PS Peter - Yeah, Old Lizard William S. Bourroughs making double talk in a fully mirorred echo chamber with lots of blood spread out between the laughing old teeths in his lether face. Boy oh boy - what a joy. (Joris Carl Huysmans, Max Ernst and Otto Dix (back from some muddy ditch in WW I) gently humming along, while Salvador Dali and Enrico Morricone are strolling along, delighted by the gentle moves of Sophia Loren, who is sliding down a sand dune nearby on her beautiful bare feet and - her butt a bit too (How do I know - well: I have a (needless to say: Black and white) photograph of her, that shows her doing just that - laughing -- together with a little boy - - - what a joy...).

PS
@Dieter: "The "imported plastic organ" could also be a cheap heart implant"

Well considering that Steely Dan is named after a dildo, "competently fingered by Donald Fagen" could mean a lot of things!

PS Ganderson - this quote is hilarious (from the Liner Notes of "Can't Buy a Thrill", I guess):

"On the same cut an inexpensive, imported plastic organ (an instrument which long ago fell into disuse in most rock circles) is competently fingered by Donald Fagen."

(The "imported plastic organ" could also be a cheap heart implant he is "completely finger"ing, couldn't it? -Oh - than it would be on Frank Zappa's Can't Buy a Thrill - or some such: We're Only in it For the Money...).

PS: Peter, thank you for that tweet. I would not have believed it, otherwise. That's because I've not heard any calls that sound the least bit muffled. I'd told people that there's no way they'd do something that stupid, rather than just put up the plexiglass, spray off the place between shifts (or various portions at a time), and do the usual other things to "make us all safe" from the COVID-one-niner.

For those guys (and lots of gals - maybe 30%, guessing), communications is EVERYTHING! They are not allowed to use any slang phraseology, or say the same types of jokes as pilots can get away with. They are very precise with what they do say. This is indeed a dangerous move. Everyone in aviation is told that communication is very important. WTF?!

I can't get enough out of that tweet, but I wonder if this guy is talking about the Air Route Traffic Control Centers, the Towers, or the TRACON (approach/departure) positions.

PS
OT, but this Alex Berenson tweet conveys information that is both infuriating and terrifying. I'm glad I don't have to fly at the moment.

https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1368657965553758224

PS
Speaking of scams, lately I've been getting four or five calls a day of fake "This is Apple support..." calls. I wish I could reach through the phone and kill these people.

Sometimes I get waves of calls that are in Chinese. It's always some high-pitched Chinese woman's voice going "shee shee shing shaaayyy showwwww..." while this weird music plays in the background. I wonder what they're trying to sell me? Maybe they're selling pirated Steely Dan CDs.

PS
@Ganderson Yeah, on Spotify there's an album weirdly called "The Best of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen" which contains that cut along with a whole bunch of other demos and oddball versions. Not quite as slick as The Dan in terms of production.

PS
I like “ ...the urban sturm and drang of Do It Again...”

What did happen to David Palmer? Did he change his first name to Robert?

There’s a couple of CDs floating around of pre “Can’t Buy a Thrill” stuff- uneven to be sure, but there’s a wonderful, slowed-down version of “Brooklyn (Owes the Charmer Under Me), and unlike the version on CBAT featuring Fagan on vocals. I like the version they released on the record, but the older one is, I think, even better.

https://youtu.be/s5SpndF5PB8

PS
Lol on the liner notes referring to "The Dan." Did anybody EVER use that term? Also, amazingly, you can find Ultimate Spinach on Spotify. Just started listening: pretty bad early psychedelic schlock, but the album is young.

"...and vocalist David Palmer"

Whatever happened to THAT guy?

PS
Here you go:

It has been said many times and in many ways that what the world needs is another rock and roll band. This could very well be the one of which the pundits spoke.
The crisp exacting music of Steely Dan has been a long time coming, although the group itself was formed only a short time before this inspired recording was made. The DAN consists of six parts: composers Becker and Fagen performing on electric bass guitar and keyboards respectively; Jim Hodder, percussionist; bronze god of the pulse rhythm section; guitarists Jeff "Skunk" Baxter and Denny Dias; and vocalist David Palmer. For the past ten years or so each of these fellows has been pursuing his own private destiny within the confines of the "pop music jungle." Their varied apprentiships include stints with infamous groups from past decades and more recent sorties such as the short-lived but illustrious "Ultimate Spinach." As is so rarely the case, the whole of Steely Dan is greater than the sum of its parts, and the newly formed amalgam threatens to undermine the foundations of the rock power elite.
The selections on this first album tend to run the gamut of musical expression from the pastoral lyricism of "Dirty Work" to the urban "Sturm and Drang" of "Do It Again". From the vacuous historical romance of "Kings" to the modern-as-tomorrow angularity of "Fire In The Hole." From the east coast cynicism of "Only A Fool Would Say That" to the sun-struck L.A. optimism of "Change Of The Guard". From the frank, industrial-grade polish of "Midnight Cruiser" to the rhapsodic "Turn That Heartbeat Over Again." And so on.
The superlatives commonly found in liner notes are often as empty as the music they applaud. This is not the case on your new Steely Dan album. For example hear the raw urgency of Jeff "Skunk" Baxter's solo on "Change Of The Guard" and savor his tasteful utilization of the spinal vibrato. Or hear how he displays the cunning of the insane on steel guitar in "Fire In The Hole". Can you believe visiting guitarist Elliot Randall's exultant chromaticism on "Kings"? Or David Palmer's bitter- sweet rendering of "Dirty Work"? Or drummer Hodder's driving beat throughout?
And there's more. Tradition and experimentation reign side by side when Denny Dias accepts the burden of resurrecting the electric sitar on "Do It Again" and makes it sound easy. On the same cut an inexpensive, imported plastic organ (an instrument which long ago fell into disuse in most rock circles) is competently fingered by Donald Fagen. And dig those startling high register bass effects on the final cadence of "Heartbeat"!
Thus treads heavily the titantic of Steely Dan, casting a long shadow upon the contemporary rock wasteland aspiring to spill its seeds on barren ground, and at the same time, struggling to make sense out of the flotsam and jetsam of its electric musical heritage. With a solid first album under its belt, and with an ever expanding reputation as a dynamic performing group, it would appear that the Dan's place on the American musical scene is assured.

Dan Steele. Outre' Daniel, Steely Dan. It's growing.

PS: Good evening everyone...

How about a little Science...

https://rumble.com/embed/vb2v1n

And a little Media Bear...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3Z-_RmzxYM
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/QzYySCB_DMc?color=white&autoplay=1
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/aoofodxGV0E?color=white&autoplay=1

☮

PS: DOH!! Thank you, Adam, and sorry, Czar. All I had to do was say it out loud.

PS: green nude eel = green new deal

The Week That Perished 129 is pretty good. I enjoyed it.

☮

PS: Mr. G, I will go find that info on the liner notes. "Royal Scam" is not my favorite Steely Dan album.

Alarmist - I'll check out that Takimag piece (jumping to the part in question). Thanks.

Mr. Blanc - I just wrote to the Czar there about the phone calls. The car warranty thing is the only one I got suckered into, I mean, at least by wasting time on. See, we'd never had a car with a warranty on it before. Since we did recently, I got one of those calls for the 1st time a few months later. I called them back, though I don't think the call got very far... can't remember. I still feel like a sucker for that one.

Mr. Smith - I can see that I'll enjoy that column!

PS: HST Czar - you are right that oldsters will fall for scams more, I think because they can't keep up with all the new tactics. Secondly, we've had the richest old people our country and the world has ever seen (I'll find that post later), so many get scammed out of more money than they should be paying for handyman work, etc. They are too tired to argue or bargain, and they figure this is why the saved up all that money, I guess. This will change as the economy takes a dive.

Not sure I get that green nude eel bit, but it's very literative!

BTW, they are getting slick with spoofing the phone numbers for caller IDs. Some will look close enough to your own number that a first impulse is to answer it.

PS: Good afternoon everyone...

Thanks for the link Alarmist...

"It’s surprising that of all the “white boy” activities Blacks! could have chosen, they chose the one that involves hanging from a rope. On the other hand, what are the other choices? Water sports?"

Sometimes I like to flip woke sentences upside down...

“This is a White-only space. We ask that BIPOC folks respect this space created specifically for the White community.”

"The official White Girls Holiday Gift Guide featuring our favorite products for White Girls designed by White People!"

"Clearly it’s important to support White-owned business and equally important to boycott black, brown and jewish owned businesses."

"Trump vows investment in White-owned businesses as he unveils plan to fight anti-White racism."

☮

PS Perhaps it’s the same outfit that call Mme B and I at least a couple of times a week with the final notice that the extended warranty on our car is about to expire.

PS

I only open the envelopes that say the contents are “IMPORTANT TAX INFORMATION”, and even then ....

Funny thing is that in Europe I get very little junk mail, for whatever reasons, which means my personal info, even pre-GDPR, was not being freely sold around, as was the case in the US when I lived there several decades before.

O/T ... go to Taki’s to read the weekly news wrap-up and skip to “CLIMBIE FISSURE”

“There was no shortage of eyebrow-raising and confused doglike head-tilting last week when word got out that Cornell University was offering an indoor rock-climbing class open only to black students.”

https://www.takimag.com/article/the-week-that-perished-129/

PS
I like this album a lot- although I never loved the title cut. I think my favorite tune on the record is “ Sign in Stranger”

“You zombie. Be born again my friend
Won’t you sign in stranger...”

I may have mentioned this before, but the liner notes for the album “Can’t Buy a Thrill” are a riot.

PS Phone calls from invalid number or just an IP address are a scam.
When the person on the other end has a thick accent but a name like Johnny or Jane that is a fraud.
Oldsters usually fall for the scams and that is their prime target.
Sometimes you can get an oldster to just go off on them and it is hilarious.
The Royal Scam? Sounds like all of the FUSA (former USA).
The last one out should turn off the lights if there are any left on with the green nude eel back to the primitive peak stupidity.