PicoBlog

Trigger warning: Sexual harrassmentI imagine you are familiar by now with the new brand ambassador of Indian air travel - a man lovingly christened by India’s super-entertaining media as The Urinator. An unintentionally cool sounding name, I thought… a lot like the Terminator… Until we all saw what happened to his job, eh? For anyone who has been living under a rock (or nursing an infant which leaves you marginally more clued out), here is the summary: In the business class of an Air India flight, a man got drunk - so drunk that he mistook a 70-year-old co-passenger as the toilet and allegedly urinated on her.

Before we begin, I want to announce that I will be away for a couple of weeks on vacation—the kind of vacation where I don’t bring my laptop and actually be present in the moment. So, there will not be a new newsletter for a couple of weeks. The good news is that I will probably have a fun blog-style newsletter of activities from my trip when I get back. So there’s that!

Remember Bell Biv DeVoe? Sure you do! They had that “Poison” song back in the day! You know who loves that song? Everyone. During their Vanilla Ice-length reign, Bell Biv DeVoe released a handful of hits that subsequently generated a couple of timeless pieces of ass-related wisdom. The aforementioned “Poison” taught us to never trust a big butt and a smile. The follow-up single “Do Me!” told us that if we did find a big butt we trusted, the next move was to smack it up, flip it, rub it down.

Starting the year here with a column, followed by the full, free, newsletter coming later this week. And at the bottom of this column, a message to paid subscribers about a new feature.NBC News correspondent Ben Collins was very busy posting online about X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, on the new social media outlet most like it – Meta’s Threads. “Twitter is like cigarettes that yell at you, a racism website for racists,” he wrote last month.

Much is revealed in a man’s death. Stories are told, pictures are shared, and those who knew the deceased pay their respects. A crowded funeral shows even those without acquaintance that they are attendant to a great loss. On the other hand, a poorly attended funeral is the worst fate a man can suffer, but such will not be the case for Ben. An overflowing funeral is fitting for a man who was larger than life; a funeral that cannot contain all the souls he affected fits a soul that could not be contained.

Welcome to my Talking Guitar podcast featuring Benny Goodman talking about groundbreaking jazz guitarist Charlie Christian. When he joined the Benny Goodman Sextet in 1939, Charlie Christian was virtually unknown outside of Oklahoma. Thanks to his groundbreaking records with Goodman, by the time of his death in March 1942, Christian was the foremost electric guitarist in jazz. His influence still reverberates in modern music. To this day, one of the best compliments a jazz guitarist can hear is, “Hey, you sound like Charlie Christian!

Watch full video on Twitter.View most updated version of this post on Substack.Share Benny Latimore is a multi-talented singer/songwriter and pianist who scored a #1 R&B hit in 1974 with “Let’s Straighten It Out.” Benjamin William Lattimore was born in Charleston, Tennessee. When he was still a teenager in the late fifties, he joined the Nashville-based group Louis Brooks & The Hi-Toppers, replacing vocalist Earl Gaines. He also played piano in the band, and while with them met Nashville R&B songwriter and producer Ted Jarrett.

Hello and happy back-to-school time! I know that some people lament the waning days of summer, but I am here for early fall. I love the rituals of September—new backpacks still stiff in the straps, clean white sneakers, freshly sharpened pencils at the ready. When I was a student, I relished the predictable and familiar cadence of the school year, and I am only now realizing how much I’ve missed it over the past decade.

GUTS. A little bit, that single word would work as the entire review for the Black Swordsman Arc of Berserk, which comprises the first eight chapters of the manga. There are currently almost 400 chapters, so there’s a long way to go, but this serves as an interesting introduction to the world and its characters. Or at least its protagonist, Guts. Which is the perfect name for this man. This Black Swordsman.