bigcrush: Meant to post earlier: I was on the Today Show Tuesday! Kathy Lee tried to lick my fork and said Cornhole…like….a lot :P
Jessica Amason rocks it on The Today Show — complete with one of Ike and Jane’s specialties, the banana/peanut butter/bacon donut — as she promos her new book “THIS IS WHY YOU’RE FAT”
THIS SATURDAY! COME PARTY + HELP THE HOMELESS!!
CBS has picked up a comedy project based on the Twitter account, which has enlisted more than 700,000 followers since launching in August and has made its creator, Justin Halpern, an Internet star.
“Will & Grace” creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick are on board to executive produce and supervise the writing for the multicamera family comedy, which Halpern will co-pen with Patrick Schumacker. Halpern and Schumacker will also co-exec produce the Warner Bros. TV-produced project, which has received a script commitment.
hoping we’ll see this go forward with a Supreme Court review. Charitable organizations that offset their costs by way of small profit-making endeavors should not be penalized but thanked for taking intitiative to do whatever it takes to stay afloat. The value of Nuci’s to this community is huge — this taxing is an atrocity.
“Not Since You,” the movie that was shot in Athens a couple of summers ago (formerly called “The Hill”) and executive produced by Ashley Epting, is screening out in Cali. at the American Film Market tonight.
Lots of locals came on to help bring the film to being, or appear as extras — and anyone familiar with the Epting compound will recognize the sites. Will keep posted for a potential Athens screening.
Allison Weiss - “Fingers Crossed”
from upcoming album Allison Weiss Was Right All Along, due out on 11/24.
Everyone in Atlanta should go to the Earl tonight to see Allison perform. She’s pretty much a bad ass.
My article on Vic Chesnutt ran yesterday — he had some choice words about Paul Broun, considering Vic, who’s been in a wheelchair since age 18, has a “pre-existing condition” and can only get hospitalization insurance. He’s now being sued by ARMC b/c he hasn’t been able to pay off the $70,000 or so he owes the hospital. It’s crazy, ridiculous, rage-inducing stuff, and he’s sufficiently enraged/depressed about it.
On the happier side of things, he plays tonight at the 40 Watt with his touring band o’ punks, made up of Guy Picciotto of Fugazi and about seven members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor. This will be a phenomenal show and you should go.
athensview: Athens Jazz. I saw and heard Randy Andersen, trumpet, for the first and last time back in June at a Ciné jam session. Randy and his horn seemed the oldest of friends, and the two of them, I thought, belonged exactly where they were, left of the keys and right of the saxes, offering some especially loving and respectful contributions to the musical conversation.
Randy died this week after a long fight against cancer. He’ll be remembered at a service on Monday, November 2, at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph’s. Then we’ll all adjourn to Ciné for an extended jam session in Randy’s honor. Please join us at Ciné for what should be a beautifully fitting musical celebration of a jazz artist’s life.
Steve Key and Mitch Rothstein, who knew Randy well, say he moved to Athens in the early 1990’s to be closer to his mother’s family. Born in New York City, Randy grew up around jazz, shmoozing with some of the greats. He served as an Army musician, playing his horn across the U.S. and overseas.
During his years in Athens, Randy was jazz shepherd and evangelist, taking the initiative to put together a number of combos and big bands. Steve Key has a special memory of the night Randy hosted a Morton Theatre performance with saxophonist Billy Mitchell.
Randy studied jazz trumpet with one of the under-appreciated poets of the idiom, Dave Burns.
Another great find via athensview’s Bob Brussack
athensview: Athens People. If I had turned right at Lumpkin this morning, as I usually do, I would not have met Karen Witten. But I crossed Lumpkin and began the long walk down the Broad Street hill, lingering a moment or two at Broad and Finley to renew my acquaintance with the cobblestones that have ushered me and so many other pilgrims into the presence of The Tree That Owns Itself.
When I reached Pope, I turned right, partly to avoid an even longer trek back to the downtown parking deck, and partly to pay my silent respects to Hill First Baptist Church. When the church gathered, some time ago now, to say farewell to my colleague Larry Blount, who died young, the spiritual tide that engulfed the congregation washed over me, standing at the back of the sanctuary, leaving me with the strong conviction that Larry, perhaps alone among all I’ve mourned, received a proper send-off.
As I moved beyond the church on Pope, I encountered something unexpected. To my right, in a hollow between the back of the church and a row of wood-frame houses, vegetables grew in neat rows and patches. Here — only a block or two from the 40 Watt and the arch — was a garden. And walking slowly through it, carrying (I think) one of those plastic grocery bags, was a diminutive gray-haired woman. She was dressed so modestly, and she carried herself with such humble grace, that I thought she might be homeless. As I watched, she stopped, midways of the garden, and busied herself. I realized then that the garden was no mere waypoint for her, but a workspace. She was the gardener or, as it turns out, one of them. She is Karen Witten. Karen, a physician, has spent more time in Addis Ababa than in Athens. For more than a decade, she worked closely with Ethiopian scientists to try to rid the country of the scourge of malaria while her husband Wray, a lawyer, helped build Ethiopia’s system of legal education. About two years ago, Karen and Wray retired to Athens, moving into a house near what is now the garden, but was then just a kudzu-dominated patch of open space.
The story of the garden’s creation and of its tending by a diverse community of volunteers should be told, and the telling already has begun. This week’s Flagpole (as Karen pointed out to me) includes an excellent feature on “the hand-made garden.” After you’ve read the piece, drop back by. I’ll post a few more images when they’re ready, and I’ll add a detail or two to the story.
Note: For access to a dropio drop where you may download a high-res version of this image for your personal use at a nominal cost, click here.
Hilarious Darius-as-John-Madden call for donations for America’s Giving Challenge
The Darius Goes West crew is rallying the troops again, trying to get the most supporters to give $10 (or more) by Nov. 7. Winning team gets $50K donated to the cause, second place gets $25K donated, and 3rd-7th place gets $10K donated. Easy-peasy for these guys to at least get $10K donated to Charley’s Fund for Duchenne muscular dystrophy research.
DMD is a terrible disease that attacks kids, it’s fatal in all cases by the time they hit their late teens and early 20s. $10 toward helping find a cure costs each of us very little, but collectively helps very much, so please join in the cause and pass it along.
Broun gets a smackdown.
It’s amazing that he just keeps it going, thinking that reading from his shuffled papers is an appropriate reply.
The wonderful Linda Phillips, who founded Nuçi’s Space in Athens, was given an honorary key to the city on Saturday (Oct. 24) from Athens mayor Heidi Davison.
I’ve been lucky enough to get to know Linda, first meeting her back when Nuci’s Space was just an old car garage, gutted out but even then beautiful with her vision to create a musicians’ resource and practice space in memory of her son, Nuçii, who she lost to suicide on Thanksgiving Day in 1996.
I’m not sure how many musicians have passed through the doors since Nuçi’s opened nine years ago (the event where she was given the key was the 9th anniversary) — and we’ll never know how many have been saved from the same fate as Nuçii. But even one would be enough.
The goodness Linda has given this community through Nuçii’s Space can’t be overstated.
