Day: October 10, 2025

‘Rain Dogs’ Turns Forty

It is a Friday and this is my last post of the week…..I do not write many reviews but this one hits home for me.

Back in the mmid-70s I was the late night bartender at a local pub and that was when I was introduced to the musical styling of Tom Waits.  From the very first song of his first album, Closing Time, I was hooked.

I even went to a small club in New Orleans where Waits was performing….a club that sat about 200 people and I was not disappointed.  His storytelling was spot on especially in the early hours of the morning when the creatures were out and about…..if you have lived that life then you know how spot on his storytelling was.

This review is about his album, Rain Dogs, who some say was one of his best works.

I can’t recall what went through my head when first listening to ‘Telephone Call From Istanbul’, a rhythmically buoyant song that seemed to be about broken glass, blue donkeys and never trusting a man in a blue trench coat. All I know is that I was open-mouthed, and nothing musical was ever the same again. Especially for my long-suffering mother, who would have to deal with me imitating Waits’ possessed, wolf-like howls whenever I entered a room.

Even now, she refers to Waits as the sound ‘Woooouh!‘ as opposed to his birth name – both as a reference to my insufferable childhood antics but also, I suspect, to the fact that listening to a Tom Waits record is, for her, the equivalent of that scene from The Pink Panther Strikes Back when Herbert Lom dons the clawed gauntlet and goes to town on the chalkboard. Some apples do fall far from the tree.

Years later, I wandered about in my then-favourite music store, on a mission: I was looking to buy my first Tom Waits album.

At the time, I didn’t know his discography like the back of my hand and was searching for the album that featured ‘Telephone Call From Istanbul’. To my distress, I couldn’t find it and settled on the only record they had, ‘Rain Dogs’, not realising in the moment that it was the best buy I was ever going to make.

I mainlined the album again and again, completely drunk on Waits’ gravelly growls, his ominous whispers, the carnivalesque musical accompaniments that enriched the stories of one-armed dwarves, millionaires shoveling coal and protagonists falling out of windows with confetti in their hair.

https://www.euronews.com/culture/2025/09/30/rain-dogs-turns-40-celebrating-tom-waits-greatest-album-and-his-unparalleled-discography

Waits’ voice may not be everyone’s cup of tea but for me he speaks volumes….his storytelling is superb.

The truth of the matter I prefer his early years his album Nighthawks At The Diner will forever be number one on my list….for those that do not know Tom Waits this is the album I most liked…..although they all are good.

Please listen

and enjoy.

Now for the album Rain Dogs….

I hope you enjoyed the unusual musical styling….

That is it for this week…..enjoy your weekend and as always…..Be Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Nobel Drops Today

After threatening and begging the Nobel Committee by Little Donny, will make it’s choice known today…..will Donny get his wish or will the Nobel people do the right thing and pick someone with integrity and a moral compass?

Donny’s Gaza peace plan was a made for TV special with the hopes of influencing the Committee in his favor….did it work?

The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday, and the big question is whether it will go to President Trump. The president and the White House have made no secret of his desire to win it, with repeated references to his role in ending conflicts around the world. The new Israel-Hamas peace deal, however, likely won’t be a factor because of the timing. Coverage:

  • Mideast: “Nobel Prize to Trump!” supporters cheered in Tel Aviv after the peace deal was announced, reports the New York Post. Israeli farmers even spelled out “Nobel 4 Trump” in a field, notes Mediaite. In Gaza, Palestinians also chanted Trump’s name in praise.
  • Too late: The Norwegian prize committee held its final meeting on Monday, meaning the decision was made before the Israeli-Hamas deal was announced, reports the Times of Israel. Typically, the panel makes its decision several days or weeks in advance, then meets a final time before the announcement.
  • Unlikely: In an essay for Time, the director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo (not affiliated with the Nobel) writes that Trump is a long shot this year. Nina Graeger cites Trump’s decision to pull the US out of multiple international pacts and to cut foreign aid, seeing it as at odds with the Nobel ideal of global cooperation. Although Trump “has made notable efforts in several areas, the overall record at this stage does not fully align with the standards outlined by Alfred Nobel,” she writes. “Should his initiatives—such as efforts to end the war in Gaza—achieve lasting success, the situation could look quite different this time next year.”
  • Worthy: One of those who nominated Trump is American-Israeli academic Anat Alon-Beck, who lays out his case in a Fox News essay. “His ability to broker peace, hold adversaries accountable, and foster alliances has positioned him as one of the most consequential leaders of our time,” the essay reads. “His leadership is so consequential that even Iran, long the chief sponsor of terror and resistance to peace, was forced to recalibrate its rhetoric and behavior in the face of the new regional reality his policies created.”
  • Bettors: On the online betting site Polymarket, Trump had a 5.7% chance of winning on Thursday. In first place are “Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms,” which have been helping the injured in the war-torn country, at 35%. Also ahead of Trump are Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny, at 10%; and Doctors Without Borders at 6%.

Who will be their choice?

Give it to a dog catcher as long as Donny does not get his grubbing hands on the prize.

Stop The Presses!

Well Donny is still a loser.

The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 is Maria Corina Machado, a woman who has been described as Venezuela’s “symbol of resistance” to Nicolas Maduro’s regime. The Nobel Committee said Friday morning that it had decided to award the prize to the opposition leader for her “tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.” Jørgen Watne Frydnes, the Norwegian committee’s chair, described her as a “brave and committed champion of peace” who “keeps the flame of democracy burning during a growing darkness,” the Guardian reports.

Asked about President Trump’s push to be awarded the prize, Frydnes said the committee receives thousands of letters a year and it has seen “media tension” in the past, the BBC reports. “We base our decision only on the work and the will of Alfred Nobel,” he said. Trump has long said he deserves a peace prize and he stepped up his campaign in recent months, though the committee held its final meeting on Monday, days before the breakthrough in Gaza peace talks.

Before the announcement, newspaper columnist Harald Stanghelle said that if he didn’t get the prize, Trump might retaliate against Norway by imposing higher tariffs or even by declaring the country an enemy, the Guardian reports. Trump “is so unpredictable. I don’t want to use the word ‘fear’ but there is a feeling that it could be a challenging situation,” he said. “It’s very, very difficult to explain to Donald Trump or to many other countries in the world that it is a totally independent committee because they do not respect this kind of independence.”

Personally I think Doctors Without Borders should have won the prize…..for they do amazing work.

Thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Just Another Cabinet Meeting

Just more theater of the absurd.

Yesterday Donny and the merry band of sycophants held their 8th cabinet meeting and it was a doozy….from circumcision to punishing Dems…..a typical Donny pep rally….

President Trump opened a meeting with his Cabinet at the White House on Thursday by speaking about the ceasefire deal and his plans to travel to the Middle East. Trump said that he will be going to Egypt for a signing ceremony and that he has been invited to speak before the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, during the trip, the AP reports. “If they would like me to, I will do it,” Trump said. He said it is a complicated process for the hostages to be released from Gaza, but it will be happening Monday or Tuesday. Trump’s eighth Cabinet meeting lasted around an hour, much shorter than other recent meetings. More:

  • Autism. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reiterated the unproven link between Tylenol and autism at the meeting. He claimed children who are circumcised early have double the rate of autism, which is because they’re given Tylenol afterward. Kennedy also shared what the Independent calls a “bizarre story” about seeing a video of a woman “saying ‘F Trump’ and gobbling Tylenol.” Trump said vaccines could also play a role in autism, saying, “Obviously, there’s something, there’s something that’s artificially, I think, induced, something, whether it’s the vaccines, in terms of these massive vaccines,” per NBC News, which notes that the theory of a link has been debunked.
  • Chicago, Portland buildings for ICE. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said her department is buying buildings in Chicago and Portland for use in immigration enforcement operations, NBC reports. “We’re purchasing more buildings in Chicago to operate out of. We’re going to not back off,” she said. “In fact, we’re doubling down, and we’re going to be in more parts of Chicago in response to the people there.”
  • Shutdown cuts. Trump said only “Democrat programs” would be cut in response to the government shutdown, the Guardian reports. “We will be making cuts that are permanent and we’re only going to cut Democrat programs, I hate to tell you,” he said. “We’ll be cutting some very popular Democrat programs that aren’t popular with Republicans, frankly, that’s the way it works.”
  • A notable absence. One person who was not present at the president’s Cabinet meeting on Thursday was Mike Waltz, the newly confirmed US ambassador to the United Nations. That’s because the White House has decided that the job will not be a Cabinet-rank position, as it was during the Biden administration, the AP reports, citing two congressional officials familiar with the matter.

Let me ask here….if Chicago is such an awful place to live why was it voted the best big city in America by Conde-Nast the travel magazine?

Can you see why I call this a Sh*t Show or a Clown Show?

RFK, Jr is a joke onto itself…..but then all his cabinet members are jokes.

These bozos get sillier with every meeting….but what can you expect when the whole ‘show’ is staffed by incompetent pricks?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”