Crooked cop brought down HARD

Bondi has been a bit of a let-down so far, at least to me. Happily though, along with Our Tulsi, Kash Patel is really delivering the goods. To date I have yet to be disappointed by the way both of them interpret their job responsibilities. Nor can I find fault with their work ethic; their embrace of the underlying principles which define the uniquely American concept of public service; their obvious competence; their likewise obvious disinclination to pull their rhetorical punches; their eagerness to attack, attack, and attack again, keeping the skeer on his/our/America’s adversaries until the enemy’s fighting spirit, as well as his will to resist, have been well and truly crushed.

Kash Patel slams ‘corrupt’ sanctuary sheriff indicted for cannabis company extortion
Tompkins faces up to 20 years in prison on each count after allegedly exploiting dispensary partnership for personal gain

Boston’s sanctuary sheriff was arrested Friday on federal charges after allegedly leveraging his elected position to extort $50,000 from a cannabis executive who was seeking state approval to open a dispensary—a scheme FBI Director Kash Patel called a betrayal of public trust.

Suffolk County Sheriff Steven Tompkins, 67, who oversees more than 1,000 employees in the Boston-area, was handcuffed Friday morning in the Southern District of Florida after a federal grand jury indicted him on two counts of extortion under color of official right, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts.

“When someone entrusted with enforcing the law is accused of breaking it for personal gain, it undermines the public’s trust in every honest officer who wears the badge,” Patel told Fox News Digital. “The FBI will pursue corruption at every level, because no one is above the law. The people of Suffolk County, and the country, deserve leaders who serve them, not themselves.”

Tompkins was appointed sheriff of the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department (SCSD) in 2013, elected in a 2014 special election, and later re-elected to serve successive six-year terms. 

He made headlines in 2019 after booting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents out of the county jail, signing an eviction notice that required hundreds of illegal immigrant detainees to be moved out within 60 days, according to a report from the Boston Herald.

This grifting, grafting shitlick looks about like you’d probably expect he would. Exhibit A for the prosecution:

Gee whiz, color me shocked…NOT. Color him, y’know, colored. Or blaque, on the dark(ie) side, melanin-enhanced, whatevs. Below the fold, I’ll tuck some highly offensive song lyrics from USDA certified odd duck Johnny Rebel, from a CD resto of an early/mid-60s single. The CD, titled For Segregationists Only, was given me by one of my closest NYC friends—an outside the lines catch so far underground nobody would suspect a hipster Manhattanite to know about it, much less own a copy himself.

If blue-collar racist slurs make your skin crawl, your gorge rise, and your blood boil, you’ll definitely want to shine this one on and act as if it doesn’t exist—which, in practical terms, for you it doesn’t. Trust me, we’ll all be better off for it. For less sensitive scoundrels, scalawags, and scapegraces who are made of sterner stuff, y’all reprobates will probably find this as rib-tickling as I do.

Continue reading “Crooked cop brought down HARD”

2
1

In memory of the greatest drummer of ’em all

That would be the one, the only, the incomparable Taylor Hawkins, as seen below.

Although I’ve always liked Alanis just fine, they coulda just stayed on Hawkins through the entire video for all me, I woulda been fine with it. Previously, I only knew of Taylor Hawkins from his association with the Foo Fighters and hadn’t bothered to look into the guy a little bit more deeply, not even in the aftermath of his sad demise. So imagine my surprise at learning yesterday evening that he’d pounded the skins for Ms Morissette before signing on with Dave Grohl & Co as a full-fledged Foo Fighter.

David Grohl is by no stretch any kind of slouch on drums his own self. Nirvana was pretty much nothing, nobody, and nowhere until they hired Grohl, he MADE that band. Then, after Cobain’s tragic suicide, Grohl got himself up off the drummer’s throne, came out from behind his kit, and put himself front and center as lead guitarist, singer, and songwriter of the newborn Foo Fighters.

After putting the Foos together—originally conceptualized by Grohl as not so much a band as a one-man recording project with backing musicians brought in as and when needed, a scattershot project which was dropped when it became clear what a murderous pain in the ass it was going to be to call, pitch, obtain consent from, negotiate terms with, agree on said terms, sign contracts with, and book studio time to fit into the schedules of a varied assortment of players, all bringing along their own obligations, agendas, touring/rehearsal/recording schedules, lifestyles, and personal baggage—Grohl made the best hire of his career, signing Taylor Hawkins on as drummer for the fast-gelling Foo Fighters hit-generating machine. Hawkins agreed, the band went to work, and the ascension of the Foo Fighters to the dizziest, most rarified heights of the Billboard pop/rock Hot 100 chart was assured.

Having only just learned of Hawkin’s early work for/with Alanis Morissette—whose powerful, passionate, emotive singing; engaging stage presence; honest and expressive lyrics; and multi-octave-spanning vocal range grabbed me but GOOD the very first time I heard her on the car radio—I thought sharing my felicitous discovery with y’all would fit the bill quite well.

Next up: Whodathunk Taylor Hawkins, being the über-badass drummer he assuredly was, could also hit a creditable lick as vocalist/frontman, stepping into Robert Plant’s great big shoes without breaking a sweat? Not Your Humble Host, I admit. Never saw it coming, me.

Yes, of course that would be Led Zep icons Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones sharing the stage with Hawkins, Grohl, and the rest of their youthful playmates.

Bodacious!

The Sidney Sweeney saga continues, and it’s BEAUTIFUL, man!

for anyone gen X or older and many who are younger, the sydney sweeney jeans ad is an obvious icon, a cultivated callback to a genre that once was, the latest modern take on a corbusier chaise lounge or an homage to 1950’s sport shirts. it looks like 1,000 other things you saw your whole life, a piece of classic americana once as common as summer sunshine and about as objectionable.

on its overt level, this branding makes deep sense as jeans styles are changing, moving from the stretch-fit skinny jeans paradigm of the last 15 years back to a looser and baggy 80’s and 90’s low-rise style. it’s all of a piece: a throwback ad style to foreground a throwback clothing style. it caught the zeitgeist. it’s clever, stylish, sexy, and strong. she’s an attractive woman doing cool stuff in a cool stuff in a cool way. sweeny looks like a bad ass, the car is epic, and this triggers appeal to women and men alike. you want to go to there.

so why has the internet and the aggrievement industrial complex of media babble-heads exploded into such a lockstep tizzy over an ad that would have been utterly unremarkable during most of living memory?

El Gato goes on to expound on more than one of said reasons, all of which are perfectly plausible. But for my money, it really all boils down to just one crucial element: The Wokester Left—never among the most stable of us to begin with, either psychologically or emotionally—has now gone officially, certifiably, irretrievably, pathologically bugfuck NUTS. The slavering moonbats have lost contact with rationality and/or reality altogether and aren’t gonna be coming back anytime soon, assuming they ever come back at all.

Put another way, the loony Left’s visceral hatred for Mighty Whitey, physical comeliness, mainstream opinion, and a refusal to evince proper contrition—ie, to hang one’s head apologetically, as is only meet and just, for the abominable H888Crime!™ of being young, White, good-looking, independent-minded, and wildly popular with Normal Americans—has finally driven the poor dears clean around the bend and into the ditch.

Add to these egregious offenses the fact that Our Sydney remains defiant and unflappable under a heavy (and intensifying) barrage of Wokester vitriol, obloquy, and unhinged threats. Most maddening of all: she’s female but is in no wise the Wokester-approved flavor of Toxic Feminazi, nor does she show the slightest inclination to sign on. Really, it couldn’t be more obvious as to why the whackadoos loathe her so frenetically, yet can’t quite seem to quit her even so.

Remember back when Rush used to boast about “living in Liberal heads rent free?” He might’ve written the book on the idea, but Sweeney has taken it farther than even Rush himself ever imagined going. You just gotta love the girl for that, if for nothing else. Back over to El Gato for the happy ending, unexpected as it was until it landed in our laps.

the vestigial remnants of the cancel culture mob were all out in force demanding boycotts and censorship and playing that favorite role of theater kids everywhere: the victim.

but a funny thing happened on the way to the struggle session:

nobody cared.

academia roused itself to towering rage.

yawn.

newspapers manufactured outrage at printing press scale.

yawn. snork.

the internet exploded in outpourings of tearful anxiety projection and attempted villification.

and the jeans sold out in record time.

you cannot just tell people, “this is normal,” “obesity is healthy,” or “if a man (or a woman) will not date a woman because she has a penis, that’s transphobic” (people really claim this by the way and disagreeing with it has been treated as hate speech) and expect to be believed or to become a cultural touchstone.

and people are exhausted by it, desperate to return to a different time and a set of standards more in line with their lived (and biological) experience and preferences.

it’s about power.

they experience the empowerment of a woman like sydney as an assault on them because they see power as a zero sum game.

but so intense is this will to power that it cannot be admitted, least of all to themselves.

they are absolutely sincere to the point of non-interrogatable delusion on this topic.

it’s grinding them to dust because none of this works anymore.

the magic words have lost their power. yell “racist! sexist! structural oppressor!” until you sprain your tonsils.

outside of your ever-shrinking always on rage tribe, no one cares.

As I always say, couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of assholes. Didn’t happen a moment too soon, either. A few paragraphs along, El Gato throws us a helpful compare/contrast bone:

CORRECTION: I wuz wrong just then; sorry, everyone. There’s no comparison to be made here, the two specimens depicted above are about as dissimilar as dissimilar gets. They are unrelated; exact opposites; light years apart; as different as chalk and cheese. They clash worse’n a brown shirt with a blue suit. Please allow me to atone for my error with another shot of Ms Sweeney’s astounding fun bags.

I repeat: YOWZA!!!! A bit blurry and out of focus, sure, but unless my eyes deceive me I do believe an enticing half-moon of undraped right nipple can be descried in the above screencap.

Careful fellas; human saliva can wreck your keyboard should excessive quantities of it be drooled thereon.

Poised, indomitable, intelligent, fiercely confident—all these qualities and more come together to make Sidney Sweeney the Platonic ideal of what legendary ‘rassler Lex Luger meant when he decided to call himself The Total Package. Throw in that 1) she’s also a well-trained, skilled shooter, and 2) she’s an avid vintage-car enthusiast, restorer, and diehard Ford gal who enjoys nothing more than getting her hands greasy wrenching on her own prized 65 Mustang, first and foremost among other FoMoCo models, namely her grandpappy’s old F100 pick-em-up in which she learned to drive as a youngster (and that she still owns) and her 69 Bronco, for openers. She even co-designed a Mustang GT limited edition model for the Blue Oval boys to boot. Background:

Sydney Sweeney’s love for cars is deeply rooted in her family background and personal experiences. Growing up in a small town near Spokane, Washington, surrounded by mechanics, she developed a genuine passion for classic vehicles early on. This passion was not just a phase, it is a family legacy. While the world knows her for powerful performances on screen, off-screen, she is just as comfortable under the hood, restoring classic cars and proudly sharing her projects. One vehicle in particular has been generating buzz, a certain Mustang. But is it the iconic GT350?

Sydney Sweeney does not own a Mustang GT350. While she is prominently featured driving a GT350 in the recent American Eagle ad campaign, her actual Mustang ownership is different. Sweeney’s love for cars and vintage models does come from her bloodline. In a small town near Spokane, Washington, she first learned to drive on her grandfather’s F-100 farm truck, a vehicle she still owns today. During the pandemic, she purchased an original 1969 Bronco that required extensive restoration.

Sydney Sweeney owns a classic 1965 Ford Mustang, which she has lovingly nicknamed Britney. This vintage Mustang is bright blue and has been the subject of her restoration projects shared on social media. Sweeney’s hands-on work and deep personal connection to her 1965 Mustang have inspired some of her automotive collaborations, including the custom 2024 Mustang GT she co-designed with Ford, but the only Mustang she personally owns and cherishes is her 1965 model.

To celebrate the Mustang’s 60th anniversary, Ford is building two custom Mustangs inspired by Sydney Sweeney’s Brittany Blue 1965 model—one for Sweeney, one for a contest winner. These cars feature a Robin’s Egg Blue exterior with a crushed glass clear coat, 20-inch chrome rims, Sweeney’s signature on the engine, and the Ford x Sydney Sweeney heart bolt emblem throughout the design.

Aiiight, I just can’t restrain myself: boyohboyohboyohboy, WHAT A WOMAN!! “Total Package”? Pish-tosh; doesn’t do her justice, not even close. Although I can’t honestly say I ever had such thoughts before right this very minute, saucy, sexy, succulent Sidney makes me wish I was about thirty years younger; way better looking; fit and healthy; independently wealthy; and lived half a block down from her crib. If I woke up to find all this had somehow come to pass, I’d run the shoes off my feet and my feet down to bloody nubs chasing after her fine self. I ain’t too proud to admit it, neither.

Behold! I bring you good tidings of great joy

If my email inbox is any guide, many of you CF Lifers noticed that my dear friend Francis Porretto’s Liberty’s Bastion blog has been down for several days now. I knew what was going on thanks to an email conversation betwixt Francis and myself over the weekend which concluded very felicitously indeed, at least from my own perspective. Namely: Fran will now be posting here at Ye Aulde Caulde Furye Blogge as and when he feels like it!

Y’all will know I’ve been a YUUUGE admirer of Porretto’s fine, fine work for a long while now, so I’m very proud indeed to have the privilege of hosting him here. Welcome aboard, old friend, it’s great to have you.

1

At last, REAL progress!

Okay, as FauxJaux Bribem likes to say, this is a big fuckin’ deal, man.

Say Goodbye to Sesame Street
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CBP) has announced that it is shutting down after Senate Republicans zeroed out funding for the boondoggle during their markup session on Thursday.

“Despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called, wrote, and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB, we now face the difficult reality of closing our operations,” CPB President and CEO Patricia Harrison said in a statement. “CPB remains committed to fulfilling its fiduciary responsibilities and supporting our partners through this transition with transparency and care.”

CPB said that it told employees to expect mass firings—most jobs will be cut on Sept. 30, although a skeleton crew will stay on to see to the details of the funerals and burials for Elmo, Big Bird, and Cookie Monster. (Actually, it’s to deal with music licenses that are set to expire in December.) 

CPB describes itself as “a private, nonprofit corporation authorized by Congress in 1967” that is “the steward of the federal government’s investment in public broadcasting,” on its website. “It helps support the operations of more than 1,500 locally managed and operated public television and radio stations nationwide. CPB is also the largest single source of funding for research, technology, and program development for public radio, television, and related online services.” 

Harrison said in an April Press release, “Public media has been one of the most trusted institutions in American life, providing educational opportunity, emergency alerts, civil discourse, and cultural connection to every corner of the country.” 

Almost none of that is true.

Of course not. These are hardcore, dedicated liberals talking here; that being so, why in the ever-lovin’ blue eyed world would anyone expect that it would be true, prithee tell?

(Via Stephen; sorry, almost forgot)

Slangin’ arrows

My brother Jeff has a good friend and former co-worker, Donnie Williams, another big-rig driver who lives about an hour’s drive from here in Pelion SC, just outside Columbia. As it happens, his 13-year-old daughter Delilah is…wait for it…WAIT FOR IT…

Umm, a national-champeen archer? Rilly?

Yup, seems so. According to the archery app Donnie recommended to me, called the NASP Portal (that would be the National Archery in Schools Program, in case y’all were wondering), Delilah got off to a somewhat sluggish start in the competitive bow-and-arrow field after having been encouraged to take up the Sport Of Kings by one of her coaches at school. After the merest handful of shaky outings, though, D quickly settled down to rise through the ranks to the very top of the youth-archery heap, and has stayed there ever since. In her first big tournament, she scored only 176 out of a possible 300 points, which sounded respectable enough to my unenlightened ass until Donnie assured me that it was no great shakes. Nowadays, Delilah’s numbers are consistently in the 270s, 280s, even 290s.

I’m told by both the young lady’s dad and my brother, who has met her a time or two his own self, that Delilah, while extremely intelligent and a solid. straight-A student, is also extremely shy—an unfortunate but fairly common combination of personality traits my Madeleine also had to deal with earlier in her childhood. Thankfully, as time went by and she got older she outgrew the shyness but held onto the smarts, as I’m sure Delilah will in her turn.

As for the brand, type, and string weight of the bow she uses in competition, NASP allows only Genesis compound bows strung at 20 pounds in their events, nothing else is acceptable.

From the NASP Portal app’s About page:

Image000000 3.

And here’s a snapshot of Ms D’s recent tournament performance:

Image000000 4.

Jeff informed me earlier today that the Williams clan is presently on their way to—what, either Virginia or West (by God) Virginia one—so’s young Delilah can dominate another tournament.

 I fooled around with the bow and arrow as a wee sprat myself, although I wasn’t anywhere near in Delilah’s league. The deal was my late, much lamented Uncle Gene took up the bow and arrow to go hunting with, going so far as to set up a large, soft target surrounded by stacked-up hay bales in his long, narrow backyard, thereby creating a practice range where he might hone his archery skills. Unca Gene was kind enough to let any of us neighborhood kids who were big and strong enough to string his fancy recurve bow unaided use his range also, a pastime I greatly enjoyed. He insisted on being out there with us on these occasions as a semi-chaperone, the Adult Supervision who’d make sure we behaved responsibly, that we wouldn’t lose our heads, go feral, and start shooting arrows at each other.

Delilah would probably laugh at me for this, but I remember my first day of bow-n-arrowing: I wrecked my left forearm something fierce when I jumped in shooting without any kind of arm guard whatsoever—a rookie blunder which allowed the tough, rough bowstring to rake down the inside of my unprotected left forearm from elbow to wrist, leaving it skint-raw, swollen, badly bruised, even a bit bloody after I’d loosed only a few arrows in the general direction of that huge bullseye.

Note that I said I had fired my pointy, colorfully befeathered sticks “in the general direction of,” not “into” or “through” said target. All in all, even though we all had a lot of fun, that first experience as a bowman was not an entirely happy one for li’l old moi. Next time out, I vowed that I’d be bringing forearm protection of some sort or other along, even if the best I could manage was to wind an old t-shirt around my arm and knot up the sleeves to tie it down.

When Jeff told me about Donny’s kid and her unusual athletic career, I casually remarked that her story would make an excellent topic for a CF post. Right away, Donny got seriously stoked about the idea, fairly well dancing around on his toes like a guy, his back teeth afloat, urgently in need of a good, long whizz nownownowNOW with nary a Men’s Room in sight. Nor a tree; a deserted alley; the unlit doorway of a vacant building; a patch of unmanicured, overgrown shrubbery; or an abandoned car to provide concealment while he takes care of business.

So here we all are, then. Sometime soon, I think a short interview with Delilah to discuss her thoughts, her feelings, her ambitions, her likes and dislikes in regard to her sport of choice might be in order.

Last but not least, along with the other stuff Donnie sent me a pic of his favorite shirt:

Image000000 5.

Heh. ‘Nuff said, my friend. Not that any of those things are necessary, of course; from where I sit, it’s altogether clear that Delilah is perfectly capable of looking out for herself. If anybody warrants worrying about, it definitely ain’t this girl, it’s the hapless subnormal who decides it’d be a grand idea to mess with her. Aforementioned subnormal will wind up flat on his back and immobilized in a hospital bed, scratching his cracked, aching noggin in bewilderment as to how he came to be there in the first place.

A thoughtful, heartfelt, tasteful, thoroughly moving tribute, near-perfectly put together by an unexpected source

Vince McMahon, we hardly knew ye. Congrats, salutations, and humblest thanks for this beautiful commemoration, to everyone involved with its creation.

Triple H, WWE deliver emotional Hulk Hogan tribute at SmackDown
Hulk Hogan’s tribute to open WWE SmackDown on Friday night was nothing short of a tear-jerker.

The event in Cleveland was opened with loud applause and the crowd chanting “Hogan” in unison to honor the late wrestler who died at 71 years old on Thursday.

Fellow wrestler Triple H led the tribute for Hogan.

And with that, let’s go to the vid.


Dammit, I don’t know who the blue blazes that guy might be that’s standing front and center and delivering the speech, but I know for sure and certain he can’t possibly be HHH. Man, no friggin’ way. Whoever that imposter really is, he’s much, MUCH too old to actually be the HHH I remember.

Have people had a bellyful of it yet?

Looks like the Spaniards may have, some of them at any rate. Heartfelt kudos to those cake-eating civilians for at last r’aring up on their hind legs, angrily screaming “ENOUGH already!!” Next comes the traditional raising of the Middle Digit Of Hate© in the general direction of Established Officialdom at every level, closely followed by aggrieved Serf Class knaves taking matters into their own (unwashed) hands.

Hopefully, it’s not already way too late for the Spanish Peasant Uprising of 2025 to be of much help in the way of significant sociopolitical change, beyond affording the local yokels a fleeting sense of pride, bravery, and honor reclaimed—both personal and national varieties in one fell swoop, as they say.

Big Trouble in Torre Pacheco
For the last few days there has been widespread unrest in the region of Murcia in southeastern Spain. The trouble began last weekend in Torre Pacheco, when a 68-year-old was attacked and wounded by what he said were Moroccan culture-enrichers. Angry groups of native Spaniards then took to the streets looking for Moroccan culprits, and from there the unrest spread to other Murcian cities. There have been multiple reports on the ructions in recent news feeds (see, for example, The Daily Mail, GBNews, Blue News, Brussels Signal, and European Conservative).

The following article from the Spanish public broadcaster RTVE, also translated by Gary Fouse, describes recent events in Torre Pacheco:

6 arrests for attacks, damages, and altercations in the unrest in Torre Pacheco (Murcia)
Six persons have been arrested — five Spaniards and one Maghrebian — for assaults, damages, and altercations in a police operation deployed in Torre Pacheco, Murcia, as Mariola Guevara, the government delegate in the community, reported tonight.

Thus, during Sunday, the forces and agencies of state security have arrested another five persons, all of Spanish nationality, in addition to the Maghrebian arrested on Saturday.

Three of those were arrested were for attacking a Moroccan minor and for causing damage to a journalist’s sound equipment; two others were arrested as they were walking around in a group on a public street wearing bicycle helmets in a suspicious manner.

Hmph.  SO, then, let’s recap:

  • Violent retribution against randomly selected Muzzrat immivaders
  • Trashing the (pricey) gear of purveyors of Europropaganda
  • Carrying out a surveillance and intel-gathering mission, as well as intimidating, confusing, and antagonizing the enemy via large groups dressing and conducting themselves “in a suspicious manner,” which sounds like all-purpose legal bafflegab whose meaning is adjustable according to the circumstances; the aspect which pisses off the Spanish Stasi most of all is how the RAYCISS!© thugs evinced not the least concern at the prospect of arrest, jail, fines, and presumably, execution by keelhauling

I dunno; sounds to me as if those Spanish ReichWingNaziDeathBeasts© have their heads screwed on straight—clearly, their hearts are in the right place, and they’ve got their priorities in order. Some regularly-scheduled range time—let’s say, a bare minimum of two (2) hours, thrice weekly—could well be indicated here, before Spanish Leftwits completely outlaw all such terrifying, deadly, and barbaric places and pursuits.

Barrence Whitfield & The Savages redux

Yes, I know I posted a jubilee of praise for the mighty, mighty Barrence Whitfield not terribly long ago, but for some reason I got to ambling through my Barrence YewToob playlist earlier today and, as is his/their usual wont, Barrence and the boys just blew my doors in all over again. In consideration of any poor deluded fools who have no interest in grooving to the extraordinary rock ’n’ roll stylings of the Round Mound Of Beantown Sound* and his band—a soul-blighting malady I can neither comprehend nor overlook—I’ll just tuck the vids below the fold.

Continue reading “Barrence Whitfield & The Savages redux”

JAZZ cat!

Actually, I’d call this number from jazz/R&B/pop/rock legend Ben Sidran more blues than it is anything else, but that’s probably just me. See what you think, bearing closely in mind Rule #1 with all things musical: Always go with what your heart tells ya.

The brilliantly understated piano and guitar solos work together with the likewise spare but quite tasteful fills from the tremolo-soaked Stratocaster and that perfect Hammond B3/Leslie pairing to juice this modest piece right on up to genuine “earwig” status. Sidran’s laid-back vocal stylings are just the icing on a VERY tasty cake; he and his backing musicians play so far behind the beat here that they’re in serious danger of having it come around behind to lap their asses.

Sidran has been kicking out the jams since about 1960 or so, winning his spurs with an insanely wide variety of fellow artists. To wit:

Ben Hirsh Sidran (born August 14, 1943) is an American jazz and rock keyboardist, producer, label owner, and music writer. Early in his career he was a member of the Steve Miller Band and is the father of Grammy-nominated musician, composer and performer Leo Sidran.

Sidran was born in Chicago, Illinois, United States. He was raised in Racine, Wisconsin, and attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1961, where he became a member of The Ardells with Steve Miller and Boz Scaggs. When Miller and Scaggs left Wisconsin for the West Coast, Sidran stayed behind to earn a degree in English literature. After graduating in 1966, he enrolled at the University of Sussex, England, to pursue a PhD. While in England, he was a session musician for Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, Peter Frampton, and Charlie Watts.

Sidran joined Steve Miller as keyboardist and songwriter on recording projects, appearing on the albums Brave New World, Your Saving Grace, Number 5, and Recall the Beginning…A Journey from Eden. He produced Recall the Beginning and co-wrote the hit song “Space Cowboy.” In 1988, he produced Miller’s jazz album Born 2B Blue. He has also produced albums for Mose Allison, Van Morrison, Rickie Lee Jones, and Diana Ross.

Sidran returned to Madison, Wisconsin, in 1971 and has spent most of his life there. He taught courses at the university (on the business of music) and beginning in 1981 hosted jazz radio programs for NPR (including the Peabody Award-winning Jazz Alive series) and TV programs for VH1 (where his New Visions series in the early 1990s won the Ace Award). While hosting that series, Sidran frequently expressed his desire to “demystify the world of jazz; jazz musicians are just like the rest of us, only more so.”

As a musician and a producer he has released over 35 solo recordings.

And even that catalog of achievement, remarkable as it is, is but the tip of the Ben Sidran iceberg. There’s a way-cool backstory for the above embed, specifically the title shared by both song and album.

The original idea for Rainmaker was to throw a party in a Paris recording studio in honor of my 80th birthday. I saw it as a way to celebrate the survival of so many things, including myself, a life without borders, and my friendship with so many musicians abroad.

I imagined that it would be a blues record, so I began by writing some original blues songs and revisiting some of my favorite classic blues too. But as often happens, what we discover is not necessarily what we were looking for, and in this case I found myself writing songs that felt dystopian, not all of them traditional blues forms, and not what you might imagine as “party music”.

But by the time we finished recording at Studio de Meudon with new and old friends from America and France, the record had found its own sound. Somewhere between tragic and celebratory, shaggy and polished, broken and healed, I guess you could say that Rainmaker really is all about surviving in the modern world.

“Just like the rest of us, only more so.” Yeah, you sure said yourself a mouthful there, Ben.

HUGE: SCOTUS Rules AGAINST Nationwide Injunctions by District Courts

This morning.
The Trump administration can now legally ignore the district court nationwide injunctions.

The district courts can rule adversely on a case, but it cannot be applied across the country.

The recent EO defining birthright citizenship that was nuked by a district court injunction is now back in force (SCOTUS did not rule on the constitutionality of that).

BIG WIN!

HUGE WIN! Supreme Court Rules Nationwide Injunctions by District Courts EXCEED Congressional Authority — Clears Path for Citizenship Crackdown

Op’m de do’, Richit!

Had an old favorite of mine pop into mind just a short while ago, an immediate hit which, upon its release, speedily ascended all the way up to number one with a bullet on the Billboard charts for Count Basie & his Orchestra back in 1947. It’s a novelty number (remember those? Don’t hear too many of those nowadays) I haven’t heard in way too many years, and had damned near forgotten about completely. So without further ado, here t’is.

I do declare, you just can’t help but dig those rib-tickling vocal stylings of R&B legend “Sweets” Edison, which I hasten to assure one and all I surely do. More from the notes included by the fella who put this one-of-a-kind chart-topper on Yew Toob.

Open The Door, Richard! (McVea-Clarke) by Count Basie & his Orchestra, vocal by Harry “Sweets” Edison, Bill Johnson, and the band

All five posted versions of this short-lived novelty sensation made it into the top-10 on both the pop and R&B Billboard weekly record charts: Count Basie (#1 pop), Dusty Fletcher, Jack McVea, Louis Jordan and The Three Flames.

Huh. Much as I’ve always admired the incomparable hit factory Louis Jordan’s amazing work, I don’t believe I ever heard his version of  “Open the door, Richard” before. Gonna have to get cracking right away on filling that yawning chasm in my musical education straightaway.

UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER

Says President Trump in a two word post just after the following:

We know exactly where the so-called “Supreme Leader” is hiding. He is an easy target, but is safe there – We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now. But we don’t want missiles shot at civilians, or American soldiers. Our patience is wearing thin.

the AMERICAN Conservative

Funny ha-ha

Swiped this ‘un from our boy Ken, just ‘cuz it got a snicker out of grouchy old me.

Heh. Also, *snort, chortle!* On reflection, I suspect the main reason this groaner got me to giggling so was the reminder of how overjoyed I was back when Madeleine began to show the first early signs that her early-toddler-years fascination with godawful puns was beginning to wear off at last.

CF Archives

Categories

Comments policy

NOTE: In order to comment, you must be registered and approved as a CF user. Since so many user-registrations are attempted by spam-bots for their own nefarious purposes, YOUR REGISTRATION MAY BE ERRONEOUSLY DENIED.

If you are in fact a legit hooman bean desirous of registering yourself a CF user name so as to be able to comment only to find yourself caught up as collateral damage in one of my irregularly (un)scheduled sweeps for hinky registration attempts, please shoot me a kite at the email addy over in the right sidebar and let me know so’s I can get ya fixed up manually.

ALSO NOTE: You MUST use a valid, legit email address in order to successfully register, the new anti-spam software I installed last night requires it. My thanks to Barry for all his help sorting this mess out last night.

Comments appear entirely at the whim of the guy who pays the bills for this site and may be deleted, ridiculed, maliciously edited for purposes of mockery, or otherwise pissed over as he in his capricious fancy sees fit. The CF comments section is pretty free-form and rough and tumble; tolerance level for rowdiness and misbehavior is fairly high here, but is NOT without limit.

Management is under no obligation whatever to allow the comments section to be taken over and ruined by trolls, Leftists, and/or other oxygen thieves, and will take any measures deemed necessary to prevent such. Conduct yourself with the merest modicum of decorum, courtesy, and respect and you'll be fine. Pick pointless squabbles with other commenters, fling provocative personal insults, issue threats, or annoy the host (me) and...you won't.

Should you find yourself sanctioned after running afoul of the CF comments policy as stated and feel you have been wronged, please download and complete the Butthurt Report form below in quadruplicate; retain one copy for your personal records and send the others to the email address posted in the right sidebar.

Please refrain from whining, sniveling, and/or bursting into tears and waving your chubby fists around in frustrated rage, lest you suffer an aneurysm or stroke unnecessarily. Your completed form will be reviewed and your complaint addressed whenever management feels like getting around to it. Thank you.

CF Glossary

ProPol: Professional Politician

Vichy GOPe: Putative "Republicans" who talk a great game but never can seem to find a hill they consider worth dying on; Quislings, Petains, Benedicts, backstabbers, fake phony frauds

Fake Phony Fraud(s), S'faccim: two excellent descriptors coined by the late great WABC host Bob Grant which are interchangeable, both meaning as they do pretty much the same thing

Mordor On The Potomac: Washington, DC

The Enemy: shitlibs, Progtards, Leftards, Swamp critters, et al ad nauseum

Burn, Loot, Murder: what the misleading acronym BLM really stands for

pAntiFa: an alternative spelling of "fascist scum"

"Mike Hendrix is, without a doubt, the greatest one-legged blogger in the world." ‐Henry Chinaski

Subscribe to CF!

Support options

Shameless begging

If you enjoy the site, please consider donating:

Correspondence

Email addy: mike-at-this-url dot etc

All e-mails assumed to be legitimate fodder for publication, scorn, ridicule, or other public mockery unless specified as private by the sender

Allied territory

Alternatives to shitlib social media: A few people worth following on Gab:

Fuck you

Kill one for mommy today! Click to embiggen

Notable Quotes

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
Claire Wolfe, 101 Things to Do 'Til the Revolution

Claire's Cabal—The Freedom Forums

FREEDOM!!!

"There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."
Daniel Webster

“When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill.”
Charles Bukowski

“A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.”
Ezra Pound

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
Frank Zappa

“The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea.”
John Adams

"A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves."
Bertrand de Jouvenel

"It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged."
GK Chesterton

"I predict that the Bush administration will be seen by freedom-wishing Americans a generation or two hence as the hinge on the cell door locking up our freedom. When my children are my age, they will not be free in any recognizably traditional American meaning of the word. I’d tell them to emigrate, but there’s nowhere left to go. I am left with nauseating near-conviction that I am a member of the last generation in the history of the world that is minimally truly free."
Donald Sensing

"The only way to live free is to live unobserved."
Etienne de la Boiete

"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid."
Dwight D. Eisenhower

"To put it simply, the Left is the stupid and the insane, led by the evil. You can’t persuade the stupid or the insane and you had damn well better fight the evil."
Skeptic

"There is no better way to stamp your power on people than through the dead hand of bureaucracy. You cannot reason with paperwork."
David Black, from Turn Left For Gibraltar

"If the laws of God and men, are therefore of no effect, when the magistracy is left at liberty to break them; and if the lusts of those who are too strong for the tribunals of justice, cannot be otherwise restrained than by sedition, tumults and war, those seditions, tumults and wars, are justified by the laws of God and man."
John Adams

"The limits of tyranny are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
Frederick Douglass

"Give me the media and I will make of any nation a herd of swine."
Joseph Goebbels

“I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.”
Ronald Reagan

"Ain't no misunderstanding this war. They want to rule us and aim to do it. We aim not to allow it. All there is to it."
NC Reed, from Parno's Peril

"I just want a government that fits in the box it originally came in."
Bill Whittle

Best of the best

Finest hosting service

Image swiped from The Last Refuge

2016 Fabulous 50 Blog Awards

RSS feed

RSS - entries - Entries
RSS - entries - Comments

Boycott the New York Times -- Read the Real News at Larwyn's Linx

Copyright © 2026