You might remember me mentioning a couple of times over the past year or so that while visiting Indy I had done some recording with my old friend Ryan Fraley and a big band CD he was working on.

Well, the CD is finally out. It's really good and I'm proud of my playing on it. The music is classic and progressive rock songs rearranged for big band, but don't think of it as a gimmick. The arrangements are great, the playing is solid and hearing these songs in a jazz/symphonic context is really interesting.

Please check it out. You can listen to it and order it from the website or Amazon.

Tired. Exhausted. The tour over the weekend was pretty hectic.

And as I'm sure you all know, the bailout failed. As much as I hated the idea of the government providing a golden parachute to these corporations without some strict regulations legislation, the idea of an economic meltdown because of no bailout is almost scarier.

Mom left today. While we didn't have a lot of activities we had a really good time just being together and playing with Milo. It was sad to see her go.

I'm headed out for a short tour tomorrow, NYC and Memphis.

It looks like big corporations want the government to stay out of their business unless they are going broke in which case they want billions of dollars of taxpayer money to fix their situation.

So we lighten government regulations and give tax breaks to big business just to bail them out when their greed catches up to them?

This will end badly.

Download the movie now, for free!

Esquire magazine recently published this list of books every man should read. I have only read a few (Plainsong, The Sportswriter, Slaughterhouse-Five and Huckleberry Finn, The Call of the Wild for school) and really should have more of them under my literary belt. What do you think? How many have you read?

The Adventures of Augie March, by Saul Bellow
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
Affliction, by Russell Banks
All the King’s Men, by Robert Penn Warren
American Pastoral, by Philip Roth
American Tabloid, by James Ellroy
Angle of Repose, by Wallace Stegner
As I Lay Dying: The Corrected Text, by William Faulkner
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Blood Meridian, Or, the Evening Redness in the West, by Cormac McCarthy
The Brothers Karamazov: A Novel in Four Parts With Epilogue, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Call of the Wild, White Fang, & To Build a Fire, by Jack London
Civilwarland in Bad Decline: Stories and a Novella, by George Saunders
A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole
The Continental Op, by Dashiell Hammett
The Crack-Up, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Deliverance, by James Dickey
Dharma Bums, by Jack Kerouac
Dispatches, by Michael Herr
Dog Soldiers, Robert Stone
Dubliners, by James Joyce
A Fan’s Notes: A Fictional Memoir, by Frederick Exley
For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway
Going Native, by Stephen Wright
A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories, by Flannery O'Connor
The Good War: An Oral History of World War II, by Studs Terkel
The Grapes of Wrath: John Steinbeck Centennial Edition (1902-2002), by John Steinbeck
Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad
Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga, by Hunter S. Thompson
Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara
The Known World, by Edward P. Jones
Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings, by Jorge Luis Borges
Legends of the Fall, Jim Harrison
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Three Tenant Families, by James Agee
Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry
Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis
Master and Commander, by Patrick O'Brian
Midnight’s Children, by Salman Rushdie
Moby Dick, by Herman Melville
The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
Native Son, by Richard Wright
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
Plainsong, by Kent Haruf
The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain
The Power and the Glory, by Graham Greene
The Professional, by W. C. Heinz
Rabbit Run, by John Updike
Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates
The Right Stuff, by Tom Wolfe
A Sense of Where You Are: A Profile of William Warren Bradley, by John McPhee
The Shining, by Stephen King
Slaughterhouse-five, by Kurt Vonnegut
So Long, See You Tomorrow, William Maxwell
Sophie’s Choice, by William Styron
A Sport And a Pastime, James Salter
The Sportswriter, by Richard Ford
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, by John Le Carré
The Stories of John Cheever, by John Cheever
The Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction, Tim O'Brien
This Boy’s Life: A Memoir, by Tobias Wolff
Time’s Arrow: Or the Nature of the Offense, by Martin Amis
Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller
Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry
Underworld, by Don DeLillo
War And Peace, by Leo Tolstoy
What It Takes: The Way to the White House, by Richard Ben Cramer
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories, by Raymond Carver
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami
Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson
Winter’s Bone: A Novel, Daniel Woodrell
Winter’s Tale, by Mark Helprin
Women, by Charles Bukowski

This hilarious site has been making the rounds in emails and blogs lately, it is absolutely hilarious. So what if these celebs were from the Midwest? Here's what a couple of them would look like:

(NOTE: After the last joke I posted I do realize that I need to be more PC so please don't be offended if you, like myself, are from the Midwest.)

Jennifer Aniston:


Sarah Jessica Parker:


Johnny Depp:


Tara Reid:


That's just a few, there's more on the link!

Top Republican says Palin unready

Senior Republican Senator Chuck Hagel has voiced doubts about Sarah Palin's qualifications for the vice-presidency.

John McCain's running mate "doesn't have any foreign policy credentials", Mr Hagel told the Omaha World-Herald.

Mr Hagel was a prominent supporter of Mr McCain during his 2000 bid for the US presidency, but has declined to endorse either candidate this year.

He was opposed to the Iraq War, and recently joined Mr McCain's rival Barack Obama on a Middle East trip.

'Stop the nonsense'

"I think it's a stretch to, in any way, to say that she's got the experience to be president of the United States," Mr Hagel told the Omaha World-Herald newspaper.

And he was dismissive of the fact that Mrs Palin, the governor of Alaska, has made few trips abroad.

"You get a passport for the first time in your life last year? I mean, I don't know what you can say. You can't say anything."

Mr Hagel also criticised the McCain campaign for its suggestion that the proximity of Alaska to Russia gave Mrs Palin foreign policy experience.

"I think they ought to be just honest about it and stop the nonsense about, 'I look out my window and I see Russia and so therefore I know something about Russia'," he said.

"That kind of thing is insulting to the American people."

BBC North America editor Justin Webb says Mr Hagel's opinion of Mrs Palin will have an effect on independent voters.

A senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr Hagel was a close ally of Mr McCain, but the two men parted company over the decision to go to war in Iraq.

Mr Hagel skipped this year's Republican National Convention in favour of a visit to Latin America.

Mr Hagel's decision to accompany Mr Obama this summer on a trip to Iraq and Israel, as part of a US Congressional delegation, led to speculation that he would throw his support behind the Democratic nominee.

However, a spokesman for the Nebraska senator insisted in August that "Senator Hagel has no intention of getting involved in any of the campaigns and is not planning to endorse either candidate".

link

That's right folks, I'll be appearing on 'Sports Talk with the Good Doc' on LATalkRadio.com with Dr. Patrick Riche and Jackie Taylor again. Listen, call in, and talk some sports with your boy:

The show is on from 6-9 PM PST

LATalkRadio.com

The phone number is:
1-323-203-0815

Talk to you soon!

My mom arrived yesterday and we've been having a great time chasing my son around ever since. The election came up and I asked her about it, she told me that many people she knows back in Indiana really like Sarah Palin. I was appalled by this. Considering how much I hear about personal freedoms from folks back home I'm astounded that anyone could think her Vice Presidency would be a good idea.

The hypocrisy of the Republican party after her candidacy was announced has been particularly deplorable. While Hillary was making her run all we heard from Republicans was how Dems were trying to play the "sexist" card and how nobody was sexist they just didn't like Hillary. Then after Palin steps up Republicans are crying "sexism!" left and right particularly in regards to Obama's now famous comment "you can put lipstick on pig, but its still a pig" Where's the hypocrisy? McCain made the exact same comment about Hillary. No outrage there though! Wow.

Then is the obvious question of experience. McCain supporters have long criticized Obama for not having enough political experience to lead, but now these same folks are defending Palin's lack of experience (I think its saying a lot when The Office has been on longer than your national political career) and going so far as to say she has more experience than Obama! The new excuse from the Right is that Palin has more Executive experience than Obama. Huh?! What does that have to do with anything? Next time you hear this dressed-up spin of hypocrisy remind the person that Andrew Jackson, Abe Lincoln, John F Kennedy, and *gulp* George H.W. Bush all had political careers in the Legislature and no Executive experience before taking office either.

Then there's the question of pork barrels. Pork barrels are kind of hard to explain and this article does a better job than I could:

WASILLA, ALASKA -- For much of his long career in Washington, John McCain has been throwing darts at the special spending system known as earmarking, through which powerful members of Congress can deliver federal cash for pet projects back home with little or no public scrutiny. He's even gone so far as to publish "pork lists" detailing these financial favors.

Where's the hypocrisy? Here:

Three times in recent years, McCain's catalogs of "objectionable" spending have included earmarks for this small Alaska town, requested by its mayor at the time -- Sarah Palin.

In 2001, McCain's list of spending that had been approved without the normal budget scrutiny included a $500,000 earmark for a public transportation project in Wasilla. The Arizona senator targeted $1 million in a 2002 spending bill for an emergency communications center in town -- one that local law enforcement has said is redundant and creates confusion.

McCain also criticized $450,000 set aside for an agricultural processing facility in Wasilla that was requested during Palin's tenure as mayor and cleared Congress soon after she left office in 2002.

The entire article is fascinating, you should read it. So Palin earmarked federal funds for her town, the kind of politics that McCain has been fighting his entire political career.

But I guess the thing that disturbs me the most about Sarah Palin is the hypocrisy of her daughter's pregnancy. (That's right, I'm going there. And hopefully Obama will too). Palin asks for respect and privacy for her daughter's decision during this political campaign. Yet, if any other young, unwed woman gets pregnant, if she is raped, or if she is faced with the prospect of carrying and delivering a horribly diseased or disfigured child with a short life expectancy, Sarah Palin would have our government legislate to her what course of action to take. She only wants respect and privacy if the decision made is the one she agrees with. In fact, there is nothing respectful or private about our government telling women what decision to make about their pregnancies.

And if recent allegations about her allowing the Wasilla Police Department to charge rape victims for the forensic work (i.e. rape kits) done on their case turns out to be true, she moves from the realm of hypocrite to monster.

Orwell was wrong, we don't have to worry about Big Brother. If McCain succeeds, Big Sister will only be a heartbeat away.

I had a really good time in Oklahoma. This is the third time we've played at this venue and the folks that promote/host the show are really great. I had some really great food including some good BBQ and I re-connected with an old friend of mine from Ball State. I didn't even know this guy lived in Oklahoma now, aren't Facebook Status Updates great?

He showed me the memorial for the Oklahoma City bombing. It was really moving; there's a stone chair for each victim that is lit at the base. Each chair is positioned in the location that the victim's body was found, the chairs all face a still, shallow pool. On each side are enormous, free-standing walls with clocks on them denoting the times off the attack. I saw the memorial at night which made it more powerful as the lights from the chairs really cast a mood. It is a beautiful tribute.

I'm back home now. Thank goodness we avoided Galveston. The show is supposed to be re-scheduled for next month but I don't see how with all of the damage the city has suffered.

The Colts squeaked out an ugly win today. Hopefully the team finds its rhythm soon, my nerves can't take a whole season of this. I was at my sports bar this morning downright nauseus watching the game. In other sports news the Dodgers are doing quite well, hopefully the rest of their season will be less nerve-racking for me.

If you didn't know Mom is coming to visit soon. She'll be in L.A. on Tuesday. We're all looking forward to her trip.

I'm leaving for a quick trip to Oklahoma for a gig with the boss. Our gig in Galveston for Saturday has been canceled. Considering the city was evacuated today I'm calling this a good move.

Great way to open the stadium, boys ...

-Football season finally, officially starts today. Go motherflippin' COLTS!

-Speaking of sports the Dodgers are finally in first place in the NL West. Go Azul!

-I have a gig in Galveston, TX scheduled with Tyrell next Saturday. According to weather reports this is approximately the time when one of the three hurricanes ravaging the Caribbean should be hitting the Texas coast.

-The hypocrisy of Palin will never cease to disgust me. She asks for privacy in regards to her daughter's decision-making concerning her pregnancy yet advocates the government legislating the same decision-making for other folks. Some people are actually going to vote for her?

-I jammed my ring finger three weeks ago while playing volleyball and my ring still won't fit because of swelling. If you see me out and about please don't think I'm on the prowl.

-Is summer over? Holy crap!

China's opening ceremony for the Olympics or John McCain's speech at the RNC?

Following in the footsteps of my ol' man I made my radio debut last night co-hosting an online sports talk radio show. It was the most fun I've had with my clothes on, I can't tell you what a blast it was. I like to think I was a natural waxing poetic about the Colts, Dodgers, tennis, etc. You can download or stream the show here:

LAtalkradio.com

Click on the Sep. 3 episode. There are some callers the first hour and the topic was college football which isn't necessarily my forte' so I wasn't talking much, I talk much more in the second and third hours. Warning! There is some blue humor used if you knowuttumsayin' so if you are easily offended, you have been warned.

Are you f*%^$ng kidding me?

With the political atmosphere what it is these days every time I get an idea for a blog its always about the election. I gotta step back man, there will be plenty of time over the next two months for that. Although I realize that some folks out there care deeply about what I think, if I try to put my political thoughts on the blog any more I'm going to start boring even myself.

Labor Day weekend has been fantastic so far. I played beach volleyball and went to a cookout/birthday party on Saturday, Sunday I had a really easy gig at Hollywood Park followed by yet another cookout/birthday party (more details on the baby blog), and today some friends of ours and Milo's came over for an afternoon in the pool. And there is yet another cookout I'm headed to in a couple of hours.

The next couple of weeks are pretty open as far as gigs are concerned but I have some projects brewing that I'm going to focus more attention on. Hopefully I'll have some exciting Lower Level news in the next couple of weeks.

And if you're wondering what the post title is all about, Google is launching its new web browser Chrome tomorrow. I'm hyping up everything Google these days as I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Google phone which I hope blows the iPhone out of the water.

Labor Day questions for you:
How many beaches or pools did you go to?
How many cookouts did you attend?
How many beers/wine coolers did you consume?
How many times did Sarah Palin come up in casual conversation?