It’s the chip. I could hold it with my right hand, but my desk set-up means the cup’s on the left. So I hit the chip.
I’ve had this for almost 25 years. The amazing thing is that you can still buy it, from Etsy shops that have copies the original vegetable-box art.
It’s fine. One must keep a Constant Mug Number, or CMS. Last year we added two - a Miro-inspired I gave to my wife, too delicate and beautiful to suffer actual use, and the third instance of the London Underground series. (It doesn’t match the other two, which irritates me a good deal.) That meant that two had to go, and they did. Now I have the choice of adding a coffee mug, because we’re below the CMS, or adjusting the CMS baseline downward. I’ll go with the latter.
In related news:
The last of the flowering trees in the yard. It's the last salute to early spring. I never tire of seeing these pop, and am always reminded that we moved here in summer, and were surprised by these the next spring.
I tweeted on Friday that I had seen two unrelated references to Orson Welles’ famous Frozen Peas rant. One I can’t recall, a reference on a website, and the second was on Twitter, when someone linked to a Pinky & the Brain parody of the speech. This was before noon.
Many hours later I was involved in the tedious backing up of my Audio folder to the cloud. I’ve 2 TB to fill, so I decided to dump the entirety of my music archives. These consist of all the files I’ve hoarded over the years, from the top 300 songs of every year from 1900 - 1990, to the “Sentimental Journey” collection (mostly 40s, hundreds of songs) to the “Lost Jukebox” series of also-ran minor songs from the 60s. Italian movie music Coop sent me years ago, and so on, and so on. Oh: the Comedy folder. There’s the Monty Python folder. Been a while. First album. I know the bits . . . except this one, I don’t.
It’s Michael Palin as a guy doing a bad read on a voice-over for a beer ad. At one point the guys in the booth are asking why they got him instead of someone else.
Well.
This is 1971. The Orson Wells Frozen Peas rant was 1970, and it was recorded in England. The Peas rant didn’t surface for years. This meant that Python was making a joke no one understood. They must have been handed the tapes by someone in the business.
The wikipedia entry on the Frozen Peas incident says that Python referenced it on the Contractual Obligation Album, in the sketch “The Bishop,” but that was a repeat of a sketch from the first. So Wikipedia is WRONG.
I’m sure someone else has noticed it, but for some reason I feel like I discovered something.
Read some discourse about how there was much racist pushback when Deep Space Nine went with a black commander. The author, I think, was still in single digits when DS9 came out. Or perhaps 12 or 13, that all-important age for keen observation and majesterial ejudication of events.
The important thing is to be outraged on other people's behalf for a thing that shows how horrible people were then and also now.
I remember that it took a while to warm to Sisko, because he was not a warm man. He did not wish to be. The situation did not call for a warm and emotional man. But all you needed to know was in the pilot, I think - he'd just lost his wife, he was consumed with grief, found his son, and made it to escape shuttle - he was staring straight ahead, not out the porthole. Nowadays I suppose the main character would look stricken and put a hand on the glass, and that's fine. But I remember he was just a motionless ball of loss and rage, and how he moved slightly when the escape pod blew the bolts. This guy had just put everything down the deepest well imaginable.
Aw. He's all tuckered out, wondering where Sam has gone on her broom tonight.
Except he’s not a befuddled and occasionally annoyed suburban guy married to a witch. He’s a bad guy. How do we know? Because when we first met him, he was dressed like this.
The shiny black jacket: the uniform of the JD and the antisocial youth who didn’t care for the rules in this crazy world, man.
We meet one of his associates, who’s blowing some ca-ra-aaayzy sounds on that tell-tale indicator of youthful criminality, the harmonica:
And yes, it’s him. The Professor.
Our young thug works for an epicene crime boss, played by the ever-perfect George Macready.
This makes no sense; someone so removed from his crimes would not entertain hit men in his own home or give them orders. He would have levels of remove. The whole episode is predictable, really, with the rise and fall of a cheap youth killer, but it’s how the network TV dealt with the JD Problem.
There was concern for the JD Problem, but how much sympathy? Consider the men who weren’t out there in rumbling with the Bearcats from the other side of town. When I was your age, I was drafted. In fact somehow you’ve avoided Korea. And we’re supposed to feel bad for you?
When he makes it big he has a nice apartment, with unusual wall decorations of the modern style:
But he botches the Johnson Rubout, and he’s haunted by the death of an old girlfriend, which he caused, because she was going to rat, and at the end he gets some ballistic karma.
And no one watching feels bad about it at all.
I mention this because it’s odd to find yourself thinking well, Dick York, that’s what you get, and you deserved it. Because then you think about the Dick Swap of Bewitched, and how people might have wondered at the time whether Sam was tired of the first Dick and just sent him to the cornfield, and brought in another with his memory readjusted by necromancy. She would have had to cloud the memories of others, too. No small job.
We really had no idea of the extent of her powers.
It’s 1971. More Billboard ads.
Not my definition of “Moneymaker” in 1971, but it was a different time.
Ranwood Records is an American record label started in 1968 by Randy Wood (after he left Dot Records) and Lawrence Welk. Lawrence Welk owned all of the recordings that he released on Dot as they were produced and manufactured by Teleklew Productions and leased to Dot. These were repackaged for reissue on Ranwood.
So that explains that.
Oh this is going to be breathy late folk music from beardy geeks, is it?
Ever heard of them?
McKendree Spring is a progressive folk-rock band, formed in 1968 and particularly active in the early 1970s. The band, originally known as McKendree Spring Quartet, formed at Adirondack Community College in Queensbury, New York. The group's leader was Fran McKendree (vocals and guitar); their first bass player was Larry Tucker then Fred Holman; Dr. Michael Dreyfuss (electric violin, viola, Moog, Arp, Mellotron); and Martin Slutsky (electric guitar). Christopher Bishop replaced Holman on bass as of the 1973 release Spring Suite. Some of their music ventured into avant-garde or experimental territory, such as "God Bless the Conspiracy”
I don’t know if I would’ve been into this, but possibly, if the right people had suggested them. I can imagine this playing as an opening act, and completely losing the audience that had come to RAWK. Or maybe they would’ve WOOOOO’d their way through the quiet parts. It takes so many false runs at “God Bless Ye Merry Gentlemen” I want to strangle it.
Blues authenticity, unfiltered, direct, the real thing? That’s the picture we want:
To native Utahn, Kim Whitesides, art is a language, an opportunity for his vision to inspire others. Kim made an impact in the art community at a very young age. In grammar school (3rd grade) Kim was chosen to lead a seminar on paper-mache sculpture before the membership of the Utah Teachers Association. While in High School, his work as a graphic artist included the creation of celebrity portraits, which led to purchases by, and friendships with a number of musical artists. Kim’s formal training came from the University of Utah, and the Art Center College of Design, in Los Angeles, where he graduated in 1967, with great distinction.
Kim lived, and worked as an illustrator, in New York City, from the late 60’s through the mid 80’s. During this period his paintings appeared in many publications, including Time magazine, Rolling Stone, and Playboy. He received numerous awards from The Art Directors Club of New York, and The Society of Illustrators.
Probably that guy.
Ah, the old build-up campaign.
The label has one entry, and it’s for one singer: Lon Ritchie.
He does not appear anywhere on YouTube.
Hank Jr. in the clean-cut years:
This overproduced country was what we absolutely despised at the time. Our parents liked it, though.
Odd how "parents like it" and "we hated it" seemed to go together a lot.
We made fun of this guy, too.
Instead of finding the Slim tune, shall we wonder about that producer? Bill Collie? The name might have meant something to the audience at the time. Biff had his own career. And here it is, or was.
Whoa! Nothing like it. “Target areas glowing in the dark - disappearing when hit.” Authentic! Player really Sees ands Hears the Bombs and Rockets Dropping to Targets.
NO BELTS. This meant something to the operators at the time, because the old bombing-run machines had belts, and they’d snag or break.
That'll do. Now it's time for DC Covers, a subsite I haven't updated in 10 years. Remember, nothing here is ever done.
