* I told subscribers this today…

I’m pretty sure that the last time I took at least two weeks off work was in 2003 when I went to cover the war in Iraq. So, I’ve decided that since the General Assembly is taking a break for the next two weeks, I’ll do the same. The blog will be down for a week, and then my intern Kevin will cover things for the second week of vacation. The automated news feeds will still be up and running, of course, so the blog will be a must-read even without new posts. Take care.

Be nice to Kevin, please.

* Head to Illinoize while I’m gone. I’m not going to put an Illinoize feed in this post because the javascript feeds are having problems loading lately and I don’t want it to mess up the blog while I’m gone, so just go over the and check it out yourself.

* The Sun-Times ran an excellent editorial about Chess Records today. Howlin’ Wolf was one of the top artists at that studio, and here he is singing “Shake It For Me” with Sunnyland Slim, Willie Dixon, Hubert Sumlin and Clifton James…

* My dad asked that I post this one. Professor Longhair & The Meters do “Tipitina”…

Have a good one.