Ta Dah!! . . .

In anticipation of an upcoming release on Yoruba Records, it took me two friggin days of wrestling with Photoshop^™ and with Notepad, pulling my hair out by the roots, but I finally managed to make the javascript work on the new webpage. The culprit turned out to be a missing pair of quotation marks. Go figure. That's what I get for doing things the hard way (i.e. by typing all the code out myself on a simple word processor rather than using an html assistant program). I think I understand now why most programmers are bald and stressed out all the time. It's only a navigational page right now; I will flesh it out some today.

anyway, here it is:

www.tainoleon.com

Drop me a comment to tell me if it doesn't work or something. So far it looks pretty good on Firefox and Explorer.

peace

ó

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A Knock On The Door

They ask me if I've ever thought about the end of
the world, and I say, "Come in, come in, let me
give you some lunch, for God's sake." After a few
bites it's the afterlife they want to talk about.
"Ouch," I say, "did you see that grape leaf
skeletonizer?" Then they're talking about
redemption and the chosen few sitting right by
His side. "Doing what?" I ask. "Just sitting?" I
am surrounded by burned up zombies. "Let's
have some lemon chiffon pie I bought yesterday
at the 3 Dog Bakery." But they want to talk about
my soul. I'm getting drowsy and see butterflies
everywhere. "Would you gentlemen like to take a
nap, I know I would." They stand and back away
from me, out the door, walking toward my
neighbors, a black cloud over their heads and
they see nothing without end.

James Tate

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short rant with music interlude

I heard someone say that the reason that quaaludes completely disappeared from our social landscape is that, since there were only a handful of bulk suppliers of the main chemical ingredient needed in methaqualone production, when these manufacturers (apparently, most were in India) were asked by the world community to stop filling such bulk narcotraffiquer orders, they agreed and ceased selling it, thus cutting off the supply, causing folks to seek their euphoria in other, more easily obtainable methods.

Perhaps, in light of this model and of the fact that we have better antihistamines and steroids which which to treat those things which were usually treated with ephedrine and its analogues, we should consider doing likewise and request that they stop production of this chemical as it is the main ingredient of crystal meth. It's easy to get and it's making raging zombies out of our heartland proletariats. It's making violent criminal-minded people out of folks that would prolly be better off numbing themselves with alcohol instead. At least with alcohol they'll just be harmless slothful couch surfers instead of desperate dangerous unthinking petty criminals.

just a thought . . .

anyway . . . I found this live recording of Ted (keys) and Joe M (d), and Rob W(I think)(b), and yours truly (gt&vox) from one of the conservatory live clinics. This is a pretty short version; the soloist usually flies for a while on this one. Thought I would share it here.

Baró

cheers

ó

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Of Habichuelas and Frijoles

I made a fantastic Cuban black bean soup today. I've been cooking a bunch of criollo foods lately (I made mofongo this week too). Using my mother's instructions and some daring, I think I have perfected the art form of the black bean. (thanks mom) It's really hard to find certain ingredients such as ajicitos and recao around here, but I can subbstitute the various regional chiles and cilantro for those, with pretty good results so far.

The above is a foto of the beginning of the soup. I'm about to sit down and eat me a big ol' bowl of the finished product now.

buen provecho

ó

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old african proverb

He who forgives ends the argument.

peace

ó

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virtual batá moment

One night during the blacksheep choir recordings a few years back, I had the honor of bringing Alberto Villareal, a Cuban folkoric drummer who was visiting the states on a series of master drum clinics, down to MCC for a session. I was hoping to use the batá flavor on one of the tunes on the bsq cd. His host while in Phoenix was Eric Udell (who played okónkolo on this track) and we had a night of beer and batá and pizza. Ebb was there too and he particularly took pleasure in Alberto's company and mastery. We never used the tracks in the final mixes but I found them the other day, so I loaded them into Sonar and placed them in a different setting. Sounds like film music maybe. A forest. An unresolved mystery. A storm coming.

Bionic Batá

ó

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ghost drummer loop

My first experiment in stop-motion gif animation, a self portrait as a spinning ghost.

ó

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gorgeous weather

spent most of the day in my big straw hat gardening - weeding the back yard - while listening to various lectures through the open door of my room (Jane Goodall, Holmes Rolston, Freeman Dyson, Kenneth Starr, and Marcus Borg)

pretty good seed . . . come to think of it . . ..

waiting for germination to begin any moment now . . .

ó

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a desert worth its salt

The Sonoran Desert.
I guess we are now into the longest dry spell in the recorded history of Phoenix, Arizona, something like 105 days without rain now.

And me with my ark all finished and ready to go and everything. How about that?

It felt good to wear sandals today.

ó

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