Robert Baird

I often joke that when I expire and migrate to the lower rings of hell, I'll find nothing else in my eternity than white blues bands playing "Mustang Sally" over and over and over again. But now I may have found another possibility for the soundtrack to my infernal reward.

So there I was, part of a motley crew of HE 2006 attendees and fellow travelers, groovin' with deejays Ming and FS and their four turntable assault at the Friday night rave that ended day one of HE 2006. Unfortunately, no one else was there.

Call me an elitist but I fail to see the attraction&#151for viewers&#151in the whole American Idol phenomena. Of course, television has made millions from televising talent shows over the years so I guess it's just me that's out of step.

Being addicted, or even just a fan of The New York Times means you have to suss out the necessary assumptions and become expert at translating what's really going on there. Even overlooking the woeful sports section and regular incidents of pathetic pandering—a recent travel piece by Robert Kennedy Jr. comes to mind—the institutional psychoses and attitude, subtle as they may be, that the paper infuses, again ever so delicately, into everything is quite amazing.

As a follow-up to my last entry, I was sitting in my favorite watering hole over the weekend, listening to my favorite jukebox&#15118 tunes for 5 bucks&#150when a couple sitting at the bar next to me struck up a music conversation about what was playing: Elvis Costello, The Shins, King Sunny Ade, Lefty Frizzell, James Brown, Arctic Monkeys, you name it. At one point, talking about the cover art of an album I can’t remember now I said, being the absent-minded old man of the bunch, 'Have you ever seen that record?'

I've come to the conclusion that birthdays really aren't a whole lotta fun. I mean what's to like? You're another year older, fatter, dumber; in short, whatever detriment is plaguing you at the time is magnified by yet another a&#0241o.

Having heard from the good folks at Ralston Purina&#151sorry, "good folks" seems to be a trigger for 60's TV commercial flashbacks for puppy chow or something. Lemme try again...When I heard from the good folks at the burgeoning mini&#150mega empire that Concord/Fantasy Telarc has become that a new series called Stax Profiles was about to begin, I anxiously tore open a Concord box that arrived in the office yesterday.