all that jazz

The number of opportunities to hear live music in this city is really staggering. For some shmo's bday the other night we went out for some steak dinner and then meandered through the streets to this tiny jazz club. The club (really, a room) was small enough that the entertainers could (and did) easily interact with the audience. A group of drunk high school girls were dancing pretty oddly to the music, and screaming as if they were at a Beatles concert. Nevertheless, the sax player really enjoyed their hooting and hollering (and why not?) and during one solo, walked over to their dancing and was playing to them. He got pretty passionate about it, and ended up on his knees. Highly entertaining.


The music was pretty good, and it was great to recognize so many covers (Take Five, When The Saints Go Marching In, Georgia on My Mind, Cantaloupe Island, to name a few).

Here's us.


During a lesson last night, a conversation about Communism and bribery - for just about everyone and everything - brought up an interesting Czech saying which outlines the pervasiveness of personal corruption: "If you're not stealing from the government, you're stealing from your family." Basically, everyone is expected to cheat the government and each other. But if you're too moral to do that, you're essentially taking food out of your family's mouths.
But to be perfectly fair, I saw a cop actually refuse a bribe from someone about to be towed. I was pretty shocked. But hey, I guess some things change. Or maybe there were too many people around for him to accept.