Dispatches from Vilnius

In 1968 Miles Davis had a whirlwind romance with Betty Mabry that resulted in a major turning point in his music.  She introduced him to the world of Funk, tailored him for the 60s and became the inspiration for his album Filles de Kilimanjaro .  One of the songs was devoted to her.   You can't say it is anywhere near as funky as the album Betty Mabry would later produce under Betty Davis , but it has a nice Sunday morning feel to it with Chick Corea and Dave Holland filling in on electric piano and bass.  Apparently, Ron Carter was none too happy about giving up his double bass.  Miles' second greatest quintet broke up shortly thereafter, and he formed an electric band inspired by the music of Betty's world that resulted in one of his greatest albums, Bitches Brew .  She is credited for coming up with the title.   It is a decidedly more hip album that combines jazz and funk in his own inimitable way.  The album was well received by Ba...

Charlamagne Tha God took exception to Joe Biden calling Trump our first racist president, noting the obvious that many presidents before were avowed racists.  I suppose Joe meant in recent history, but then Richard Nixon made it pretty clear where his affinities lay .  You could also make the case that the notorious crime bill that Bill Clinton endorsed unfairly targeted Black Americans .  He rushed the bill through Congress hoping it would help Democrats in the 1994 midterms, only to see that Congressional election blow up in his face.  However, neither Nixon nor Clinton nor any modern-day president was ever as overtly racist as has been Donald J. Trump, which is the point Joe Biden was trying to make in an effort to solidify his support among Black Americans.  He just may have lost Charlamagne's vote. Of course our current president would like Black voters to believe he has done more for them than even Honest Abe did back in 1863 when he signed the Emancipati...

It was fun to hear Roller Girl as Brenda was seduced by Jules in one of the pivotal scenes in Mrs. America.  The song was by Anna Karina in her signature movie from the French New Wave.   As you can see from this video clip , she was easy to fall in love with.  However,  the album is not easy to come by , although it was one of Serge Gainsborough's best collaborations in my mind. The 60s and early 70s were a time of free-spirited young women.  The New Wave was felt in America with many young actresses flaunting their bodies, such as Goldie Hawn giving us a playful version of Bridget Bardot  in  Butterflies Are Free .    On a more serious note, you had movies like Five Easy Pieces , in which a young Jack Nicholson turns his back on wealth and becomes a roughneck on an oil rig, flirting with Karen Black before falling in love with Susan Anspach. There was a nihilism to these movies that made them very attractive, similar ...

You could almost hear Lynn Anderson singing in the background, as Trump left reporters stunned by his rambling campaign stump speech in the Rose Garden yesterday.  When asked if there is anyone left to question the president in the White House, Jim Acosta said , "no, Anderson, we're down to kool-aid drinkers and next of kin." One of those next of kin was busy earlier this week plugging Goya food products after its CEO gave his full support to her father.  Just one of the many brazen acts of promotion the Trump White House has become infamous for. Meanwhile, Dr. Ben Carson, a once famous neurologist, is telling everyone that we can't shut down the country again over coronavirus , believing it would "completely destroy the financial infrastructure."  He gets back up from Pete Navarro, who has now launched a full frontal assault on the authority if Dr. Fauci in the USA Today, claiming the good doctor "has been wrong with everything I have intera...

The problem with Cate Blanchett playing Phyllis Schlafly is that she gives the anti-feminist icon a warmth and sensitivity that she never possessed, at least not in public.  As fun as Mrs. America is to watch, it resurrects the old witch, who Betty Friedan infamously said should be " burned at the stake ."  Phyllis was great at getting under people's skin and sure got under Betty's skin, as episode 4 showed in generous detail. But, is Schlafly worth resurrecting?  What kind of object lesson can we take from this 9-part mini-series that chronicles the fight for an Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s which never really died out? Congress had written into the passage of the amendment in 1972 that 38 states had to ratify it before 1979.  It didn't seem like a tall order back then as Democrats controlled many state legislatures and there were enough Republicans who supported the ERA to help them out.  However, Phyllis made it her crusade to get 13 states to...

Seems like Mary Trump's book will come out next week, despite all her family's best efforts to squelch her . With so many advance copies now in circulation, the story will get out one way or the other, and from the reviews it is none too pretty a picture of the Trump family. Much of this we have surmised from the information publicly available on Trump and his relationship with his father.  Donald has said many times that he doesn't drink because of his older brother's alcoholism, but we can take away from the excerpts that this was just a way to promote himself not a show of sympathy toward his brother, who died at 42.  However, this teetotalism has been disputed by others as well. In fact, there is not much about Donald that we don't know.  The only problem has been to verify the many stories that swirl around about his abusive behavior toward any one who challenges his authority, especially women.  Mary sheds some light on his misogyny by sharing a...

... and you thought Mike Judge really went out on a limb in Idiocracy ?  In this crazy, upside-down world literally anything is possible, even the prospect of Kanye West sitting in the Oval Office , only this time behind the desk .  If the Donald can do it, anyone can! We have four long months until the general election and things had been getting kind of boring.  Our billionaire rapper wasn't content to sit on the sidelines in 2020, watching the poll numbers of his " father figure " tank.  While most just consider this a blatant promotional campaign, some political pundits appear to be genuinely worried he can pull votes away from Joe Biden , especially after Elon Musk offered an endorsement of sorts . Kanye represents one half of a billionaire power couple that has a lot of social influence, but will it translate into votes?  Of course, no one thought the Donald would get any further than the first primary and look who ended up sitting in the White Ho...

It is really hard to convey to my friends in Lithuania why these Confederate statues spark so much outrage.  Aren't they a part of history, one of my friends asked?  So too were the Soviet statues but I don't see very many of them around anymore.  Still, they find this wanton vandalism a little hard to accept. We seem to be having a watershed moment, in which not only the United States but countries all over the world are coming to terms with their painful past.  This occurred in the late 1980s in the Soviet Union when Mikhail Gorbachev unwittingly opened up a Pandora's box of emotions that led to the dissolution of this socialist behemoth.  Lithuania was literally the mouse that roared when it tore down a statue of Lenin in the center of Vilnius, after the Soviets had been forced to leave the newly independent country. A similar event took place in New York City almost 250 years ago when the United States declared its independence from Great Britain i...