Dennis Latham: Life, Fiction, and the Pursuit of Madness

The poster for the gig in the Cincinnati entertainment district. Using my Italian heritage family last name (Latham is too hard to pronounce), I opened my Big Band Show at Boswells in Cincinnati on Saturday. My wife, worked into the act during the past few months, did a wonderful job with our duet on Rain or Shine, and her renditions of Summertime, Cheek to Cheek, and Fever. We had some trouble adjusting our sound equipment to the room after it filled up. The background ambience, the high ceilings, and brick walls created quite an echo. Now that we know the room, we can fix any sound distortion for our return.   I performed almost three hours of my Sinatra, Bennett, Nat King Cole, and other Big Band and Torch songs. We had the Standing Room Only house rocking to swing music from the 30s to the 70s. Since real big bands are scarce, we use recorded background music with QSC speakers, Yamaha stereo board, a bank of accent spotlights, and Schure microphones. So...

My Marine  friend Dennis took this picture of the National Cathedral while we were in DC. There are 200 bodies buried inside the church, including President Woodrow Wilson. It has to be seen to be believed. In recent years, it has suffered earthquake damage.   Our World What it boils down to in all society or beliefs is money, power, and sex. That's it. Those three things are the end motivation for everything that exists. Even in the poorest of nations or centers of religion, someone in power has the money, and money means power and sex. All the other utopian beliefs are just a means to attain money, power, and sex. In every country there are rich and poor. It's always been that way and it always will. The End Is Coming? A lot of people think the world is going to end on December 21, 2012.  I say it's going to end on November 6, 2012, one way or the other. I have been bombarded by political email for the past four years, each and every day. It's unre...