bumper sticker for the day

RIP - Leslie Nielsen

Leslie Nielsen

b. : 11 February 1926

d. : 28 November 2010

. So long, Leslie Nielsen. I won't call you Shirley anymore. You were great in the Airplane! series, and fantastic as Frank Drebin in The Naked Gun films. But you also were an outstanding dramatic actor. And some of us geezers still remember you as Colonel Francis Marion in Walt Disney's The Swamp Fox. .

Roger Waters Concert!

Yes, I had extremely high expectations for this concert, and yes, it lived up to them completely. Excellent music (The Wall, obviously) and a fantastic visual extravanganza. I'd tell yooze folks to go see him when he's in your town, but the tour is almost complete. He's got about 5 more dates in California; then he's done. .

Plus my ticket and dinner were birthday presents from Jason and Ryan! How kewl is that!? Thanks guys!

a Slate Fire Pit!

I had one more task scheduled for yesterday before friends arrived - put together the above-pictured Slate Fire Pit. Because Arizona does occasionally get cold enough to where one of these is downright comfortable when sitting on the back porch after dark. . The instructions promised me 15 minutes of entertainment putting this together. But I managed to stretch it out to 45 minutes, plus two skinned knuckles, and roughly 75 cusswords. . In the end, I got it together. Alas, it didn't get used, despite us being on the back porch until 9:00 PM or so.

Happy Thanksgiving!

My schedule for today :

Watch some football.

Walk the dogs.

Watch some football.

Discusss political stuff on the back porch.

Watch some football.

Stuff myself silly on turkey and assorted side dishes.

Watch some football.

Sample every dessert.

Watch some football.

Dream about going to see Roger Waters tomorrow night.

Snack on leftovers.

Watch some basketball.

Doze off for a couple minutes.

Wake up, watch some basketball.

Laugh at those going shopping tomorrow.

Get told to make a Xmas list.

Have one more slice of pie. Mega-Burp!

Discuss philosophical stuff on the back porch.

Watch Sports Center.

Read some Bukowski poetry.

Zzzzz.

Dancing With The Stars

I admit it. I've watched more hours of this season's Dancing With The Stars than probably all the reality shows of the past put together. But that's only because it was on 1-2 hours every Monday and Tuesday night, and Liz was thoroughly hooked on it. So if we were still eating supper at 7:00 PM on those nights (and that's usually the case), I was forced to watch it. . Congratulations to Jennifer Gray. She truly deserved to win. At least it wasn't the baby-making Bristol Palin, who finished third and gave Mama TeaBagger entirely too much free air time. . Liz swore if Bristol won, she would never watch DWTS again. A hollow threat, you say? She was hooked on The Bachelor a few seasons ago when they did their phony ending of the guy dumping the winner for one of the losers. Liz said she'd never watch that show again, and to this day, she hasn't.

Frank Sinatra - September of My Years

Artist : Frank Sinatra

Album : September Of My Years (1965)

Genre : Easy Listening Overall Rating : 7½*/10

. I must be getting old, cuz I never used to be able to listen to Frank Sinatra. I converted this LP for a friend, and was surprised how many songs I recognized and how ...um... pleasing-to-the-ears the music was. . And it isn't just me. My carpool partner's 18-year-old son recently became a fan of Sinatra as well. Wow! I know The Beatles maintain their popularity from generation to generation, but I didn't know Old Blue Eyes has the same gift. . All in all, this was a pleasant surprise. I don't think it'll become one of my top ten favorite albums, but if you force me to do Easy Listening (and take away my Sarah Brightman CD's), this will be my first pick. . Album Tracks : (my favorites in pink) :

01. The September of My Years (3:15)

02. How Old Am I? (3:30)

03. Don't Wait Too Long (3:04)

04. It Gets Lonely Early (2:57)

05. This Is All I Ask (3:03)

06. Last Night When We Were Young (3:33)

07. The Man in the Looking Glass

08. It Was A Very Good Year (4:25)

09. When The Wind Was Green (3:22)

10. Hello, Young Lovers (3:41)

11. I See It Now (2:50)

12. Once Upon A Time (3:30)

13. September Song (3:30)

Quote for the Day

"Bacchus tells me that they have communicated with many peoples and they respect all forms of language, finding each beautiful in its own way. The language of this gray land is a flowing tongue in an alphabet long ago perfected. On writing, they are conflicted. It is necessary, but they warn that writing encourages forgetfulness and discourages memory and they are correct." (pgs. 407-08)

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from The Charlemagne Pursuit, by Steve Berry)

Bambi Chess

and I just hate it when someone kills my Bambi's mother before I kill their Bambi's mother.

Arizona Spelling Note

Remember : You can't spell CRAZY without R-AZ. (kos)

Libertarians

I have a relative and a co-worker who call themselves Libertarians. Both are insufferable. And both introduce their political viewpoint by saying, "I am a ...(dramatic pause plus an ever-so-slight sigh)... Libertarian". . Reading that sentence doesn't really convey the true sense of political righteousness they infuse into it, so find yourself a Libertarian, and (even though you already know the answer) ask them what political party they support. They'll be happy to tell you, using the full audio effect.

Hayabusa!

This is an incredible close-up picture of the asteroid Itokawa, taken in 2005 by the Japanese space probe, Hayabusa. That shadow you see is of the spacecraft itself, which actually landed on the asteroid, gathered some cosmic dust, and brought it back to earth. You can read the full article about this here. Live long and prosper.

Working on "Porgy and Bess"

Porgy & Bess. I'm working on converting this from LP-to-CD. Same album cover, except the LP I have was issued by Columbia Records, not Philips. This soundtrack is not available as a CD. And in researching it, it appears very unlikely that it ever will be. . I also found an LP with the music from the Porgy & Bess Broadway musical, which goes all the way back to 1935 (the music, not the LP). It is not nearly as cool as this movie soundtrack is.

The world in 2050

I'm a time-traveler. I've been there. This is pretty much as it will happen. Except for China. They don't really invent Dimension-Hopping by 2050.

Melanie concert tonight!

Report to follow. Expect lots of gushing praise by me, as I've been a fan of hers for decades. Even though she isn't considered "cool".

Sunday Punnery

I am a fan of puns. The more contrived, the better. So I was delighted last Sunday morning to find not one, but two strips with compound and groan-inducing puns. .

Wednesday's Brain Teaser

Think of two words whose pronunciation changes when they are capitalized. Answer in the comments.

Quote for the day

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He had his eye on her laundry, that small but steady gold mine, but her own attention was riveted on his hefty real estate. Their lives together would be fortified by the keen nip of greed, as each prayed daily to their household gods that the other would die first.

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Many marriages endure for decades on this healthy basis, so I wished her well.

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(from The Silver Pigs, by Lindsey Davis - page 258)

Sunday Night Culture

Drinking hemlock apparently makes you turn green.

Concert tonight

We're off to see these two guys tonight. Everyone has heard of Elton John of course. But I'm surprised no one remembers Leon Russell. I do. And I found three of his LP's this afternoon. . Trivia Question : Elton John's real name is Reginald Dwight. When he made up his stage name, from whom did he pick the name "John"? (answer in the comments)

Midnight on the Water - David Bromberg Band

Artist : David Bromberg

Album : Midnight On The Water (1975)

Genre : Eclectic

Overall Rating : 9*/10

. Yet another fantastically-talented musician/songwriter who had limited fame for his 7-minute rendition of Mr. Bojangles in 1972. David Bromberg is a master of all sorts of instruments, and his music embraces all sorts of styles - rock, folk, bluegrass, country, just to name a few. . Midnight On The Water was his 1975 album. I found it in a the $1 bin at my local used-record store. What a great find! It has a nice mix of songs, some marvelous fiddling and guitar-picking, and number of familiar sing-along tunes, and Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt sneaking in to sing back-up vocals on a couple tracks. . Alas, it was scratched beyond belief and had one horrible forward-skip. My newly-purchased automatic hiss-pop-scratch removal software had its work cut out for it, and did an admirable job. There are only 2 tracks that it failed to clean up adequately. Trust me, they were incredibly damaged, and I'm quite satisfied with the results. Indeed, I would never have even attempted to manually clean the tracks up, and after converting it to CD, I had to euthanize the LP. . In summary, Midnight On The Water is highly recommended to all folk and/or bluegrass enthusiasts. Weird Fact : the order that the songs are listed on the back cover is totally messed up. I've never seen that before. However, the disk itself lists them correctly. 9 Stars. Pick it up today, and get acquainted with a musical genius. . Complete track listings (my favorite cuts in pink) :

01.) What A Wonderful World

02.) Yankee's Revenge

03.) I Like To Sleep Late In The Morning

04.) Nobody's

05.) Don't Put That Thing On Me

06.) Mr. Blue

07.) Dark Hollow

08.) If I Get Lucky

09.) The Joke's On Me

10.) Midnight On The Water

. Note To Mr. Bromberg : please-oh-please come to Phoenix one of these days!

Quote for the day

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"If you enjoyed laughing in the face of death, you might like to have a crack at High Saffron. One hundred merits, and all you have to do is take a look."

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"I understand there's a one hundred percent fatality rate?"

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"True. But up until the moment of death there was a one hundred percent survival rate. Really, I shouldn't let anything as meaningless as statistics put you off."

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(pg. 178 of Jasper Fforde's Shades Of Grey)

RIP - Laika

RIP, Laika. You were the first animal to orbit the earth. They didn't tell you, but it was never planned to have you make it back to earth. Re-entry technology had not been invented, and 53 years ago, today, you gave your life in the name of Progress. . You can read the Wikipedia article about Laika here. It is doubtful that society - even in Russia - would stand for this today. Although in fairness, I'm hard-pressed to say how we could've gotten our rudimentary knowledge of life during spaceflight without sending an animal first. But jeez, we cooda sent a cat instead. That would've been okay. .

For the record, Laika was a three-year-old (estimated) stray that the Russians picked up off the streets of Moscow. TRIVIA QUESTION : Why did the Soviets choose to use strays during the early days of their space program? (Answer in the comments).

Congratulations, SF Giants!

Congratulations are in order to the San Francisco Giants, who whupped my Texas Rangers in the World Series, 4-games-to-1. The Giants definitely were the better team, as their Pitching shut down our Hitting in no uncertain fashion. . I probably should feel worse about this, but San Francisco has been waiting a long time too - their last pennant was when they were still the New York Giants. And if we had to lose, I'd druther it was the Giants than teams like the Dodgers or the Braves. To boot, Tim Linceum is one kewl dude. Let's hear it for long-hairs! .

For my Rangers, the future looks quite bright. Cliff Lee has expressed an interest in returning, the chemistry on the team is superb, and we reportedly have a number of exciting youngsters in our farm system.

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So we'll be content with our first two post-season series victories, our first-ever appearance in the World Series, and a thorough whupping of the New York Yankees. It was our best season ever, bar none. And last but not least, it should be noted that Alex Rodriguez finally fulfilled his promise to lead the Rangers to the World Series. Thanks, A-Rod!

Why indeed?

Happy Halloween!

We'll be handing out candies to the Trick-or-Treaters tonight. At least Liz will be. My job usually is to stay pent up in the computer room with our three rude, bark-&-growl-at-everyone-that-rings-the-doorbell mutts.

Festival of Light Classical Music

Absolutely the best collection of Light Classical Music of all time, it was released by Readers Digest in 1960 0r 1961. My Dad bought it, and I played it to death while everybody else was listening to some new group called The Beatles. You certainly got your money's worth too - each LP holds 45-50 minutes of music. . Somewhere along the line, it exited my folks' house - mosts likely when they no longer had a turntable. I can't see any chance of RD ever re-releasing it in CD form, so I was pleasantly surprised when I found the whole set (sans the box cover) at my local used-LP store. I was even more pleasantly surprised when they gave it to me for free. Because hey, it's a rock-&-roll store and no one would ever buy Light Classical LP's anymore, would they? . The records are in fair shape. No discernible warping, and only one skip so far after playing six of the LP's. But they are fraught with hissing and minor scratches, and that's the step in LP-to-CD conversion that chews up the man-hours. . So I was (again) pleasantly surprised last night when I came across a $20 software program last night that automatically removes hisses, scratches, and pops. I bought it, downloaded it, and tried it out this afternoon. I'd say it removes about 98% of the various types of noise, which is quite acceptable to me. It still takes about 2 hours to do a complete conversion, but that's child's play since I don't have to remove those scratches. W00t w00t!

Why I don't work for People Magazine

Their Headline : Mariah Carey is pregnant!. My first thought : Holy crap, Mariah. Roseanne's gonna start hanging out with you so she can look skinny! .

Their Headline : Billy Ray Cyrus and wife Trish divorcing!

My first thought : Good grief! Her eyes are three times the size of his. One of them is an Extra-Terrestial. And I think it's her.

RIP - LimeWire

Born : 29 May 2000

Died : 27 October 2010

. It is with a heavy heart and a not-so-heavy yawn that we bid adieu to LimeWire today. A federal judge has issued a permanent injunction against the file-sharing network, the results of a 4-year (!) trial. LimeWire now joins entities such as Grokster, Napster, SuprNova, Pirate Bay, and MiniNova in that great P2P Neighborhood in the sky. You can read the Daily Telegraph's article on it here. . The article's claim of "50 million users per month" seems overblown to me. LimeWire was my first experience with P2P, but that was a long time ago. It wasn't too long before the site became so infested with viruses that only a naive 12-year-old or a master hacker would risk downloading anything from it. I am neither. . I also could never quite get past the sneaking suspicion that the site was actually a proxy spy-site for the RIAA. I mean really, guys. Why would you develop a feature that forced you to show your whole music library to anyone and everyone? Could things get any more convenient for the brownshirt thugs from the RIAA when they came a-trolling? . So while we're minorly bummed that another file-swapping site has been squashed, I was frankly surprised that it was still even around. Vaya con Dios, LimeWire. Sadly, I barely remember you.

The NBA starts tonight!

And already we've learned that the Miami Heat might not be the greatest team of all time. . Meanwhile, the Phoenix Suns start on the road in Portland, so the above comic seems appropriate. The experts are picking the Suns to finish anywhere from 5th to 8th in the West. . I'm thinking we won't even make the playoffs. As of this posting, it's halftime, we're down by four, and it doesn't look like we know the meaning of the words "defense" or "rebounding". Come back, Amaré. All is forgiven.

Does Your Chewing Gum Lose It's Flavour (on the bedpost overnight)?

I learned about a new (for me) musical genre today - Skiffle. It's foremost artist - indeed, its founding father, was one Lonnie Donegan. I found a 3-CD compilation of his stuff for $7 at the used-book store, and played it at work all day today. It's strange listening to something that makes Bluegrass seem highbrow. Here's one of his more famous songs, although strictly speaking, I don't think it's a true example of Skiffle.

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World Series Time!!

And for the first time ever, my Texas Rangers are in it! My Phillies got close, but biffed last night. And my Diamondbacks were mathematically eliminated about 10 games into the season. . We play the San Francisco Giants, who I have nothing against. But I've been a Rangers fan for nearly 40 years, and we've waited a long time for this. It should be a great series, and it starts Wednesday night. .

I don't do a lot of prognosticating, but methinks having Cliff Lee gives us a slight edge. I'm looking for the Rangers to win it in 6 games. Which is too bad, cuz it means the final game will be in San Fran, not Arlington.

Quote for the day

"When faced with the unthinkable, one chooses the merely impossible."

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(from Laurie King's "The Beekeeper's Apprentice")

Mole Day

Tomorrow (10/23) is International Mole Day. As in Avogadro's Number and all that. It is properly celebrated at either 6:02 AM of 6:02 PM. I'll do something geeky - maybe mix vinegar with bleach. But I will definitely avail myself to the "PM" option.

Vassar Clements - Orange Blossom Special

Vassar Clements was in my opinion the greatest fiddler of all time. I'm just finishing up converting the only two LP's I can find of his. Here's a YouTube video of him doing the Orange Blossom Special, which is also on one of the LP's. Oh yeah, his supporting cast in this video is pretty spectacular too.

Scientist quote for the day

"...then again it was a dusky and colorful group, of vests and shawls and scarves and jewelry, including an ankh here and a figurine of dog-headed Anubis there. Their women might not be Cleopatra, but they certainly had an alluring beauty. What lovemaking secrets might they know? I pondered that question for some moments. I am, after all, a scientist."

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From William Dietrich's "Napoleon's Pyramids" (pg. 56)

from our garden

Something quick, as I'm glued to ESPN.com for updates on the Yankees-Rangers Game #4. I'd watch it on TV, but Liz is glued to it watching Bristol and Kurt and Florence cha-cha their little tutus off. . Here's a photo I took in our backyard garden today of a spider weaving its web. I feel like he's trying to communicate with me, but what would he be saying?

True on both counts

It's always fun to be accosted by missionaries when we walk our dogs at night. Elder Elder exudes utter confidence as he tries not to look like a total dork in his crash hlemet and on his ten-speed. Elder Younger lags behind to learn. . I'm not really in any mood for a theological debate, and our three dogs just want to go on walking. So I amble away. Which Elder Elder is sure means I have no answer for his persuasive personality.

Big Bad John - Jimmy Dean

Album : Big Bad John & Other Fabulous Songs & Tales

Artist : Jimmy Dean

Release Year : 1961

Genre : Country & Western

Overall Rating : 8*/10

. Jimmy Dean passed away earlier this year (13 June), and I probably should've done a RIP posting on him. I remember hearing the hit, Big Bad John, as a kid; but I couldn't have told you any other songs by him. When I saw this LP in the freebie bin at my local used-record shop, I snagged it and converted it. . Nor surprising for a freebie, the vinyl was a holy mess. A zillion major scratches and a gazillion minor ones. I took the big ones out, but left the little ones, so there's a lot of "static" to put up with. Thankfully, the disc wasn't warped and there were no skips. . Jimmy Dean is first and foremost a story-teller. His singing voice is okay, and his supporting band is adequate, but you play his albums mostly to sing along. Big Bad John was a crossover hit, topping both the Pop and Country Charts. It even hit #2 in the UK. . I was surprised how many other of the tracks on this LP I had heard before. I don't think my dad had any Jimmy Dean records, and I'm certain none of my college roommates did. It was a laborious convert, but it's an album I'll enjoy, as long as I don't play it on a good stereo system. . Complete track listing (my favorites in pink) :

01.) Big Bad John (3:00)

02.) Smoke, Smoke, Smoke That Cigarette (2:45)

03.) Sixteen Tons (2:40)

04.) Make The Waterwheel Roll (1:55)

05.) Gotta Travel On (2:17)

06.) Oklahoma Bill (3:42)

07.) Night Train To Memphis (2:28)

08.) Grasshopper Mac Clain (3:14)

09.) I Won't Go Huntin' With You Jake (2:49)

10.) To A Sleeping Beauty (5:16)

Family Portrait

Here's a photo of a bunch of my extended family. That's Lucy and Lucien in the lower right. I posted a picture of Lucy a couple years ago. You can see it here. She's held up pretty good over the past 24 months, hasn't she? . You can read more about this fabulous display here.