Goldman & Citi have Swine Flu vaccine, do you?

In the event of revolution I have some thoughts about who to put up against a wall.

Some of New York’s biggest companies, including Wall Street giants Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, received doses of swine flu vaccine for at-risk employees, drawing criticism that the hard-to-find vaccine is going first to the privileged. [emphasis added]

That’s not criticism, that’s a statement of fact.

New York city defended its actions by saying that distributing large doses of the vaccine to such businesses is "a great avenue for vaccinating people at risk." ASTERISK/FOOTNOTE: And by people at risk we mean those who are rich and have health insurance. I’m not sure what the risk is here, but I’d like to have some.

This event has revealed a previously unsuspected gift for irony at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC responded to this by saying any decisions that appear to send vaccine beyond high-priority groups "have the potential to undermine the credibility of the program." You think?

Goldman, Citi, et al, got the vaccine because they have their own doctors. Before getting the vaccine, doctors at these companies had to agree to only vaccinate high-risk employees. (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) And I am sure they are doing just that and ignoring any VIPs who ask for it and could have them fired.

It is nice to know that at least one of the firms who have received billions in tax dollars has spent some of that on competent PR people. While Goldman Sachs kept its 200 doses and Citigroup kept its 1,200, Morgan Stanley turned over its 1,000 doses to local hospitals after finding out they had not yet received any vaccine.

I realize our government is a corporate whorehouse, but would it mind at least pulling the shades down over the windows?

Related story:

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) – Senior health officials in the Canadian province of Alberta said on Wednesday they had fired an unidentified worker for giving National Hockey League players preferential access to the H1N1 flu vaccine. The controversy boiled over this week when it was revealed that players for the NHL’s Calgary Flames and their families received shots on an exclusive basis one day before the province closed public flu clinics due to a shortage of the vaccine.

Remember: Before getting the vaccine, doctors at these companies had to agree to only vaccinate high-risk employees. (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)

New reg lets banks ignore actual value of “underperforming” loans

It is only fitting that on Halloween the Federal government is increasing the number of zombies among us.

Federal bank regulators issued guidelines allowing banks to keep loans on their books as "performing" even if the value of the underlying properties have fallen below the loan amount.

The rationale?

While CRE (commercial real estate) borrowers may experience deterioration in their financial condition, many continue to be creditworthy customers who have the willingness and capacity to repay their debts. In such cases, financial institutions and borrowers may find it mutually beneficial to work constructively together.

Nothing inspires confience in me like the phrase “financial institutions and borrowers may find it mutually beneficial.” Especially since banks are not required to only apply this rule to “creditworthy customers who have the willingness and capacity to repay their debts.”

I really can’t top what Doug McIntyre wrote at DailyFinance.com:

The FDIC appears simply to be taking losses that would be incurred in the normal course of business and pushing the true accounting for them into the future. It is to the political benefit of Washington to make it appear that the banking sector is getting better. It also probably helps the FDIC, which is essentially insolvent, from having to come up with billions of dollars to insure deposits at failing banks.

Some can argue that this regulation just does for commercial real estate what had already been done for home mortgages. In April, the Financial Accounting Standards Board approved a new set of rules allowing financial firms to fiddle with how big their real-estate losses are. (New accounting rules let bankers set the value of their own toxic assets)

When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”

HOORAY? Sub-prime mortgages “back to pre-crisis levels”

The Fed says sub-prime mortgages again make up more than 20% of the nation’s outstanding mortgages.

After plummeting in early 2008, the share of borrowers with FICO credit scores lower than 660 has returned to just higher than 20 percent, the same share as when subprime securitization peaked in 2006.

Once upon a time this number was a bad thing because all those loans were held by private institutions many of which basically collapsed when it turned out people couldn’t pay them off.

Today it is a good thing because Government-backed agencies Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae "are providing unprecedented support to the housing market — owning or guaranteeing almost 95% of the new residential mortgage lending." So all is jake now that you, me and every other US citizen are guaranteeing these turkeys.

The reason for this rebound is not that due to any increase in the financial stability of people with lousy credit scores. No, it’s because the Federal Housing Authority seems determined to recreate the housing bubble “by providing vital insurance that enables borrowers to qualify for loans with as little as 3.5% down.”

The FHA is, of course, a picture of fiscal health. The agency recently admitted that “a soon-to-be-released audit will show that its reserve fund has fallen below the level required by law, meaning it will not be enough to cover 2% of all outstanding FHA mortgages.”

One solution proposed to get the agency’s reserves back up to what the law requires:  Raise the minimum down payment on FHA loans to 5%.

But – reports the LA Times — “new FHA Commissioner David H. Stevens said such a move could threaten the nascent housing recovery. A person looking to buy a $300,000 house, for instance, would have to raise an additional $4,500 for the down payment.”

If you can’t afford another $4.5K for the down payment, you probably can’t afford $300K either.

Says who?

The FHA itself. That’s because – just like in the last housing bubble – the lenders don’t really have a clue as to how much the borrowers can repay. We know this because the FHA has admitted it really hasn’t done much to screen the lenders for things like basic competence.

According to a report by the FHA inspector general: “The agency approved nearly 3,300 lender applications in fiscal 2008, more than triple the year before. But the number of workers evaluating applications remained the same. In a review of 22 approved applications, the audit found that only one contained all the necessary documents.”

History repeats itself first as tragedy then as farce, someone once said. Unfortunately the farce doesn’t leave you any better off than the tragedy.

By the time this is all done the economy will look like it’s been hit by a typhoon of monkeys.

BON TON ROULEZ!!!

Bank fails after taking “Jesus saves” literally

Riverview Community Bank of Ostego, MN, whose founder said God told him that He “would take care of the bottom line,” was closed by the FDIC last Friday.

Chuck Ripka, one of the bank’s founders, once told the Star Tribune that God spoke to him and said, "Chuck, if you pastor the bank, I’ll take care of the bottom line." Ripka and his staff would pray with customers in the bank’s Otsego branch and even at the drive-up window. (A story I once heard about not mixing money lenders and temples suddenly comes to mind.)

Seems the Good Lord didn’t tip Mr. Ripka to the fact that home prices do not always head toward Heaven. The bank was an aggressive real estate lender and at one point had the fourth-highest concentration of real estate loans-to-capital of any community bank in the Minnesota. Riverview’s mistakes weren’t limited to bad loans it seems. Earlier this month it had reached an agreement with the Fed to cease paying dividends and correct violations of law spelled out in a May letter from the Fed. The order didn’t identify what laws were broken.

 

(And speaking of banks in need of divine intercession, check out: Citigroup’s "Hail Mary Pass": How To Know Citigroup Is In Serious Trouble)

Someone at Toyota, Saatchi thought cyber-stalking was a good marketing idea

In order to market its then-new Matrix model, Saatchi & Saatchi proposed and Toyota OK’d a campaign whereby people who “opted-in” would get “e-mails for five days from a fictitious man called Sebastian Bowler, from England, who said he was on the run from the law, knew [the person] and where [he/she lived] and was coming to [his/her] home to hide from the police.” And oh, by the way, the participants were entered into the event by people who wanted to set up friends to be "punked."

What could possibly go wrong with that?

Plenty. So much that Amber Duick of LA has filed suit against the carmaker over emotional distress caused by being on the receiving end of the stunt.

Although Bowler did not have Duick’s current address, he sent her links to his My Space page as well as links to video clips of him causing trouble all over the country on his way to her former house in Los Angeles, according to the lawsuit.  "Amber mate! Coming 2 Los Angeles. Gonna lay low at your place for a bit till it all blows over," the man wrote in one e-mail.

You may not have thought it possible, but it gets even stupider.

Duick’s attorney said the marketing company went so far as to send Duick a bill for damages the fictitious man supposedly made to a hotel room. "Amber, ran into a little problem at the hotel," a note with the invoice stated. "After I’m done visiting you, I’m going to go back and sort out that front desk Muppet."

The company’s defense? “Well, she did agree to the opt-in.” Said opt-in was buried in an emailed “personality test” which contained a link to a web page allegedly explaining what was going to happen. Duick’s lawyer characterizes the explanatory note as “indecipherable.” This point seems reasonable as you could hardly expect to punk someone who knows what’s coming.

The entire thing begs two questions:

• WTF was someone smoking when he/she OK’d this?
• What the hell was the campaign supposed to accomplish?

Saatchi & Saatchi told the marketing magazine OMMA last year that it had developed the campaign to target men under 35 who hate advertising. The prank campaign, Saatchi creative director Alex Flint told the magazine, should gain the appreciation from "even the most cynical, anti-advertising guy.

HUH? How the hell does this actually sell the product? It sure as hell isn’t going to make anyone less cynical or anti-advertising. I want to ask did it ever once occur to anyone that even “men under 35” have been known to have problematic people in their lives – but we already know the answer.

Sadly this campaign is excluded for this year’s list of Top 10 (or so) marketing blunders as it took place in 2008. However, I suspect it may receive a special citation from a certain special interest group.

A basic rule marketing people can’t remember: Nazi = bad

Latest example: A wax museum opening next month in Thailand put up posters of mass murder Hitler with a slogan that said: "Hitler is not dead."

Museum director Somporn Naksuetrong said the billboard had been covered up after "a lot" of complaints poured in, including from the Israeli and German embassies. "We didn’t choose Hitler with the intention of praising him, but because he is well-known," Somporn said.

<<Jaw drops, bounces, skitters across floor and leaves>>

Previously:

• Red Bull gives a shout out to its favorite Nazi

• Top Marketing Blunders of 2007

Lawyers allege being a woman not a “Pre-Existing Condition”

A bunch of lawyers, in an attempt to provoke a SOCIALIST TAKEOVER of the great and beneficial insurance industry, are claiming that having a uterus is no reason to be charged HIGHER INSURANCE PREMIUMS.

The lawyers, working for the thoroughly unbiased National Women’s Law Center, even talked The Whimpernator –  COMMIE-SYMPATHIZER & SELLOUT Gov. Schwarzenegger, to sign a law state law banning gender rating, which is the practice of charging women higher insurance rates than men for the same services.

But wait it gets worse! The NWLC (clearly an ACORN front group) now wants this same OVER REGULATION applied TO THE ENTIRE NATION! The group’s hairy-legged leader, Marcia Greenberger, told the DEMOCRAT CONTROLLED SENATE,

"Across health insurance markets, discriminatory industry practices put fair and affordable coverage out of reach for far too many women. We have heard repeatedly from predominately female businesses that have learned that their health insurance premiums are higher because of the gender of their employees.”

Note that she said, “heard repeatedly from predominately female businesses.” Well they’re just a bunch of biased whiners. And get a load of these “statistics”

• Women are charged as much as 48 percent more than men for health insurance. (OF COURSE THEY ARE! Men don’t have those naughty bits! Naughty bits are expensive!)
• Of the more than 3,500 plans studied, 60 percent did not cover maternity care. (Maternity care is a another plot to subvert CAPITALISM! My mother didn’t care about me and look how I turned out!)

 

 

(Waits for someone to not get this…)

Store owners shoot congenial, hairy beer customer

Owners of the Marketplace Foods in Hayward, Wis., decided to call in the law when a 125-pound male entered the store and, without bothering anyone, walked to the beer cooler and sat down. The customer then waited patiently for an hour. To this reporter’s eyes it seems clear he was waiting for a staff member to locate his preferred brand, but the brains at the store didn’t feel that way. Acting on the gross and unfair prejudice that because said customer was a black bear and therefore must be a threat (Why must we fear what we don’t understand?) managers called  officials from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources who tranquilized and removed the customer.

This kind of treatment should be reserved solely for executives from Bear-Stearns. (sorry. I had to do it.)

In case you think I am misreading this incident, remember that EYEWITNESSES “say the bear seemed content to sit in the cooler — and they note that he didn’t drink any of the beer.” (emphasis added)

Given the number of breweries which have used bears to sell their beer without recompense (gallery below), I hope they will hire a sympathetic law firm to come to the defense of this cruel victim of bad customer service.

As the astute songwriter Steven Fromholz noted in his song Bears (ably performed here by one Mr. Lyle Lovett):

Some folks say there ain’t no bears in Arkansas
Some folks never seen a bear at all
Some folks say that bears go around eating babies raw
Some folks got a bear across the hall

Some folks say that bears go around smelling bad
Others say that a bear is honey sweet
Some folks say this bear’s the best I ever had
Some folks got a bear beneath their feet

Some folks drive the bears out of the wilderness
Some to see a bear would pay a fee
Me I just bear up to my bewildered best
And some folks even see the bear in me

So meet a bear and take him out to lunch with you
And even though your friends may stop and stare
Just remember that’s a bear there in the bunch with you
And they just don’t come no better than a bear

 

   

 

 

Red Bull gives a shout out to its favorite Nazi

Red Bull beverages produces a magazine called The Red Bulletin (which sounds like a communist publication, but never mind), billed as “news from the world of Red Bull.” It is the usual slick, vapid type of magazine filled with people and things that you’ve never heard of because you’re a grown up.

In the current issue they have profiles of four people they deem heroes: In the words of the subhed: “If boundaries were meant to be pushed, these men and women were born to push them.” The four are a female Turkish racecar driver, a NASCAR driver, Hugh Hefner and … Wernher von Braun.

The article mainly focuses on the second part of Dr. von Braun’s career when he guided NASA and America’s effort to reach the moon. Scant mention is made of his early years as chief rocketeer for Adolf Hitler. The only mention of his years as a Nazi and SS officer is the opening clause of one sentence

Just seven years after the last of his 1402 V-2 missiles had wreaked death and destruction on London during World War II, this Prussian-born minor aristocrat was informing, engaging and entertaining America with magazine explanations of how man might break free of Earth’s bonds.

After that, this blow job (that’s a technical phrase used by journalists who get stuck with assignments like this) for the deceased goes on ad nauseum with hard-hitting observations like

“He was a PR man’s dream,” says Mike Buckbee, NASA’s public affairs officer throughout its Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programmes.

No mention whatsoever is made of the N-word, slave labor or death camps or any other of that little unpleasantness from 1933 to 1945. Even NASA, von Braun’s former employer, has the decency to say

Von Braun’s relationship to the Nazi Party is complex; although he was not an ardent Nazi, he did hold rank as an SS officer. His relationship to slave labor is likewise complicated, for his distance from direct responsibility for the use of slave labor must be balanced by the fact that he was aware of its use and the conditions under which prisoners labored.

I have only one possible explanation for this surreal Sesame Street moment (“One of these things is not like the others…”). Red Bull was founded by one Dietrich Mateschitz, an Austrian. Austria, for those of you who don’t remember, was not conquered by Germany – it invited them in.

As usual, the estimable Tom Lehrer put it best:

“And what is it that put America in the forefront of the nuclear nations? And what is it that will make it possible to spend 20 billion dollars of your money to put some clown on the moon? Well, it was good old American know-how, that’s what. As provided by good old Americans like Dr. Wernher von Braun.”

(sings)

Gather round while I sing you of Wernher von Braun,
A man whose allegiance
Is ruled by expedience.
Call him a Nazi, he won’t even frown.
"Ha, Nazi Schmazi," says Wernher von Braun.

Don’t say that he’s hypocritical,
Say rather that he’s apolitical.
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That’s not my department," says Wernher von Braun.

Some have harsh words for this man of renown,
But some think our attitude
Should be one of gratitude,
Like the widows and cripples in old London town
Who owe their large pensions to Wernher von Braun.

If Obama can win a Nobel for not being Bush, why can’t I?

What did this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner spend today doing? Deciding how many troops to send into combat.

Mrs. CollateralDamage called it this morning: Obama got the Peace Prize for being anyone but GW. It is an absurd award. The President, as he himself would probably point out, has yet to do anything to deserve it. This one is even sillier than the one they gave to Al Gore. Or, as Mrs CD put it, “I wasn’t George Bush last year, why didn’t I win?

I do not mean to blame my President for this. It is entirely the Nobel committee’s silliness.

Tom Lehrer once said that irony died when Henry Kissinger won the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize.  This one is light years better than that.

Afghanistan: Worse than Vietnam?

Why are we there? Ostensibly to prevent the Taliban/Al Qaida from training terrorists to attack us. Other unspoken reason 1: To try to prop up the nuclear armed government of Pakistan by denying those same groups bases to attack Paki from.Other possible reason: Have a nearby base from which we can launch a mission to secure said nukes if/when Paki gov’t falls apart.

What is the solution currently offered? Increase the number of troops on the ground to establish a safe zone within Afghanistan so Afghanis can set up a functioning government with hope that this will extend out into all of Afghanistan.

Problems:

1. This solution achieves neither of the first two objectives.
2. There is no objective criteria for success.
3. Like Vietnam there is no direct US interest in the outcome of this war. Denying bases to terrorists is close to the same thing as the old domino theory that was used to rationalize Vietnam. Look at US history: We win wars that are either important to the national interests or in which we are so much larger than the opposition that a small portion of our military can overwhelm them. (See Grenada and Panama, Invasions of)
4. We are running a military operation literally on the opposite side of the world. Supply lines are much more of a problem than even in Vietnam. Afghanistan is the nation that the Soviet Union – which shared a common border and had far fewer scruples about inflicting disproportionate damage – could not win. The Russians could not have been happier than the day we asked if we could run our supplies through their nation. They just followed Napoleon’s advice to "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." They probably view it as payback. We bankrupted them to win the Cold War, so they’ll help us bankrupt ourselves.
5. Because there is no objective criteria for success no one has any idea how long even the proposed solution will take to implement.
6. It will damage NATO permanently. Either the member nations will continue to commit token amounts of troops and poison the water for any future necessary deployments as casualties turn the public further against joint operations with the US; or the other nations will cease to deploy troops and NATO will be turned into a shell of itself. NATO has a very clear reason to exist: To protect member states from attack by another government. That clear reason is why NATO has survived even the end of the threat is originally designed for. Using NATO to respond to and suppress insurgent, non-government actors is a very dangerous dilution of that mission. Mission creep will make NATO useless.
7. We can’t afford the current size of the wars we’re already in – in either money or manpower. Afghanistan and the George Bush Desert Classic together have come close to breaking our ground forces. They are being worn out by too many deployments. Too many of them are being regularly asked to do missions that they are ill-trained to do. I have an incredibly high opinion of the American soldier. I have met many and am related to one. No military can take this kind of long-term open-ended deployments. And that is without even going in to the cost in terms of arms and armor. As a nation the US is effectively broke. We are funding the government on debt piled on top of debt piled on top of debt. Our banking system is the dead mouse on the kitchen floor of the US economy.* Both the bankers and the government are terrified of what will happen when/if the banks state the size of their losses. WE HAVE NO MONEY! This is my real problem with the entire health care debate. I am all in favor of national health care. I think this will save the nation a considerable amount of money in the end and extend the length and quality of its citizens’ lives. One problem: WE HAVE NO MONEY! How many wars have we paid for while not addressing this basic need? Just since the start of the New Deal there have been five major conflicts, the Cold War and I have no idea how many minor wars. We will spend billions on the military at the drop of a hat even when there is no actual threat to the safety and well-being of our nation. But some sort of national health insurance – which would cost far less than any of the major wars — has been blocked for more than 50 years.
8. The Afghani government (and I use term liberally) remains in place because of corruption and rigged elections. You can’t win the hearts and minds battle with a government that looks like every other corrupt national government the Afghanis have ever had. Yeah the Taliban are murderous thugs but you have to make an argument to the people that more than “We’re less capricious than they are.”

If I were Hamad Kharzai I wouldn’t be buying any green bananas right now. The US has a long record of replacing its hand-picked leaders with extreme prejudice at times like this. (See Vietnam war, changes of government during for examples.)

Which brings me to my final point: If this isn’t another Vietnam, it will do until the real thing comes along. It is far too easy to imagine someone saying about an Afghani town: “We must destroy the village in order to save it.” That is not a slap at our military. It is meant to point out that under these extreme circumstances humans are likely to react in extreme ways. What seems like crazy on a normal day …

Unfortunately we do not have the option we should have used in Vietnam, declaring victory and go home. To do so almost certainly would make matters worse. We have added to the mess in an incredibly dangerous part of the world. This is the 21st century’s Balkans not because it may spark another world war but because it could involve the world in a cataclysmic war. I do hope Archduke Ferdinand is not already on his way.

 

 

*This sentence is a rip off of something Collateral Damage Sr. originally said about Nixon.

American Girl selling “homeless girl” doll for $95

What could be a better way for your child to learn that the homeless are just like real people than to buy her a “less fortunate” playmate for her other American Girl doll(s)?

How about spending some time with — and money for — someone who is actually homeless?

The latest addition to the American Girl line of how-do-you-justify-it-ly expensive dolls is Gwen Thompson. Ms. Thompson

and her mother Janine fell on hard times when her father lost his job; they later lost the house as they were unable to keep up payments. Soon after, Gwen’s father left them and they became homeless the fall before the start of the book’s events. Initially, Gwen’s mother has them live in their car until the winter comes; she then takes them to Sunrise House, a place for homeless women and children. Sunrise House helps them get on their feet and eventually get a new apartment.

Despite this happy ending Ms. Thompson does have a touch of Voltaire’s Candide about her:

Gwen likes to swim. However, she is not a strong swimmer and is sent to work with the 8-9 year olds. She becomes the swim coach’s assistant on the swim team in the second book so that she can participate and learn to swim better. In [the book] Chrissa Stands Strong this makes her the object of cyberbullying.

Poor Gwen should just be grateful she wasn’t made the token cripple as well. Just think how much American Girl could charge for a wheel chair?

I can't compete with reality.

Even ironistas must do their research. The answer to the above question is $30. Heather, who brought this to my attention and rocks big time, adds  “A set of crutches (with a leg cast and other accessories) is only $26.  You don’t have a daughter….you don’t know!”

Well she was an American girl
Raised on promises
She couldn’t help thinking that there
Was a little more to life
Somewhere else

Twitter valued at $1 Billion say people with a vested interest in Twitter

Hysterical story in today’s journal headlined: Twitter’s Value Is Set at $1 Billion

The lede:

Twitter Inc. is nearing a deal for as much as $100 million in new funding that would buy the fast-growing Internet-messaging company more time to figure out its business model, according to people familiar with the situation.

But the punch line comes in the 3rd graph:

The investors are valuing Twitter – which has yet to generate more than a trickle of revenues – at more than $1 billion, according to people familiar with the plan. That’s more than triple the valuation Twitter received during its last round of capital raising in February, underscoring how quickly the company has grown.

So let me see if I understand, the companies who are giving $100M to Twitter say Twitter is worth more than 10 times that amount. Hmmm. Well they are certainly an unbiased source.

By the way, CollateralDamage.biz is worth more than $10 million so you should want to buy it while the price is still this low, say people familiar with my bank account.

So we now know it takes about 10 years to forget the lessons of a bubble burst. Remember the .com bubble?

Anyone?

Bueller?

Companies with no way to generate actual money were suddenly worth absurd amounts because … well … because. As far as I can tell Twitter’s business model is to be bought by Google. To date Twitter has proven to be a very popular supplementary application. People use Twitter and all there other methods of communicating. It isn’t supplanting either email or blogs AND (this is big) it is NOT popular with the teens to 20s demographic, which means it doesn’t have a future.

UPDATE!

This just got added to the WSJ site:

SAN FRANCISCO (Dow Jones)–Micro-blogging service Twitter Inc. said Friday it had closed a "significant round of funding," a deal that will give the wildly-popular startup more time to develop a business model.” Twtter said investors included Insight Venture Partners, T. Rowe Price (TROW), Institutional Venture Partners, Spark Capital and Benchmark Capital.

There’s gotta be a pony in there somewhere, right guys? Hey, anyone seen my Kozmo.com messenger bag?

If the Wall Street Journal Is So Smart, How Come They Agree With Me?

Me:

Second, housing starts are at a nine month high! Great, just when a huge amount of housing stock is about to be dumped on the market, aka, more foreclosures.

Them:

Recovery Obstacle: So Many Houses

They have to get better reporters over there.

Los Lobos Goes Disney

That is not a slight on one of my all time favorite bands* but the title of their latest release. On it they cover Roger Miller’s masterful “Not In Nottingham” (from Robin Hood), Randy Newman’s “I Will Go Sailing No More” (from Toy Story) as well as other great music from The House of Mouse. (And to think I scooped Mrs. CollateralDamage – who writes the Disney focused blog Broke Hoedown – on this. WOOT!)

This is not the first time that “Just Another Band from East LA” has done the Mouse. On the great compilation Stay Awake they performed “I Wanna Be Like You” from The Jungle Book, which was recorded for the movie by the great Louis Prima (and is included on LLGD). I bought Stay Awake on vinyl back in the day (1988) and highly recommend getting the CD. It also has Sun Ra (!!!) doing “Pink Elephants On Parade” and Tom Waits’ version of “Heigh Ho (Dwarf’s Marching Song).”

Stay Awake was one of several odd and wonderful compilations that came out around then. The other one I have is “Lost In The Stars: The Music of Kurt Weill” (1985). While it does have Sting doing “Mack The Knife” this is more than balanced out by the other tracks including Lou Reed’s “September Song,” Stan Ridgeway (of Wall of Voodoo) does a sublime and terrifying version of “Canon Song,” Marianne Faithfull’s exquisitely ragged “Ballad of the Soldier’s Wife,” Todd Rundgren doing “Call From The Grave,” and many other great ones. It’s out of print, which is a shame, and used copies are selling for $23 and up. C’mon over to my house and I’ll play it for you for free.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*In the ‘80s when people would refer to U2 as The Greatest Band In The World all I could ever think (and sometimes said) was “Did Los Lobos breakup?”