Bright and warmish, and that’s the end of that. Snow predicted, and they’re not saying “but it won’t last.” They haven’t said that at all. Usually it’s “a morning dusting, gone by noon!” but there’s bad news behind the weatherpeople’s voices, as if to say “it will never leave for six months.”

WHICH IS ENTIRELY POSSIBLE.

Well, the house is warm and the wind is full of told-you-so warnings. Has to happen sometime; might as well be now.

He said, screaming inside.

To think the picture above was just last week.

 

I was listening to a BBC show that had one British housing expert and an American housing expert; the former seemed red-faced about everything, and decried his countrymen’s inability to pave over green spaces to build dense affordable housing because they liked to walk their dogs in the park, and the American? woman? ended every? Other word? With uptalk. Mostly? Gah. For some reason, the host asked them about Fats Domino after the break (the break being not for commercial purposes, but to pitch other programs.) The American? Wasn’t really, familiar at all? With him, but well Blueberry Hill, of course.

Meaning: she heard the opening bars on a commercial for a CD of 50s hits when she was at her parents’ house and they were watching old-person TV. The Brit was effusive, saying he literally grew up with him, since his mother played the records when he was in the cradle.

“So you really remember nothing of his work,” would be the proper response, since no one remembers what their mother played while she tried to get you to sleep.

But on and on he went about his Genius. Look, the guy had a charming persona, a smile in his voice, and the songs were fine examples of 50s pop, but Fats Domino was not Mozart, and to hear these obits you’d think the guy had absolutely changed music in some fundamental way that rearranged the existing conceptions of the possibilities of the pop.

C’mon.

As all these fine old artists pass, it seems as if the boomer generation has to laud them as geniuses to prop up their own generation’s founding myth: rock and roll was the most important music of the 20th century, and at its height produced Great Art. Now and then, yes. For the most part, no.

That doesn't mean it's not a hoot and a joy; I subscribe to the Duke Ellington notion. If it sounds good, it IS good. And this number from Fats rocks pretty good for 1949.

 

Great guy with a unique style who added something fresh to popular music, and made a lot of people happy with his effortless talents. You'd think that would be enough.

Thursday night is when I empty the bins for Friday morning collection, and as you might have deduced over the weeks, or months, or years, or decades this site has been running, that's what I'm doing here. I have no place to put this picture, so here it is. One of those compositions that just presents itself all at once, and you have to snap the shot. Or rather pretend that you're doing something so the guy doesn't think you're taking his picture. Which, of course, you are.

 

I pass this site at least twice a week, but the arrangement of shapes has never caught my eye. It was the man who did it. The color, the smallness of the figure. You might think: why didn't you crop it to remove the windows on the upper-right hand corner? Maybe I will, but that would lose the downward-pointing cornice, an angle that cascades all the way down to the man.

And of course it wouldn't be a Friday without a dog picture.

 

A very big and noisy monster had just passed by, clanking and huffing. And that was it for the walk.

Or so I thought; he went around to the side stairs, and went east for a while until something gave him the jimmies.

 

The hotel, which I'm sure we need, even though about 3,306 went up in the last few years, is halfway there:

 

Perhaps you'll recall when this was a hole in the ground, with fences that didn't let us see anything but excavated dirt. Well:

 

 

See those trees? They're new. The Nicollet Mall overall is almost done, and the trees are in.

Just in time for the leaves to turn and drop off. Great timing.

 

 

 

Gildersleeve season 6. The show is mature, in a rut, but no one's completely bored with it . . . yet.

   
 

Typical little bit of interstitial sweetness.

   
   
   

   
 

Ever so Forties - and as you might suspect, it's the Holiday Season. Sort of Thanksgivingy, with Pilgrim Respect.

   
   
   

 

   
 

It's like the previous cue, scrambled and made crazed - and then listen how it blends with the sound of the phone.

   
   
   

 

 

   
 

AD: 1952. Podners: doggone it, buy this cereal, consarn it! Guy Madison and Jingles want you to. And there's a gun cut-out!

   
   
   

 

This seems timely:

 

   
 

This music I associate with the stuff adults listened to when I was in junior high - music that suggested they had given up on music, somehow.

   
   
   

 

 

 

That'll do; see you around.

 

 
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