"Ray"

Anj and I slept on this joint for way too long. We should have caught it in the theaters when it came out. Missed it then, missed it at the Parkway, missed it at a Monday movie night at the Independent (formerly the Justice League for you heads; might head back there this Thursday night for a timely Rebirth Brass Band show).

But we finally moved it to the top of the Netflix queue (connect to us if you're on there), and it arrived while we were in SoCal. So we started it last night--got about an hour in, and did another hour earlier this evening. Maybe this is some irrational exuberance, but this may be the best movie I've seen in years.

Watching it has reminded me that I've never really listened to the man's music. Another huge gap. Time to remedy that. Just trying to decide whether a 2-disc Ultimate Hits collection suffices, or whether to spring for the full 5-disc Genius & Soul. Both are Rhino productions, so they're probably both quality collections. But then there's the Atlantic box set, The Birth of Soul (3 discs). The breadth the Rhino collection is appealing--but the Atlantic stuff is what I'm most interested in hearing, so that could be a good way to go for now.

OK, just impulsively bought the Atlantic set off of Amazon. Maybe I'll have the cream for the Rhino set someday in the future.

Anyways, the four days in SoCal were good. Well, San Diego was a journey to the heart of emptiness. As I posted here on Yahoo 360, (get on there as well and connect to me, and start feeding in your content)--Gertrude Stein ought to be directed at SD, not Oakland. But hanging out in Hermosa and Manhattan Beach with some buddies was surprisingly fun.

We'll have to get down there again and hang with you Dillytaunters. Maybe we can even get juniorcooper out to the west side sometime soon, have ourselves an editorial meeting.