The best CD, ever: I’ll be at the neighborhood Tower Tuesday morning at 9 a.m. to purchase Mark O’Connor’s new CD, Thirty Year Retrospective. In July, 2002, I was fortunate to attend the CD’s taping, an event I blogged then and re-post, in part, for you here:

(from the rexblog, July 10, 2002) Mark O’Connor is releasing the “live” double-CD as a retrospective of his 30 years as a recording artist. The concert was held in the new (and accoustically awesome) Ingram Performance Hall at Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music.

Mark O’Connor, Chris Thile, Bryan Sutton and Byron House came as close as four artists can to perfection. (It didn’t hurt that we got there early and got front-row, center seats.)

Bryan Sutton on guitar is worth travelling anywhere to see. Byron House on bass is unbeatable. Mark O’Connor is legendary. But Chris Thile. How does one begin to describe his talent. Other-worldly? Godlike? On a stage with three other titans of accoustical music, Chris Thile tranformed his mandolin into something beyond magical. Chris Thile reminds me of Pete Maravich. In the way Pistol Pete redefined what ball handling is all about, Chris Thile is in the process of changing the way the world perceives the mandolin. His name should be Chris Thrille.

Two ninety minutes sets left the audience exhausted but the musicians appeared energized, even joyful.

In a rare brush with greatness, the next morning I saw Mark O’Connor in the parking lot of The Violin Shop in Bellevue. It would have been like having a conversation with Michael Jordan the morning after a championship game. I was able to ask him ten minutes of questions about the performance and he seemed eager to indulge the kids and me.

Nashville is that kind of amazing place.

Cooking books? While I’ve avoided the Rosie trial in much the same way I avoided her magazine and TV show, today’s revelations regarding the falsification of ABC numbers hits the rexblog radar screen.

Quote (from the AP story):

The chief financial officer of Gruner + Jahr USA, publisher of Rosie O’Donnell’s magazine, admitted Monday that his company reported false circulation figures to hide the magazine’s losses. Lawrence Diamond, the CFO, said executives at G+J decided to “manage the financials” of the magazine, “Rosie,” so they could keep publishing. If the magazine lost more than $4.2 million in a fiscal year, O’Donnell would have been permitted to end her arrangement with G+J.

“We did not want to shut down,” Diamond testified under questioning by Matthew Fishbein, an O’Donnell lawyer. The executive was testifying in Manhattan’s State Supreme Court where O’Donnell and G+J are suing each other for breach of contract. O’Donnell’s lawyers said the G+J executives were falsifying the circulation numbers during the height of the fight between the entertainer and the company for control of the magazine.

I now officially take back any prediction of a certain victory for G+J. All I’m certain of now is that everyone associated with this case will be found guilty of first degree hubris.

How bad? Sports Illustrated’s Peter King has this to say about the humiliating defeat the Titans dealt the Dolphins yesterday: “I’d say yesterday’s 31-7 loss was the most embarrassing for (Miami) since Dan Marino’s last start, when the Jags hit them up for 60 points.” That’s pretty bad.