A Little Bragging

I just discovered that Amanda Shaw, the talented fiddle player and singer that I've talked about more than once on these pages has a quote from me from my Voices to hear site on her web page. Sorry I just have to brag a little, I've never had someone use anything of mine as a quote on their page before. Pretty cool if I do say so my self.

Orson Scott Card and Gay Marriage

This actually ties in with the idea of a lengthy post I've been meaning to write, and may still, about how you should react when a writer whose work you admire proves to be, shall we say less than sterling in other ways.

Orson Scott Card has always been a favorite writer of mine. His Ender series of stories are some of the best science fiction written I feel, but he recently wrote a column that can be found here that talks of the evils of gay marriage. He claims that the court decisions allowing gay marriage in California and Massachusetts is the end of democracy in America.

Should it matter what a writer believes? I know I will still enjoy his Ender books and a lot of his other work, but I fear there will always be a small part of me that thinks about this now.

More Comic Con

From CBR comes this pic of the line waiting to their badges so they could get into the con. This is from Wednesday, the preview night, which has the smallest crowds of the con.

The Best of the Runaways?

I was working on transferring more vinyl to my Ipod and was digitalizing "The Best of the Runaways." The Runaways were an all girl group from the mid seventies that played rock and roll. Two of it more well known members were Joan Jett and Lita Ford. I realized that this best of collection doesn't have "Cherry Bomb" on it. Now the Runaways were never a big band, they never had a hit single, but the one single that is probably most associated with them was "Cherry Bomb." And this collection doesn't have it. The other songs are good, but how can they call this a best of without "Cherry Bomb?" I'm sure it's tied up with some record deal or licensing deal, but still it kind of sucks that the song isn't on here.

CCR Reissued Again

Some of the best music ever made is coming back in Sept. The first Creedence Clearwater Revival albums are being re-released than, along with bonus material and new linear notes. These six albums, "Creedence Clearwater Revival," "Bayou Country," "Green River," "Willy & the Poor Boys," "Cosmo's Factory" and "Pendulum," form the core of some of the best rock and roll ever. And to imagine these six albums were released within a two year period, from 1968 to 1970. It's amazing to think of that, nowdays an artist has to take years and years to put out a new album and they'd be lucky that if half of it is even good. I have these albums originally on vinyl but will have to purchase the new cd versions.

Happy Birthday NASA

It was fifty years ago today that President Dwight Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, officially establishing NASA.

Miley Number One

Miley Cyrus has the number one album in the country with her new album. It's her first album without Hannah Montana attached to it.

White and Keyes on Bond

Jack White of The White Stripes is working with Alicia Keyes on the theme song to the new James Bond movie. The song is titled "Another Way To Die." This is an interesting combination.

New Dylan

Oct 7 Columbia is releasing the eighth volume of Dylan's Bootleg series Tell Tale Signs. The two volume collection of rare and unreleased material will focus on the time frame from 1989 to the present. This is from the Oh Mercy album to his most recent one Modern Times. I'm fascinated by hearing what got left off the albums and some of the different versions of the songs that made it onto the albums. I'll be eagerly awaiting this one.

San Diego Comic Con

This weekend was the San Diego Comic Con. Even if you're not a comic book fan it's hard not to have at least heard of this con nowadays. It's huge. It's become much more than just a comic book convention. Hollywood trots out all their big movies for preview and to hopefully get the fans interested enough to go home and start blogging about. The last time I went was about six years ago. The attendance than was between 60,000 and 70,000 a day. This weekend it will probably be over 120,000 people a day. It's grown so big that I can't even imagine it. My first San Diego Con was back in the 80's and I doubt that there were more than 10,000 people and I thought that was a lot at the time. For some more about the Con you can go check out one of my other blogs Life in 4 colors for some highlights.

Song Missing From Yesterday's Post

I wanted to add this song to the post about my Dad yesterday but couldn't get Life Logger to work. So I'm putting it here today. It's by Alison Moorer with her sister Shelby Lynne live.

One Year Ago Today

It was a year ago today that my Dad died. I still miss him.

Peek-A-Boo

The Dark Knight

Ok, I can't give a complete review of this movie as I missed the final act (see the following post for the full story on that) but I can say what I did see was amazing. This movie makes all the previous Batman movies look weak.

Heath Ledger is just as good in the role of the Joker as most critics have been claiming. I would be very surprised if he doesn't get a nomination for an Oscar, if not a win. His Joker is evil and crazy without going so far over the top that it appears comical.

One of the things I really liked in this movie was the secondary characters, like Gordon, Alfred and Fox. The movie gave them a depth that we rarely see in movies like this. It had me wanting to see a movie with Gordon as the main character. And the relationship between Alfred and Bruce Wayne was more than just a butler and his Master.

Go check this movie out. I plan to head back soon for a second and complete showing.

The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste

Ok, yesterday I did something I have never done before. I got up around nine and jumped on the computer, checked out a few sites and than decided that I was going to go see The Dark Knight. I figured early in the day I wouldn't have to deal with a full theater full of people talking over the movie. I figured after the movie I would head over to Best Buy and check out any new releases that came out yesterday. (There's a clue in that sentence.)

I was enjoying the movie when my phone vibrated. I always make sure I put my phone on vibrate when I go to the movies. I hate when I hear someones phone ring while I'm watching a movie, and than worse when they answer it and start talking. I took a quick glance at my phone to see who was calling. It was work. I thought to myself, there can't be more than twenty minutes of the movie left I wonder if whatever they're calling about can wait. I decided it could. I put my phone back up.

And than it hit me! I was off Wednesday this week. It was Tuesday. (New releases of cds and movies come out on Tuesday.) Somehow I got up and believed it was Wednesday. I misplaced an entire day. I jumped up and ran from the movie. Leaving the last twenty minutes of The Dark Knight still to be seen.

I couldn't belive it. To understand the panic I was feeling you have to understand that I am never late for work. Work was calling because they were getting worried that some new medical malady had struck me down, they knew I wasn't late for work. I still can't believe I did this.

Of course once I got to work everyone had a good laugh about it. All day long I felt like I was playing catch up. I was actually less than an hour late to work.

It's terrible when the mind goes.

Bob Seger

I just finished transferring Bob Seger's Mongrel from vinyl to my computer. Bob Seger is one of my favorite artists. I thought I'd share a video with everyone. This is "American Storm" from his Like A Rock album, yes before it was a commerical it actually was a song on an album.

July 20 A Great Day In History

On July 20 1969 Apollo 11 landed on the moon and Neil Armstrong took the first step of a human on another planet besides our earth. I remember watching this on tv when I was a kid. Everyone was gathered around the set to watch this historic moment. It's a shame that the space program has basically fallen apart. We should have continued to send men to the moon. We should have a moon base by now.

Newsradio

I've been watching the DVDs of the five seasons of Newsradio. This was a show that first came on in the late 90s and was created as a showcase for Phil Hartman after he left Saturday Night Live. This is one of those shows that grow on you. I won't try to claim it's one of the best comedies ever, but it's a nice funny show. I think the real star and glue that held the show together was Dave Foley, who played station manger Dave Nelson.

Voices to hear book Out

I know I haven't been posting very much lately, but I actually have been busy. Well, busier than normal with work and everything else. I've just published a Voices to hear book. As some of you are aware I also publish another blog called Voices to hear, about music and artists in need of more promotion. The book is a collection of the posts from the blog and some new stuff and a lot of pictures. It's done in standard landscape edition, 10 x 8 and has 116 pages. I'm going to put a link on the sidebar for anyone interested in checking it out and maybe buying a copy. It's a POD, which is Print on demand, which mean the site prints a copy only when someone orders one. Go click on the link and it'll give you a 15 page preview. I think it turned out really well.

Another Boring Health Update

The last two posts made me sound pretty depressed so I figured I better post something a little more positive. Monday this week I went to my surgeon for a follow up. She gave me those magic words that released me and said everything was fine. I'm not going to be bench pressing any small cars soon, but I can at least start getting back to normal.

Than Wednesday I had a colonoscopy. After my Dad died last year of colon cancer I figured it was the right thing to do. While I was in the hospital from my gall bladder surgery the doctor came in and convinced me. So Tuesday was spent in preparation for the test and Wednesday was the day of the test. I'm glad to be able to say it went without a hitch and I was told I am clean and good to go.

So this week has been fairly eventually and I'm glad it's coming to a close. I'm in a pretty good mood, my health is on the upswing and I'm sitting here listening to Fats Domino, so what can be so bad?

A Musical Interlude Between the Dying

It seems that I don't haven't been blogging as much as I'm used to. I'm feeling a lot better since the surgery, but still am not back to full strength. And this week I go back in the hospital for another procedure, nothing life threatening and done as an outpatient, so hopefully I won't be there for another week. But it seems that everytime I sit down to blog I'm blogging about someone dying. Some of the people I mention are just names from some famous action or cause, others even though I don't know them personally still mean something to me.

The song here is "See The Light" from a group called the Textones. The song comes from their album Midnight Mission released in 1984. The lead singer of the group is a woman named Carla Olson. At the time of its release there was a lot of hope for this group to hit it big from their record company and a lot of critics. Since most of you have never heard of the group or the lead singer you know how well that worked out. One of the founding members of the group was Kathy Valentine, who left to join a new all girl group the Go-Gos.

Carla Olson has continued to make music. She has played with a lot of other well known musicans, including making music with the late Gene Clark of the Byrds. She has three albums coming out this year, past work with her group the Textones, with Gene Clark and with Mick Taylor.

Thomas Disch Commits Suicide

On July 4th the writer Thomas Disch committed suicide. Best known for his work in the science fiction community. He was a writer of novels, but I remember him best for his shorter work. His short story "Descending" is a story of his that has remained with me long after I read it as a youth. I've always thought he was one of the better writers in science fiction. Evidently he had been depressed for the last few years after the death of his partner and lately he's been fighting eviction from his New York City apartment. Perhaps his best known work was the story "The Brave Little Toaster" which later was adapted as an animated feature.

To many readers of this blog his name is going to be unfamiliar but to me he was always on a short list of favorite writers. If you have a chance to read any of his work do it. I'm not sure how much of his work is still in print, but if you can find anything pick up his collection "The Essential Disch."

From his livejournal:

What is so tragic as the lethal blast
Of thunderbolt or .38
That turns what had been present
Into past? There he stood
And here he lies at last.
Will you not shed a single tear
For any such? Is that too much to ask?

Not much more to say except that it's a damn shame.

Happy 4th of July

Bozo Dies

Larry Harmon, the longtime Bozo the Clown died Thursday of congestive heart failure at the age of 83. Harmon was not the first Bozo the Clown. The first was Pinto Colviq, who also was the first voice of Disney's Goofy. Harmon ended up buying the name and rights to Bozo and making the Clown a household name.

Joss Stone

I was going through some old files and found these pictures of Joss Stone from Bonnaroo from at least three years ago.

Obama's Goal For The End of His First Term

From the newest issue of Rolling Stone and Jann Wenner's interview with Barack Obama:

If I haven't gotten combat troops out of Irag, passed universal health care and created a new energy policy that speaks to our dependence on foreign oil and deals seriously with global warming, than we've missed the boat.

Now that's worth electing him for.

Jesse Malin Part I

Jesse Malin is one of my favorite singers. This is part one of an interview with him, followed by Part II.

Jesse Malin Part II

Yes We Can