PicoBlog

When I was a little kid, before I knew about jazz, I knew about rock music. It was everywhere, the sound of the world, and I loved it. Thanks to my family, especially my father Vince Sperrazza, some of his friends, and Modern Drummer magazine, I absorbed a lot of info about rock drummers, especially drummers who weren’t ‘in bands’. A few names stood out, were spoken of with real reverence: Hal Blaine, Earl Palmer, Jim Keltner, and Jim Gordon.

     Notice the headlines on Hunter Biden and those on Jim Irsay. In the path of our nation in a political year, Biden is called a dopehead and a thief. But he seems to have the same issues as Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts, who had a “blue skin tone” on Dec. 8 and was treated with Narcan to overcome an opioid overdose.      I look at all hard addicts alike.

I am not mad. I am interested in freedom. -Jim Morrison (This is the final part of this Litverse series. Read Part 1 & Part 2.) On July 3, 1971, Jim Morrison, the lead singer of The Doors, died in a bathtub at the age of 27. The official cause of death was heart failure, but most firsthand reports say that he died from a heroin overdose. Four people attended the funeral in Paris.

On Friday, September 1st, famous rock musician Jimmy Buffett passed away. Buffett has near-universal name ID in America, best known for beach rock hits like Margaritaville, Cheeseburger in Paradise, and It's Five O'Clock Somewhere. Buffett and his fans, known as Parrotheads, were synonymous with beach vibes and rock. Buffet fell in love with Key West in the early 1970s, keeping a homes on the Island and opening the first Margaritaville Restaurant in the city.

Happy National Goof Off Day! I’m Geoff Plitt, and welcome to What You Need to Know, the brief, weekly newsletter where I share the best comedy videos I’ve seen all week. It will always be free, and you’re welcome to become a friend by following me on Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok, where I share my own jokes every week. And now, the videos you came for: Jimmy Kimmel had Dr.

Jitneys were — and still are — an important mode of transportation in the black neighborhoods of Pittsburgh. August Wilson, aka “The Black Shakespeare,” wrote his play “Jitney” about the characters working at a Hill District “jitney station,” where drivers awaited calls for car service from local people. The jitney system — which is free-market, completely illegal but virtually unpoliced — relied on entrepreneurial drivers, word of mouth and cash.

It wasn’t until I started training Judo that I realized most people don’t know how to move on their feet. Even more recently, a former D1 wrestler offered to teach wrestling classes and had the same reaction… He was stunned. “Do people not even understand the basics of how to move on their feet?” I held back a laugh and said “yeah, it’s scary isn’t it?” Moving in jiu-jitsu in a standing position isn’t that difficult.

The other week I wrote a piece on how quarterback selection in the NFL Draft is so contingent on landing spot for the selected player as to make the whole exercise of projection one of futility. It’s sort of a “great man vs forces of history” debate. The easiest guy to look to for a “great men change their eras” at quarterback is Tom Brady. This was clearly a great man but also one who was drafted into an amazing context with a legendary coach who A) gave him the shot to play in the first place over a franchise quarterback who’d just signed a big extension and B) proceeded to develop that quarterback and pair him with deep and smart teams for the next 20-ish years.

Joan of Arc has one of the most complicated and charged reception histories of any saint. Embraced as a symbol of the French far-right, as a feminist icon and as a transgressive androgyne, few other saints have resonated across such disparate movements. Cute Etsy stickers emblazoned with the quote ‘I was not afraid; I was born to do this’ (not something Joan ever said) vs Marine Le Pen holding a rally in front of Frémiet’s 1874 statue of a gilded Joan on horseback.