Jazz and the lack of swing Why does so much modern jazz seem to have absolutely no rhythmic or melodic center? If Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong are the epitome of jazz, then the postmodern atonal arrhythmic jazz of today must only represent the complete polar opposite. Is the purpose of modern jazz, like so many other forms of modern art, intended to punish the listener? My musical tastes certainly don’t run to the benign and facile, but even the most agressive antagonistic music in my collection has a recognizable time signature and key. I think the worst enemy of art is not the philistine but rather the academic who takes all the soul out of art in the name of experimentation.

Digging out of the hole My recent romantic experience definitely threw me a curve ball, but I finally seem to be digging myself out of my rut and back onto solid ground. I still probably don’t do enough to stretch and challenge myself right now, and to a certain extent I am still in a wound-licking phase, but there appears to be brightness beckoning ever closer.

Footnoted Thanks to the wonderful people at Marketplace, I heard the tail end of an interview with Michelle Leder, who publishes a financial blog called Footnoted. The basic purpose of the blog is digging into various financial statements of publicly traded companies for the juicy bits that most financial journalists completely ignore. She decided to pursue this course of action after an investment went bad and she reviewed the company’s quarterly statements. She came to the realization that if she had spent an hour reading the statements she could have saved herself $5000. Don’t have time to read it right now – bookmarking for later, but I am sure I will be back.