On an adventure, busy, busy, busy, busy.
Don’t worry, taking LOTS of pictures, you’ll have to look at a lot of them later.
In the meantime, here’s a sample panorama from today to whet your appetite.
Über cool to be there at 22:30 on a Saturday night after seeing a FREAKIN’ OUTSTANDING performance of “Beautiful” – even if it was still 91°F and 55% humidity.
Who can spot The Long-Suffering Wife?
Filed under Entertainment, Music, Panorama, Photography, Travel
As I’m sitting here listening to some music REALLY LOUD,
…a news headline catches my eye and I realize that we’re wasting our time worrying about Brexit, Zika, the US Presidential race, global climate change, and any multi-gigaton nickle-iron asteroids coming at us at 0.9c. HERE’s what’s really important (and I should warn you before you click on the link, the first picture shown there made me want to gag and laugh hysterically simultaneously):
Who Is Taylor Swift, Really? Why Her New Romance With Tom Hiddleston Has Me Questioning Love
That “look” by Taylor says it all. Worth a thousand words? Try a trillion.
I remember when she broke on the country/western scene with her first hits. 2006, she was 16, naive, innocent, and squeaky clean. I heard her doing an interview on the local country radio station, with her mom with her as she was touring around the country, and she was just giggly.
Her first song was cute. Her next hit was sweet. Her third was cute and sweet. Her fourth was a cookie-cutter copy of her first, second, and third with the serial numbers filed off. And her fifth. And her sixth. Every. Single. Song!
High school! Sock hops! Puppy love! First kisses! Broken hearts! Eternal, undying, chaste, platonic love for all of time!
Every. Single. Song!
I dare you. Name one song that doesn’t fit the mold. I’ll wait…
I thought so.
Then the squeaky clean, virginal, teeny bopper, high school cheerleader image started to shift. It wasn’t about what she was singing (which even on album number five and world tour number four and movie appearance number five and television show appearance number three and monstrously huge award number eleventy-seven was absolutely the same as everything before) but about who she was dating.
Was she hanging out and falling in love (eternally, undyingly, chastely, platonicly) with the high school quarterback? Or some really sweet kid she had met on her tours? Or the boy next door?
Not unless you live in Beverly Hills and the boy next door has just as many awards as you do.
Joe Jonas, Taylor Lautner, John Mayer, Jake Gyllenhaal, Conor Kennedy, Harry Styles, Calvin Harris. Tom Hiddleston.
Give me a freakin’ break!
And the paparazzi and tabloids and celebrity reality shows have eaten it up like nothing since Tracy and Hepburn. Even someone such as myself, who only knows about such things enough to (hopefully) win on “Jeopardy,” is inundated with Taylor, TAYLOR, TAYLOR!!
And now it’s causing people to “question love”? More importantly, let’s get back to that picture in the article cited above.
Taylor is her own industry at this point, rivaling Oprah herself, making more money per concert than you, me, our families, and everyone we know will make in our entire combined lifetimes. Therefore, one can only assume that she has a whole cadre of folks who are very well paid to make her look fabulous and stunning every second of her life.
And they made her look like this?
Almost makes me want to listen to a Donald Trump campaign speech.
Filed under Music
I love living in the future.
We were out at a restaurant tonight, a wonderful, small BBQ place which we’ll gladly tell you about if you’re in the neighborhood. Some nights they have live music, but tonight it was quiet and they just had some music playing over the sound system.
At one point a great song came on, a long, jamming, real bluesy version of “Hey, Joe.” I knew it wasn’t Hendrix, but it sounded a bit like him, and the guitar playing was exquisite. I’m a sucker for a nimble-fingered guitarist.
In the past when I’ve heard something like that, I’ve just been stuck not knowing who it was. I’ve asked waitresses or front desk staff, but usually get a blank stare or at best a, “How should I know?”
Tonight I could have used the SoundHound app on my phone to identify it, but to work well I would have had to be closer to the speakers, which could have been problematic.
Instead, I went up to the front counter and asked. Instead of a blank stare, the waitress tapped on the device running it all and displayed the data for the Pandora Radio track playing. The answer was there!
But how do I remember it? I have a memory like Swiss cheese some days, and I didn’t have a paper to write on. The waitress had moved off to do waitress things and I didn’t want to rummage around on the front desk and cash register to look for something to write on.
So I used my phone to take a picture of the screen. Simple. Fast. Piece of cake.
In case you haven’t noticed, that supercomputer/camera/music player/ebook in your pocket also makes a really easy data collection tool & notebook.
The future is a pretty neat place! Not perfect, but it has its points!
Oh, the artist was Guitar Shorty on the “Walter Trout Radio” station on Pandora. It was 21:03. The album is “The Best Of Guitar Shorty.”
I know all of that because I live in the future!
It must be boring for people who have phones full of just country music, or just rock and roll, or just adult contemporary, or just anything. I have a much more eclectic selection. Asking for a random selection is usually varied, often strange, and sometimes just bizarre. Like this morning (warning: lyrics on the first selection is NSFW, but it’s [deliberately] a live version with lousy audio):
It’s the transition from the first to the second one that raises the bar in bizarre.
As for the Dixie Chicks video? Without a doubt, one of the finest music videos ever made – an absolute top ten of all time for me.
Filed under Music
Listening, as usual late at night, to the 80’s Alternative “New Wave” channel on Sirius-XM. Up comes this, pretty much a catchy standard on this channel, often good for really cranking it up:
I knew that it was from a not-so-well-known musical called “Chess,” which makes sense when you listen to the lyrics. Sure, the lyrics are full of not-so-subtle double entendres. It’s still catchy.
I knew that it was performed by Murray Head, but for the life of me I couldn’t name any other song I’ve EVER heard him do. I figured that he was a one-hit wonder with a song from an otherwise forgotten musical.
WRONG!
The online version the Sirius-XM app has notes about each artist as the song’s playing. Only the first couple of lines are showing, with more if you click on the link. I rarely pay much attention, but tonight I clicked, hoping to find out more about “Chess.”
It’s semi-interesting that it was co-written by Tim Rice. I’ve heard that name, he did something else, what was it…? Ah, yes.
Then I saw it in the notes.
It turns out that Murray Head was also in Tim Rice’s big hit, the one that’s still playing around the world, in the lead role in the original London cast:
Yes – the same guy who does “One Night In Bangkok” also played Judas Iscariot in “Jesus Christ Superstar” and can be heard on the original cast recording from 1970. You know, the one that we just about wore right through the vinyl playing it so many times.
Mind.
Blown.
Anyone else play in the high school band, probably as 3rd or 4th chair something? It was a bit like being the kid in right field in baseball, you could play well enough to get by, but really, you knew this wasn’t where your career was headed. The kids in 1st chair were the ones who practiced twice as much as they needed to (and twenty times more than you did – do the math) because they were going to go to march in the Rose Parade and meet John Davidson and go on to a career as a professional musician. (Hi, Cathy!)
But if you got interested enough, or if you wanted to impress that cute girl who just moved up to 2nd chair clarinet (or the guy who just moved up to 2nd chair trombone, I’m not here to judge) and you started to practice, then you could try to move up. You could challenge the 2nd chair french horn! It’s like “racing for pinks” in a way, a head to head audition with the music teacher to see who got the higher chair, the harder music, and the infinitesimally larger amount of glory and admiration.
With that in mind…
Coming home very late from the CAF hangar tonight (a different story) I was coming up the Canejo Grade on the 101 Freeway. It’s about four miles long, a 7% grade, four lanes, usually with the right two lanes clogged with very, very slow semis, and the left two lanes clogged by people with either no gas pedal or no engine to handle that kind of a climb. In between dart the folks with big engines and little patience.
Tonight it was late and traffic was light so I was in my new little Honda Fit zooming up the hill light a fighter pilot climbing toward the moon. I was in the #1 (fast) lane, pretty much all alone, when I came up behind another car going much slower, considerably less than the 65 mph speed limit. I cut over into the #2 lane and zipped right on by, my little four-cylinder engine screaming (well, okay, buzzing) along at about 4,000 RPM.
The car I was passing was a brand new Corvette. The one that’s gorgeous and can do about 120 mph in third gear, and goes from zero to “holy shit!” in about five seconds. And I was screaming (buzzing) past him like he was standing still!
Isn’t that the same as a 3rd chair French horn (my Fit) challenging and stomping on a 1st chair (the Corvette) and taking the better seat away? Does that mean that he has to take my car and I get to take his, since we’re obviously each better suited to the other vehicle? Are we back to the “trading pinks” analogy, but this time in real life on the Canejo Grade?
A guy can fantasize, can’t he?
Evidence suggests that the guy in the Corvette was going so slow because he was distracted, texting or something on his phone. Shortly after I went by him he seemed to have realized what had happened and the last I saw of him he was heading over the top of the hill at speeds my Fit couldn’t hit if you pushed it off a cliff.
But for a moment there, I and my little four-cylinder glorified roller skate were the kings of the Canejo Grade!!
Filed under Distracted Driving, Music
I heard about this on the morning news as we were getting up this morning – figured it had to be a hoax. Apparently it’s not.
Paul McCartney, Beck and Taylor Hawkins turned away from Grammys afterparty
Are you freakin’ kidding me?
Okay, if you run into Paul McCartney in a completely out of context time and space, say, in the frozen food section of Ralph’s on Sunday morning when you want nothing more than to get your bag of Tater Tots and get home to watch the football game, I can see that you might say to yourself, “Wait, that guy looked familiar! Was he…” But by then Sir Paul is off into the organic vegetables and your Tater Tots are rapidly thawing and you never really know, but you’ll always wonder.
If you’re the bouncer at a top-notch, über-trendy nightclub on a Wednesday night in January in San Francisco or Dallas and some dude comes up and wants in, claiming to be Paul McCartney, your job is to be skeptical. Maybe this guy’s just a really, really good Paul McCartney impersonator! You’ll lose your job if you let him in and he’s a fake! In short, it sucks to be you, but maybe you could have him sing a bar or two of “Yesterday” or “Eleanor Rigby.” If it sounds like him, let him in! If it’s really him and your boss fires you anyway, then your boss is an asshole, you need to find a better job anyway, and you got a personal concert from a freakin’ legend! If it’s not him and you get fired, then you probably weren’t cut out to be a bouncer and you should go find a job as a politician, where good judgement is not only not called for but is often a career killer.
On the other hand, let’s get real! You’re the bouncer at a top-notch, über-trendy nightclub on Grammy Night in February just blocks from where the Grammy ceremonies were just held. Inside the nightclub are a zillion heavy duty music industry icons, hosted by folks who just performed on stage at the Grammy Awards. Some guy who looks exactly like Paul McCartney, sounds exactly like Paul McCartney, and claims to be Paul McCartney comes up and you turn him away?! Not just once but twice, because you want to prove to the world that you’re consistently clueless?
Are You Freakin’ Kidding Me?
The excuse I’ve heard is that he was young and didn’t know who Paul McCartney was or what he looked like.
Too young? Oh, so they had a one-year-old working as a bouncer?
He didn’t know who Paul McCartney was or what he looked like? Then why in hell was he working as a bouncer at a post-Grammy Awards party?!
It boggles the mind, and new questions arise from the boggling process.
Would he have let Taylor Swift in? Beyoncé? Kanye West? Would he have known and recognized any of them?
Would he have let Paul McCartney in if he was with Taylor Swift, or Beyoncé, or Kanye West? (Note that the more sane, and mature, among us would refer to it as Taylor or Beyoncé or Kanye with Sir Paul, not the other way around.)
Would he have let Paul McCartney in if he was with John Lennon? And would he even understand why that’s a rhetorical and silly question made solely for the point of satire and exaggeration?
Kids these days!
Filed under Freakin' Idiots!, Los Angeles, Music
Casting about for a topic, much like a puppy scampering after a lief blown in the wind (it’s a Norwegian puppy, apparently), I spy with my little eye a note from WordPress that informs me “there are 444 comments in the spam folder.”
Oh? Really. Surely there must be some true gems of wisdom in there to admire as I listen to the “Saturday Night Safety Dance” on SiriusXM. TURNED UP REALLY LOUD!!
(Right now it’s Annie Lennox & The Eurythmics, “Sweet Dreams“)
Kaitlynn says, “Do not push me.”
No context for you, says Kaitlynn! She sounds like she’s on the edge, ready to snap. One wonders if her alarm clock failed to go off this morning, leaving her to run off to work without coffee or a shower, only to find once she got there that she was being assigned to a twelve hours shift without bathroom breaks in customer service and returns on the day after Christmas when every unhappy consumer in South Gloustenberry is trying to exchange or return whatever crap their mother-in-law saw fit to re-gift or dump on them.
This has been mere speculation.
(“Oh, Yeah!” by Yello is now blasting through my office. My head is bobbing.)
“Helpful info. Fortunate me I discovered your website by accident, and I am surprised why this twist of fate did not took place in advance! I bookmarked it,” says Beatrice.
Beatrice sings the siren song of poor grammar in spam, but not because she (or, more precisely, her cheap, black market, Nigerian software) speaks lousy English. No, Beatrice is playing the long con. She wants you to think that she’s ignorant. But we know that she’s not. However, she bookmarked this site – see, it says so right there. So now she knows that we know. But we know that she knows that we know. Except that she knows that we know that she knows that we know. Which is extremely clever of us, because we know that she knows that… Oh, hell, Beatrice is just a lonely old lady in Ogaminan, hanging around the official post office, looking for a good time on a Saturday night. Just like you and me.
(“Love Shack!” Love shack, baby!)
According to Glinda, “Excellent goods from you, man. I have understand your stuff previous to and you are just extremely excellent. I actually like what you’ve acquired here, certainly like what you are stating and the way in which you say it. You make it enjoyable and you still care for to keep it sensible. I can not wait to read far more from you. This is actually a great website.” Well, she’s got that last part right. And I do care for to keep it sensible. “Extremely excellent”? Well, duh! It’s no wonder that Glinda is a wise and good witch. But I’ve always thought she was a real sanctimonious bitch for not telling Dorothy about the powers in the Ruby Slippers earlier. “You had to learn for yourself” my ass, how ’bout a little help here?
(“Take On Me” by A-ha. One of the best, still love that rotoscoped animation!)
Annette wants us to know, “The larger the pipeline, the larger the water sprinkles will certainly be. Remember that beyond the hookah shaft is often constructed of a steel that could rust.” I hate it when my hookah shaft rusts. I will now be indebted to Annette for life because she has warned me about this hazard. (No, my old hookah hasn’t rusted, working just fine, thanks, no problems, none at all, not that I think about it much and it’s not a euphemism damn it, why do you ask?)
(“Dead Man’s Party” by Oingo Boingo! I am filled with sorrow that I never got to see Boingo live. Sigh…)
Shanel says, “They can be just as important as the medical side of things. In order to save money on your air travel, you can opt to buy tickets for a roundabout trip. With a size twice that of Manhattan island, the asteroid was first discovered by Gustav Witt on August 13, 1898.” Shanel seems to have been smoking some seriously weird shit. Either that, or she didn’t listen to Annette and now her hookah shaft has rusted. Shanel seems a bit unfocused. But we’ll have to remember to throw a 118th birthday party for that asteroid next August 13th.
(“I Melt With You” by Modern English is up, the Bass Meltdown Mix. I mean, what ELSE would you play in the Saturday Night Safety Dance?! C’mon, hum along with the bridge!)
“Though cats are generally sociable dogs, not every guy lives easily with a associate. A few like a solo living.” That’s what Cleveland Browns Apparel has to say. Obviously, Cleveland Browns Apparel is so depressed about the butt-kicking her team is going to get tomorrow by my beloved Kansas City Chiefs that she’s started drinking so heavily that she can’t tell the difference between cats and dogs. I’m guessing that she’s living solo, whether she likes it or not.
I do wonder why almost all of the spam messages come with female names if they don’t have some sort of sales pitch for a name. “Michael Kors Handbags” is not an account ID that’s going to discourage a belief that your message is spam. Every single other one that I see uses a female name. Rowena. Valerie. Freda. Jacquetta. Deborah. Carla. Mary. Susan. Reno. Cathy. Vicki. Kamela.
Wait…
(The really, REALLY Not Safe For Work Unedited Version of “Eighty-Eight Lines About Forty-Four Women” comes on as I start to realize that Shanel and Annette may have been a bad influence on me tonight. The universe might be messing with my head. Or vice versa. Wow, man, look at all of the colors! Farm house!)
Fade to black. Delete all in spam queue.
(It’s another disjointed ramble, I fear, but I’ll try to keep it short.)
I like roller coasters, always have. My kids all learned to love them. Then there are the roller coasters off of the rails without all of the OSHA-mandated safety backups five deep, like going and flying aerobatics in a T-6 or catching a ride in a P-51.
And the Space Shuttle or Soyuz or Dragon or anything else that’s in the pipeline? Bring it on. You need to “man-rate” the SpaceX Dragon. Just put in a sleeping bag and some snacks and I’ll man-rate that sucker for you on the next launch. (Rhetoric, I know, since the odds of being allowed to do that are just about the same as having the USS Enterprise land in my back yard with Kirk, Spock, and friends. But I really would do it. In a heartbeat.)
It’s the mental roller coaster that’s beating me up tonight. Adrenaline’s a wonderful thing (ask for it by name!) and it’s gotten me through the last month, but it might be wearing thin at the moment. Or maybe there’s just too much news about a certain bigoted, ignorant, hate-mongering piece of shit who is running for President. It could go either way.
Getting the job was fantastic! Having my mother pass away, while not unexpected or even a bad thing given her condition, was a blow.
High! Low!
The job’s going great, I loved it my first week! Our poor dog is literally on her last legs, starting to lose her last semblance of mobility, in more and more obvious pain.
High! Low!
Orbital launched a Cygnus cargo vehicle to ISS yesterday on an Atlas V, and SpaceX is hoping to launch their return-to-flight Falcon 9 by the end of the year. Just about anything related to American politics.
High! Low!
I feel like a piece of taffy being stretched just a bit too thin.
Then comes the healing power of music. Just when you need it most, you get “88 Lines About 44 Women” popping up (the unedited version to boot!).
Go ahead. Turn it up, way, Way, WAY up! Sing along.
I don’t know if we’re headed up or headed down on the roller coaster, but as long as we’re singing, I guess it’s better than not being on the ride at all.
‘Cause giving a damn is too much of a pain in the ass at the moment, that’s why.
Remember, “You have to go to people’s funerals or they won’t come to yours.” Thanks, Yogi.
Filed under Critters, Juicy Chunks, Movies, Music
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We Love The Stars Too Fondly 