Another burglary - or, more accurately, home invasion. This time it was a neighborhood friend of Daughter's. Same MO. Came in through a window, stole the TVs and electronics, loaded them in the car, stole the car. Bonus upgrade: they went upstairs. They've never been upstairs before. (I don't know why I think it's a they, and not one person, but we somehow imagine it's a two-person crew.) They went upstairs and rifled through drawers and purses. While people were sleeping. So that's a new level of fun for the neighborhood.
I visit some websites whose traffic, from the looks of the comments, is heavily skewed to Europeans under 25. If ever there's a thread about someone shooting a home invader, the Europeans will tut-tut about Murca and how sad it is that someone would think it was right to deprive someone of their life just because they were stealing. As I put it in the column I wrote last week, for those who think that the people who commit these crimes are desperate Jean Valjean types who just want to feed their children, the victims never report that they were missing a loaf of bread from the basket on the counter. It's not that I want the burglar shot; it would be traumatic for the family who live in the house. One may feel perfectly justified about putting a round through someone who's cut your power and phones and invaded your house knowing you're there, but that doesn't mean you wouldn't get an odd feeling when you put up the Christmas tree in the spot where you dropped him.
Anyway. Wife comes back from tennis, wants to know if we have any Ben Gay. I think: isn't that from the era of over-the-counter medicine that didn't work? I mean, what is it, camphor, menthol, campthol, memphor, spirits of aspic, eye of newt? Do we have any liniment, she says. No. I will go to the store and buy liniment! Also some horehound drops.
So on the way I see a car going slowly up the block. Slowwwly. It passes; I pull in behind it. It takes the first left and pulls over. I stop and take the number. I drive up a block around a curve, turn around; now the car comes out of the intersection and goes back the way it came. I got a good look at the driver, though, and to put matters gently she would not fit through the windows the crooks are using to get in.
What she was doing, I've no idea.
Once you start to get suspicious of a driver, you get suspicious of every driver. Then again, they're not driving to the crimes. They steal the cars so they can drive to the place where they transfer the stolen goods. That's their plan.
It's only a matter of time. Before they're caught, or we're hit.
Good day all around, though; busy as all get-out, and that included getting out. Led another tour around Loring Park; we have paying customers every Thursday for four weeks. Did a podcast in the morn, put a column in the system in the afternoon to go with the Star Trek 50th piece I put in the system last night at 12:30 AM, and now I have only the Shatner interview to finish.
Let's say his reputation is accurate. And since he has many reputations, well, then what you've heard is probably correct. I wasn't trying to do a Star Trek interview, because what's left to say with any amount of enthusiasm after 50 years? Even though he's volunteered for this. I mean, they called us. I asked about projects new and obscure, books, his recent Twitter controversy, anything but "what does Captain Kirk mean to the 21st century" or "Could you assemble a Gorn-killing cannon if you had the materials?" As respectful as possible, until the moment when I -
Well, you'll have to read the piece. Next week's paper. It has a rather awesome thing that happened, and while it was mortifying at the time it's hilarious now.
It's been a long week and I'm done here. Done! Except for all the stuff to come below and a new podcast for you to enjoy, if you wish.
Fridays, for some reason, details the ongoing makeover of downtown Minneapolis. Cranes! Cranes everywhere. I had nothing to show about this pit for weeks, but after I went away to Europe and spent two weeks on the Bleat detailing the tales, there's substance to report.
I've no idea what it'll look like. It's a medical building. Don't you love the tower in the background, by the way? Ur-60s structure, also medical in function. It's far enough outside of the city core that it's never considered a downtown building, but it's only ten blocks from the center of downtown. I should hop over and investigate it - never given it a good look.
Because it's too far away. Ten blocks!
The Millwright went from a pit to a framework as well:
I think that's as tall as she goes, but this will be a handsome building.
Back to music cues for "The Little Things in Life," Peg Lynch's last continuously running sitcom. The cues run from substandard 60s cues to cringingly 70s, and I'm surprised at how few there were. I think I'm already repeating what I previously played. In fact I know I'm already repeating the fact that I think I'm repeating myself, but on we go: this is the sound of narrative radio in its strange last gasp.
The jaunty Scottish cue returns . . .
. . . with embellishments!
There are many variants of this. Is it supposed to be sophisticated? Dangerous? Funny?
Tense? Depressed? What?
A bonus here - PL always loved to remind people that she was not a ditzy housewife who had one year of teacher's college
Old-line cue, too.
The Helping Hand of the Kresge Operation:
Groovy K-mart.
Man, so much stuff sounded like this back then.
Welcome to our August roadside Bob & Ray feature: Grand Motel.
A speck of a place. A heck of a place.
Will Leonard Humphrey's difficulties with the Continental breakfast come back to haunt him?
Starting as an arranger and pianist with several notable big bands in the 1940s, he segued into the Hollywood radio scene, working on several nationally-broadcast variety programs. After conducting an Army Air Force Band during World War II, he was hired by Columbia Pictures as a staff pianist and orchestrator. He worked as pianist on several hundred motion pictures, worked with many famous composers orchestrating their soundtrack compositions, and created original compositions of his own in several dozen movies.
Born in 1917, died 2007. he also write the theme for "My Favorite Martian," among others.
The tune is "Street Scene," a melody played over and over and over again in Warner Brothers movies whenever they wanted something urban and gritty.
It's not a piano concerto.
Oh, er, ahem:
That'll do; see you around. Hope you enjoyed the return to normalcy. Oh - the Ramble! A new episode, here.
