TIL: Driving to work this morning, I caught a repeat of “Fresh Air” on my local NPR station. It happened to be a repeat from 2017, so they could cut into the time for the “Summer Fund Drive.” But the guest happened to be Max Brooks, son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft. Continue reading “What I Learned Today #4: Max Brooks”
Can You Tame Wild Wimmen: Gotham by Gaslight
Just as I finally decided to get my dormant musicalcheese.com url to point to this section, I also got approved as an iTunes affiliate. So, If I can offer some musical cheese stories good enough to get you to click on and buy the music indicated, I might get a nickel or so.
Gotham by Gaslight
While the latest movies adapted from DC Comics have been somewhat hit or miss, they have had several animated videos produced for the home market. Many of these are adaptations of some of the comics’ graphic novels, like “The Killing Joke” or best-known storylines. But rather than being straight adaptations, they twist away from the source material in interesting ways. Continue reading “Can You Tame Wild Wimmen: Gotham by Gaslight”
Eclipse Journal 2: August 21
I probably am not going to be able to hide the fact that I’m writing this story about the August eclipse seven months later, in the midst of a February snow system. Very well. Let me just cop to that fact, and my need to put some interesting “cornerstone copy” on my site that’s a little less than five years old.
Eclipse Day Wakeup
Eclipse Journal 1: August 20
I have been fussing with the transfer of this blog to WordPress, and with trying to make it current. But let’s start pitching in some new content, first by catching up to a momentous road with my son. This is adapted and expanded from my beer-centric eclipse coverage at beeronaut.com.
Departure
My son Sean and I set out at about 9 am Sunday morning to cross the State of Illinois—the long way—to experience the total solar eclipse of 2017. Our route would involve cutting from one interstate to another along an hour’s worth of rural highway so the Boy could practice his driving. Continue reading “Eclipse Journal 1: August 20”
Ungena Za Ulimwengu (Unite The World)
This was the Temptations’ 1970 follow-up to “Ball of Confusion (That’s What the World is Today)”. If anything, it was even more adventurous and relevant, and deserved to be a much bigger hit than it was. Continue reading “Ungena Za Ulimwengu (Unite The World)”
Time to come clean.
I have spent some years trying to build my own web page from scratch; one that doesn’t look like butt.
But I have finally decided that it will be impossible to keep up with everything I would need to learn just to put a decent piece of web up there.
I’ve now decided that it would be easier to learn to wrangle WordPress. And to see what I can do with a basic WordPress theme, currently “Twenty Seventeen.”
I’m working to put access to my entire World Wide Web wandering on here. So keep an eye open.
—Mark
A note on Father’s Day
In the face of current social and political situation, and because it was Father’s Day when I started putting this down, I wanted to share some impressions of my dad.
I don’t believe my dad ever said a disparaging word about any individual or group.
If he reads this, he may write back to say, “Oh, I’ve had a lot of cross words with people in my time.”
Continue reading “A note on Father’s Day”
The New Incivility
The public radio show This American Life recently offered a segment that indicated a trend sure to escalate in our wired-in world…
The following link will direct you to the page for the Christmastime Episode #371: “Scenes From a Mall” (still free at this writing, but will probably becomes a 95-cent download by the time you read this). Continue reading “The New Incivility”
Musical Cheese for October 17, 2012
The Gettysburg Address — Lord Buckley — His Royal Hipness — 1956
Gangnam Style! — Psy — 2012
Ruby Baby — The Drifters — 1956
A Cowboy’s Work is Never Done — Sonny & Cher — All I Ever Need is You — 1972
Live — The Merry-Go-Round — 1966
A Quick One, While He’s Away — The Who — A Quick One —1966
The Laughing Song — George W. Johnson — Brown Wax Cylinder Collection (Tinfoil.com) — 1899
Cocktails for Two — Spike Jones & His City Slickers — Anthology — 1944
Planet Rock — Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force — 12″ single — 1982
Get Dancin’ — Disco Tex & the Sex-o-Lettes — Get Dancin’ — 1975
Hadacol! (That’s All) — The Treniers — They Rock! They Roll! They Swing! — 1952
Nag Nag Nag Nag — Art Brut — It’s a Bit Complicated — 2007
The Rain, the Park and Other Things — The Cowsills — 20th Century Masters — 1967
Kermit Schafer — Rock Around the Blooper — 1956
Jackie Onassis — Human Sexual Response — Figure 14 — 1980
Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow (single version) — Frank Zappa — Apostrophe(‘) — 1974
Don’t Go Near the Eskimos —Ben Colder — single — 1962
Another Way to Die – Jack White & Alicia Keys – “Quantum of Solace” soundtrack – 2008
Woodstock — Matthew’s Southern Comfort — 1970
Shake It — Ian (Iain) Matthews — 1978
Hey, St. Peter – Flash & the Pan — 1978
Whole Lot-ta Shakin’ Goin’ On — Big Maybelle – 1955 (produced by Quincy Jones)
Nut Rocker — B. Bumble & the Stingers — 1962
The Return of Musical Cheese! Sept 12, 2012
Here we are with a new semester at good ol’ WIIT, the voice of Illinois Institute of Technology. The little radio station that could now has a new board and all us DJ’s have had to go in for re-training.
I discovered that this board is much easier to use than the last one, as long as I don’t try to do anything fancy, like try to put phone calls on the air. The two CD decks will start playing when you hit the “on air” button on the board. And best of all, they have another deck for digital media: Flash drives, USB drives, etc. We are even closer to realizing my dream of being able to bring in all my music for a show on the half-a-postage-stamp sized chip in my cell phone. Continue reading “The Return of Musical Cheese! Sept 12, 2012”