". . . A Utah judge has been suspended for six months without pay after he made a series of critical statements about President Donald Trump online and in his courtroom over the past few years. . . The Utah Supreme Court filed its court ruling this past week on Judge Michael Kwan’s actions. . . Kwan, who has served as a justice court judge in Taylorsville for 20 years, was cited for “improper use of judicial authority and his inappropriate political commentary,” the latter often involving President Trump. . . The court noted multiple times when Kwan had provided political comments that criticized Trump, as a presidential candidate in 2016 and as president on his Facebook page and in court. . . Three days after the 2016 election, Kwan wrote on Facebook, “Think I’ll go to the shelter to adopt a cat before the President-Elect grabs them all” — a reference to the "Access Hollywood" tape in which Trump was heard bragging about grabbing women's genitals without consent. . . Almost a month after Trump’s inauguration, Kwan said “welcome to the beginning of the fascist takeover” and questioned whether Congressional Republicans would be “the American Reichstag,” this time referring to the political body of Nazi Germany. . . Judge Kwan defended his online commentary by stating that he had a First Amendment right to share his views about elected officials' political and social stances, calling it “constitutionally protected speech” and describing his statements as “social commentary or humor.” . . . "
. . . anything humorous (and apparently true) can be gleaned from recent events . . .
(from https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/what-trump-got-wrong-about-brett-kavanaugh-n915476)
“I'm not a drinker. I can honestly say I never had a beer in my life, OK. It's one of my only good traits. I don't drink,” Trump said. “Can you imagine if I had, what a mess I'd be? I would be the world's worst.” . . . Indeed, there is no evidence that the president has ever indulged in a drink. . ."
(from John Adams, by David McCullough)
". . . Because wisdom and education were not sufficient of themselves, he had added the further "duty" of government to "countenance and inculcate" the principles of humanity, charity, industry, frugality, honesty, sincerity - virtue, in sum. And amiability as well - "good humor," as he called it - counted for the common good, the Constitution of Massachusetts was to proclaim, suggesting that such delight in life as Adams had found in the amiable outlook of the French had had a decided influence. . . "
"Does humor belong in music?" Frank Zappa once asked. I would answer, "You bet your ass it does!" A tounge-in-cheek look at loyalty and commitment . . .
Bar rooms sure have a funny way
Of bringing loyalty out in a man
Buy a drink and tell a joke
And buddy you've got you a friend
But keep a good eye upon that friend
Because he really doesn't give two hoots
And don't say anything about his Mom
His girlfriend or his army boots
I'll be your Blood Brother
By your side through thick and thin
I'll be your Blood Brother
Just as long as I don't have to bloody
My ha - ands
. . . in the name of humor. Purportedly Sonny Rollins' own words. . . possibly. . . but undoubtedly re-arranged . . .
(from http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/sonny-rollins-words)
I started playing the saxophone when I was thirteen years old. There
were some other kids on my block who had taken it up, and I thought that
it might be fun. I later learned that these guys’ parents had forced
them into it.
* * *
The saxophone sounds
horrible. Like a scared pig. I never learned the names of most of the
other instruments, but they all sound awful, too. Drums are O.K.,
because sometimes they’ll drown out the other stuff, but it’s all pretty
bad. Jazz
might be the stupidest thing anyone ever came up with. The band starts a
song, but then everything falls apart and the musicians just play
whatever they want for as long they can stand it. People take turns
noodling around, and once they run out of ideas and have to stop, the
audience claps. I’m getting angry just thinking about it.
Sometimes we would run through the same song over and over again to see if anybody noticed. If someone did, I don’t care.
* * *
There
was this one time, in 1953 or 1954, when a few guys and I had just
finished our last set at Club Carousel, and we were about to pack it in
when in walked Bud Powell and Charlie Parker. We must have jammed
together for five more hours, right through sunrise. That was the worst
day of my life.
* * *
We always dressed
real sharp: pin-stripe suits, porkpie hats, silk ties. As if to conceal
the fact that we were spending all our time playing jazz in some
basement. I remember Dexter Gordon was doing a gig at the 3
Deuces, and at one point he leaned into the microphone and said, “I
could sell this suit and this saxophone and get far away from here.” The
crowd laughed.
* * *
I really don’t know why
I keep doing this. Inertia, I guess. Once you get stuck in a rut, it’s
difficult to pull yourself out, even if you hate every minute of it.
Maybe I’m just a coward. If I could do it all over again, I’d probably be an accountant or a process server. They make good money.
* * *
Once
I played the Montreux Jazz Festival, in Switzerland, with Miles Davis. I
walked in on him smoking cigarettes and staring at his horn for what
must have been fifteen minutes, like it was a poisonous snake and he
wasn’t sure if it was dead. Finally Miles stood up, turned to his band,
and said, “All right, let’s get through this, and then we’ll go to the
airport.” He looked like he was about to cry.
* * *
I
released fifty-odd albums, wrote hundreds of songs, and played on God
knows how many session dates. Some of my recordings are in the Library
of Congress. That’s idiotic. They ought to burn that building to the
ground. I hate music. I wasted my life.
. . . in proper order. . . they sound more like this . . .
(from http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/sony-rollins-the-colossus-20130819)When I visited Sonny Rollins at his home in Germantown, New York, a semi-hardscrabble hamlet 100 miles up the Hudson River, the 82-year-old jazzman they call the Saxophone Colossus was doing his laundry. "Oh, man, come on in, man," Sonny said in his reedy, slightly high-pitched voice as he stuck his head out the back door of the modest house, blood-orange skullcap on his kingly, lantern-jawed head. Jumble of shirts fresh from the dryer in his arms, he led me through the cluttered kitchen to a sitting room. "Be with you in a minute," he said with a sigh.
For Sonny, certainly one of the greatest tenor-saxophone players in the history of the instrument invented by Adolphe Sax in 1841, and a key figure in jazz for more than half a century, it is a drag any time "the celestial Big Picture" is infringed upon by "the Little Picture," which the musician defines as "that day-to-day crap you have to put up with on this misbegotten planet.". . .
"That was my life back then – I thought it would always go on like that, never change," Sonny said. Now, on "the wrong side of 81," he could feel the metronome inside his head ticking away, each instant too precious to be squandered on the puny minutiae of the day-to-day.
For instance, only that week he'd spent nearly the entire morning down in the Big Apple, making an episode of The Simpsons. Sonny played a holographic image of himself that hovers, godlike, outside the bedroom window of perhaps his best-known mainstream musical disciple, Lisa Simpson. Sonny had three lines, which he dutifully repeated over and over again, coached by a voice on a speakerphone originating 3,000 miles away in Los Angeles. Later, Sonny said that taking all morning to produce a hologram visible only to a TV cartoon character was "kind of strange," especially for someone who'd managed to cut albums like Tenor Madness and Saxophone Colossus in a few short hours on a two-track machine located in Rudy Van Gelder's Hackensack, New Jersey, studio.
"Technology, man," Sonny said with a shrug. "All this little stuff interrupts my chain of thought. Consequently, I haven't been able to properly practice my horn the way I have to," he said, emerging from the laundry room in a loose-fitting khaki shirt, a pair of baggy gray sweatpants, and thick white socks stuffed into open-toe leather slippers. "If I don't get to practice, work on my embouchure and scales, then I can't play correctly, and if I can't play correctly, I can't work out my ideas, and if I can't work out my ideas, then I go crazy." . . .
One of the great stories in the annals of jazz, or any other modern creative endeavor, Sonny's two-year "sabbatical," time spent practicing alone on the desolate, decrepit walkway of the Williamsburg Bridge in New York, remains the jazzman's emblematic moment. It was a radical move. After all, Sonny had already fronted groups that included Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, and Max Roach. Saxophone Colossus, recorded in 1956 and including all-time classic performances of "St. Thomas," "Strode Road," and "Blue 7," established him as a star.
Yet Sonny wasn't happy. "It wasn't like I was playing bad," he told me. "I just knew I could get better, that I had to get better."
The original plan had been to woodshed in his Grand Street apartment on the Lower East Side, but the lady next door had just had a baby, and he thought if he played too loud he'd give the child "bad ears." That's what led him to the bridge – 135 feet above the roiling East River, he could really let loose under the sky and the stars with the whole city laid out before him. Musicians all over town thought he was nuts. Why did he need all this practice? He was the best; wasn't that good enough? But those people didn't hear what Sonny heard. He was nothing but a glorified beginner, Sonny believed, a work in progress. There were places he needed to go. When he got there, that's when he'd come back.
Tell Sonny that the image of the brilliant jazzman seeker – the lone figure amid the chaotic howl of the city, blowing his horn in quest of a bit of sanity – has always been a source of personal inspiration and he will be touched by the comment. Mention that he's your favorite player, along with Sidney Bechet and Johnny Hodges, and he'll shake his head slowly. "To be put with those guys, wow. That's a real compliment." Go on to say that you always hummed "St. Thomas" for your children when they were tiny, and a few years later your daughters made you a birthday card with a handmade tinfoil saxophone in the middle of roughly drawn treble clefs along with the words Sonny Rollins, and the Colossus will begin to tear up. . .
"You mean, like you're going to play this music and the rivers are suddenly going to run backward?" I asked, trying to be funny. After all, he was already perhaps the greatest single improviser in the history of jazz. No one had his emotional range, the ability to one moment be riffing like a musical stand-up comedian and then, abruptly, be tearing your heart out with the abject blues of the human condition. What about that fabulous opening to Monk's "Misterioso"? How about that spectacular ending to "God Bless the Child"?
This made Sonny laugh. When Sonny laughs, you know it. He bends his neck back nearly 45 degrees, casts his eyes skyward, and his mouth becomes a widening circle. Ha-ha-ha, he goes, loudly, like howling at the moon, albeit with perfect breath control.
"Don't you see, that's exactly the point," Sonny chortled as he clamped his skullcap onto to his head. "Those notes you mention, those notes have already been blown."
. . . I'm sure the latter is much more accurate . . .
OHO's
"Ocean City Ditty," the
CD single is now available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/oho4
(and, if
you're in town, at Trax On Wax on Frederick Rd. in Catonsville, MD)
My latest solo release, '2014' of original, instrumental piano music, can be downloaded digitally at:
(or you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
your browser: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/rayjozwiak4)
As far back as I can remember, I have always possessed a great appreciation for humor. I don't just mean the telling of jokes good or bad, or listening to jokes per se. Even though all kids, myself included, go through the 'knock knock" stage. (I remember when our youngest did. He would concoct the most nonsensical knock knock jokes which evoked the most hilarious laughter from himself, non-stop at the dinner table.) And I certainly enjoy certain stand-up comedians as well as humorists in literature.
Maybe I should more specifically say that the appreciation to which I am referring was (and is) for individuals possessing a natural, innate quality in their ability to inject a humorous element in ordinary conversation to the degree that they become, for lack of a better word, humorous.
I have personally encountered several of such personalities throughout the years. In the past I even enjoyed them so much that I wanted to be like them. But this mysterious, humorous quality is not something that can be taught or learned. It appears to be a genetic trait and a natural characteristic that one either has or does not, such as blue eyes or the ability to curl your tongue.
(from a doormat tag from High Cotton, Inc., Bluffton, SC)
"Important things you should know about your new doormat
Warning: Do not use mat as a projectile. Sudden acceleration to dangerous speeds may cause injury. When using mat, follow directions: Put your right foot in, put your right foot out, put your right foot in and shake it all about. This mat is not designed to sustain gross weight exceeding 12,000 lbs. If mat begins to smoke, immediately seek shelter and cover head. Caution: If coffee spills on mat, assume that it is very hot. This mat is not intended to be used as a placemat. Small food particles trapped in fibers may attract rodents and other vermin. Do not glue mat to porous surfaces, such as pregnant women, pets and heavy machinery. When not in use, mat should be kept out of reach of children diagnosed with CFED (Compulsive Fiber Eating Disorder). Do not taunt mat. Failure to comply relieves the maker of this doormat, Simply Precious Home Decor, and its parent company, High Cotton, Inc., of any and all liability."
When I was pre-adolescent, watching with wonder the antics, joy, humor and sensuality of the beautiful young people in such entertainment offerings as the 'Beach Party' and Elvis Presley movies and television fare like 'The Patty Duke Show' and even 'The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis' (in syndication, mind you, NOT the original run).
I recall vividly thinking that 'this is what it's like to be a teenager'. Your biggest worries would be who to ask to the prom and should you tell your Dad that you scraped the car on the door frame of the garage last Tuesday.
I learned later that life would simply not be quite that romantically glorious nor as blissfully simple.
And, in my 20/20 hindsight, I'm actually GLAD that it isn't!
. . . and truth. . .
. . . from John Kenneth Galbraith
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. "
"Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite."
"It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought."
"The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.
as a form of employment for economists."
"The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself."
"Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof."
"We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect. "
"Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable. "
"Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative."
"The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking."
"More die in the United States of too much food than of too little. "
"In economics, the majority is always wrong. "
"Few can believe that suffering, especially by others, is in vain. Anything that is disagreeable must surely have beneficial economic effects."
"In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong."
"Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence. "
Writing to acquaint you with OHO and our music in hopes of securing future performance dates at _______________**.
OHO began as Baltimore's answer to Pink Floyd, an American underground icon, a band that came out of nowhere playing music the chroniclers swore was years ahead of its time. OHO sneaks around the musical conventions that have mummified so many others, unleashing sliders where you'd expect curve balls, fast balls where you'd expect change-ups. Part of it is their sense of humor, part of it their unerring humanity. A curious anomaly, the band was totally out of synch with current musical trends when they formed in late 73, a five-piece multi-instrumental, avant garde, acid-progressive band from Baltimore with a do-it-yourself lifestyle and album/label/outlook who were either seven years too late or seventeen years too early.
After almost forty years of evolution from precocious prog-rock darlings to pre-punk garage rebels, to folk-jazz free fliers to power-trio original and sophisticated-covers band, OHO (now consisting of founders Jay Graboski and David Reeve, reunited with thirty-year musical collaborator [1970s Ful Treatment] Ray Jozwiak and occasional, special, when-available, musical guests) now belts out a bevy of thought-provoking original material blended with classics and the cream of current, intelligent rock and roll, spiced with musical influences from everywhere-including the kitchen sink- for your dancing, dining and drinking pleasure. A physical and aural delight.
We hope to experience the pleasure of performing for your fine clientele at ____________** in the near future. Looking forward to hearing from you. A CD of the current incarnation of OHO is enclosed and and free download card (to experience the rich history of OHO) for your review and musical pleasure.
