a quick one

And now, a seasonal entry from

Doc Nagel's Top 100 Things

14. Jazz versions of Christmas tunes. I just love 'em.

By jazz versions, I here mean a fairly wide swath in the territory from blues to swing to big band to crooner to hard bop.

A few of these are well-known, of course. For instance, I think most folks know (and if they don't they should) Louis Armstrong's Zat You, Santa Claus?". Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Ella Fitzgerald, Eartha Kitt, Etta James, Ramsey Lewis, and dozens of other jazz or jazz-influenced musicians have recorded joyful, swinging, spiffy X-mas numbers.

We own copies of two of the best jazz holiday albums, Jimmy Smith's rollicking, and sometimes overwhelming Christmas Cookin' and Vince Gauraldi's soundtrack for A Charlie Brown Christmas. I've yet to pick up a new Christmas jazz album this year, but I know which one I want: Joe Pass's Six String Santa. Might need to look that up on iTunes.

morning constitutional

It's Constitution Day!

Please take a moment to reflect upon the Constitution, whether it's the constitution of meaning by an intersubjective community, or the constitution of fraud by a series of acts, or even just the reconstitution of lemon juice in one of those little oval squirt bottles.

Or, if you swing this way, you could celebrate your Constitutional rights by wire-tapping yourself.

EDIT @ 7:03 AM:

This just in from the Modesto Bee: Economy in crisis. I guess that when, finally, the Bee notices a news story, it becomes more official somehow.