Chicago Blues 2016

Chicago is a city famed for its blues heritage. Totally full-blown cats such as Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon, Freddie King, Magic Sam, Buddy Guy, McKinley Mitchell, Bo Diddley, Mike Bloomfield, Little Walter, Charlie Musselwhite, Paul Butterfield and Junior Wells called the Windy City their home during the 1950s. BORN IN CHICAGO has been covered by thousands of bands and this song is an anthem of pride for Chicago.

#23 Michael Jordan also brought fame to America's 2nd City by winning all those NBA championships and Barack Obama honed his politics in the rough-and-tumble wards of the Southside. The president is a hometown boy and this week flew to Copenhagen to advance Chicago's bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics.

A patented impassioned speech to the gathering of IOC voters broke the ice frozen in place by GW Bush, however the final tally award the Olympics to Rio. The right-wing flacks were immediately gleeful at this apparent defeat for the n-word president, but let's face it if you were standing in an airport and choice of Rio or Chicago, which plane would you get on?

The answer is too obvious.

Rio here we go

Bad Math

Math is a difficult field of study. Most Americans fail to comprehend anything beyond multiplication and division. Algebra is a foreign language and calculus terra incognita. If it weren't for calculators most people in the world couldn't count numbers higher than their fingers and even taking off their shoes wouldn't put them much further than 16.

For some strange reason I was good at math. The archdiocese of Boston awarded me a scholarship to Xaverian Brothers High School based on my test scores. Neither my teachers nor parents would accept my explanation that my excellence was due to an extraordinary ability to guess the right answers in multiple choice examinations instead of an innate gift for math.

No remedial algebra for my freshman year. I was in the advanced classes. My grades hovered around B without ever attaining the promise of my elders' expectations. They considered me an 'under-achiever. I strived to prove them wrong without success and went so far to choose math as my major in college.

Big mistake for nothing erases math skills faster than marijuana and I was dealing pot to pay for my tuition. My nights were spent behind the wheel of a taxi to afford my apartment. 9am Calculus classes were missed with regularity, however I scored well on my final and proceeded into sophomore year to study Linear Algebra under Rene Marcus. His mind could calculate missile trajectories without a slide ruler.

In 1971 no one had a calculator.

They wouldn't have helped me, since I wasn't going to classes. At the midterm I scored a 15 in the test and Rene Marcus suggested I withdraw from the course. I accepted his advice and dealt with my parents' disappointment. They thought their second son was going to work for NASA.

1972 was the end of my math career and I haven't opened a math book since then, although I have learned that western man didn't come up with the concept of zero until well into the Second Millennium, while the Mayans always had zero or Pohp for their 20-based numeral system.

And I don't have to use my fingers for long math, but if you think you're smart just remember the words of Phil Pastoret.

"If you think dogs can't count, try putting three dog biscuits in your pocket and then giving Fido only two of them."

Arf Arf Arf equals three.

In the Words of Albert Finny

Few films are as bittersweet romantic as the comic road movie TWO FOR THE ROAD starring Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn. The two play star-crossed lovers traveling throughout Europe. Their honeymoon brings them to a country hotel in France, where they observed older couples speechlessly dining together.

"What kind of people don't speak to each other." Audrey asks in a haze of smitten amusement.

"Married people." Albert Finney answered with a vow to never be like their aged compatriots. Of course within the movie's plotline the two evolve into despicable people riven by greed. The ending has them abandoning the ways of the flesh and driving off into the scenery to save their love.

There was never a sequel, however years later a British TV host interviewed Albert Finney and asked, "You've been married six times. What was the similarity between your wives?"

"They all left me." Albert Finney quickly quipped, fully understanding that some men are not made by the women behind them, but by those who have left them behind.

Happy Beermas

October is a High Hoilday month for beer-drinkers everywhere.

Your attendance is obligatory.

Drink Beer and drink it often.

It's good for you.

If you have any difficulties, please refer to the above chart.

It's a life-saver.

Sophie's Phnom Penh RIP

The most wicked bar in the world Sophie's of Phnom Penh has been reported to be closed forever by a reader of mangozeen. My last visit to the second-floor short-time bar was in 2007. The doors were shut by order of the city governor to allow the working girls a long holiday. The long holiday seems to have been permanent. I googled Sophie's Bar Phnom Penh 2009 without discovering any news. This infamous institution has gone the way of Babylon and Times Square.

Sad to say that the world of the wicked gets smaller as the billions increase to take up too much room.

Sophie's Bar was a shock to the senses.

The door opened by several scantily clad girls. They grabbed your arm and dragged you inside. One undoes your fly. Oral sex without any inhibition. Beer cold. Cheap. Certainly not the Ritz, but no one going to Sophie's was expecting 5-star treatment, although the girls couldn't have been nicer.

It shall be sadly missed by mongers worldwide.

Chicago versus Rio

President Obama has flown to Copenhagen to promote his hometown Chicago as host for the 2016 Summer Olympics. The otter front-runner is Rio de Janiero. The right-wing media has attacked the president for abandoning the health care debate as well as featuring several vicious killings in Chicago to embarrass the nation's leader. On particular murder of a high school student was captured by a passers-by cellphone. Ugly. Very ugly. But Rio is no Mason City Iowa.

If I were an athlete I'd rather go to Rio than Chicago.

Hell I went to Chicago this year.

It sucks.

So maybe the right-wing flacks and I aren't that far apart.

Arriba Rio 2016

WHITE BIRD by it's a beautiful day

1969. The year is vintage. Some much good. Some much bad. Today I was riding the subway to work. Newspapers strew across the platform. The commuters grim. Wife #2 in Thailand unhappy with my love. My funds low. No prospects of more money. Despair was inevitable until the lilting violin of It's a Beautiful Day drifted out of the past. 40 years distant. The Bay area band scored a 1968 hit with WHITE BIRD and this tune rescue my soul from the general malaise of 2009.

David Laflamme wrote the song about his life in Seattle. "Where the 'white bird' thing came from ... We were like caged birds in that attic. We had no money, no transportation, the weather was miserable. We were just barely getting by on a very small food allowance provided to us. It was quite an experience, but it was very creative in a way."

Hippies.

I picked up the garbage and sang the song to myself.

People thought I was mad.

They hadn't seen 1969 in a long time.

To get a taste go to the following URL to hear WHITE BIRD by It's a Beautiful Day,

The world in nothing like I thought it would be