Sydney Pollack (1934-2008)

Movie director Sydney Pollack, a Hollywood hitmaker for four decades, died this afternoon from cancer. He was 73.

Mr. Pollack will be best remembered for “Tootsie,” a classic American comedy. But I’m embarrassed to realize how many of his films I haven’t seen, such as “Three Days of the Condor,” “Absence of Malice” (even though I was a journalist) and “Out of Africa.”

His first feature film as a director – “The Slender Thread” in 1965 – starred Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft. I never saw that one either, but I’ve embedded the trailer below to honor his passing.

Sydney Pollack was one of the celebrities Elvis Mitchell interviewed for his upcoming chat show on Turner Classic Movies, “Elvis Mitchell: Under the Influence.” That show is due to premiere in July.

A free Hamiet Bluiett download

Baritone saxophonist Hamiet Bluiett, a founding member of the World Saxophone Quartet, is a titan of avant-garde jazz.

Let me point you to a FREE MP3 of Bluiett and two other serious cats – percussionist Kahil El’Zabar and violinist Billy Bang (about whom I blogged last September).

This trio, under the group name Tri-Factor, released a 2002 CD titled “If You Believe.” Which is also the title of the free track.

Click here to hear it on my Vox blog.

Follow this link to Amazon.com if you want to download it. But there’s an error; the track is labeled “Dark Silhouette”... but it’s actually “If You Believe.”

The full album is downloadable from iTunes and Amazon.

Now for something extra. Below is a 10-minute profile of Hamiet Bluiett recently broadcast on KECT, St. Louis’s public television station. Old dude reminds me of Grady on “Sanford and Son.”

Random wrongness

Liz Trotta has apologized...

... for her “lame attempt at humor” regarding the thought of Barack Obama being killed. It came at the end of a 3½-minute piece on Fox News earlier today. It is embedded below. (Hat-tip: Politico.)

Meanwhile, Team Hillary blames the Obama campaign for “inflaming” the controversy over Hillary’s own assassination remark.

You know what? I’m thinking that Barack Obama’s greatest deed in life could be his preventing the shameless Mrs. Clinton and her swarm of dirt dobbers from rising to power.

Oh no she di’in’t!

Thanks to commenter odocoileus for pointing out this jaw-dropping “joke” by Fox News contributor Liz Trotta this morning:

DMX, keepin’ it mad real

Hat-tip to Ernest Hardy for pointing to this hee-larious video of rapper DMX talkin’ shyit... alongside British fanboy prat Tim Westwood.

Watching this clip reminds me to remind y’all: May is Mental Health Month.

‘Hillary’s Downfall’

This wicked and profanely funny video was written by James Adomian, a comedian and George W. Bush impersonator. (He played Bush in “Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay.”)

“Hillary’s Downfall” has been online for a couple of weeks... but is still timely.

Tsvangirai has returned.

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai returned today to Zimbabwe, where he will face President Robert Mugabe in a run-off election next month.

Reports of political violence – specifically the beating and killing of Tsvangirai supporters by government-backed thugs – have been coming out of Zimbabwe for weeks.

In that context, consider this headline from an editorial published yesterday in the Zimbabwe Herald, the government-run newspaper:

“Let’s Disembowel Tsvangirai on June 27.”

Not till the end of that editorial do you realize the word “disembowel” is meant figuratively. (Or is it?)

According to the Herald, Tsvangirai and his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) are sock puppets for the “regime change agenda” of Britain and the United States.

“[I]f some among us continue giving the Westerners hope by voting for the MDC, they will only be too eager to keep ratcheting the pressure in the hope that one day, we will capitulate,” according to the Herald.

“However, if we send a clear message to them that we have seen through their ruse by shunning Tsvangirai and overwhelmingly endorsing President Mugabe, they will be compelled to leave us alone.

“June 27 is the day we should send that message, let it be the day we disembowel the neo-colonial project.”

Follow this link to watch a 1½-minute BBC news report on Tsvangirai’s return to Zimbabwe.

‘We cannot forgive you this, Senator...’

Yes, Keith Olbermann is the most self-important jackass on American television.

Whenever he unburdens himself of another so-called “Special Comment,” I prepare to be astounded yet again by his graceless prose, his ham acting, his pretenses to historical wisdom and his overarching tone of disrespect.

Still, I am mightily entertained whenever Keith goes off on Hillary Clinton... as he did tonight.

It helps that she had it coming.

Random hotness

Bonus freebie: ‘Conquer Mentally’

Want more hip-hop to remind you of the Golden Age? Producer Presto has a new CD dropping in mid-June. It’s called “State of the Art.”

The track “Conquer Mentally” is available now as a FREE MP3. It features Sadat X (remember Brand Nubian?), O.C. and Large Professor.

Click here to spin “Conquer Mentally” on my Vox blog. Click the song title below to download it. (I also got the video cued up...)

“Conquer Mentally” (MP3)
More on this album

A free Roots download

Philadelphia’s hip-hop heroes The Roots have a new album out – “Rising Down.” I can point you to a FREE MP3 off it, courtesty of the music blog Pampelmoose.

Click here to stream “Get Busy” on my Vox blog. To commence downloading, hit this link.

Random wrongness

Remembering Fats Waller

Thomas “Fats” Waller – one of the great jazz musicians of all time, and probably the funniest – was born on May 21, 1904. He had a fruitful recording career, but he died too young – in December of 1943.

I’m streaming one of Waller’s final recordings on my Vox blog. Click here and check out “The Reefer Song,” alternately titled “You’re a Viper.” (“Viper” was a slang term for marijuana smoker.)

Curiously, this pro-pot ditty was recorded under the direct sponsorship of the U.S. government. It was a V-Disc... made specifically for U.S. armed forces overseas as a morale-booster.

One never knows, do one?

Random Japaneseness

Playlist: Live from Jazzfest 2008

I can’t believe I’ve never been to New Orleans. I have two good friends who love that city – one for the food and the weirdness, the other for the music and the food. (And I love music, food and weirdness.)

One of these days I’ll get it together and check out Jazzfest. Until then, let me tell you about DigitalSoundboard.net... in case you don’t know.

That’s a site where, if you register, you can purchase and legally download good-quality MP3s (or, if you prefer, FLAC files) of live gigs.

They got hip artists such as Will Bernard, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey and Steve Kimock. And they got festival shows... including sets from the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival a few weeks ago.

I’m streaming some of that Jazzfest funk on my Vox blog, by way of DigitalSoundboard... because it’s never the wrong time to get your NOLA on. Click the song titles below to listen.

1. “Mr. Go” – Bonerama

2. “Meters Medley” – Bonerama

Bonerama (pictured above) is all about the bone. Trom-bone, that is. This band puts four trombonists out front. Founders Mark Mullins and Craig Klein came out of Harry Connick’s big band.

These performances are from Bonerama’s May 1 set at Tipitina’s French Quarter.

3. “Bring In the Noise” – Porter Batiste Stoltz

Also known as PBS, Porter Batiste Stoltz (pictured below) is a spinoff of the Meters. Bass player George Porter was an original member of that legendary groove band; drummer Russell Batiste and guitarist Brian Stoltz joined the Meters during the 1990s. You best believe this is a hard-funking power trio. (All three share singing duties.)

This recording is from PBS’s May 2 gig at the Howlin’ Wolf.


4. “Squeezin’ My Heart” – New Orleans Allstars

This one-off jam band included George Porter, Ivan Neville (Aaron’s son) and a peculiar Swedish performer – Theresa Andersson – who calls New Orleans home.

This tune is from a May 2 set at the Howlin’ Wolf. And if you’re interested in Ms. Andersson’s looped vocal effects and violing playing, below is an unrelated video that shows her in action:

Random hotness

Random wrongness

Another Obama song

You’d think that people would have had enough of Barack Obama songs. I look around me and I see it isn’t so.

And what’s wrong with that?

I blogged about the mariachi Obama song. I blogged about several reggae Obama songs. The latest comes from an L.A. rock ’n’ roll combo called Pistol Opera.

The track is called “Obama,” and it might be a goof. (Sample lyric: “Like Abraham Lincoln crossed with the Mack. Once you go Barack, you never go back.”)

Or maybe it’s just a money-making move. Could even be sincere. Who knows?

To hear “Obama” streaming on my Vox blog, click here.

It’s downloadable from eMusic and Amazon.

UPDATE (05/19/08): Hmmm. Turns out it’s a goof and it’s sincere. Eli Braden of Pistol Opera fancies himself a bit of a comedy writer. Four months ago, he blogged: “I’m Totally Gay For Barack Obama.” It’s an amusing post.

When Cosby blamed whitey

A couple of years ago, I tracked down and bought a copy of Bill Cosby’s doctoral dissertation.

Y’all know Cosby likes to flaunt his doctorate, right? He even puts “Ed.D.” on some of his television credits. You ever wonder what his thesis was about?

Here’s the title: “An Integration of the Visual Media Via ‘Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids’ into the Elementary School Curriculum as a Teaching Aid and Vehicle to Achieve Increased Learning.”

Cosby presented this dissertation in September 1976 at the University of Massachusetts.

Here’s what’s interesting about it. Whereas Dr. Cosby has lately been stressing personal responsibility and the failure of black folks to lift themselves up, he was humming a different tune 30 years ago.

Back then, it was all whitey’s fault.

“Schools are supposed to be the vehicle by which children are equipped with the skills and attitudes necessary to enter society,” Cosby wrote in his introduction. “But a black child, because of the inherent racism in American schools will be ill prepared to meet the challenges of an adult future. The ‘American Dream’ of upward mobility is just another myth.”

Yeah. Bill Cosby wrote that.

He was wrong then. He’s right now.

“Far from being prepared to move along an established career lattice, black children are trained to occupy those same positions held by their parents in a society economically dominated and maintained by a white status quo,” Cosby continued in his dissertation.

“Because urban children come from a poor socio-economic environment, teachers – instilled with their own racist attitudes – are quick to make assumptions about the cognitive abilities of their students.”

Hmm...

“The failure that minority children experience from the very outset can only reinforce the debilitating sense of worthlessness whites convey in a variety of ways,” Cosby wrote, “and so feed the self-hatred produced by discrimination and prejudice.”

Damn. He was on some Jeremiah Wright shit! He even quoted from Stokely Carmichael’s book “Black Power” to define the scope of white racism in American society.

According to Cosby, “[t]he ferociousness with which racism is perpetuated transcends all class levels.” And white people “are raised with a counter myth of white supremacy (power and domination) and intellectual superiority (by which to assert their power and domination).”

Of course, with the passage of time it’s now evident that no matter how high you pile the leftist horseshit, it won’t make black kids do better in school... and it won’t decrease the rates of black violent crime.

Those are things only black people can fix.

Something DVD-licious from Curtis Mayfield

I didn’t know this new DVD was coming... but as soon as I stumbled on it, I ordered one. And I bet some of y’all will do the same in a few minutes.

It’s “Movin’ On Up: The Music and Message of Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions.” The DVD trailer is embedded below. If you want to read a review, try this one or this one.

‘The Black List’ is opening soon.

Back in January, I blogged about a new documentary film by my friend Elvis Mitchell and his friend, photographer/filmmaker Timothy Greenfield-Sanders.

It’s called “The Black List: Volume One,” and it’s a series of interviews with notable black folks.

Mark your calendars; “The Black List” opens May 30 at the Laemmle’s Grande 4-plex in downtown Los Angeles. It will open in New York City two weeks after that, and it’s due to premiere on HBO in August.

Variety has praised the film as “a rich and revealing work of portraiture.”

Below are Elvis and Tim talking about “The Black List” at the Sundance Film Festival.