Weather: Cold with high, whispy clouds -- it sure is nice to see a sunrise, though!

Wildlife: Those damn cats gotta stop bringing in dead birds -- leave 'em outside for the Magpies!
I have to watch out about the deer hanging around day and night. The neighbors are afraid of Mountain Lions following them from out of the forest.

Charity Alert: The Child Health Site : Help a Child in Need Lead a Healthy, Active Life

Media Alert: OK, Janet Jackson's admitted that her stunt was planned. At least one person isn't lying anymore. I hope the FCC just leaves that dumb debacle in the past, but I can't expect it. The football game on Superbowl Sunday has been relegated to third in importance behind halftime, during which I did my laundry, and the commercials, which I intentionally skipped this year.
Ridley Scott's Gladiator was run in "prime time" on ABC. Day-um! What a violent show!
Today's spectacle entertainment may be silly at worst, but the Roman arena was demented. We still have bullfighting, sad to say, but wholesale death and dismemberment are thankfully illegal. (Movies and Video Games aren't real, remember?)
Russell Crowe earned the Academy Award, and gave the BEST speech I've ever heard from an an actor when he accepted his Oscar.
Reasonably good fan site: Maximum Russell Crowe
Scott sometimes has a social message in his films -- Blade Runner and Thelma and Louise for instance, but if there is one here, it's hidden -- unless the message is "Life sucked in ancient times too."
Here's one fairly-informative site: Ridley Scott @ Filmbug
The movie is set in the reign of Commodus, generally acknowledged as the start of the Decline of the Roman Empire: The Roman Empire
Here's some paraphrased quotes: Like Nero, Emperor Commodus' private life was a disgrace and his public extravagances outageous; like Nero, he fancied himself in the circus; and like Nero, he died an undignified death - a professional athlete was hired to strangle him in his bed in AD 192.
177 Marcus Aurelius makes Commodus co-emperor; 180 Death of Marcus Aurelius. Accession of Commodus, who retreats to Rome from Germany; 183 Plot to kill Commodus discovered. Power of favourite Perennis. 186 Fall of Perennis. Power of favourite Cleander; 189 Fall of Cleander; 192 Death of Commodus.
The previous 84 years had seen just five emperors; during the next 104 years Rome should endure no less than 29.
My take on this historical matter -- the people of the Mediterranian were so impoverished then by 200 years of Roman thievery, that repeated warfare and treachery among the ruling class went unchallenged, and doomed this civilization to collapse. I'm amazed that it took another 150 years, plus generations of repeated Barbarian invasions to really kill the empire in Western Europe. After Eastern Emperor Justinian's few victories in the mid-Sixth Century, there wasn't much left to fight over, and the Lombards just came to stay.
That was just a rough sketch of the facts -- Ridley Scott's Movie Empire is an English Empire, stocked with English actors -- Derek (I Claudius) Jacobi is even in the film! The plot is ridiculously untrue, but his sketch of 2nd Century Rome has verisimilitude. I don't think anyone today could present the real horrors of the Colosseum, and I hope nobody tries.
A psychologist might write something about the fascination with perversion and violence that drenches almost every Roman movie -- or why the written record seems to dote on these themes as well, but not I.

Follow Up:
Al Kooper answered my email in less than a day (See Feb. 2)--
Thanks for your kind words & support
Its what keeps the old man goin'
al kooper
Check out his website: AL KOOPER
He's a good prose writer. His mini-diaries and commentaries are very well done, and convey the unique insight of a musician with humor and clarity. You can also catch up with the 40 year career of one of American Pop Music's more important studio men without my irrelevant input.
He also turned 60, and did a concert at the Berklee School of Music on January 31!

Weather: A sprinkling of snow. It's also a lot colder than yesterday. I wanted to wash/wax the car on Sunday, but the commercial, automated place was closed! ($#@!)

Wildlife: The two eagles had to share the aereation pond with ice fishermen nearby -- I think the birds ate the cleanings afterward.

Charity Alert: The Breast Cancer Site : Fund Mammograms for Free

Media Alert: I managed to get through most of the Superbowl while switching to CSPAN during the commercials. It was actually worth the effort -- Oliver Sacks was speaking on Book TV. I enjoyed the game VERY much, and spoke to my brother via long-distance before and afterward. Score: New England -- 32 Carolina -- 29.
The halftime show just confirmed general preconceptions -- popular artists strutted their lip-synched stuff in an audio/visual cacophany. If ya' liked 'em, ya' liked the show, if ya' didn't, ya' didn't. With that being said -- I was liking Janet Jackson's "Rhythm Nation," until Justin Timberlake showed up. He's danced better in the past, and I've never liked his singing anyway.
BUSTED: That final grab at Janet's boob-cover was obviously planned. Neither leather, vinyl, nor spandex tears away that easy. Women entertainers don't wear nipple-covers* unless they expect their breasts to show either. BTW -- that incident barely lasted a second -- If you could see it* you were replaying it on slo-mo or pause --- HA HA HA!

Follow-ups:
I wrote a "fan letter" by email to Al Kooper last night, since I've been enjoying his Michael Bloomfield collaborations on CD. (See Jan. 26, 2004) While tracking him down online, I found that he has serious vision problems now, but he's perseveres through them -- good man! AL KOOPER
I found a list of the studio musicians who played on the Box Tops' records. (The Box Tops road band is listed on the Alex Chilton page -- See Jan. 30, 2004) They are: Reggie Young, guitar; Bobby Wood, piano; Bobby Emmons, organ; Tommy Cogbill, bass; Gene Crissman, drums; Mike Leech and Glen Spreen, horn and string arrangements, and the great Wayne Jackson, with his Memphis Horns. Wayne Carson Thompson wrote their biggest songs, Penn and Oldham wrote some other singles. Tommy Cogbill co-produced Dimensions, their best album.