and if I still had eyes, then I would surely cry

Enjoy a music video for Hallowe'en:

Wait a minute, Chester

I am reminded of a friend from high school who, as a fan of music and Christianity, was inclined to rate songs based on what he called their "Righteousness." While this might sound dismal, his combination of an excellent musical ear, and a willingness to consider that a secularly focused song might have an inherent spiritual component made for some very excellent and surprising choices.

(The song that he first explained his theory of Musical Righteousness to me was "Lay Your Hands on Me" by Thompson Twins. I'm still not certain if he ruined that song for me or gave it more meaning, but every time I can hear it I can still see him taking a big slug from a bottle of Canadian Whisky and yelling "This song is so Righteous!" over and over.)

This is a selection of cover versions of "The Weight." I've never known that The Staple Singers did a cover of "The Weight," and even before listening to it I could feel the Righteous Meter zooming up into the red.

Listening to the World - Antigua and Barbuda

I notice that the list of countries on Wikipedia has been reduced by one. It seems that Wales is not a country.

Sorry, Wales.

And to Antigua and Barbuda.

This is my second Caribbean radio station in a row, so I'm in a very Caribbean mood. I've never been a big fan of the Caribbean, but now I think it might be nice to go someplace with a beach and dial up this sort of radio.

So I've been listening to Liberty Radio ZDK.


The first thing that I heard when I clicked into Liberty Radio was a delightfully groovy Caribbean version of "You Were Always on my Mind" - which became even more groovy and delightful when the DJ broke into the middle of the song to read birthday greetings. The next tune up was apparently about Jesus. I could tell this because the Chorus went "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus."

Further attempts to log in have been thwarted - there seems to be more people who want to listen to the radio than the servers can handle. That is a good thing -- in its own way.

I'd like a "none" pizza with left beef

Steven from The Sneeze tries out the Dominos Pizza online order form.

by Nathan Coley

Buying the New Yorker 1976 - page 54

The Ritz-Carlton that is being advertised here is now the Taj Boston. Around the corner from the Taj Boston is the Ritz-Carlton Boston Common. When I Google "Ritz-Carlton Boston" I get four addresses.

1. 15 Arlington St. This is the old Ritz-Carlton/current Taj Boston. (This is where Boston Red Sox outfielder Manny Ramierez lives/lived depending on how happy he is at any given time.)
2. 2 Avery St. This is the address of the Ritz-Carlton Boston Common.
3. 172 Tremont St. I had to go to the satellite to figure this out. This is the back entrance to the Ritz-Carlton Boston Common. But this is an important address, as it is, unlike the main entrance/address, actually on the Common.
4. 6 Newbury St. This is/was the car wash in the parking garage of the original Ritz-Carlton. I don't know which is more swank: getting your rental car washed while you are on vacation, or driving downtown to get your car washed at the Ritz.

I think you need to get a suite to have a fireplace in the Ritz-Carlton Boston Common and the Boston Taj.


In 1976 the Dominican Republic was coming to the close of the presidency of Joaquín Balaguer. As a means of holding the Communist influences of Cuba in check, Balaguer's tenure was marked by "a repression of civil liberties."

On the plus side, folks who responded to this as in January would have had the chance to get themselves to the Dominican Winter Baseball League title series. There's always a trade off.

Finally something makes me want to consider signing up for Second Life

From the Dilbert newsletter we learn that Scott Adams will be doing a virtual book signing on Second Life on October 30th. His avatar will be passing out free Dilbert posters and the Second Life system has been programmed so that other avatars can kick his in the groin.

Great Moments in Reader Feedback!

In my inbox:

no sé inglés, no se nada !!!! en fin, me gusto el formato de tu blogger.
besos

:)

My reply:

Takk til deres slag bemerkning! Har en praktfull dag!

Buying the New Yorker 1976 - page 52

In the seventies, families didn't include women.

Buying the New Yorker 1976 - page 50-51

Apparently, in the seventies, different sorts of Volvos meant that you thought in different sorts of ways.

Now, if you drive any sort of a Volvo it's pretty much a given that you are a nasty dirty hippie that eats sprouts and watches the Daily Show.

The best laid plans of mice and car manufacturers gang aft aglay.

White Hall Hotels

A spiffy little brochure from London:




The cover is a very stiff cardboard and the interior page is a heavy bond. The binding is a goldish yellow ribbon.

Here's the front interior page:



The middle:



The final interior page:



And a spiffy map on the back:



Here's the location in Flashearth.

I will probably have more to say on this in upcoming posts, but I have to notice a personal connection. I've actually stayed in one of these hotels! I spent a night at the 18, 19,& 20 Montague hotel - actually I slept there one morning. The plane was late and I arrived about 4:30 AM. The hotel manager was not terribly happy, and we were gone by lunchtime. That's all I remember about the place. Sorry.

I'm also not sure which, if any, of these hotels Great Grampa stayed in. We'll figure it out.

Old Questions are Answered

Back in May, 2006 I was feeling advanced nostalgia:

I am going to miss the Enron trial, only because I love listening to reporter Wade Goodwyn. He sounds exactly like the guy who did the narration for those old Disney nature documentaries.

That guy was a gentleman named Winston Hibler.

You can read more about him here.

Meanwhile, in December, 2006 I mused about wanting to see this Blue Peter segment:

"Other well-remembered and much-repeated items include the Girl Guides' bonfire that got out of hand on the 1970 Christmas edition."

It is on this Youtube clip, about 4:50 in:



Somehow I was expecting more carnage.

This Week in Pod

I did have this post ready to go a few days ago, but I haven't had the internet time that I thought I would.

+++++

An addendum to my previous discussion of covermount CDs.

One of the side effects of having a constant influx of covermounts is the occasional discovery that the CD that you (read: "I") went out and purchased for only one song was useless because the one song that you (read: "I") wanted was on a covermount CD that you (read: "I") just hadn't listened to yet.

For a little while, I've been considering picking up the new Feist CD, partly because I find that "1234" song amusing. This is the song that rocketed up the charts after it was featured in an iPod ad, which was running concurrently to the debut of the current iteration of the Amazon.com mp3 store, which caused the same song to be the first number one song on the service that was competing with the one that had been successfully advertising it.

You should understand that if that is something that makes me want to pick up a CD, I am in many ways utterly hopeless.

Luckily, in this case, I found that there was a CD still in the plastic envelope that was in a stack of things that I hadn't read yet. On the CD? "1234" by Feist!

I am in no way exonerated, but now I am no longer amused enough to purchase the CD simply for the one amusing song. I fear that Feist will amuse me with other songs, for I am a sucker.

And onwards:


Most Played Song

Helen Love - "Debbie Loves Joey"

I pick ten tracks at random:

The Hope Blister - "Sweet Unknown"
Tom Jones - "Sunny Afternoon (with Space)"
Jimmy Cliff - "Samba Reggae"
Yo Yo Ma - "Franck: Sonata in A for Violin and Piano"
The Beastie Boys - "Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun"
Alphaville - "Ascension Day"
David Sylvian - "God Man"
The Pretenders - "Bless You"
The Pogues - "Fiesta"
The Police - "Can't Stand Losing You (Live)"

For hard drive space (and my own sanity) I do have to delete the occasional album. This week I deleted:

Ant and Dec - We're on the Ball (2002 England World Cup Team Theme Song)

[Yes. I purchased this because I was amused by it. As I was saying...]

I had completely forgotten that I owned this CD:

Mike McGear - McGear

The last thing that I ripped:

Lucinda Williams - Car Wheels on a Gravel Road

I hate to lose things

One of those videos that I have been hunting forever for a copy of, Michael Smotherman's "Crazy in Love" circa 1979 (I see that the date at the end says 1982, but I think it is actually earlier):



This was one of the videos that showed up pre-MTV, in the gaps between movies on HBO and "Look Kids! Videos!" programs. I had this in the middle of the first videotape that I ever owned, and picked up a copy of the album. The videotape was lost in the early eighties (I recall that a drunken friend stood on it.) and I have been on the lookout for it ever since.

Upon moving in, my sophomore year roommate went digging through my record collection, as I went simultaneously digging through his. When he came across the Michael Smotherman album, he immediately started waving it around and said that he had been looking for the video for ages.

I told him my sad story, and we drank a bottle or two of something or other and pledged that we would both keep looking for this video and the moment one of us found it we would tell the other.

Unfortunately, he died more than a decade and a half ago.

This sucks. I'm sorry, I'm in a bit of a grim mood.

Buying the New Yorker 1976 - page 49

Nostalgia:


In 1976 NBC changed its logo. This was a big deal. I remember this because NBC spent a lot of money explaining how this was a big deal.

To sum up -- the last logo was a peacock. The reason that NBC chose a peacock was because it had made the jump to color television. As everything was broadcast in color in 1976, NBC decided that "Hooray! We're in color!" as a branding theme had run its course.

So a new logo.

Unfortunately there were a few snags:

1. The period from 1976 to 1980 saw NBC in last place in the ratings. (The 75-76 season that this ad is appearing smack in the middle of was particularly dismal).
   
2. The new "N" logo was distressingly similar to the logo of Nebraska Public Television, naturally leading to a lawsuit.
   

By 1979 the "N" was recast with the peacock superimposed on it, and in 1986 the "N" was removed and the peacock was once again the logo, as it has remained to this day.

You will be astonished to learn that there is a page on Wikipedia about the history of NBC logos.

Important internet debate of the year

Resolved: "Superman doesn't poo."

I come late to the meme parry

I did these two a while ago and forgot to post them.

For my many readers from Bryn Mawr

In a dizzying four years, Preston Sturges reinvented American film comedy. With seven landmark films, his mix of wordplay and slapstick created a school of movie-making that was wildly funny and distinctively American— a sophisticated take on the screwball cycle: fast and smart and never too dignified for pratfalls.Sturges was the first prominent writer-director in Hollywood history, paving the way for his Paramount Pictures colleague, Billy Wilder, among others.

In this course, we will discuss the process by which Sturges the writer became Sturges the director, and what his films, which include The Lady Eve and Sullivan's Travels, say about their times and the American character. We will also see how he achieved his comic effects, and how, in an era of strict censorship, Sturges managed to creatively and amusingly evade the retrospective.

So Go Sign Up!

The Globe will teach you language skills

From here

Jeff Yamaguchi, who serves as Hideki Okajima's translator, was interpreting for the reliever last weekend and said Okajima had thrown a "cookie," a common expression used by English-speaking pitchers to describe a fat pitch. Yamaguchi insisted that Okajima had employed the Japanese equivalent for cookie. "Amai [pronounced ah-MY] means sweet," Yamaguchi said. "Tama is ball. So when you say 'amai tama,' you're saying 'sweet ball.' " In other words, a cookie.

Previously on "The Globe will teach you language skills": "Wank"

A particularly silly castle

This is Castle Doune, where most of the various castle scenes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail were filmed.


Have a look.

Not filmed at Castle Doune were the final scenes of the film. They were done at Castle Stalker which can be found here (currently not nearly as good resolution).

This Fortnight in Pod

This week (okay, two) I've been concerning myself with covermount CDs - the free CDs that come with magazines and newspapers and whatnot.

I am a sucker for the things.

Right now I am about a third of the way through the CD binder of CMJ covermounts that I have accumulated. It's a monthly magazine and I've had a subscription since 1997. That should tell you about how many of the damn things that I'm loading in. I stopped paying for a subscription in 2002, but am still getting a copy every month. That should tell you something about how organized they are.

It is sort of astonishing to go through a forced march of these CDs - to remember how many artists I discovered when I listened to the latest issue (and how many songs I liked and completely lost track of.) All of the CDs I have by The Nields and The Coral and Gomez and The Streets can have their blame placed directly on CMJ magazine.

Anyway - on to the regular stuff:

Most Played Song

Al Stewart - "Katherine of Oregon"

The first line of the song is "When I am even more old than I am now" and goes on from there. It psychs me up as I walk to work.

I pick ten tracks at random

The Boomtown Rats - "Sleep (Finger's Lullaby)"
Minibar - "It is What it is"
Lambchop - "Something's Going On (and On) [alternative version]
Britten - "Serenade for Tenor Horn & Strings, Op 31"
Wall of Voodoo - "Living in the Red"
Playmates - "Days After Tomorrow"
Alanis Morissette - "Utopia"
Oasis - "(Untitled)" - [one of those forty second tracks from What's the Story (Morning Glory)]
Vasen - "Tomten Kammer"
Coldplay - "Yellow (Live at Glastonbury)"

For hard drive space (and my own sanity) I do have to delete the occasional album. This week I deleted:

Cartoon Sound Effects - Volume One

I had completely forgotten that I owned this CD:

Black Tape for A Black Girl - Remnants of a Deeper Purity

The last thing that I ripped:

CMJ Covermount CD - Issue #097 (October 2001)

interesting fun fact

The word "botulism" comes from the Latin "botulus," which means "sausage."

Science marches on and on!

Use your iPod to clean your teeth!

Great moments in road trips

Michael Nesmith drives his eldorado to the moon, 1985.

Science marches on!

Carbonated Yogurt!

Buying the New Yorker 1976 - page 47

No.

Buying the New Yorker 1976 - page 46

"The kind of thing that means business. Or lunch."

That's a slogan that stays with you.

Buying the New Yorker 1976 - page 45

The first quote says that the interior is more spacious than a Z-Car. I'm pretty sure the reviewer is referring to the Nissan 280Z, which would have been a comparable reference in 1976.

The Triumph TR7 is one of those cars that a few people seem to just love the hell out of, and most everyone else sort of looks at and goes "eh." The people that I've met that love the hell out of Triumphs tend to own them, which leads me to believe that they are fun to drive.

Which brings up another point - this is probably going to be the last year that I'll be seeing ads for cars that look like I can still see them on the road occasionally.