Happy Feet Friday

Coleman Hawkins and a small group consisting of Bill Coleman on trumpet, Andy Fitzgerald on clarinet, Ellis Larkins on piano, Al Casey on guitar, Oscar Pettiford on bass and Shelly Manne on drums perform a foot-stomper called "Hawkins' Barrel House" (1943). Good solos all around, but I was particularly knocked out by Al Casey's acoustic guitar.



Bonus tune! Speaking of the guitar, here's a duet featuring Eddie Lang, often referred to as the father of the jazz guitar, and fellow guitarist Carl Kress, performing "Pickin' My Way" (1932).

Happy Valentine's Day!

This is the day that is a celebration of love - yes, the love that chocolate manufacturers, jewelers and greeting-card companies have for their bottom line.


To mark the day, here are Little Esther and Mel Walker with Johnny Otis and his band performing "Cupid's Boogie" (mislabeled "Cupid Blues" in the video).

To borrow from Dr. Johnson...

...the knowledge that one is likely to be named as a defendant in a defamation lawsuit concentrates the mind wonderfully: "The Diocese of Covington has exonerated the Covington Catholic students of any wrongdoing in the viral incident following the March for Life in January".

Hmmm

Wouldn't it be ironic if modern American conservatism went out on the same magazine it came in on?

It's debatable, of course, whether it would truly be "conservatism" that's carried away; more like the academy of irrelevant and ineffectual soothsayers, philosophes, and thinly-veiled confidence men who have infested this once-great publication (and other lesser, but still once-respected, publications).

Well, well, something else that you're not supposed to do

It is unfair to take Democrats seriously: "Ed Markey: McConnell Sabotaging Green New Deal by Bringing It to a Vote".

Update: BTW, I love the moniker Ace has bestowed upon AOC: "Alexandria Donkey-Chompers". It so perfectly combines aspects of her ideology and her appearance in one hilarious nickname.

The constant danger of the imbecilocracy

Alexis de Tocqueville was surely one of history's shrewdest observers, as Bruce Thorton points out in this article on the Democratic Gong Show. A taste:

I was surprised to find so much distinguished talent among the citizens and so little among the heads of the government. It is a constant fact that at the present day the ablest men in the United States are rarely placed at the head of affairs.

Jactitation soothed

After an initial violent spasm of PC finger-pointing, knee-jerk condemnations and general tut-tutting by Democrats and their auxiliaries over ancient episodes of blackface tomfoolery by Virginia's governor and Attorney General (and, I would argue, the more genuinely worrisome allegations of sexual violence made against the Lieutenant governor), it seems as if the governor and AG, at least, are probably safe for now; I'm not so sure about Lt. Gov. Fairfax, although he's certainly entitled to due process. In any event, the evil and absurdity of modern times are once again revealed. The governor and the AG can go back to celebrating the rites of Moloch and "humanizing" infanticide with impunity, while revelations of the felonious application of shoeshine to pasty white faces will be buried under the somber injunction for everybody else to learn from this teachable moment. As to Fairfax's fate, we shall see. The political dissonance is intriguing: are we still supposed to "believe all women", or do we wait for all the facts (since this isn't a white Republican male we're talking about)?