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My most recent cellphone gripe was somebody being way too loud in the cafeteria, not about their personal stuff, which is annoying enough, but about someone else’s personnel issues. “Please make them stop,” he said to no one in particular.

“Yesterday at the annual SpeechTEK conference in New York, Paul English announced in his keynote address the creation of a new “GetHuman Standard” for customer service phone systems. Microsoft and Nuance are working with Paul, and other companies are expected to join. Learn more about the Gethuman Earcon.“

Here’s hoping the loser of the Democratic primary for the US Senate race in Connecticut supports the winner. The Democrats’ chance of being the national party in 2008 will not be helped by a third party run in 2006.

I got in the mail yesterday the Billboard Albums, which includes every album that made the Billboard charts through 2005. This makes my Top Pop Album book of a decade ago pretty redundant. I also have that Complete Directory to Prime Time Network Shows 1947-1992 by Brooks & Marsh gathering dust since I posted that list of shows on more than one network. So I will send these two older, but still useful, reference books to the first person who can e-mail me the correct answer to these two questions:
1. Angelina Jolie’s uncle wrote a #1 hit that came out in 1966. What was it? And who performed it?
2. Based on the number of seasons it was broadcast and its audience size, 60 Minutes is the #1-rated program of all time, according to Brooks and Marsh. What’s #2?

From Jaquandor, via Tosy

Five things . . .

…in my refrigerator (without looking).
1. Lots of milk 2% organic for Lydia, 1% non-organic for Carol and me, but that may change.
2. Lots of yogurt,some for Lydia in the large (cottage cheese sized) containers, and some (single serving types) for me. (Carol steals Lydia’s)
3. A can of cola I got, left over from a party.
4. Bread, because it’d get moldy on the counter.
5. Several types of pickles.

. . . in my closet.
I don’t have a closet. I have an armoire, imposed upon me by my wife when the child came around and stole my closet. My sister came and reorganized it so I can’t find anything.

….in my bag (this would be my backpack)
1. Music taken to or from work Currently- Tony Bennett, who turned 80 last week, Buddy Guy, who turned 70 last week, Complete Stax/Volt, Alison Krauss, the Band).
2. Underwear taken to the Y, or dirty clothes taken from the Y.
3. Loose change, because it otherwise makes so much noise in my pocket.
4. Some recent, but not current, periodical. Parts of Saturday’s newspaper.
5. My spare glasses (my sunglasses when it’s cloudy.

….in my vehicle.
My vehicle’s my bike. There is nothing in it, and the only things on it when it’s put away is the bike lock and the helmet.

…on my desk (at work).
1. Way too many loose papers.
2. Some newspapers from last week.
3. A picture of Carol, and trimmed photo of Lydia inserted therein.
4. A reference question I’m working on.
5. At least two pens, probably with no caps.

…on my walls (at work).
1. A picture of John Lennon.
2. A map of the United States.
That’s about it. It’s a small space.

….on my bookshelves (other than books).
1. A spindle of CD-Rs.
2. Census CDs.
3. A few comic books people have given me.
4. A few music CDs.
5. A stack of unsorted papers.

. . . I want to do in the next few years.
1. Read more books not geared toward children.
2. See more plays.
3. See more movies, if even at home.
4. See a Broadway play or two.
5. See more live baseball.

. . . On my nightstand.
1. A battery-powered push light in case the power goes out, so I can see.
2. A telephone receiver. Lydia has knocked the rest of it on the floor so repeatedly that we’ve unplugged it, but easily reinstall.
3. A clock/radio.
4. An old lamp.
5. A cup holding pencils and pens.

Actually, he didn’t exactly call ME specifically a geezer. But in his weekly Metroland column Rapp on This, in his guise as mild-mannered intellectual property attorney Paul Rapp – which you should read every week if you care about music and the changing technology, Paul wrote:
You don’t need 75 minutes of music from every artist you take a fancy to. You probably don’t need more than a song or two. And you certainly don’t need the idiotic “jewel case” or a shiny plastic disc or a glossy little book you’ll maybe look at once, if you can get it out of the idiotic jewel case without trashing it. All you need is a digital file, that you can put on a hard drive somewhere, stick on a gizmo that you can put in your pocket, and maybe burn onto a CD with 15 or 20 of your other favorite songs by different artists.

If this all sounds foreign or scary to you, it’s time to wake up. This has been the future for a long time.

But, gee, I LIKE that little book, and I look at it almost every time. Who wrote that song? Who are the backup vocalists, the producer, the guest musicians? Maybe it’s just me, the librarian who has a NEED TO KNOW, and will regret the loss of that information.

My band, Blotto, had its first CD go out of print recently. We’re selling nicely on iTunes and about 20 other (and lesser) online music sites. I seriously considered just not reprinting any more CDs – why deal with the expense, the hassle, the shipping, the shelf-space and the goddamned jewel-boxes? But I realized that, well, we’re talking about a collection of 25-year-old music here, with prospective purchasers who – how can I say this delicately? – tend to trend to an older demographic? Many Blottophiles, I suspect, aren’t yet completely hep to that crazy digital scene, daddy-o. So, it’s probably a good idea for us keep the CDs available, at least for now, and we will.

But if we had a geezer-free fan base, I don’t think we’d bother. Kids don’t care about CDs anymore. Why should they?

Having had to TRACK down the Blotto CD only a couple years ago (I had all the music except for the live and karaoke versions of “I Wanna Be a Lifeguard” on vinyl already), I appreciate his point. The tunes will be available, but will one know the names of the members of the band? Or does that no longer matter? It’s not my geezerosity that’s kicking in, it’s my librarianship.

Which got me to thinking:
1) When are you bored? AND
2) What do you do about it?

Truth is, I’m almost never bored when I am in control of my own time.

When am I bored?
*At some meetings I’m not running. (If I were to be bored at a meeting I WAS running, I wouldn’t be running a very effective one.)
*When I’m doing some mundane task, usually asked by someone else. I may be the world’s worst collater, you know, take one sheet each from a half dozen piles and staple them together. I quickly lose interest and one or more piles always comes out short. I’m easily distracted.
*When I’m doing a task I hate. This includes hour three of working on our taxes. Given the fact that I never GOT to hour three (or four or six or eight) when I was single and filing a 1040A (simple form) and was done in about 45 minutes leaves my wife with the heavy lifting on most of the Schedules, while I concentrate on the main form, and to do whatever calculations she requests.

What do I do about it? Music, of course, something that relies on the bass line, preferably.

So when this string of 14 weeks at number one ended on May 9, who WAS #1?
Was it Bobby Vinton or Roy Orbison, American artists popular in the pre-Beatles era? No, though Vinton’s There! I’ve said It Again was #1 for the four weeks prior to the Beatles’ ascension. And The Beatles had toured with Orbison.
How about another British Invasion group, such as Peter and Gordon, the Animals, or Manfred Mann? No, though P&G did chart later in the year with a Lennon-McCartney tune, World Without Love.
Perhaps a Motown artist, such as the Supremes or Mary Wells, or a “girl group” such as the Shangra-las or the Dixie Cups or a resurgent American band such as the Beach Boys or the Four Tops? All of those groups had a #1 hit in 1964, as did Dean Martin and Lorne Greene(?!)

But the artist who first displaced the Beatles was a 63-year old trumpeter who hadn’t had a Top 10 hit in eight years, a guy who was named “satchel-mouth” as a kid, and who started recording in 1923. Of course, I’m talking about Louis Armstrong, and his hit rendition of Hello, Dolly! For years, he said his birthday was July 4, 1900, but later research suggested that his birth was actually on August 4, 1901, which would have made him 105 today had he not died back in 1971.