This and That

THIS JUST IN: PERFORMANCE
On Sunday I sang my love song If Offered A Choice before several hundred people (and my wife and daughters) accompanied by the Danville Community Band. The video cuts out before the stirring ending and the brisk round of applause, but you'll get the idea.


Cool Art
I am beginning to think that I read all the notifications in LinkedIn so you don’t have to. In any case, super-cool stroboscopic art.

Bollards Ahoy
You ever wondered if bollards are effective?
[not a stealth edit] Thank you Robert Malchman for pointing out this was CGI.

Spider Humor

From Semi-Rad: I didn’t come here to f**k spiders.

Journalism Quote
The late Pete Hamill on celebrity journalism: “If the headlines scream about the living arrangements of the sitcom actress Ellen DeGeneres, what will they do if there is another Hiroshima?”


Bolero-Like Songs

 

Any American male who was an adult in 1979 and saw Bo Derek’s 10 knows that Ravel’s Bolero is the perfect length and rhythm to serve as a soundtrack for making love.

I once found, but now can’t find, an article naming similar songs. The only one I remembered was Kashmir by Led Zeppelin, released four years earlier.

If you can think of any other songs of a similar length and rhythm (or can find the article I can’t), please let me know.


You’ve Got To Be Taught

This Rogers and Hammerstein song from South Pacific (1949) is as true today as the day it was written, which is why several southern states once banned it for being “Communist.”

You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear,
You’ve got to be taught from year to year,
It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear—
You’ve got to be carefully taught!

You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a different shade—
You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate—
You’ve got to be carefully taught!


My Recital

Greatest birthday ever.

Two days after my 70th birthday I sang love songs to my wife for a half hour. I enjoyed it, she enjoyed it, and so did my daughters and their husbands.

I found a talented accompanist, Nathan Joseph, who could both lead and follow me. He played his electric piano as I sung transposed charts suitable for my baritone.

Regular readers will remember the previous steps; I started writing love poems to Vicki, then paid a Welsh freelancer to set them to music and sing them. I don’t sing as well as he does, but I like to think there was more heart in my version. I will be posting links to the video (kindly shot by one of my sons in law) as soon as it’s available.

I love to perform in public, so I considered this recital a gift from them to me. There were only five people in the audience, not counting my grandchildren who weren’t all that interested. I suspect that’s as many people as were listening to me 55 years ago when I first broadcast on KBPS. But it was more people then watched the Pauli Schindler show which I put it on with my brother Steve at age 10. The microphone was a string tied to a spoon, and the camera was a broom.