Although their audience is sorta cultish, there's nothing like a They Might Be Giants show-- hook filled, high energy, clever music. They are on my 100 mile radius list-- I'll go whenever they are that close, and I've never been disappointed.

I've seen Cracker in both full band and in stripped down mode. Great show either way.

Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. A lot of people on this chain are saying Springsteen, but (a) you aren't going to see the Boss in any venue smaller than a sports arena-- not worth it; (b) he has been running on fumes for 25 years; and (c) the best of his material is now over-familiar. With Johnny you get Springsteen material that is less played out, in a smaller setting.

What were the other seven?

The book is excellent. I don't know that it really treats the Yankees as a metaphor or a microcosm-- the Yanks were part of the atmosphere of the time, like the smell of garbage and the air of menace. I think you had to live in New York back then to really understand what it was like. I was a kid working in the City that summer, and the Daily News was like a Dos Passos novel-- a collage of sports and crime and gossip and politics. I thought the book did a terrific job of capturing that, and look forward to the series.

Cheers, Bill Altreuter

The original drummer with the E Street Band was a far more swinging player than the current occupant of the drum seat-- at least as documented on Springsteen's first three albums. I can't help but think of Conan's drummer as "the new guy" even now, and his leaden drumming is one of the reasons that so little of the Boss' output rocks as well as it used to.

Seriously-- pick a random cut off "Greetings From Asbury Park", and focus on just the drumming. Now do the same with a song from "The River", or *gack* "The Rising".

I really think this is a dubious result. What we seem to be seeing in the primaries is that Democrats are ready for this African-American, and maybe not so ready for this woman. I think it is the candidates, in other words, and not race or sex-- and I think that it is difficult for people to parse out the distinction. As a thought experiment just now I asked myself if there was a different woman that I could see myself supporting for President, and came up blank. (Louise Slaughter, maybe, but she's kinda old.) Then I tried the same thing with "African-American" instead, and ran into a similar wall. (Charley Rangel?) We don't think of people as Presidential candidates until they are Presidential candidates. HRC happens to be one that I would only vote for if the alternative was a Republican.

Why in the world would the City of Seattle have hired Andrew Zimbalist as an expert? He has built his career on the argument that sports arenas add only negligible value to their communities, and has made this argument persuasively for years, in books, articles and in the media. (He is a frequent guest on "It's Only a Game" for example.) I find his scholarship interesting-- he was a pioneer in the field of sports economics-- but just because he is a classy expert doesn't mean that he's the expert you should hire. You should find a guy who maybe thinks along lines that are helpful to your case.

For example, in Sports, Jobs, and Taxes: The Economic Impact of Sports Teams and Stadiums Professor Zimbalist wrote:

""To the extent that a new stadium is a central element of an urban redevelopment plan and its location and attributes are carefully set out to maximize synergies with local businesses, and to the extent that the terms of its lease are not negotiated under duress and are relatively fair to the city, the local community may derive some modest economic benefit from a sports team. The problem is that these two conditions rarely apply to monopoly sports leagues. Cities are forced to act hastily under pressure and to bargain without any leverage. Properly reckoned, the value of a sports team to a city should not be measured in dollars of new income but should be appreciated as a potential source of entertainment and civic pride that comes with a substantial net cost."

I could cross examine him for most of a morning on that paragraph.

Now, that's not to say, and Zimbalist is always careful to avoid saying that sports teams don't have a value to a community. It would be interesting to see the contract here, to find out if it contains language that speaks to the unique quality the Sonics' presence provides to Seattle. If there is language like that, Zimbalist's arguments about economics would be beside the point.

The whole thing is sad. Seattle is a great hoops town and deserves better.

Bill Altreuter