawks and jagged accents) that characterized the increasing excesses of bop and hard bop, the dominant jazz styles back east. Cool jazz, especially its vocalists, injected the music with nonchalance and a sense of irony—qualities wholly absent from the jazz mainstream. The L.A.–based singers June Christy (the well-scrubbed former canary of the Stan Kenton Orchestra, the only great Los Angeles big band), Peggy Lee (onstage, she didn’t emote; she arched an eyebrow), and Frank Sinatra (especially on his up-tempo numbers, which convey the sense that romance is a lovely, transitory lark), all of whom recorded for Los Angeles’s trend-setting Capitol Records, interpreted lyrics with a resigned intelligence and a refined detachment. Listen to Christy’s signature “Something Cool,” about a tawdry lounge pickup, told from the perspective of the self-deluded female barfly: such knowing­ness entirely eluded the fervent (and earnest) Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, and Nina Simone..."

Ediciones Eloísa Cartonera Book Covers

"Following Argentina's economic collapse in late 2001, the Eloisa Cartonera company arose from the ruins in Almagro, a lower middle-class neighborhood in Buenos Aires. In a broken-down shop on Guardia Street, young writers and artists have established an art gallery and bookshop that serves as the public face of Eloisa Cartonera, a publishing house that makes original books from recycled cardboard and cheap prints and sells them for less than 5 pesos ($1.60) each, about a third the price of a conventional paperback. The book covers are printed with rough stencils and poster paints..."

via gmtPlus9 (-15)

Singin' & Swingin': Jeri Southern: Coffee, Cigarettes & Memories (1958)

another gem from a great blog!

free Hawaii Five-O Season One

not available in Canuckistan...

"Let The Buyer Beware (2004)
7-1/2 Hours Of Mostly Unreleased Lenny":

last night's Lunar Eclipse over Green Lake on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

via the lively Slog

via Ron--Proof of poet's date with Destiny revealed

"In an unpublished draft of his book, Lucky Poet, the communist and Scottish nationalist wrote: "I had travelled down from Edinburgh to London specially to try to remove the Scone Stone from under the Coronation chair in Westminster Abbey, believing that once brought up over the border again, the Scottish people would refuse to allow it ever to go back to England and that the inevitable controversy might well set the whole Scottish movement alight at last.

"My friends and I unfortunately on close inspection found the removal of the Stone at that time impracticable..."

June Christy: Something Cool - Stereo Version (1960) a great favorite, long MIA &

the furthest thing from Squaresville, actually...don't miss this...

Local trees

Harry Nilsson's entrancing version of Stephen Sondheim's "Marry Me A Little" (unreleased 1969) from his musical "Company" inspired me to watch the PBS version of the recent Broadway revival tonight, as did seeing some footage of its star Raul Esparza...

Compromised Energy

"At about $30 a barrel, it becomes profitable to scoop up the tar sands of Alberta–4500 pounds of sand per barrel–heat it up to separate out the tar from the sand and then chemically crack the tar into something resembling crude oil. Needless to say, all of this comes at a hideous environmental cost. Thanks to all of the energy intensive processing before the sands become oil-like, about fifteen to forty percent more carbon is ultimately released per barrel of oil equivalent–all of the reduced carbon emissions from increasing CAFE standards? Instantly canceled out in Canadian rockies–plus vast pools of toxic water, destruction of the boreal forest and the unearthing of heavy metals. Production is expected to expand for the next twenty-to-thirty years, helping fill the gap between global energy consumption and traditional crude production..."

roday's YouTube - Lina Romay Soundie: Let's Get Lost

Glenn Greenwald

"For those who crave and glorify (though in their lives completely lack) acts of warrior courage, play-acting the role of the intrepid Warrior is uniquely satisfying. That's why nothing can fill the bottomless spare time of bored, aimless adolescents like sitting in front of a computer commanding vast armies and destructive military weapons, deployed against cunning, scary and evil enemies. That's why the Mark Steyns of every generation create such Enemies, because they are purposeless and aimless without them..."

some trees from Flickr: Finisterre (and Geoffrey Fletcher's London)

"A group inspired by 'Finisterre : A Film About London', the 2002 presentation by the British band Saint Etienne. It's a dreamlike 24 hour circular journey from South Croydon station, visiting the often ignored and under-appreciated London. Greasy spoon cafes, a Soho dive, a Camden gig, a late night tube ride, an empty car park, a council estate. Rain. Bus shelters. Taxis. Canals. Torn posters. Banksy. A pub with racing results on Ceefax. The Barbican at night. Sodium lighting on wet pavement. Cheerful grimness. The London threatened with homogenised blandness. The London just out of the tourists' peripheral vision..."

"Three Squares" & "Landscape for Benjamin (Trees)" from Chris Engman, Photography, Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle, WA

(thanks ::: wood s lot :::)

Singin' & Swingin'

lots of wonderful Squaresville sounds here...

The Falconer's Tonearm

Bound a dime with a length of twine
plowed the licorice earth with bone,
load-bearing chords dropped off the spine
in shellac'd redoubts of Fonotone.

For the sake of us feral kids--
necks scratched raw by a two-horse town--
the sleeping cops of Michigan
poured out a can of Motown.

The thistled face of Jimmy Shand
in a flat of some small size
the hypno-coin of Frankie's face
spinning steamships past Reprise.

Brown Shanachie cottage
Angel feather frottage
this too is collage
as a function of knowledge.

Woke up this morning
began with a word--
but not of warning
concerning a Bluebird:

the weather around Fats Waller
obviates the squalor
which is more than I can say
for flexidisc RCA...

nice thing on Edward Lear

"Colder the cucumbers that grow beneath,
And colder still the brazen chops that wreathe
The tedious gloom of philosophic pills!
For when the tardy gloom of nectar fills
The ample bowls of demons and of men,
There lurks the feeble mouse, the homely hen,
And there the porcupine with all her quills.
Yet much remains -- to weave a solemn strain
That lingering sadly -- slowly dies away,
Daily departing with departing day.
A pea green gamut on a distant plain
Where wily walrusses in congress meet--
Such such is life--"

More local trees