What on Earth is Red Reading This Time: 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool by James Kaplan

Kind of a mouthful of a title, isn't it?

I stumbled on this book when I was browsing the stacks at a local bookstore, and the title intrigued me. I owned a copy of Kind of Blue and played it when the mood struck me, and hearing some of my youngest's high school friends play Freddie Freeloader as part of the jazz band* they put together their junior and senior years only reignited my interest in that era of Jazz. While I'd known about the basics surrounding the lead-up to the creation of Kind of Blue, courtesy of the Ken Burns documentary series Jazz, the detailed biography and intersection of Miles, John, and Bill was relatively unknown to me. 

The book begins with a retelling of James Kaplan's interview with Miles Davis for Vanity Fair back in 1989. As James tells it, his brother somehow convinced an editor at Vanity Fair that James knew all about jazz and so the editor gave him the job of interviewing the often difficult Miles. James promptly freaked out and crammed for the interview prior to showing up for what was originally to be one hour. Apparently Miles was taken with James and was very generous with his time, forming a lasting impression on James which led to this article (found in the Vanity Fair web archives) and a lifelong interest in jazz.

James then proceeds into both a biography of the three men, interweaving their tales with the progression of jazz from the Big Band era into Bebop and beyond. Some biographers would stop at the point of creation of Kind of Blue, but not Kaplan. He puts the album into perspective by showing the direction the three --and jazz itself-- went after that inflection point. After all, 1959 was also the year of the release by Ornette Coleman of The Shape of Jazz to Come, which announced to the world the presence of what is now known as Free Jazz. At that point, jazz began to move toward the avant-garde in the same way modern Classic Music did in the same time general time period. 

If you're a student of the music, or just enjoy music in general, you might find the book fascinating. And more than a bit sad.

Why sad? Because the history of jazz is littered with corpses, slaves to another mistress: drugs.

Miles also noted that the session was punctuated by the arrival of "all these hustlers and dope dealers looking for Bird [Charlie Parker]"--who kept disappearing into the bathroom, then coming back "all fucked up and shit. But after Bird got high, he just played his ass off."

And there it was, inexorably entwined with the growing fame that this album would accelerate, a coded message to young aspirants, the first two premises of a siren syllogism: Bird does heroin. Bird plays like a god on heroin. Young musicians could draw the obvious, but spurious, conclusion. And to the sorrow of so many, many did.  

 --From 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool, Pages 65-66.

There are times when it was difficult to read about these incredible musicians as junkies who could create masterful improvisational pieces night after night, particularly given my personal aversion to needles.** Knowing also that other jazz musicians of that era such as Dizzy Gillespie or Dave Brubeck eschewed drugs and still performed at a high level turns the triple biography into a tragedy, one that you can see coming a mile away.

Another theme of the book is the racism experienced by the jazz musicians, and how they responded to such racism. You could draw a direct line between the racism experienced by all three and their consequent drug addictions, and from there to their eventual decline and death. 

Still, there's the music. Oh god, the music.

I get it: jazz isn't for everyone. I'm not about to make any converts here, because like, say, an Irish Stout or an India Pale Ale when you are exposed mainly to American Lagers, it takes some getting used to.

Jazz and popular music split a long time ago, much longer than I've been alive, but I've made a living of finding music, books, and games off the beaten path.*** The beauty and tragedy of Jazz is wrapped up in the beauty and tragedy of countless artistic endeavors, and as long as there's music to be made, Jazz will endure. 3 Shades of Blue was a great book to absorb, and I spent way too many late hours reading it before I realized I had to get at least some sleep before I had to wake up for work the next day.

*The band's name was called Kinda Jazzy, in a self-deprecating fashion. They played in at least one jazz club around Cincinnati, somehow managing to be allowed to play despite none of them being old enough to actually drink at the establishment. 

**Yes, I know, I have to deal with needles due to my medical conditions, but that doesn't mean that I have to like it.

***If you don't think MMOs aren't popular, just remember that WoW had at its peak 13-14 million subscribers globally in a world of 8 billion people. That's less than 0.2% of the global population.

Meme Monday: Goth and Goth Girl Memes

Okay, this Meme Monday came about because I was hunting for something for another post and a couple of goth girl related memes popped up. Well, I thought, I already have a few other goth related memes lying around, so let's roll with it.

Yeah, this was the primary culprit.
From Reddit.

"I am the Keymaster."
"I am the Gatekeeper."
From Reddit.

Here's the second culprit. I guess it's
inevitable that with WoW's current baddie
as an Elven Goth Girl. From Reddit. Again.

Goths aren't limited to WoW fans.
From FFXIV and Imgflip.

The historian in me found this incredibly
amusing. From Facebook.

I've been sitting on this for so long I don't
know where I found it. That being said,
there's a "Goth IHOP" guild on the WoW
Anniversary Dreamscythe-US server.

Even the fake book memes got in on
the fun. From Facebook.

Building a World to Inhabit

One thing I loved about game worlds, whether in MMOs or RPGs or even tabletop games, is that it's a world to inhabit. There are (or ought to be) spaces where people can be free to just do whatever. Some people roleplay, some people goof around, and others just hang around waiting for a queue to pop* while soaking up the scenery or the chat that's flowing across their screen.

For example, about eight or nine months ago my Questing Buddy, her middle kid, and I played hide and seek in Stormwind. I thought I knew Stormwind in Classic Era, but my Questing Buddy had discovered places that people never go to so she could hide in.

Such as this place.

To get to Cut-Throat Alley (above), you have to go through another building and out the back, and from there you can go into another building or two that are completely empty. I'd imagine that some people roleplay in these spaces away from the crowd, but this particular time there was nobody there except for the three of us.

I was curious just how many of those places remained in Retail WoW, so I hopped onto Livona and took a look around. 

Well, whaddya know...

Yes, Cut-Throat Alley is still there, although with flying being allowed in the Old World now it's not quite so isolated as it was before. No, I didn't see anybody else there, but anybody flying by can find the place from above quite easily. 

It's quite remarkable that this remained intact in a post-Cataclysm revamp when so much throughout Azeroth was rebuilt (just look at Hillsbrad Foothills, for example). In fact, the only change to the entire area was that while in Vanilla Classic the building you go through to get to the Alley is empty, in the Retail version the building is actually inhabited with NPCs.

Filling in some of the gaps like this is something that I've occasionally advocated for in the past, to make these old areas feel lived in a bit more. Just go to Silvermoon City and realize just how empty the place is, and you wish that there were maybe three times as many NPCs wandering around than what there are. And yes, I did check months ago when I went to go try to see if I could get XP merely by fishing, and the NPCs are the same as always. There's something comforting about it, but still there could be more Sindorei around the sole remaining major Elven city.**

While I was clowning around with Livona, I took her via tram to Ironforge to see if some of the Dwarven housing is still there. You know, the empty "houses" carved into the insides of Ironforge, typically more well known today as the place where Horde raids hide out in when they invade Ironforge.

Cardwyn and Azshandra have died many times
assaulting the Horde in this exact place.

Again, these areas remaining intact is quite comforting. By comparison, some areas changed quite drastically:

Where'd it go?

What you don't see above is the side area of the Cathedral of Light where the Paladins would hang out. You'd find the trainers there, opposite the First Aid trainer area to my right (and off screen). In a post-Cataclysm world, the now non-functional Paladin class trainers*** are lumped in with the First Aid trainers (now called something else, the name escapes me) in a single side area. Obviously this was done for ease of use, but changing the formerly well-used Cathedral to make interactions quicker made the space feel somewhat less impressive than it used to be.

Of course, you could say that Stormwind in general kind of got the short shrift as far as dramatic changes go because Orgrimmar's visuals are significantly different:

Vanilla Classic...

...and post-Cataclysm. I borrowed the
original Quintalan, still in his Tier 9 armor set with
Quel'Delar strapped to his back, for that screencap.

Despite the changes, it's those little things that go to make up a world, make it feel lived in, and less of a game than a place. Wander into Blackrock Depths, poke around the city of the Dark Iron Dwarves, and you'll see what I mean. When I still ran instances with Valhalla back in Vanilla Classic, a group of us were in Blackrock Depths when someone piped up that Blizzard would never made an instance like this again. "It has that grandeur of a real city and you can lose yourself inside for hours," he said. I can't speak to a post-Mists Retail, but I agree with the sentiment that Blackrock Depths and Maraudon are two huge living places that take a long time to navigate. They bear a closer resemblance to an old D&D module such as the Slave Lords or the Giants modules than a modern MMO dungeon.

*Think of it as a glorified lobby for a multiplayer game such as Call of Duty.

**I think it's the sole remaining Elven city, given that Darnassus is kind of crispy.

***I discovered that the class trainers were non-functional when I visited the Rogue Class Trainer, Syurna, in Darnassus. Because I'm a glutton for punishment.

Red vs. Birds, Part Whatever

I'm only being semi-facetious with that title, because I've had quite a Spring dealing with birds. 

My involvement with birds is mostly two things: don't let them get into the house, and set out seeds for them in the birdfeeder. They don't bother me, and I don't bother them. However, each Spring there is an ongoing battle to keep the birds from building a nest in the porch.

It's the robins that are doing that. Always the robins. 

One year, the robins made a nest in the bush right next to where our cars are parked, and one of them would sit on the side mirror of one of the cars all day long, making noises at it's reflection, and crapping all over said side mirror. I had to hose off that side mirror every couple of days until the baby birds in the nest grew up and flew away. 

However, for the past several years, the robins have been trying to build a nest in our porch, which would prevent us from actually using said porch until they left. (They have a habit of dive bombing us if we come close to where their nest is.) To prevent this, I've turned on the overhead fan on the porch for several days to keep the birds from landing on the fan and trying to build a nest there. This also keeps the robins from building a test on the rafters next to the fan by blowing away the twigs and whatnot.*

This year the robins were unusually persistent, but they eventually failed to build a nest and moved on. I thought that my work was done and I could turn my attention to staining the deck boards I put down last year. The rain had been unusually persistent this Spring, so for much of the past Spring the weather had either been too wet or too cold to allow me to go out and stain the deck boards. Finally, however, the weather turned and I got four days of clear weather for the deck to dry out and I could make a go of staining it.

Then the robins decided to take their revenge by finding a nice perch on the deck and start crapping all over it. 

I was planning on using a deck cleaner/prep solution on the boards anyway, but the appearance of bird poop all over the deck was quite unwelcome. I spent the better part of a day scrubbing the thing down, clearing it out, and then the next day there was more poop to clean off.

After two days of this, I finally said "Fuck it," and decided to stain the deck after work.

Partway through the staining, I finally remembered
to take a photo.

Using a paint pad as opposed to a roller made for a lot less splatter and made the process go more quickly than it had in the past.

The view from the porch after it was completed.
Yes, the screen is ripped, but that's an artifact
of the original screen that enclosed the porch. That's
a story that I'll have to discuss in another post.

I know it's not perfect; I can see the overlapping coats of stain in plenty of spots, but the entire point of this was to protect the wood, not look perfect. I can go put another coat of stain on later, but the current problem is fixed.

Now, I have to work on the stairs, then address the railings. My budget might not permit either to be complete this year, because I had surprise car bills this Spring. I also decided to pass on finishing up my amateur radio license this year because buying ham radio equipment was out of the question too. Oh well, one thing at a time.

*It's not as if the robins don't have trees and bushes to build nests in nearby; there's a bunch of them around.

Time for a Bit of Scrabble

If you ever wondered if you could just go off script and do your own thing in Retail WoW, yes you can.

However, it's not easy.

If you do what I did and deleted the Dragon expansion seed quest because I decided I was going to ignore what Blizzard threw at me and just go my own way...

Guess what happens when you log back in?

Note the lack of a "Close" button or an X in the top right corner.

Yep. You're forced into accepting the quest again. Even if you hit the Escape key, you get this:

I'm really starting to dislike the sound of his voice.

So you have to either accept the quest and then simply ignore it, or you are in a constant state of having to abandon the quest only to have it automatically reappear. Apparently this has been a thing for quite a while, judging by the Blizzard forums:

As of June 2, 2025, although this was posted in 2023.

The best I can do is accept the quest and then untrack it, and that's that. 

When you think about it, simply going off script appears to be an option that Retail WoW doesn't know how to handle. Player driven fun, such as what I described at the end of this post here, is something that Retail WoW isn't really built for. And I'll be honest, I doubt it's very much on Blizzard's mind at all.*

It certainly seems that there's a dual problem in Retail at this juncture with regards to unscripted play: the player base is simply not interested in that, and Blizzard takes the lead in providing things for players to do. There's a bit of a chicken-and-egg issue here as to which came first, but it certainly seems that players are fine with following whatever tasks or events that Blizzard sets out. This puts the onus on Blizzard to provide "fun" for the players, rather than the players taking the initiative to work out fun for themselves. 

I get it: that pendulum toward player directed fun can swing so far that it could be a disaster. Just look at Fallout 76 and how Bethesda was so sure that players would come up with their own content that it simply fell flat on its face when that didn't happen. You need to provide some structure to a game world, and I think Bethesda finally realized much too late that they'd better get some NPCs and traditional quests in there right pronto. Still I wonder if the pendulum has swung so far toward doing whatever Blizzard hands out without questioning whether we, the players, could make up something better to do.

But judging by all the hoops I have to jump through to just go off in my own direction, I don't think Blizzard really wants me to do that either. It's almost as if people who decide to go investigate what's over the next hill are relegated to the Classic side of the fence, where all the malcontents who won't do as their told reside.**

***

As for Livona, I did take a flightpath through Kalimdor just to see another place that no longer exists in the current state of Retail:

Yeah, I think I'm going to not do any more recent expansions. I might be living in the past, but at least there's a damn World Tree here. I can guarantee that Cardwyn would have said "fuck it" years ago and given the middle finger to any starter quests, echoing a certain parody novel...

Just then a soft knocking came at the door.

"Dammit," muttered Frito, roused from his reveries. "Who's there?"

There was no reply save another, more insistent knock.

"Okay, okay, I'm coming," Frito went to the door and opened it.

There on the stoop were twenty-three lyre-strumming nymphs in gauzy pant-suits couched in a golden canoe borne on the cool mists of a hundred fire extinguishers and crewed by a dozen tipsy leprechauns uniformed in shimmering middy-blouses and fringed toreador pants. Facing Frito was a twelve-foot specter shrouded in red sateen, shod in bejeweled riding boots, and mounted on an obese, pale-blue unicorn. Around him fluttered winged frogs, miniature Valkyries, and an airborne caduceus. The tall figure offered Frito a six-fingered hand which held a curiously inscribed identification bracelet simply crawling with mysterious portents.

"I understand," said the stranger solemnly, "that you undertake quests."

Frito banged the door shut in the specter's surprised face, bolted, barred, and locked it, swallowing the key for good measure. Then he walked directly to his cozy fire and slumped in the chair. He began to muse upon the years of delicious boredom that lay ahead. Perhaps he would take up Scrabble.

--From Bored of the Rings by The Harvard Lampoon, page 149.

*I actually do know something about what's on Blizzard's mind, but I'm not allowed to divulge that information right now.

**That's not necessarily a surprise, as were it not for the malcontents there wouldn't be a WoW Classic in the first place. And to be perfectly blunt, if WoW Classic didn't exist, there wouldn't likely be a Dragonflight or War Within, because Retail WoW would have died when BfA and then Shadowlands' poor design and execution caused subscriptions to plummet. It was Classic WoW that kept Retail afloat during those days.

Meme Monday: Housing Memes

I was working outside this weekend when it hit me that I haven't done any player housing memes in a while (if ever).

Now, I'm sure that I've heard about player housing in MMOs recently...

Whoops. From WoW Insider (or Blizzard Watch).

Uh, not that player housing, but the other one...

The last time I saw people waxing poetic over
Blizz like this was, uh... ::checks list:: the most recent
expansion being released. I think I'll take a rain check
on that one, Preach. From Preach's YouTube Channel.

Still, I thought it'd be interesting to cover RPG and MMO housing for a change.

This is for my son, who still plays FFXIV.

And survival horror too. Minecraft counts as
survival horror in my book. From
Mematic and Cheezburger.

When I was in college, a campaign centered around
us having "liberated" a tavern from it's corrupt
owners, and people started figuring out how to
make it a profitable establishment. So...
it checks out. From Reddit.

Alas, you haven't seen my strongholds in SWTOR.
Now, where's Njessi when I need her?
From Reddit.

Okay, okay. Here's one for the upcoming
player housing in Retail. From Reddit.

Yes, I Do Actually Like Playing Them

While you might think that my Grumpy Old Man (tm) posts about World of Warcraft and other MMOs indicate I'm not having fun these days, I disagree.

I may not be having as much fun as I had while I was initially playing WoW back in 2009/2010, but to me it is... comfortable. I can laugh at MMOs now and not consider it 'srs bznss', but I can also enjoy myself while recognize it's limitations.

This is something that simply doesn't happen
in WoW since... Wrath, maybe?
From Know Your Meme and Justin Parks.

Yes, there are things that annoy me. I'm opinionated enough that I'll always find something to annoy me,* but finding and complaining about annoyances doesn't mean I think that a game is irredeemable. (Old Blanchy notwithstanding.)

One thing I have noticed the longer I've played video games in general is that I'm at my happiest when I'm playing my favorite parts of video games. For Classic WoW, it's in the leveling process and just hanging around various parts of Azeroth.** Sure, I also like running 5-person instances and a good match of Alterac Valley, but that's in smaller doses rather than repeat runs for a deeper goal. For example, last weekend was Alterac Valley weekend, so I got onto the Classic Era servers and ran Alterac Valley a handful of times, but that was it. I didn't have a need to do that more than just those half a dozen or so runs, so once I got that out of my system I was fine on not doing any others all weekend.

Or, in Retail, instead of grumping about Old Blanchy's demise, I decided to go exploring along the well-trod path from Stormwind to Theramore. The path is pretty traditional if you decide to not take a flight path straight to Menethil Harbor***:

• Tram Ride from Stormwind to Ironforge
• Run from Ironforge east through Dun Morogh
• Take the pass (either North or South) from Dun Morogh to Loch Modan. 
• Head north from Loch Modan into the pass down toward the Wetlands.
• run north and then east along the main road through the Wetlands to Menethil Harbor.
• Take a ship from the Harbor to Theramore.

Obviously, I chose running along the scenic route because it was an option. It gave me a chance to explore at a slow pace and enjoy the sights as I knew them in the pre-Cataclysm times.

Okay, that quest hub is new for Cataclysm...

I didn't see a soul along the way, but that was fine. 

To be fair, this is the fewest number of people
on a ship to Theramore that I've seen in quite a while.

What was even better was at the end:

Do I know you? You look familiar.

My lone toon that has reached max level in 2014 used to be able to fly through a Theramore that was devoid of NPCs and everybody else, because she never participated in the Destruction of Theramore event.**** It is nice to see that a brand new toon doesn't have a completely empty Theramore, but rather a Theramore that's as it was in Cataclysm. (And largely what it was like from the TBC Era.)

***

There's also a measure of comfort when visiting areas I have fond memories of.

I've been married for over 30 years, and I simply
can't comprehend why all these women would
accept hanging around and sharing Darmas like that.
Maybe it's transactional by nature, but...

The Vanilla SWTOR planets, particularly the low level ones, bring back most of my nostalgia for the game. The same goes for Vvardenfell and ESO:

I think the screencap is off a bit, as it looked much
more vibrant on the screen.

I've also been known to roam the halls of Spacedock...

I frequently get lost in this place. What a fine example
of Starfleet training I am.

Or just chill in town, whether it be Darkshire...

Or Stormwind...

I consider all of these (lack of) activities to be "playing the game", even though I might not have a specific plan at the moment. You don't have to have a specific plan to play MMOs, so why not lean into it if that's what you feel like doing?

Besides, it keeps me from complaining about whatever people are hyped up about these days, so that's a good thing.

*Even among my favorite bands. I read an article yesterday out of BBC Music that had a list of what the author believed were the top Prog Rock albums released in 1975. Among them he put Rush's Caress of Steel. "Uh..." I stuttered, not believing what I was reading. I mean, there was a reason why Caress of Steel's tour was informally described by the band as "The Down the Tubes Tour". In my opinion, Caress was the worst Rush album they ever put out, and it's not really even close. 

**That holds true for me in SWTOR as well, as I prefer the "Vanilla SWTOR" leveling experience more than anything else in the game. I can't say the same for LOTRO or ESO as I've not played multiple toons in either MMO, but I can say that I enjoyed the story in each that I've completed so far.

***It is also apparently a thing in Retail that a new toon has access to all of the flight paths that other toons have --at least in the Old World-- and for probably 1/10 the cost. I was quite shocked when I first clicked on a Gryphon Master to see what was available and this popped up:

Holy crap.

****That has since been corrected, as in preparation for this post I went back to Theramore and discovered that Az could see NPCs and everybody else in Theramore as it was. I guess Blizz finally corrected that gap in their event design.

EtA: Corrected spelling.