Too Long for Facebook

       In 1940, the jazz guitar virtuoso Django Reinhardt was on tour in England with his first band, The Quintet of the Hot Club, which included his brother on rhythm guitar as well as his principal collaborator, the violinist Stephane Grappelli. Django's wife and child were also on tour with him. While on the road the group received some awful news; the Germans had declared war on France. The reaction was nearly unanimous; try to extend their stay in England and hustle some more gigs, then possibly make their way to the United States. Django was the lone dissenting voice. Emphatically declaring his love for his homeland, he abruptly left his family and departed for France.     Django lies low in the provinces during the Battle of France. He returns once it is clear that Paris will be spared and the Vichy government will be in control. Upon his arrival, Django appears before the Nazi Censorship Committee. He explains to the Nazis that he is greatest guitarist ever known and that b

As most of you know by now, my dear friend and mentor William "Mibbit" Threats passed away Wednesday morning from liver cancer. I was working in the Rhode Island Hospital warehouse one day when my cell phone rang with an unknown number. It was Mibbit, whom I had only known of by reputation for a the relatively short time I had been playing with Paul Williams. The warehouse was loud and there was a lot of static on the call but we talked briefly and I agreed to meet him at his house on Prairie Ave. [just around the corner from where I was working] Toward the end of the call, he remarked that he had heard I was "a badass". It stopped me dead in my tracks and I thought I heard him wrong through the static.      "I'm sorry I missed that, who did you say was a badass?" As I strained to hear him.     "You, man!" said Mibbit rather matter-of-factly.     "Wow. Ok, thanks". I said " See you tomorrow." No one had ever called me a ba

  CW: Doom & Gloom that talks about fascism,hate crimes and political violence. . . . . . . . Yesterday, I saw a twitter post from a supposed leftist with a Russian Federation flag in his profile name claiming that "Lysenko did nothing wrong and that the Holodomor was just anti-communist propaganda." Similar people are now throwing around the phrase "Patriotic Socialism" Facebook is now allowing people to openly praise the Azov Battalion. Wapo just wrote an explainer about Dugin and Eurasianism MSNBC was playing in the liquor store the other day. Nicole Wallace ended her segment by saying that any news outlet putting out information contrary to MSNBC was "russian disinformation" Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson is making pointed, (and not wholly incorrect) criticisms of Joe Biden and Jeff Besos on a regular basis. We have already seen the far left and the far right try to defeat neoliberalism and fail while neoliberalism itself is failing in front of us in re

I was abused by Bill Cosby once (not sexually). When I was eighteen, I asked my parents if we could go to the Newport Jazz Festival before I headed off to college. When we arrived, the festival was abuzz with gossip that Bill Cosby was at the festival and that he was going to give a special performance of some kind.       "What is he going to do?" I wondered aloud "Is he going to do stand-up comedy?"     "I doubt that will happen" said my mother. That made sense. He had been retired from the limelight for some time at this point. It should be noted that this was August of 2001, at least 3 years before the first public allegations against Cosby. In the festival program, there was a headlining act listed as "The 'Coz for Good Music". On the back of the program, there was an add describing Cosby's philanthropy which I believe connected inner city youth in Philadelphia with music education and resources. However, nobody knew or could even gue