The Question I've Asked Myself: Why is the Da Vinci Code so popular?

Click Here for the news Story

"...[F]orgettable sentences with breakneck pacing, lectures on art, history and religion, sinister conspiracies, evil villains, puzzles and cliffhanger chapter endings..."

"Forgettable sentences." An understatement.

For a great conspiracy story with great writing....Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum."

Get it here.

Hollywood logical?! Finally, stands up to Opus Dei...

Thank [fill in favorite venerated human or deity]!

Logic has prevailed, Ron Howard, director of the thriller "The Da Vinci Code" stood up to Opus Dei.

"[S]tating what he said was already obvious. 'This is a work of fiction...'"

Arinze and the Da Vinci Code....

Wait! They want to sue us and make us respect their rights, while not respecting ours??? Oh, this just gets better everyday....

Click here for more from Cardinal Arinze

I love the absurdity...

Here is a nice quote:

There is only one blasphemy, and that is the refusal to experience joy. — Paul Rudnick

Odd memories of Paul Whiteman...

Little known fact: My step-grandmother's (she is deceased) first husband (my grandfather was her fourth) reportedly played with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra. She kindly gave me his cornet...a very nice instrument...this memory was triggered by an email from my friend Phil Salazer who sent me this link:

Click here for for a short movie of Willie Hall (one of the Whiteman Boys)

The guy plays a mean bicycle pump at the end.....

Which led me to this nice site:

http://www.redhotjazz.com/

Boycott Da Vinci Code!?

A new "Index Expurgatorius?" If you are a Catholic, you are being urged by the Vatican to boycott the film of the Da Vinci Code...


Click here for the article.

Archbishop Amato claims the book is successful on part due to "the extreme cultural poverty on the part of a good number of the Christian faithful."

Wow. If you are a believer and like the book, you are culturally impoverished. What does that make me, a non-believer who enjoyed the book?

"He [Amato] said that if 'such lies and errors had been directed at the Koran or the Holocaust they would have justly provoked a world uprising...Instead, if they are directed against the Church and Christians, they remain unpunished."

We should be punished!? God, once again, should rain down punishment on us for our ideas?

To Amato: I hope you continue to speak your mind. You show your own ignorance and distance from the idea of the loving God you pretend to believe in. I hope your impoverished words will lead people to freedom from your restrictive ideas.

Can you even believe this is a debate?

Can you even believe this is a debate? The Catholic mucky-mucks discussing whether or not the use of condoms to prevent AIDS is a "lesser evil" than using condoms for birth control...Truly news of the weird....

Click here for the story...

Rare political message from Jeff....

I'm so fed up I had to write. The war, the alienation of the middle east....wasn't about oil and money? Look, while we pay (yesterday, over $3 a gallon at Chevron for me) and even more pointedly: while members of our armed forces die....these guys make even more money than ever. Bush and Cheney have been in bed with these guys all along. I'm not against businesses making money, BUT...really, this is truly ridiculous. Remember who got the contracts. Remember who Cheney worked for...

Haliburton up 33 percent....from: oil!

From the Associated Press

More Da Vinci Code....

I sure hope the filmmakers don't publish this disclaimer for the Catholic group Opus Dei.

What's next? Maybe the makers of Wallace and Gromit, out of respect for scientists, should publish a disclaimer in "A Grand Day Out" that the moon is really NOT made out of cheese...

Choir Boys: Eight Days in Chicago-4.12.2006

After another afternoon of teaching, we had our debut at the Empty Bottle, a great, classic, jazz/creative music bar in Chicago. Unfortunately, it lived up to its name, it was somewhat empty...but we had a good gig and made some good music for those that were there...

Choir Boys: Eight Days in Chicago-4.11.2006

Andrew showed up bright and early (5 am!!!!) He wanted to save a night on the hotel...turns out our "patron," Roosevelt University was picking up the bill for all this stuff...he could've got there a day early, and I could've slept in. The raucousness began right away, leading our neighbor to pound the hotel room wall so hard it bent with each pound...

So, believe it or not, we worked while here. Tues-Thursday, we would imporovise and dialogue with students from 12-4pm, then we held a Master Class for grad and undergrad composition majors Thursday evening, which was a blast.

Here Don is regaling us with stories of using decommissioned nosecones of InterContinentalBallisticMissiles as voltage controllers for early synths. For real.





Here is one of the undergrads we worked with, Kaimitsu, who just got accepted to grad school...but I don't remember where...




After the teaching, we had dinner at my favorite diner in the country, The Chicago Diner


and then went and did a live performance on WNUR (Northwestern University Radio)


Mike and Jacob were PHENOMENAL. They did a great job mixing and recording us. That is them in the last pic.