BANGKOK, Monday, Sept. 24 — The largest street protests in two decades against Myanmar’s military rulers gained momentum Sunday as thousands of onlookers cheered huge columns of Buddhist monks and shouted support for the detained pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

Winding for a sixth day through rainy streets, the protest swelled to 10,000 monks in the main city of Yangon, formerly Rangoon, according to witnesses and other accounts relayed from the closed country, including some clandestinely shot videos.

Sharkforum's very own Nick Tremulis shares a radio show withi Jon Langford called "The Eclectic Company". Tonight's show promises to be another good one:

Tuesday, February 20 at 10 PM: Fat Tuesday Special - Nick is joined by Mark Guarino, Daily Herald music columnist, and Bloodshoot Records owner and co-founder, Rob Miller for a show devoted to songs and stories from today's New Orleans.

January 4. The clouds sweeping low across the southern horizon, you can just see the peaks of the Alps. We never see them spread in their full immensity from our aerie under the eaves of this old house, itself sitting atop the old city walls of Diessenhofen am Rhein. To get the full panorama you need to climb away from the river. Sometimes we don’t see the mountains for weeks on end, but it’s a good feeling to know they’re there, looming across the southern rim of Europe, with the Mediterranean world beyond. I always feel like I need a geographical fix in my head, an internal GPS, to know where I’m standing. I don’t think I’m alone in this; I believe this is why we like to watch the monitor screen tracking our progress when we fly across the Atlantic. I’m trying to get such a fix now, I guess, though it is time as much as geography that concerns me. The year is young but the hour is late. Where do we stand, and where do we go from here?

Last Monday Hans-Ruedi and I practiced out on his terrace, as we frequently do in warm weather. The day had been hot and still, and as we played we could see thunder clouds and occasional lightning flashes to the north over the Hegau across the Rhine, a plateau studded with ancient volcanoes. Hans-Ruedi and I have been playing together for two or three years now, more since Thomm Jutz moved to Nashville. A landscape gardener by trade, he plays upright bass in the Western Store country band from Schaffhausen, and in several Swiss folk music ensembles. We were remarking on the departure of our young friend, Tabea who used to join us for Monday night practice, recently departed for a job in England. “I’m afraid our friend, my neighbor Alfred is also gone. The family has been here since yesterday.”

“He came home from the hospital?”

“There was nothing more they could do for him. He was working until two weeks ago; and now…”

“That fast.”

“He was a good friend to me since I came here seventeen years ago. I’m going to miss Alfred. He may be gone already.”

Jack Warden, who died in New York City on July 19, was raised in Louisville, KY. He was born in Newark, NJ, but by his high school years he was down here and cutting classes in order to indulge other interests. Eventually, Warden, born John Lebzelter, would be nominated for Academy Awards and appear in some of the finest motion pictures made during American cinema’s Golden Era (the 1970’s). Those other interests back then included boxing, at which he excelled, winning dozens of professional bouts at middleweight until war called.

I don't know that I am qualified to eulogize Bob Heinecken. My friend Stan Mock (photographer and sculptor, who was very close to him) would be a good choice. I can ask him, if you like. I can say that my memories of Bob personally are Bogartian. I knew him long, though little. I can see him as the Photo prof. at UCLA, cigarette in hand (always), the only faculty longhair in the 60's, a singularly masculine short man who, along with Dick Diebenkorn, embodied for his students the mystery of authentic accomplishment as an artist. Or later, for many years, across the table at the ritual of the monthly poker game, plumed in smoke (occasionally grabbed by smoker's cough), a poised player, impossible to read. Even after he and Joy(ce Neimanas) moved to Chicago, he would return to the poker game whenever they were in L. A. When they attended my opening at McCormick in 2000, he and I had a good chat, and then he wandered off. Joy had to retrieve him from the sidewalk. It was the first sign I had seen of any change, though we had all known about the Alzhemer's for awhile. He was still, when we talked then, acutely observant about the work, still wryly humorous. The last time I saw him was at one of the poker games (2001?) Joy came with him to the game, for the first time, and he sat beside her as she played the hands. He smoked, talked a little, we had some laughs, and she ran the table.

Don Suggs

"Many pictures turn out to be limp translations of the known world instead of vital objects which create an intrinsic world of their own. There is a vast difference between taking a picture and making a photograph."

The problem of the theologian is to keep his symbol translucent
so that it may not block out the very light it is supposed to convey.
- Joseph Campbell

Make A Rising: Semolina Pilchard's climbing up the Eiffel Tower once again, but this time the Walrus isn't Paul...

Okay, when was the last time you heard an album that combined elements and influences by the following: The Incredible String Band' Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, The Mothers of Invention's Burnt Weeny Sandwich, Beach Boys' Smiley Smile, Love's Forever Changes with sonic shards of Robert Wyatt, Eric Satie riding a bicycle with a flat tire and something that sounds like Harry Partch shaking up a can of spray paint then suddenly smashing Mr. Satie's bike to bits with a shovel which kinda creates music to a French movie I've never seen before.

A snappy little snapshot of local history, Genevieve Coleman's charming first feature, Monday Night at the Rock 'N Bowl chronicles about the punk rock bowlathon-drinkathon at the Diversey River Bowl in Chicago. It's out on DVD now, and we check in with first-time feature filmmaker Genevieve Coleman about its process and progress of a story told over the course of several months of Mondays around the turn-of-the-century with borrowed video cameras.

Not literally, of course. (And not that there's anything wrong with that.) In today's Sun-Times Anders Smith Lindall offers up a steaming platter of home-town goodness: Jay Ryan of The Bird Machine. Ryan's burgeoning cottage industry designs and prints brilliant original pieces for cd covers and concert posters.