The Class Is Full of Edgy Friends, But Will it play?

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If the premiere episode of The Class is any indication of the direction the producers intend to go with this ensemble comedy, CBS may very well rule Monday nights this season. As the lead-in for a night that includes How I Met Your Mother, The New Adventures of Old Christine and Two And a Half Men, it has the potential to propel the network to the ratings that NBC used to enjoy on Thursday nights.

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Comparisons to Friends will be inevitable, given that The Class centers around a group of twenty-something acquaintances reunited by a singular event--in this case, an engagement party. Seems Ethan (played by Jason Ritter,John Ritter's son) met the love of his life, JoAnne in the third grade. Romantic that he is, he tracks down his third grade classmates and invites them to his wedding announcement party.

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The problem is , twenty years later, those classmates are nothing as he remembers them to be. They've all grown up--Kat is cynical, her sister Lena is loopy, and neither of them even remember Ethan. Nichole was dumped by Duncan, who discovered he was gay on their prom night. And then there's Richie, the suicidal depressive whose attempts at killing himself are inevitably by a phone call.

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Sure, it sounds all a bit contrived at first glance, but this is a pilot, after all. And the key to comedy is incongruity. Before the episode is done, subplots are set in motion, and motivations are fleshed out. And it's all done in dialogue that weaves between hilarious and poignant.

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The Class is a very witty little comedy that has a lot of potential. I'd check it out if I were you.

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Chris Smither Illuminates a Path Less Taken

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True, when he first gained national attention some forty-odd years ago, Chris Smither was associated with the folk blues movement of the time. But to dismiss him as a "modern blues"

player in 2006 indicates a lack of appreciation for the multitude of influences that drive his music. With a finger-picking guitar style that is equal parts Lightnin' Hopkins and Django Reinhart, and a baritone voice borne of Jack Daniels and Leonard Cohen, Smither transcends categorization.

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On Leave the Light On, Smither realizes his full potential in a work that is sometimes jaded, and at others almost whimsical, but always threaded with the odd coupling of romanticism and cynicism unique to the American psyche. "I'll live to be a hundred./ I was born in forty-four./ Thirty-nine to go/ But I ain't keepin' score," he laments in the title tune, setting the tone of the theme of mortality that runs through the album. It's by no means defeatist, though. Smither may be a bit long in the tooth, but he still has plenty of brimstone left in him.

And it is in striking the brimstone that Smither's genius truly lies. He's out to spark the stone, not set a fire with it. "Origin of Species" is a hilarious send-off of both intelligent design advocates and strict evolutionists told from God's point of view. Set to a Texas swing rhythm, it immediately disarms both forces through the comical logic of it all. "Diplomacy" is a commentary on current US international policy as seen through the eyes of Jerry Lee Lewis and the jukebox mentality.

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When he does play the blues, Smither has no peer among the current crop of players. Drawing on the roots of the genre, his thumb-oposing-two forefingers style of playing harkens back to the roots of recorded blues, as in his version of Hurricane James Hurt's "Blues in the Bottle."

More a tribute to his main influence, Lightnin' Hopkins, it nonetheless conjures a vision of blues at its purest--acoustic, raw and from the gut of the soul. Neo-gospel group Olladelle's back-up vocals lend an Appalachian flavor to the lilting "Seems So Real." Anita Suhanin's haunting

voice adds an atmospheric dimension to "Cold Trail Blues" and "Shillin for the Blues," serving as a perfect counterpoint to Smither's smoky leads.

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Leave the Light On is a distinctly American work, regardless of the angle from which Smither approaches any individual song. His cover of Bob Dylan's "Visions of Johanna" is turned on its side and treated as a waltz, with mesmerizing results, and his rendition of "John Hardy" is played in a manner not that far removed from the classic Carter Family recording. Musical spirits roam this album, from Delta blues to Texas swing to bluegrass to urban ballads, and Smither masterfully weaves the various idioms into a unique whole.

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Full of irony and poignancy, Leave the Light On showcases Chris Smither at what may be the pinnacle of his career. Here is an artist who has evolved over the years at his own will, and it shows on evey song on this album.

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Robert Cray and the Middle Class Blues

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It is hardly a secret that Robert Cray has often been dismissed in certain blues purist circles as being a mainstream pop player. Cray himself acknowledges this, brushing his detractors off as "bluenatics." Whatever else might be said about his style, however, the fact remains that he can make a guitar talk. The only debate centers over what he makes the guitar say.

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Live From Across the Pond, the latest release from the Robert Cray Band, will do little to dissuade either faction. But it will give both sides pause to consider their stances. Recorded over the course of seven shows at London's Royal Albert Hall earlier this year, when Cray and his band were opening for Eric Clapton, it's an album that showcases the band's strengths as a live act.

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Alternately restrained and wide open, the band plays to the audience in a way that only seasoned pros can, hitting each note with authority and dead-on timing. And while Cray is indisputably the focal point of the band, he readily acknowledges his bandmates, particularly kyeboardist Jim Pugh. Through the course of the album, Pugh's Hammond organ stylings play off Cray's blues licks, creating a sound as much R&B as it is traditional blues. Kevin Hayes on drums and bassist Karl Sevareid make no attempt at at showcasing their talents. Rather, they do exactlywhat it is a rhythm section is supposed to do-- they cement the performances.

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Robert Cray has never been a blues player--at least not in the traditional sense. His sensibilities as a musician owe as much to Stax soul artists and Eric Clapton's take on blues as they do the roots of the genre. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Sure, Cray has always geared his music to an upscale audience than what is thematically associated with the blues--his backdrop is more SoHo than NoLa. What results is an idiom that is a fusion of urban soul and delta blues.

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Left to his own devices, Cray will opt for the claustrophobia of a rain-soaked phone booth over an open house door to express the anguish of failed relationships. The lyrics are nearly inconsequential in most of these songs--it is the converation between Cray's stratocaster and Pugh's Hammond B3 that ultimately resonates with the listener. Particularly on songs like "Our Last Time" and "I Guess I Showed Her," the relationship between strings and keys is played like foreplay resulting in the climax of "The Things You Do To Me.".

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On "Twenty," Cray finally offers a definition of "modern blues", with his tale of a young urbanite wanting to avenge 9/11 in Afghanistan, only to be shipped to be Iraq, where he meets a uselesss death. It's a poignant tune, not overtly political, that sizes up the confusion of our current state of mindset. But it's on "Back Door Slam" that Cray dispells any notions that he is not, at least in heart, a bluuesman to be reckoned with.

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"I am what I am," he growls defiantly. ""I am the backdoor slam." This may be more prophecy than bravado. Cray and his band pay tribute both. to the blues and to the Stax definition of soul. They don't by any definition set new standards here. What they do accomplish, however, is a

ollection of tunes that serve as an introduction to soul music and the blues.

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Longtime blues afficionados are unlikely to embrace Live Across the Pond as a turning point in Robert Cray's career. Nor should they. This is hardly a groundbreaking album. It is, however, the first live album the Robert Cray Band has ever released.As such, it offers us a perspective on the way the man puts his performance together,

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It gers down to this. Robert Cray can play the hell out of a stratocaster. Robert Cray plays to the room. Robert Cray is not a blues player in the traditional sence. Neither was Stevie Ray Vaughnn. AS Stevie brought a rock sensibility to blues, Robert Cray brings a Memphis soul sensibility to blues. Both brought blues into a mainstream mindset.

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In the end, Robert Cray's influence on the state of so-called modern blues cannot be underestimated. Live Across the Pond shows why.

The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril is a Historical Novel That Sorta Happened

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Sometimes, you just have to go back to your roots. . .

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I'll readily own up to the fact that the exploits of the Shadow and Conan the Barbarian, not to mention the overwrought H.P. Lovecraft horror tales, inspired me to write as much, if not more, as anything I learned in English Lit. Not to discount Dickens or James Joyce, but the lurid, action-packed tales conjured by Walter Gibson and Lester Dent never failed to transport me to a reality that scraped the world in which we live. My father's addiction to Louis L'amour westerns didn't help matters, either.

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The bottom line remains the same-- the pulps, the dime novels, whatever you want to call them-- were the cornerstone that lay the foundation of pop culture as we know it. They predated comic books, they inspired movies of the time, they created the formula by which American detective series would more or less follow to this day and they launched the careers of more than a few writers who went on to become mainstays of popular literature.

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Paul Malmont's debut novel The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril is both a homage to the pulps and the men who wrote them, and a lightning-paced, intricate adventure novel in its own right. Set in 1937 New York, when the pulps were at their zenith, it casts the genre's most popular writers as the unlikely alter-egos of their creations. Walter Gibson (aka Maxwell Grant) and Lester Dent (aka Kenneth Robeson) were the creators of the Shadow and Doc Savage, respectively, the most popular characters of the time. The rivalry between the two writers, and their competition to tell the ultimate pulp tale, is the thread that holds the novel together. That quest leads them on divergent paths that lead to the same destination.

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"Let me tell you a story," Walter Gibson tells a young Ron Hubbard at the novel's opening. "You tell me where real ends and pulp begins." Thus begins this wildly entertaining adventure that weaves historical fact and outlandish implausibility into a package that leaves the reader wondering which parts actually happened, and which were pulp conjurings.

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The death of H.P. Lovecraft, then a fringe writer, even for the pulps, serves as the hook for the mystery that draw Gibson and Dent into a web of intrigue that stretches from NewYork's Upper West Side to the the northern steppes of Manchurian China. As one might expect from a novel that is itself a pulp adventure, facts, though they are laced throughout the work, never get in the way of the story. What we're treated to as a result is a cornucopia of real-life characters playing against a conspiracy of super-villains. Orson Welles and Mao Tse Tung are among the cameo players here, though their roles are hardly pivotal. Robert Heinlein and Louis L'amour are integral to the plot, however. The villains, at least the main ones, a Chinese warlord bent on revenge, and an American military man with no motive beyond greed, are drawn in detail convincingly realistic.

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The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril is a pulp at heart, though, and Malmont wallows in the possibilities of the genre. There are subplots involving Chinatown's Tong Wars of the early 20th century, chemical weaponry of mass destruction left over from WWI, mutated, lumbering zombies, madman motivations and nightmare visions. There are outrageous escapes, six-shooter gun battles, sword fights, treasure hunts and the obligatory femme fatale-- in this case, a psychic with a pet chicken).

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Where Malmont is at his best, however, is in his ability to breathe genuine life into his characters. They all have a compelling backstory, from Gibson and Dent, to the "villain" Zhang Mei, and Malmont skillfully interweaves those pasts into the context of the plot. While it does make the novel a bit long-ish (371 pages), it puts the reader into a universe that is immersive and irresistable. In fact, this is a novel that reads like a movie looks. Dissolves and intercuts abound in the story in a cinematic prose style that cries out to be made into a film.

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As an action-adventure novel, The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril is a thrill ride the likes of which are rarely seen in mainstream publishing. As a homage to the guys who wrote those thrilling tales that influenced all pop culture to come--and did so for a penny a word--it's a testament to the power of a ripping good yarn.

The Two Faces of the Batman

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Batman is, bar none, the most iconic fictional character of the last century. Google "Batman" and you will find over 51 million entries--Only Superman can compete with those figures. James Bond, Spider-Man and Mickey Mouse don't even come close. While current searches give The Man of Steel a slight edge over the Dark Knight, that can easily be attributed to the PR surrounding the release of Superman Returns earlier this year. And while I am in no way dismissing the cultural significance of Superman or Mickey Mouse, I contend that that the Batman appeals to us on a much more visceral level.

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Bruce Wayne is a man obsessed with bringing all evildoers to justice, all borne out of seeing his parents murdered before his eyes. We all know that set-up--it's embedded in the pop culture psyche in no uncertain terms. Simple on the surface, it appeals to our primal sense of justice.

We all want to see evil punished.--and therein lies the cathartic nature of Batman. Through him, we know that justice will prevail, regardless of the odds.

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The character of Batman has been with us for sixty-seven years now, introduced to the world in the May,1939 issue of Detective Comics. To put that in a historical perspective, that was eleven US Presidents ago, Germany had not yet invaded Poland and America was clawing its way out of the Great Depression. Oh yeah, and comic books, a new media format back then, cost all of ten cents. In a world at the precipice of turmoil, the shadow of a bat meting out justice offered a darker, but more realistic hero than a god-like alien from Krypton. Batman was somebody a kid could relate to-- a hero, who, in theory, he could grow up to become.

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Batman was, and I think still is (although I could be wrong),

the only superhero who had no superpowers--he wasn't an alien deriving his powers from the sun, he wasn't given a ring with unlimited potentials, he didn't take an accidental chemical bath, he wasn't bitten by a radioactive spider, he wasn't a mutant--Bruce Wayne worked his ass off to become Batman. And that's what made him more real than any of the others.

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Batman is in many ways the lineal descendant of the Scarlet Pimpernel, Zorro and, of course, the Shadow, with one glaring exception--Bruce Wayne was motivated by a grief that ate at his soul. He had to release the pain of his loss, the fears that gnawed his psyche by projecting them into the evils that had been inflicted in him by his trauma. That sort of distress would leave anybody two routes in their lifepath: either a quest to heal, or a quest to destroy the pain. Batman has walked a precarious line between the two extremes throughout his various incarnations through the years. Leave out the downright silly stories of the fifties, and two distinct personalities emerge: Batman, the Caped Crusader, and the Batman, the Dark Knight.

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The Caped Crusader personality is most fully realized in the Denny O'Neil--Neal Adams stories of the mid-seventies to early eighties, and it is here that Batman finally emerges as a genuinely sympathetic character. O'Neil explored the psyche of Bruce Wayne as well as Batman, and Neal Adams drew the character as grim, determined, and most of all, bat-like. Theirs was a character fraught with angst-- part detective, part romantic, part avenger, and completely human.

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In 1986, with his The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller built on the themes that O'Neil/Adams had explored and presented a Batman that went beyond the roots of the character to examine the the dichotomy of Bruce Wayne and his alter ego: namely, is Bruce Wayne Batman, or is the Batman merely portraying Bruce Wayne? Ultimately, that is what is the core of the Batman mythos. It's also in that issue that we are afforded the opportunity to explore the yin-yang nature of humanity.

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As integral as the Batman is to pop culture, only two movies have come close to capturing the character of Batman: Tim Burton's 1989 mega-hit Batman, and Chris Nolan's 2005 take Batman Begins. Burton's version is responsible for the resurgence of comic book characters as feature-length movies. Played largely as Wagnerian opera, Burton's version takes a lot of liberties--such as having the Joker being the killer of Wayne's parents-- but achieving a visual aura that set a new standard for all superhero movies that would follow it. His follow-up Batman Returns, however, failed artistically in that Batman spent most of the film reacting, rather than acting, to events going on around him. The Schumacher versions that followed sent the character on a downward spiral that can only be charitably called campy messes.

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Batman Begins finally got the myth right. Chris Nolan and his team did their research, tweaked key points hinted at in the comics (most notably Frank Miller's Batman: Year One) and presented a film that not only was true to the original concept of the character (fear as a weapon), but offered a fascinating psychological study as well. This was a film about motives as much as it was about action. For the first time, the public was presented with a universal hero in the Batman, a character that at once delineates the duality of the mind with a clarity that speaks best in a visual vocabulary.

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What it comes down to is this: something in Batman strikes a universal chord that resonates in all of us. His obsessions echo our fundamental need for balance. In an uncertain world, we all need a Batman to protect us. Pity that in our world, there is no Batman.

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Opening the Doors to House

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House is inarguably the best "medical drama" television series ever made, as the DVD boxed set House: Season Two makes abundantly clear. Watching this six disc, 24 episode collection is watching evolution unfold--not only in characterization, but in the medical genre itself.

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Far from another medical mystery series, such as Quincy or CSI, or to a lesser extent,Crossing Jordan, House takes its cues from literary detective traditions, and does so unapologetically. The similarities between Dr. Gregory House and Sherlock Holmes are obvious, as they are designed to be. (House. Holmes. Dr. Wilson. Dr. Watson. Get it?) Both characters are brilliant, albeit flawed, and not necessarily likeable men, but their eccentricities make them irresistable.

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House, as portrayed by Hugh Laurie, is an enigma of sorts--on the surface, he's an irascible, bitter curmudgeon with no regard for authority or convention. He walks with the aid of a cane and his pain has led to his addiction to Vicodan ( as Sherlock Holmes was addicted to cocaine). He's an unlikely diagnostician at best, but his uncanny ability in solving medical mysteries forces those around him to begrudgingly tolerate him.

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It's the interraction between House and the characters that surround him, be it his team or the victim of this week's mysterious malady, that makes the series such a delight to watch week after week. There simply is not a weak episode in the second season. While a case could be made that it is formulaic in structure (patient is felled by what seems an obvious diagnosis, but further investigation indicates something more insidious, leaving House and his team to track down the real medical culprint), each story manages to speak to a universal element without weighing itself down in pretension.

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That in and of itself would not make House the groundbreaking series it is. Other medical programs, from Dr. Kildare to ER, took a more heartwarming, almost soap opera approach to recounting the trials of the medical microcosm. Detective shows almost invariably took either a hard-nosed or comic approach to their stories. What creator David Shore did, along with executive producer Bryan Singer, was meld the two genres into a synergystic concept unlike anything American audiences had heretofore seen. It's a series that has drama, mystery, suspense and a touch of comedy, all woven in a tightly knit package that's held together by seamless scripting, outstanding performances and flawless direction.

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Season Two builds on these premises and evolves the series to a level that the first season falteringly promised. The relationships between House and his team, not to mention his foils, are gradually developed through each episode, almost as hints. as to what might follow. The evolution of the relationships is wisely underplayed, so as not to distract from the primary plot. It all comes to a head, thought, in the final episode of the season. "No Reason" opens with House being shot by Jack Moriarty, a man who blames House for his wife's suicide. It's a hallucenogenic cliffhanger that further embellishes the Sherlock Holmes analogy. (Moriarty was also the name of Holmes's archnemesis.)

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House: Season Two stands on its own as thought-provoking entertainment, but this set also includes several nice "special features." There is the usual blooper reel and a couple of inexplicable but amusing "Valley Girl Alternative Takes" done for laughs. Two episodes, "Autopsy" and "No Reason" are given the audio commentary treatment by executive producers David Shore and Katie Jacobs. While they are a bit on the conversational side, they nonetheless offer some insight into the technical process of making the show. Also included is a casual interview with the cast and makers of the series, entitled "An Evening With House."

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This is a handsome package, with flawless image quality and 5.1 Dolby sound. For fans of House, it is an almost indispensable investment. For casual viewer of the series, and for those unfamiliar with the show, it serves as excellent entertainment on its own merits.

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The third season of House premieres 5 September on the Fox network.

Confessions of a Hired Gun:

Being Bulletproof

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There is no dearth of articles philosophizing the craft of writing. Unfortunately, at least 97% of them have absolutely nothing to do with the act of writing. Instead, the vast majority focus on the mysteries of the creative process, the sundry neuroses that inhibit writers, the unreasonable demands of markets and 99 other problems that attempt to explain and rationalize why mediocre writers aren't published, much less paid.

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Why?

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Preaching to the choir is a hell of a lot simpler than converting the heathens.

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I fall into the latter category. I'm a freelance writer. I freely admit that every word I write is geared to a specific audience, and that audience changes with every new project. That doesn't mean I have no principles--it's merely a recognition that specific audiences read specific articles or stories geared to their specific tastes. Some would call me a writing whore ( in fact, some have) because I have no problem switching gears between fiction, criticism and copywriting. It's all the same to me-- stringing words together is what I do. It's just the mindset that changes. If that makes me a whore, so be it.

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I see it a bit differently. I prefer to think of myself as a hired gun. The qwertyuiop keyboard is my weapon of choice, words are my bullets and I never miss. That's the beauty of freelancing-- I'm afforded the luxury of deciding who my clients are, and just as importantly, who my targets are. As with everything else in life, there's a trade-off. When you're not beholden to any one special interest, it's easy to become a thorn in the side of all special interests, however noble your intentions may be.

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So how do you reconcile those conflicts? Do you wrestle with self- doubt and fears that you might actually piss off somebody? Or do you throw caution to whatever ill winds might come your way, and write what is exactly your gut is screaming for you to write?

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There isn't a pat answer. There are, however, a couple of clues that serve you well regardless of the idiom in which you're writing. First, you have to realize that the universe is not hanging on your every word. Your audience could give a rat's ass about your desire to alter civilization with that book that's in your head and you will one day actually write. They could care less about your personal turmoils and neuroses. They want to be entertained and/or informed.

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Period.

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You have to be bulletproof if you want to write for a mass audience. You're a constant target, and the trick is to keep the reader guessing where you're going next. The methods you utilize to pull off that trick are up to you. All that matters is that you connect to your audience. And that requires a willingness on your part to wear disguises at times. Obviously, it's difficult to inject a personal remark into a copywriting gig. But that's where the fun comes into play. It's also where we can work our own touch of personal subversion into everything we write.

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Years ago, I wrote a script for a training film for a fast food chain meant to instruct employess as to how to conduct an in-store birthday party. It was an assignment boring beyond words. To make a long story short, I turned it into a parade of cliches, with the lead character, Timmy, uttering the immortal words,"This is the best birthday ever!!" as we fade out.

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The client loved it--to the tune of a four digit payment for what I wrote as a satire. My perception of the script and their purchase if it were diametrically opposed, but they loved it, and I ate for another month, and slept without any pangs of conscience.

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Assignments like those leave me free to do what I want, to say what I think means something. Even at that, I still think in terms of reaching a global audience. Way back in the early1980's , I got it into my head that I could reconcile all the divergent aspects of pop culture in a single magazine. The resultant product was called Pulse ( subtitled"Tomorrow's Trends Today') and while it lasted only five issues, it opened myriad doors to me.

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I am by no means trying to tell people how to write here--there is no formula for that beyond the individual soul. I am going to tell you how to sell your work, though.

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Care to listen?

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Free and Legal Music Downloads Coming Soon--sorta...

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In what may signal a major shift in the recording industry's strategy, Universal Music Group announced Tuesday it plans to make its entire music catalogue available free to consumers as online downloads. . . sorta.

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On the surface, it appears to be a win-win situation for record labels plagued by declining CD sales and for an audience reluctant to buy music online. UMG is the world's largest music distributor, with a roster including the likes of U2, Kanye West and Mariah Carey. The deal they have inked with start-up Spiralfrog.com allows consumers to access and download UMG's entire library at no cost--provided they're willing to watch advertising as they download the music.

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It's a risky venture fraught with a number of caveats.

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Hoping to reach a core 13-34 year old demographic--a marketer's dream, and also the age group most likely to pirate music-- SpiralFrog is banking on the assumption that demographic will be willing to exchange their time for free music. It sounds logical enough, until a 90 second download time is figured into the equation, considerably longer than a download from itunes or other online retailers. In a target group not known for patience, that's an eternity.

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There are other issues as well. SpiralFrog downloads are not ipod compatible. While this may be a boon for Microsoft, who powers most other online music sites, such as Yahoo!, and is set to release its own "ipod killer," Zunes, later this year, the fact remains that Apple is the gold standard in online music. In addition, SpiralFrog will require users to use the site at least once a month, and it only allows storage on a hard drive or mp3 player--no CD burns. It's also rumored that downloads self-destruct after six months, requiring users of the service to download songs repeatedly.

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Other questions arise from a creative viewpoint--how willing will recording artists be to have their music associated with advertising over which they have no control? Politics and social issues are often inherent in pop lyrics. Even when they're not, they can be manipulated to fit into any context of an advertiser's desires.

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SpiralFrog chairman Joe Mohen brushes off all such concerns. "The currency e're using is time," he says, adding, "Webelieve that advertisers will pay to show those consumers ads, and that those payments will rival what companies get from iTunes andother online retailers."

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That may be, but doubts remain. Details of the agreement betwee UMG and SpiralFrog are undisclosed, and SpiralFrog's business plan is sketchy at best. A launch date has been set as "late 2006." The company claims to be in talks with other labels, such as Sony Bmg and Warner, but no commitments have been confirmed. Regardless, the basic idea may be implemented in a more fleshed out form by online retailers in the future.

A Roundtrip Ticket to the Sun

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El Nino y El Sol is billed as the "original soundtrack to the motion picture." If that's the case, then this collaborative effort by Ocolte Soul Sounds and Adrian Quesada may have the distinction of being the first soundtrack album ever recorded for a movie that doesn't exist. More likely, it's a soundtrack for the movie that wafts dreamily through our subconsciousness. If that's the case (and I think it is), it's a soundtrack that embellishes the storyline without overpowering it.

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While not necessarily groundbreaking--at least in the traditional sense of the term--this album succeeds in fusing a number of musical idioms into a pleasant identity. Drawing on inluences ranging from hip-hop to afrobeat to Carribean jazz, El Nino y El Sol (the boy and the sun), drafts a musical storyboard for urban life. Through most of it, Martin Perna's flute stylings and Adrian Quesada's arrangements play gleefully against one another.

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It may or may not be a musical rendition of the Icarus myth, but it certainly plays as if it might be."Marindio" opens the album with a childlike sense of wonder that beckons us to the possibilities of worlds colluding in a larger scheme. By the album's closing, lilting tune, Paz y Alegria", we're brought gently to a landing in surroundings that are both familiar, yet somewhat alien. Along our flight, we visit worlds inhabited by both Barry White and Ian Anderson, by Willie Wonka and Peter Gunn.

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What Ocolte Soul Sounds and Adrian Quesada have accomplished here is a piece that works as a mild morning caffeine jolt for the freeway drive to work while also serving as a soundtrack to a romantic dinner. It may not be that great jazz album we keep hoping for (Bakithi Kumalo still holds the lead there), but it's a pretty good stopgap until that comes along.

Immortality at 1/400th sec: Joe Rosenthal Dead at 94

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The man who snapped what is arguably the greatest photo of the twentieth century died today. Joe Rosenthal was 94.

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You may not know his name, but you certainly know the photo. On 23 February 1945, at approximately 1:03 PM, Rosenthal took a quick shot of five Marines and one sailor raising the American flag atop Mt. Suribashi, Iwo Jima. He shot it at 1/400th sec, at an aperture of somewhere between f8 and f11. In other words, it was a lucky shot, the kind photographers dream of. The composition was absolutely classical, the lighting flawless, the symbolism timeless. It was the perfect photograph, the kind that stirs emotions that no word can express.

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Too perfect, some said. It wasn't the first raising of the flag--that photo was taken by Sgt. Louis Lowery, working for the Marines Leatherneck magazine. And that became the focal point of a controversy that would haunt Rosenthal for years. Rumors abounded that the Rosenthal had to be staged--it was just too good to be real.

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None of that matters. As I've said before, photography captures a moment in time that has never happened before, and will never happen again. The moment Rosenthal captured was 1/400th of a second in time, but for a nation sorely in need of a morale boost, it was the most iconic image of the preserverance of the American Spirit ever recorded. He didn't fake it-- he snapped at that moment, that perfect moment that history remembers always.

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Joe Rosenthal should be immortalized with that iconic photo. He's gone, but remember his name.