Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

Faces...

Oh Cindy ain't you noticed 
that several of your friends have moved on
And the street outside is just a little too quiet
And your local paper's run out of news
I'm not persuading you or disengaging you
But Cindy you and me we've got to move

Faces weren't a band of any great significance but they WERE one of the best party bands, evah.  Loose, mebbe much too loose, but as I said: one for the Good Times.  I think Rod Stewart's gigs with Faces were his finest hour (outside of "Every Picture Tells a Story")... they beat the shit outta that "Great American Songbook" krep.  IMHO.

And yeah... we've run outta news.  Didja notice?

One Thing I Meant to Post but Didn't

Joe Queenan in this past Saturday's WSJ:

Devotees insist that yoga would help me deal with the herniated discs in my neck, would ease pressure on my spine, would lower my blood pressure. They say—thereby providing false hope to my family—that yoga would make me more mellow, more accepting, perhaps even induce me to stop and smell the roses.

But I do not want to stop and smell the roses. I don't even want to smell the roses if it were possible to smell them without stopping. For years, I have told those of the yoga ilk: I can't practice yoga or tai chi or therapeutic jujitsu or dien bien phu because I'm too working class, I'm from Philly, it's just not my style. If my hard-drinking, heavily tattooed Dad ever caught me doing yoga he would come back from the dead and strangle me. Then my neck would really hurt.

Joe... he speaks for me.  The rest of the piece... "Assuming the Pose of 'Guy Saying No'" is worth your time (subscription may be required).  And when it comes to yoga there's this and we NEVER pass up an opportunity to be self-promoting. 

Actually, there's a plethora of New Age crap that should be rejected out of hand.  Like crystals (what's so mystical about a clear rock?), "organic-fucking-anything/everything" (I was raised before "organic" took over whole aisles of our food stores and I seem to have turned out alright), feminism (of the strident sort -  real men have ALWAYS respected women and women have always known their worth), and left-wing politics (you really need a parenthetical expansionary comment?).  Among other things.

Yamaste.  (My Bad.  I meant Namaste.  Thanks, Skip.).

Things I Wish I Hadn't Seen

Yeah, I watched it.  No, I have no comment... other than "blah, blah, blah."  Wait.  I do have a couple o' things.  His "spilled milk" joke was stupid.  And his references to the military were simply bizarre and just a LITTLE bit offensive to me, speaking as a military kinda guy.  I should have said this yesterday, I know.  But that's life here at EIP: a day late and a dollar short.  Always.

―:☺:―



Except for hockey, where we're never a day late. Some quotes about last night's game:

“We realize the scope of what we’re up against tonight. This is the best team in the NHL right now and they’re definitely playing like it. They’re a group of veterans that all play very intelligently. They control the puck a lot of the time and they really make you fight for possession. We’re going to have to be at our best and try to push our style of game.

“We have to be ready to go for 60 or 65 minutes if need be to come out of this with two points. We’ll have all the time we need to rest up after tonight, but right now we need to set our sights on winning this game.”--Montreal Canadiens assistant captain Josh Gorges. (as quoted at the Usual Hockey Source)

And...

Wings' Babcock: “I'm not going to look at the video of this at all, I'm going to go out and drink, actually, is what I'm going to do.''  --A tweet by AnsarKhanMLive

"I thought because we were playing in such a great building in such a great environment that it was going to be a no-brainer," Babcock said. "But we just were awful."  -- Mike Babcock, quoted in The Freep

Red Wings defenseman Niklas Kronwall reacts after Detroit yields another goal during the 7-2 loss Wednesday in Montreal.
 Jean-Yves Ahern/U.S. PRESSWIRE

Montreal 7, Detroit 2.  Worst game of the year... even worse than the 7-1 loss to the Caps and that 5-1 debacle on the Island.  I almost turned it off.

Twilight Landing...

... in El-Eh.

While watching this vid it occurred to me that about the ONLY thang I miss about air travel... which I did a lot of back in Former Happy Days... is the spectacular nighttime city views one gets during a night landing.  My favorite night landing was always Dee-troit but that was more a function of coming home than the view itself.  The view was pretty good, however, given that Dee-troit is essentially flatter than flat and spread out over a VERY large area, compared to other cities.  And then there's Noo Yawk, of course, and London, and a plethora of other cities.  They are all spectacular from the air on a clear night.

But the most amazing night landing I ever experienced was at the old Kai Tak airport in Hong Kong (at right)... and it was ALL about the terror, mainly because one gets the feeling your pilot is setting you down on some boulevard rather than an actual airport.  You could actually SEE people walking around inside their high-rise apartments as you were on final into Kai Tak.  THAT, Gentle Reader, is a most unnerving feeling.  I can only imagine how the residents of those apartments felt about having a 747 whistle... or roar... by their windows every two minutes or so.  I'm thinkin' those people were sure glad when Kai Tak shut down.  Me?  I was glad to have survived the landing, which was a close encounter of the disconcerting sort.

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

I will be your father figure (Oh baby)
Put your tiny hand in mine (I'd love to)
I will be your preacher teacher (Be your daddy)
Anything you have in mind (It would make me)
I will be your father figure (Very happy)
I have had enough of crime (Please let me)
I will be the one who loves you
till the end of time

Is all.

I Think I'll Pass

I saw this on the Shoebox blog...

A whole bunch of artists are doing brand new, totally different renditions of Bob Dylan songs. Kind of like Dylan does every time he plays them.

And then I trotted off to investigate.  The first few paragraphs of the review... and it IS a review... had me thinkin' "no frickin' way."  No way in HELL, to be frank.  I detest hip-hop or rap or Urban Whatever and the very thought of one of those asshat "artists" desecrating what is dear to me makes my skin crawl.  Then I had a "waitaminnit" moment as I read on.  A couple of 'em, actually... like these:

The savviest musicians here flip Dylan's messages for their own aims, just as Dylan reappropriated protest songs by civil rights heroes. Celtic-rock stalwarts Flogging Molly take on ''The Times They Are A-Changin' '' -- which itself was inspired by Irish drinking songs -- and reclaim it for Dublin. Sinéad O'Connor recasts 1981's born-again ''Property of Jesus'' as a fiery church-reform anthem. And Carly Simon smartly plays ''Just Like a Woman'' as a feminist ballad. When she sings ''You break just like a little girl,'' it sounds like she's telling Dylan to man up.

[...]

By contrast, Kronos Quartet and Philip Glass sound almost revolutionary on their gorgeous, avant-classical ''Don't Think Twice, It's All Right,'' the only song that appears twice here. It takes major innovation (and some musical-saw interludes) to create a wholly original take on an artist who reinvents his own songs every time he plays live.

Interesting... yet those artists still ain't enough to make me pay the freight.  There's simply too much possibility for too much disappointment.  Make MY Dylan Dylan, please... straight up, no ice, no mixer.

Interesting

This 'toon is obviously aimed at the Geriatric Set...

I'm not sure if anyone but us geezers geddit, mainly coz we're talkin' about a cultural reference from 1953.  1953!  But I could be wrong.

On sort of the same note... Ann Coulter was on Red Eye last night and she lost it a couple o' times on the subject of Newt.  I always thought that woman was a bit of a nut case... now I'm convinced she's nuts.  I understand being supportive of your candidate (she's a Romney fan) but bein' batshit crazy, to the point of shrieking, yelling, and constantly interrupting someone who might not think the way you do, is over the top.  Which is the problem with zealots, on the left or on the right.  Neither flavor works for me.

Coulter really worked Fox a lot yesterday.  I looked for the Red Eye clip and couldn't find it... but this is close:



Nutcase.