This Is Funny and Close to the Truth

This is the funniest thing someone's sent me in a long time: No One Sets Out To Be A Smooth Jazz Musician. Here's a sample:

Look, I'm not going to lie to you. Nobody ever just woke up one morning and thought, "Of all the things possible in the vastness that is life, what I'd really like to do is play smooth jazz 250 nights a year." It just doesn't work that way.

It's not something you can plan for—it's all circumstance, I swear: You want to play music for a living. You bust your ass paying your dues in tiny clubs with six people in the audience. You think about all the talented jazz musicians out there who can't make ends meet and you start to worry. The next thing you know, your agent has you filling out forms to legally change your name from Mel Jablonsky to Michael Langello, and it's seeming like a good idea. Then suddenly you're 40 years old and you open up your dresser drawer to find nothing but linen pants.

[...]I don't want to sound like I'm complaining. Smooth jazz has been very, very, very good to me. But I can't exactly say I spent 80 hours a week practicing at Juilliard only to play watered-down instrumental versions of innocuous pop songs to audiences composed primarily of over-30 middle-class moms and their husbands. On the other hand, it does bring in $6,000 to $14,000 a night, and, no, Juilliard was not free. I mean, honestly, if one day you're just sitting around sipping coffee on your back deck and you get a call from Windham Hill Records, what are you going to do, not take it? There's worse things that could happen.

By all means, read the whole thing. I'm aware that it comes from The Onion and is undoubtedly satire (try Googling the name of the "author," and every hit will point back to this story), but it's close enough to the truth that it might as well be authentic.

(Via Eric, who I'm sure was happy to spread a laugh after a rough dayat work yesterday.)

He won't forget next time! A guy lost first place and a $1000 prize in a text-messaging contest because he forgot to put an exclamation point at the end of his sudden-death sentence.

More dress code silliness: A Pittsburgh hospital has banned the wearing of Crocs by workers in patient-care areas. The reason sounds like something Mom would tell you as a kid: "A syringe might go through one of the ventilation holes and stick you!"

Blowing out the candles: Happy birthday to my sister Kristen! If I'm lucky, I'll manage about ten minutes with her on the phone, for, as you may know, I have three very active nephews who keep her on the run. (UPDATE: It was thirteen minutes; I feel lucky!)

Keep These People In Your Thoughts and Prayers Today

There are so many things I could talk about right now, but I just want to pause from the usual stuff and give a moment of time to a helicopter pilot and two traffic reporters whose copter had to make a hard landing this morning:

A traffic helicopter carrying a pilot and two traffic reporters for Dallas news media outlets made a forced landing early Monday after losing power over Joe Pool Lake in Grand Prairie.

The chopper, piloted by Curtis Crump, was carrying traffic reporters Chip Waggoner and Julie DeHarty. Mr. Waggoner, who reports for KDFW-TV (Channel 4), said Mr. Crump was able to make a hard emergency landing near the lake dam.

[...]Ms. DeHarty, traffic reporter for Dallas radio stations KRLD-AM (1080) and KVIL-FM (103.7), was taken by ambulance to Methodist Dallas Medical Center for treatment. Mr. Waggoner also went to the hospital.

Coming on the heels of last week's midair collision of two news helicopters in Phoenix where all aboard died, I'm sure that some people feared the worst; thankfully, everyone here is expected to be OK.

I'm not familiar with Waggoner's work, since I'm rarely by a TV during rush hour, but Julie DeHarty has been a familiar voice in DFW traffic circles since back in my own radio days; she worked for the service that we used when I did the morning show at KNTU. I wish her and the rest a speedy recovery.

(This story was first brought to my attention in an email from Eric, who's a coworker of everyone involved in the accident. I don't think he was at all being hokey when he referred to these people as his "work family;" I know exactly what he means.)

A farewell to many: As we celebrate the survival of a few, we're also stunned by the passing of the many: Bill Walsh, Tom Snyder, Marvin Zindler. (And I can't neglect to mention Ingmar Bergman, even though I'm not at all familiar with his work.) I can't remember a time when so many well-known people have left us within such a short time.

And a happier milestone: Last year, my alma mater, UNT, inaugurated its first female president. Now, a female provost has been added to the ranks.

Our College Joke Almost Came True

Many of you know that I worked in radio in college, at a station called KNTU, which got its name when my alma mater was called North Texas State University. (I hvae no idea why they didn't try for KNTS, but there had been a movement to change the school's name to North Texas University if the name that it eventually adopted--University of North Texas--hadn't gone through. Incidentally, they had to wait a bit to get KNTU, which was originally assigned to an aircraft carrier, if memory serves.) So when the school changed its name to UNT, you can imagine the jokes that were flying around--would the radio staion follow suit? The answer would seem to be "obviously not," since the FCC didn't seem likely to assign call letters that would (mis)spell out an obscenity.

But what I didn't know until longtime reader Gary P. sent me a link yesterday was that the FCC has gone to computerized assignment of call letters, and, well, mistakes happen:

THE call letters KUNT have landed at a yet-unbuilt low-power digital television station in Wailuku, Maui.

Alarmingly similar to a word the dictionary says is obscene, the call letters were among a 15-page list of new call letters issued by the Federal Communications Commission and released this week.

The same station owner also received KWTF for a station in Arizona.

From Skokie, Ill., comes a sincere apology "to anyone that was offended," said Kevin Bae, vice president of KM Communications Inc., who requested and received KUNT and KWTF. It is "extremely embarrassing for me and my company and we will file to change those call letters immediately."

He thanked your columnist for bringing the matter to his attention and pledged to, "make sure I don't fall asleep on the job when selecting call signs again."

My response to that is simply, LMAO.

And do we really think the guy did that by accident?

(And yes, I'm pushing the PG-13 standards of this blog--which, as you may recall, is actually rated G--by posting this story, but it was too funny not to tell.)

Want to get smarter? Stop watching TV, according to one columnist.

A Scout is loyal, trustworthy, and never, ever gives up: A Florida man receives his Eagle Scout award at the age of 88. (He started as a boy in 1928, but World War II got in the way.)

You Can Still "Buy It Now"

I wasn't even aware that this suit had been filed, but a court has ruled that eBay will still be still be allowed to use its "Buy It Now" feature:

A federal judge Friday denied a request from a small Virginia company to stop the online auction powerhouse eBay Inc. from using a feature that allows shoppers to purchase items at a fixed price.

U.S. District Court Judge Jerome B. Friedman denied a motion by MercExchange LLC for a permanent injunction against San Jose, Calif.-based eBay over the "Buy It Now" feature.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that although eBay infringed upon MercExchange's patent for the service, it was up to the lower court to decide whether eBay had to stop using it.

In his ruling, Friedman said the company was not irreparably harmed because it continued to make money from its patents, either by licensing them outright or by threatening litigation against those it believed infringed upon them.

So sometimes, in the business world, David and Goliath can come to a compromise, even if it was sort of a good-news, bad-news ending for each company: eBay gets to use the technology, but they have to pay the smaller company to do so.

As the article notes, "[t]he case became a rallying point for critics who argue the U.S. patent system is riddled with abuse from small businesses that sue established companies to enforce patents for ideas that have never been developed into products." It certainly seems like a compromise should be worked out in cases like that.

Perhaps one of the largest David-beats-Goliath situations occurred in Houston, where a chain called Prince's Hamburgers owned a couple of small outlets known as McDonald's Drive-Ins. Their rights to that name actually kept the "real" McDonald's out of Houston until the early 1970's. (Some background on this may be found here, in the forum section of a site that's a tribute to Houston's late Astroworld theme park.) The big guys, of course, would eventually prevail. But now, in the era of Google, it would be hard to claim ignorance of the name of a national or regional chain just because it hadn't yet opened up in your town.

Putting way too many tigers in your tank: A guy asked ExxonMobil to send him a couple of extra credit cards; they ended up sending him 2000 of them.

The good in people/the bad in people: Someone robbed an 11-year-old boy's lemonade stand in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, but countless people have sent him cards with replacement money, offered to have him set up his stand near their businesses, and so on. (Even better--the robbers were caught.)

Civic Planning: Two Snapshots

I've run across some interesting articles this week that both have to deal with how cities are hoping to breathe new life into old areas. First is a great collection of articles from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune's James Eli Shiffer about the demolition of a 116-year-old house in the Jordan neighborhood of that city; it had become blighted in the eyes of local officials, who decided that it would be best to tear it down and start again rather than trying to rehabilitate it. Here's the link to the demolition video, and be sure and visit the previous seven installments of Shiffer's series on the story of the house's beginning and how it got from there to here; it's a well-done series that totally captivated me.

In the meantime, Ocean City, New Jersey is planning the beach of the future:

Visitors will wear wristbands that automatically debit their bank accounts or credit cards to pay for beach access, food and parking. Garbage cans will e-mail cleanup crews when they're ready to be emptied.

And people won't even think about trying to sneak in: Beach checkers could scan the sands with handheld devices and instantly know who didn't pay.

This southern New Jersey city plans to deliver a variety of public services and Internet access using radio-frequency identification chips and Wi-Fi wireless technology. The $3 million project is expected to be finished by next summer.

This sounds like a cool idea, though I can imagine some people will say that it's a little too Big Brother-ish; they'll also have to find a way to deal with people who don't actually carry credit cards or have bank accounts. But one idea--having parking lots with electronic signs telling how many spaces are still available--probably can't come soon enough.

The story also notes that the same provider of the high-tech gadgetry would make wi-fi available at the beach...but if you absolutely have to access the Internet while at the beach, you may need to rethink the meaning of the word "vacation."

Public service announcement of the day: Never smash a WD-40 can with a stick. (Strong language alert, as you might imagine.)

The naked truth: Brattleboro, Vermont, a town known for its tolerance of public nudity, has reversed course and outlawed the practice. T(he final straw was an elderly man walking through the center of town wearing only a fanny pack.)

They weren't exactly modeling professional behavior: A news program showed a clip of a British runway model falling off her high heels--twice--and the anchors couldn't stop laughing.

How do I love ewe? Let me count the ways; What do you give the woman who has everything? Prince Charles recently gave his wife Camilla two sheep for her birthday.

More Stuff I MIssed Last Week

One more collection of oddities from while I was teaching camp:

• After a Wisconsin family's dog ate $750 in cash, they had to search his, umm, leavings to try and get it back. (They managed to recover most of it.)


• New research project for people with too much time on their hands: Do fish suffer from exposure to rock music being played live nearby?


• You've heard of the "mile-high club," in all likelihood. Now some people are using private luxury submarines to join the "mile-below club." What's really odd is that such behavior is bothering the dolphins.


• A teenager in Brooklyn climbed into a mailbox (on a dare from a friend, of course) and had to be rescued by police. Key quote from the story: "It was unclear if the teen was acting on a double-dog dare."


• And finally, as if we didn't have enough to worry about already, your friends may be making you fat.

I'll have a post of substance tomorrow, I promise.

While I Was Out...

I'm just now catching up on all my favorite weird news sites, which had to go on the back burner during camp week. Here are a few that got my attention:

• Have you been "phished" lately? It might not be as bad as you think; it could be a school conducting research.


• Remember the guitarist for Queen? He's Dr. Brian May now, having finally completed his Ph.D in astrophysics.


• Helpful consumer tip of the day: iPhone vs. Blackberry.


• Cars in Edinburgh, Scotland had to replace their license plates bearing the sequence "SN07" because it apparently looked like the word "snot" in leetspeak.


• A Spanish man lost visitation rights to his 10-year-old son after he took the boy running with the bulls in Pamplona. (The boy's mother found out about it when she saw a picture of them in the newspaper.)


• I haven't started the final Harry Potter book yet (still finishing Book 6), but I found it amusing that Bucknell University has a campus Quidditch team.

More where this came from tomorrow.

This Power Failure Was An Arch-Enemy to Some St. Louis Tourists

I've been a visitor to St. Louis and the famous Gateway Arch on several occasions in the past year, so my attention was immediately drawn to a story from a few days ago of the Arch being hit by a power failure this past Saturday:

One of the two trams that take visitors to the top of the Gateway Arch was out of service Sunday after a power failure trapped about 200 people for hours inside the landmark the night before.
The Arch's deputy superintendent, Frank Mares, said a fuse blew Saturday night after one of nine cables pulling the south tram apparently failed and came in contact with an electrified rail.

Power went out again Sunday for about 15 minutes after the Arch reopened, in a failure believed to be linked to Saturday's problem.

On Saturday, about 40 people in each tram were stuck, as were another 100 at the top of the Arch and others in loading zones. The St. Louis Fire Department said that at least two people needed medical attention, but that no one was seriously hurt.

Visitors at the top of the Arch had to wait about three hours to get down, Mares said. Those inside the tram cars waited about two hours but were probably the most uncomfortable because they lacked air conditioning, he said.

Some people were taken down staircases to a service elevator, but most waited for a tram to begin running again.
"There was never any danger, just a lot of inconvenience," Mares said.

I especially feel for the people who were inside the trams at the time, because not only are they unairconditioned, as the story pointed out, but also because they're extremely cramped in there. Last time, we had made jokes about having to walk down all those stairs, but we never thought anyone would have to use them this soon. (And I still can't figure out how in the world they fit 100 people at the top; it's just not that big up there.)

And as one might expect from a well-run place like the Arch, the people who got stuck up there got refreshments and refunds when all was said and done. I certainly won't be nervous on my next visit, as the place has a great track record (and my next visit to STL will also likely mean that a cool jazz concert is in the offing).

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!: Starbucks announced that it's raising its beverage prices by nine cents starting next week.

Let this be a lesson to all stupid criminals out there: If you break into a place that's labeled "K-9 FACILITY," you're likely to be caught by dogs.

This School System May Take "TGIF" a Bit Too Seriously

This story came out last week, when I was too busy with jazz camp to properly address it, so here we go: An area school district wants to eliminate Friday classes by going to a four-day school week with longer hours:

Nearly 1,000 parents and students packed into Lancaster High School's auditorium Thursday night to hear district officials pitch a plan for a four-day school week that drew fiery criticism from the crowd.

Many parents at the emotion-charged meeting said the proposal – which would take effect this fall and is being presented as a one-year pilot program – would allow unsupervised students to get into trouble while home alone Fridays and would force parents to spend hundreds of dollars on child care for young children.

"People will move out of this area if they have more expenses out of pocket," Sheri Brisco, the mother of a second-grader and a pre-kindergartner, said before addressing the crowd.

It sounds on the surface like they're trying to do this to save money, though Superintendent Larry Lewis says otherwise. But there are still some glaring problems here:

• The superintendent did his research using Google and not much else.


• The schools that have used this program were almost all in remote, rural locations; one was even on the island of Micronesia. None was in a mid-sized suburban district.


• The district's only provision thus far for Friday day care would cost $25 a week, or $900 a year. Many families in the area probably can't afford that. (Also, that's only for one kid. The district has pledged to cap the fees at $50 a week for those with multiple enrollees in a family, but that's also likely to be beyond the budgets of many.)


• Shortening one day makes the others longer; how many kids will be able to concentrate through an entire school day that runs from 8:30 a.m. until 5 p.m.? That's Lancaster's proposed schedule for high schoolers. (And let's not even talk about people who have to practice for band, athletics, etc.)


• And here's the biggest question: School starts in just over a month. Why are they just discussing this now? People need time to prepare for a major change like this.

I'll once again call on my fellow educators for comments. Good idea? Horrible one? I tend to lean towards the latter, especially when the change is being proposed on such short notice. This kind of schedule can work great for college students, but they're also adults who don't need supervision during their time off. The same can't be said for younger students, especially in a lower-income area where most kids don't have the luxury of having a parent at home. I think this idea needs to go back to the drawing board.

UPDATE: An editorial in the Tuesday Dallas Morning News also comes out against Lancaster's proposal, and has a good quote:

District officials should abandon this plan and find other ways to close the budget gap. And since Lancaster spends more money on administration than state guidelines advise, cutting back at the central office might be a good place to start.

Amen to that last part. I've had that idea myself for a while now...

Some Plane Facts

I'm back from my trip and will resume regular posting tomorrow, but in the meantime, here are a few observations from my travels:

• On the first leg of yesterday morning's flight, from DFW to Memphis, the flight attendant came on and said, "Our flying time will be one minute and....umm, make that one hour and eight minutes." Laughter ensued, and my own reply was "Really now?"


• On the first leg of yesterday's flight back, from Evansville to Memphis, we were on a small regional turbo-prop plane that many call a "puddle jumper." Their engines say "GE Jet Power" on the side. I've gotten used to this by now, and I'm aware that GE is now a huge multinational corporation that specializes in things like finance, but it was still unsettling the first time that I rode in a plane like this to think that its engines were being built by the same company that made my toaster.


• On the Saturday layover in Memphis, I heard an announcement that elicited more than a few chuckles from some of us in the gate area: "Attention Springfield passengers, I need to see a representative of the Adams family." I'm sure I wasn't the only one who had "Ba-da-da-DUM *snap, snap*" going through my head after that.


• On tonight's layover, I noticed quite a few people having to run like crazy through the airport to make their next flight ("O.J.-ing it," as we used to call it, though that needs clarification on several levels now). It made me wonder if they shouldn't schedule the connecting flights closer to each other, or do they all work on paper and the problems are caused by delays? The funniest airport runner was the girl who ran completely out of her flip-flop and took several attempts to get it back on.

More tomorrow; I've had some subjects sitting in the pipe for a while.

Travel Advisory

As often happens after the end of jazz camp, I'm off to Indiana for the tail end of a fraternity conference that actually started on Thursday night (once again, my paid gig had to take precedence over my volunteer one). Posting will resume tomorrow night.

Sometimes...

...having the right equipment really can make a difference.

(It was a great evening performing with John Fedchock; more later.)

A Few Quick Animal Stories

Reviving a feature of my old radio show while I continue to have a busy week at camp...

• Trained animal acts are one thing, but a red panda at a Virginia zoo is impersonating Houdini at the moment.


• A baby kangaroo--so young it was still wearing a diaper--was found safe and sound this week after disappearing from an exotic animal farm in Wisconsin.


• UPDATE: Here's another one: There was a traumatic moment at a kids' camp in California when a mountain lion ate one of the goats in the camp's petting zoo.

Sorry for the small, fluffy posts this week, but as I said, jazz camp week is busy. Much more in a few days.

And Now for the News

Some random things caught in those rare spare moments during camp week:

• Paratroopers in Colorado landed at a prison recently. All in a day's work? Quelling a riot? Nope, they landed there completely by mistake.


• Scientists have announced a new species of orchid that was originally considered a subspecies of another kind. Its most distinctive quality? It smelly like sweaty feet.


• Anyone for a new movie sequel? Snakes in a Car's Engine.


• Our ridiculous story of the day (Government inaction department): A couple was nearly in danger of losing their home because of a $1.63 tax bill from 1996 that they never even actually received.

Camp's half done now. Come see a concert if you're in the area and haven't done so yet.

Blowing out the candles: Happy birthday to two great old friends, Micah and (Original) Mark.

The Tenor(s) of Our Times

Just checking in quickly during camp week, with a couple of quick notes:

• Down Beat Magazine has a category in its readers' and critics' polls called "Talent Deserving Wider Recognition." Tonight, I want to talk about two people in our camp so far who definitely fall in the TDWR category. One is Chris Vadala, our special guest for tonight. He's known for his tenor work with Chuck Mangione from the "Feels So Good" days, but he's also a very fine alto player with touches of Phil Woods (one of his former teachers), a very exciting soprano player, and--though he didn't bust it out tonight--a standard-setting flautist, one that any saxophonist could use as a role model when picking up the flute. It was a thrill to share the stage with him, and it's a shame that he's not more well-known by the larger jazz audience. Check out his site and pick up his recording.


• As a few friends and I were saying tonight, it boggles the mind that Ed Petersen isn't a household name in jazz (yet). His creativity and technique are dazzling, and he's just a constant wellspring of ideas. It's a privilege to sit next to him in faculty big band, and I have to tell you that I've missed more than my share of entrances on backgrounds during his solos because I'm just sitting there in amazement.

If you wanted to expand your list of jazz players worth checking out, just go to my MySpace and check out the list of players in the faculty big band, and then Google any name; there's not a person in there who's not worth listening to. This is definitely one of my favorite weeks of the year.

Long day; more later.

A Happy Camper

Jazz Camp starts in just a few hours, so posting will be spotty this week; I may still have something every day, but it will be more of the "weird news" variety as opposed to hard-hitting commentary, just because the camp will "own" me from 8:30 a.m. until about ten at night. I'll definitely post some accounts of getting to play with our two guest artists this week.

Mr. Smith? The Doctor Robot Will See You Now

OK, this is not as bad as it sounds; they're not actually replacing doctors with robots per se. It's actually pretty cool:

Has it come to this? Robots standing in for doctors at the hospital patients' bedside?

Not exactly, but some doctors have found a way to use a videoconferencing robot to check on patients while they're miles from the hospital.

One is at Baltimore's Sinai Hospital. Outfitted with cameras, a screen and microphone, the joystick-controlled robot is guided into the rooms of Dr. Alex Gandsas' patients where he speaks to them as if he were right there.

"The system allows you to be anywhere in the hospital from anywhere in the world," said the surgeon, who specializes in weight-loss surgery.

Besides his normal morning and afternoon in-person rounds, Gandsas uses the $150,000 robot to visit patients at night or when problems arise. The robot can circle the bed and adjust the position of its two cameras, giving "the perception from the patient's standpoint that the doctor is there," the surgeon said.

I for one was relieved to find out that Dr. Robot was visiting mostly weight-loss surgery patients and not something more intense like heart surgery. Used in this way, it sounds like a clever use of technology when a doctor can't literally be several places at the same time.

Would you object to a visit from Dr. Robot if he were used in this manner?

FOR SALE: A bit of a fixer-upper: Realtors in Rhode Island are having trouble selling what would ordinarily be a nice house, because of one feature that the builder never intended to have: Vultures.

This is good to know, I suppose: For humans, eating other humans is hazardous to one's health.

At least he would have gotten a good seat: A Canadian man flew to Wales for a friend's July 6 wedding, only to discover upon his arrival that the wedding won't take place until 2008.

Word.

My favorite trivial news item of the week so far: "ginormous" will be in the dictionary, or at least the Merriam-Webster collegiate edition. So will "crunk," "Bollywood" and "sudoku."

The major criterion for inclusion in the collegiate edition is for the word to show up enough in mainstream writing. (Some English professors don't care for this, as you might imagine.)

What word would you like to see in the dictionary that's not already there?

They're flush with cash: Visitors to public toilets in Japan have been discovering envelopes filled with money from an unknown benefactor.

An unusual Kodak moment: Workers in Minnesota used a video camera to rescue a dog that had become trapped in a sewer pipe.

The iPod Is a Very Cool Thing, But...

...don't use one in a thunderstorm, or you might have a truly electrifying experience. Seriously:

Listen to an iPod during a storm, and you may get more than electrifying tunes.

A Canadian jogger suffered wishbone-shaped chest and neck burns, ruptured eardrums and a broken jaw when lightning traveled through his music player's wires.

Last summer, a Colorado teen ended up with similar injuries when lightning struck nearby as he was listening to his iPod while mowing the lawn.

[...]Michael Utley, a former stockbroker from West Yarmouth, Mass., who survived being struck by lightning while golfing, has tracked 13 cases since 2004 of people hit while talking on cellphones. They are described on his Web site, www.struckbylightning.org.

Contrary to some urban legends and media reports, electronic devices don't attract lightning the way a tall tree or a lightning rod does.

"It's going to hit where it's going to hit, but once it contacts metal, the metal conducts the electricity," said Dr. Mary Ann Cooper of the American College of Emergency Physicians and an ER doctor at University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago.

Read the whole thing. The most amazing thing to me was that there were reports of injuries to people who were using laptops outdoors in a thunderstorm. I'm way more protective of my MacBook than that. (Also note the clever quote, "When thunder roars, go indoors.")

A really natural way to do yardwork: Need a good way to weed your garden? Buy a sheep; that's the subject of some university research in California, where they're working with the sheep to get rid of the weeds in vineyards while staying away from the precious grapes. (And what's up with the headline writer calling them "sheeps" in the story? Most people learn to pluralize that word when they're "childrens.")

A real "senior trip": We've all heard stories of an elderly person leaving home, becoming disoriented and ending up far from home, but this guy takes the cake: An 87-year-old Utah man left his retirement home and ended up in Pennsylvania, claiming to have hitchhiked at least part of the way.

When Dinosaurs Roamed the (Live) Earth

Longtime readers know that I enjoy rant against the Machine every once in a while, and I found a bit of that today at this post by Don Surber, where he notes that many of the performers at last weekend's Live Earth concerts were quite a bit farther removed from their heyday than the artists at, say, Woodstock:

Andy Williams didn’t play at Woodstock. He was 41 that summer.

Ray Charles, then 38, wasn’t invited either.

And at age 52, Dean Martin certainly wasn’t.

So what were and Jon Bon Jovi at 45, Madonna at 48, and ex-Pink Floyd Roger Waters, 63, doing headlining a rock concert? None of their top hits were within a decade of the “Live Earth” concert. Williams, Charles and Martin each had released his signature recording within a few years of Woodstock.

In fact, Pink Floyd’s hit — “The Wall” — is as contemporary today as “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” was in 1969.

A lively procession of comments follows, with some people lamenting that today's music is lacking in quality compared to the music of "their day" (which prompts another commenter to say "Geez, people, you all sound like your parents"). There's also a good discussion of the fragmentation of popular culture over the past several decades. When someone mentioned that a few of the so-called dinosaur performers had indeed produced hits in the past few years, it prompted me to chime in:

What’s a “hit” these days? Do people actually listen to the radio anymore (after all, it’s the same station all over the country, owned by one or two companies). I thought people just listened to bands that they found on MySpace or downloaded off the Net.

(Tongue halfway in cheek here, but it does speak to the fragmented state of today’s entertainment; just like it’s doubtful that the whole nation would watch the same TV program, it’s even more doubtful that anyone’s listening to the same music anymore.)

. The flip side (pun slightly intended) of all this is that today's technology allows younger people to have easy access to older music, which helps explain the preponderance of 15-year-old Pink Floyd fans even now.

And the debate over why so many "older" performers were at this concert produced at least one good Rant Against the Machine, from commenter "lovechild:"

Anyone who is surprised that BIG BUSINESS is out of touch with the populus [sic] must be high. [...] [A]ny time Suits get together and try to figure out what the young folks want, you know it’s going to be a disaster. If they had more sense and perhaps therefore less money, they would know to put this kind of decision-making in the hands of college students — let them submit votes for a band/performer and take it from there. One of the great things about the old mega concerts was that you heard all sorts of new music — now all you get is prefab canned crap. Some days I feel like veal.

Read the whole thing, including the comments; there's a lot of good stuff in there. I'll close with one from "Captain Scarlet":

There’s a real valid argument to this piece. Regarding the contemporary relevance of much of Live Earth’s roster: think of it in terms of the huge bucks veteran acts are getting for touring on albums nobody buys. Someone (I wish I could remember who) once said, “whenever a band says, ‘here’s something from our new album’ they might as well be saying, ‘you can all sit down or go to the rest room now…’”

Well said.

It's 7/11: Have you gotten your free Slurpee yet? (I probably won't get one, since the only 7-Eleven in my neck of the woods got closed and razed a while back, after only a few years in business.) And over at buzz.mn, Lileks and the commentariat (myself included) are discussing odd names for convenience stores. (My two contributions: Sac 'N' Pac from South Texas and Loaf 'N Jug from Colorado.)

It was their Luckey day: I talked the other day about weddings on 7/7/07, and now it turns out that a family whose last name is Luckey had a baby born on that day as well.