raspberrywine

Never will forget running into Wally on the streets of Manhattan after the first night at BB Kings in New York. He had stepped outside his hotel to have a smoke apparently and we just happened to walk right by him. My wife and I said hi and introduced ourselves and talked about the concert the night before and music in general. He was so gracious and friendly and down to earth. It was a great moment after traveling out from the Midwest especially for that gig. Wallys guitar playing was awesome during that reunion tour. We are so happy we saw several of those gigs because they were extraordinary-- but what would you expect from one of the greatest pop bands in history?

Gail best wishes with everything. Hang in there.

I love tobacco. I like smoking opium or crack more than tobacco but they were beginning to interfere with my jogging. I dont know why everyone gets so righteous about cigarettes? Didnt anyone stop to think that none of us would be here if it wasnt for a bunch of smokers? Look at the statistics for the number of men and women who smoked in 1950. Let alone 1850. Some of our greatest Americans were heavy smokers. Sure, its a lousy habit and a potential killer but if people want to smoke in places where they dont interefere with others through the smoke, go for it. Smoke on. Smoke on the water.

I find this hard to believe also since the documentary on the making of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road showed a comprehensive band trying to work through some fairly sophisticated pop/rock arrangements. The sound and arrangements of that album are fairly consistent with Dont Shoot Me, and not far off from Honkey Chateau and Caribou certainly, which was also documented to be a band effort in Colorado. Im wondering if this is really an allusion to the first album, Tumbleweed etc period.

Rolling Stone is a joke. Hard to believe it used to be a counter culture mag that had serious political content also. Its a puppet for the likes of Brittany Spears, Mylie Cyrus, and Lindsay Lohan. Its a pile of rubbish and Popular Science has more information in it about music than that magazine. They pander to rap and vacant teenage crap. Some of their writers shouldnt be writing for TV Guide.

Steve certainly you can provide more commentary than that? More and more Americans are losing health care as a result of losing jobs. Personally I support these benefits for people when the bottom falls out. And the bottom has been falling out for alot of regular people the last year. I do think the Dick Cheney blows much more than national health care.

GO REDWINGS THATS ALL I CAN SAY>!!!!! We won our men's league divisional championship here in Milwaukee. The team was really over the moon. Ofcourse we drank some beers and champaign in the locker room. Our goalie did some crack, but thats goalies for ya.

I also lived in the UK for 7 years, I think many of the tales of nationalized health are simply that; "tales." Yes, its true the surgery lines are a little longer. Are we that spoiled here?? I had nothing but good experiences. I think the Obama has it right philosophically but, like many, I really worry about all this deficit spending. I think by the end of the year we will know more about any positive effects. Right now, all its doing is padding the bottom lines of financial firms, banks, and AIG. It doesnt appear to be "tricking down" to anyone, as the Republicans would say. Im disillusioned how much has been given to the powerful vs the people. Weve been through this before,at length, in the Cartoon World but socialism is not the evil convervatives would like people to believe it is. It essentially means countries that enact these types of programs for their populations spend less on weapons and more on social programs. Unfortunately, that has become very un-American in some quarters.

Good luck and best wishes Chris, best to have this all checked out.

Pauli the jury is still out on the Obama administration. I know the Right wants to jump on the bandwagon and trash his decisions and adminsitration after a couple months, and is praying for his failure, but I think towards the end of this year it will be a better time to make less rash judgements on these decisions. I agree, many of these spending decisions seem absurd and we should all be concerned about the level of giving to banks and financial institiutions compared to giving back to people as a whole. I think this is a mistake but I will wait to see for a reasonable time period what the effects are. Its unreasonale to think this would be immediate.

When will the neo cons ever come to recognize the immense failure of the Bush administration on all these levels?? Answer: Never.

Totally agree, it should have been just about God. But what did humanity do? We built our religions around the message carriers, the middle men. Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, Buddha, Krishna, they were middle men. We should have formed our ultimate spiritual destiny around God, but every culture and region of the world is stuck on their middle men. The messages are all similar in many regards though theyve been bastardized and diluted. For example, I am often amazed at how so many Christians are ignorant of the revolutionary nature of Jesus' message. Because it's easier to live a watered down answer to the problem if you just say "you believe,", eat that wafer, and do not follow that revolutionary call to alter yourself and reprioritize in line with the actual teachings. That means not putting the morning lattes and vacations in the Bahamas above the poor for example. God might be a quantum blip in the vacuum of space or an old man with a beard and cigar sitting in the clouds, who knows. But it's the same answers we seek after but we refuse to recognize that in our Us vs. Them mentaility. Organized religions around the middle men havent solved our quests, havent led to good things in our cultures, but only compounded our problems and our disharmonies. Perhaps someday in the future we will recognize this and quit supporting these versions of power structures that seek to blind people from greater realities and take their money along the way. We can only hope that we come to understand that if there is a God it wasnt my God vs. your God. Thats kindergarten. This planet, let alone the galaxy, is a side story in this universe. In our species ethnocentrism we love to believe in the importance of man's story. But this story wasnt created for ourselves no matter what we wish to think. We should be humbled, instead in our arrogance we wish to fit this universe, and God, into our schemes and desires. My, how small we truly are.

I was going to attend till I found it out it wasnt a party for the leglization of pot. (tea)

Good things and bad things happen to all us of in these lives of ours. We learn from each. I once planted a car in the middle of a tree when I was drunk many years ago. Im glad Im still here. I think a guy who is quite popular with many posters here once said many years ago , "judge ye not, lest ye be judged." (Ofcourse I'm speaking of Jack Lemmon who was a pretty sharp guy.) We are all frail, we all have issues and have done things that perhaps we are not necessarily proud of. We are all in pain in one form or another and we all have weaknesses. I pity those who do not realize it.

Mel Gibson is an asshole. Oh and he's very overated as an actor as well.