happy birthday george ivan

George Ivan Morrison - 61 years of age - 31 August 2006

keith richards shock

The Glasgow City Council has received a report that Keith Richards lit up a cigarette during a gig in Glasgow.

The gig was at the Hampden Park stadium an open-air football ground. Scotland has a smoking ban for indoors. Richards, who has twice been charged for drugs offences, could be fined £50 if he is found to have contravened the ban.

In further news, after the break, we reveal that The Australian Minister for Health Tony Abbott is a Catholic, and we have the shocking news that some Australians are overweight.

friday cat blogging

Following Amanda Acuff over at Flop Eared Mule we have a Friday Cat blog. This Friday Amanda's choice of cool cat is The Silver Fox, Charlie Rich.

Although often pigeon holed as a popular country singer / writer because of his 40 or so country hits Rich was a person who understood and used jazz, blues, gospel, R&B, rockabilly and country. Starting off as a jazz and R&B performer, influenced by Dave Brubeck and Ray Charles, he absorbed country, became a session player on Sun Records, playing behind Jerry Lee Lewis and wrote songs that were recorded by Cash and Presley.

When he was on top with hits and acclaim Charlie got stuck into the grog. Regarded by many of his fans (well me) as a highlight, but seen by the country establishment as a low light, was the 1975 Country Music Awards where Charlie was the presenter of the CMA Entertainer of the Year Award. He opened the envelope and instead of reading the name of the award winner, Charlie set fire to the paper onstage. The winner's name that year was John Denver.

Charlie was then shunned by mainstream country pop so he removed himself from the country scene and performed only occassionally but on his own terms.

In 1992 he re-emerged with the late night country jazz masterpiece Pictures and Paintings, produced by Peter Guralnick. Do yourself a favour and go out and buy it. File it on the shelf alongside Sinatra's In the Wee Small Hours.

Born in 1932 Charlie Rich died from a blood clot in his lung in 1995.

The Silver Fox, Mohair Sam - Cat of the Week.

bukowski, pekar: by crumb

goofer dust, mojo hands and conjure bags

A normal crisis for bloggers is to hit writer's block or blog constipation or to call a halt or a hiatus.

Afflicted bloggers spend hours at the crossroads around midnight uncrossing and jinx-breaking and also searching around the backyard by candlelight trying to find that buried bottle spell, perhaps stealing into a functioning prolific blogger's abode and purloining a chunk of John the Conqueror Root or some gris-gris. Mostly the zombie blogger just mopes around, occassionally feeling hesitantly with one hand above doorways, hoping to stumble over the lost mojo bag.

Others just keep quiet when they go quiet and hope no one notices.

Some announce a halt then bounce back less than a week later with more posts than you can poke a USB stick at. It's a funny old world.

more family art

Clothes

Dolls or bags or mobiles or..