In honor o' the day, kinda-sorta... Cat Stevens before he got weird, found Allah (even though Allah was far from lost or misplaced), and changed his name:
I was once like you are now, and I know that it's not easy,
To be calm when you've found something going on.
But take your time, think a lot,
Why, think of everything you've got.
For you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not.
There's something of a minor back-story here. The First Mrs. Pennington and I were goin' through some hard times a couple o' years after Tea For the Tillerman... the album from whence this song comes... came out. To be more specific, **I** was going through hard times, agonizing over my marriage and whether I should go or stay. My father recognized the signs even as I tried to conceal them and he did what any good father feels compelled to do: he intervened. His intervention took the form of a rather strident and forceful "here's what you SHOULD do" and I was less than pleased with his "advice," as might be imagined. We'll not go into any of the sordid details (which were sordid, indeed) but the upshot of this turn was that my father and I didn't speak to each other for a couple o' years after that. "Father and Son" got listened to a LOT immediately following our "talk" and in the days, months, and years that followed. There's a happy ending in that we made nice in the end, thank The Deity At Hand. I think I learned a lil sumthin' from that episode; at least I hope I did.
Today is the day we celebrate the Ol' Man, Dad, Pop, or whatever name you apply to your father. He’s
the guy who is our earliest impression of what it means to be a man...
and the guy who is primarily responsible for molding boys into men. Here's my role model:
Dad in his Army Air Corps lieutenant's uniform, me, and Mom... c.1948 (maybe).
The Wiki has an interesting article on Father's Day... including the proper spelling as opposed to common usage... which includes this lil bit:
Where
Mother's Day was met with enthusiasm, Father's Day was met with
laughter. The holiday was gathering attention slowly, but for the wrong
reasons. It was the target of much satire, parody and derision,
including jokes from the local newspaper Spokesman-Review. Many
people saw it as just the first step in filling the calendar with
mindless promotions like "Grandparents' Day", "Professional Secretaries'
Day", etc., all the way down to "National Clean Your Desk Day."
Heh.
That describes the earliest time period when a movement was on to
make Father’s Day a national holiday… or during the very early part of
the 20thcentury.I
think it’s interesting to note that all those ersatz holidays actually
have a day named for the occasion now… even though they may not be
officially recognized holidays.
But anyhoo: call yer Ol’ Man.
So...
Holding with our tradition here at EIP we have recycled last year's
post on the subject. It occurred to me that I'm Green in at least this
one regard... we do NOT send old blog-posts off to the landfill or
otherwise harm our ecosystem, beyond actually publishing this pixelated
fertilizer. Blog posts have a half-life of at least 5,000 years,
yanno? Coz the inner-nets are forever. Or so I'm told.
That was what we said in 2010 and the year before that. We don't QUITE have a standard Father's Day post aside from what you see above.
The Doors... Well, there are whiskey bars and then there are whiskey BARS and we're thinkin' about sumthin' like this:
The first pic is of YrHmblScrb, ensconced at the Long Bar in the Raffles Hotel, Singapore (and earlier, in Cad's Alley... still in Raffles... a most appropriate venue for SOME of us). Let us quote from the linked Wiki article:
The storied Long Bar, where the Singapore Sling cocktail drink was invented, and which was patronised over the decades by a host of literati, including Ernest Hemingway and Somerset Maugham, was relocated from the lobby to a new adjoining shopping arcade.
The Long Bar... which is indeed long, capable of seating about 30 or more folks... was my very first destination when I got a little free time away from the job, a lil consulting gig I was doing for the late, lamented Ed's Famous Data Company. I was one of two "Pros From Dover" who were dispatched to the Pacific Rim for that gig and the only reason I mention that is the fact my partner in crime had never heard of Raffles, the Long Bar, or Somerset Maugham. We managed to set the boy straight and got him famously, gloriously drunk in the process. The first picture shows me with a draft but there were many, many G&Ts that followed that beer... or preceded it... if memory serves. The upshot was the two of us bein' poured into a taxi at the end of our evening, which might rank right up there as one of the best bid'niz trips ever... if only because we got to drink in one of the most famous watering holes in the entire world. So what brought all this up? Blog Buddy Glenn posted an excellent reminiscence of his round-the-world cruise (courtesy of our favorite uncle) back in '87 and mentioned the Long Bar. We took it from there...
I
got to thinkin'... we've posted a LOT of music over the last four and a
half years that floats our boat, makes our heart sing, brings back
memories of Former Happy Days, or otherwise tickles our fancy. And in
so doin' we have studiously avoided the dregs of our musical experience,
which is to say... Music We Love to Hate. We'll change that with this
post... and you KNOW there may be more. Lots more.
First
up... the supremely over-rated and sickeningly sweet Henry John
Deutschendorf, Jr. This dude is Number-Frickin'-ONE on my list of
artists that make me dive for the remote or the radio button or whatever
that will JUST MAKE IT STOP. All of his songs... any of his songs...
but this one in particular:
Aiiieee. Saved at age 27 by camping out in the frickin' mountains? Spare me. PLEASE.You can get diabetes thru repeated exposure to this shit. That goes for all the rest of his dreck, as well.
And then there's the "If I NEVER hear this again it will be too damned soon" category. The all-time winner:
The one exception: Tina Turner's version, all others please leave NOW. CCR, in particular. And every damned one of those Filipino cover bands that played this song ad nauseam
in every single Angeles City bar I ever set foot in. This is the tune
I'd choose in the "if I had a nickel for every time I've heard this"
category. Coz I'd be blogging from an upscale condo in Miami Beach or
in the south of France if that had ever came to pass. Unfortunately...
We'll not flog this dead horse too much in this first-ever installment of Music We Love To Hate. Let's close with this:
Aiiieee.
Yet AGAIN. Get on back to your Sit-TAY and frickin' STAY there. Don't
abuse my earholes with this shit, ever again.
OK
we're done. For now. You cannot BELIEVE how painful it was selecting
these tunes, Gentle Reader. Please accept my apologies if the songs are
truncated or otherwise incomplete. I'll freely admit I only listened
to the first three bars... if that... of each tune. It IS Music I Love
To Hate, after all. You know there will be more. I'm gonna have fun with this.
Well, we never followed up on that meme, until today. I have to add one more song and that would be Lennon's tune about his own personal dystopia, which never ceases to rankle. We're talking, of course, about this:
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...
[...]
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...
Oh, John... just STFU, will ya? I loves me some Lennon and his collaborative work with Sir Paul is timeless, indeed. But his solo stuff? Too much Yoko and not enough Paul. I have NO ideer why Pandora thinks I'd like "Imagine," but the fact remains I've given this tune a "thumbs down" on at LEAST six separate occasions. We heard the first few bars of the song again today, and that makes me wanna scream at times.
So... what were we listenin' to today? A buncha Beatles tunes, not the least of which was this:
It IS a good day... replete with sunshine, good beer, and a good cigar. It don't get no better than this, even with the odd "tune we love to hate" raising its ugly head. We'll take the good with the bad, coz that's what life is all about, innit?
Too processed and clean for a Belgian blonde, sweet to the point of
almost being syrupy on the palate. There are other Belgian blond ales
that are far superior to this one. Perhaps worth a try if you appreciate
the style.
-- Jason
And...
Notes: A very commercial Belgian ale. And, sadly, this beer might be a
very good beer if it wasn't so damn clean & filtered -- most Belgian
beers are bottled-conditioned. My advice is to skip this beer. It's not
the worse, but there are plenty of non-commercial Abbey-style Belgian
ales out there to drink.
--Todd
It's the sweetness I don't care for, that and a vague "chemical" taste that creeps in as you drink. I'll finish this six-pack; it's not quite at the "pour it down the drain" level of some brews I've sampled. But we won't be buying any more.
That would be the Stanley Cup Final... Game One to be played in Chicago. The experts are almost evenly split when it comes to predicting the outcome. As for me? Not so much. I'll go on the record as predicting a Bruins win in six, mainly coz defense will trump offense, every time. You only have to look at the Broons' last series to realize what that really means. But Game One? I predict the 'Hawks will take the first one and I'm not alone. Check this out:
That's from ESPN.com and you can register yer vote here. If'n ya wanna. And now it's out to the verandah to bask in 100 degree heat and knock back a couple o' Hefeweizens before the festivities begin. It's gonna be a great evening, methinks.
Heh. Another thing we prolly shouldn't talk abut but do: Today is The Second Mrs. Pennington's birthday. It's hard to believe that nineteen year old girl I fell in love with in Tokyo these many years ago turns 57 today. Time DOES fly, even if you're not having fun. Happy Birthday, Paula.
So it came to pass this Ol' Girl and I were having a conversation about cooking recently. She seemed somewhat surprised when I mentioned that I was a damned good cook, not just passable, but GOOD. I asked her how she thought I survived as a single man without bein' able to cook and she answered with sumthin' to the effect of "well, you can eat out... and there's frozen food." All well and good, sez I, but I enjoy cooking when the mood strikes. I watch cooking shows, too. She: You watch COOKING SHOWS? Me: Two words: Nigella Lawson. She: I know why you watch Nigella... she ain't ALL about cooking. Well... true, dat. One of my favorite fantasies always ends with Nigella serving me breakfast in bed. And this is where we get to the "thwarted" bits in this post. I wanted to post Joan Osborne's "Breakfast In Bed" but the video simply doesn't exist on the Tube o' You or anywhere else, for that matter. The lyrics to that tune fit what I was tryin' to get across, to wit:
Breakfast in bed
And a kiss or three
You don't have to say you love me
Breakfast in bed
Nothing need be said
Ain't no need
So, absent the tune o' choice we'll do the next best thing and post sumthin' else by Joan: Just pretend you're hearing "Breakfast In Bed," mmm-kay? Further: Aretha would be PROUD.
Q: What's unusual about that photo? A: There's not one single drop o' condensation on that glass and that's because "it's a dry heat," Gentle Reader. So we went lookin' for a song about G&Ts... coz it's THAT kinda day... and were (a) surprised and (b) disappointed that we couldn't find sumthin' suitable for posting. Yeah, we found a few tunes but there was nothing that floated our particular lil boat. So we'll revert to a favorite we heard while lounging on the verandah. This: Not a bad rendition, that. But I still like the original best:
Well now what is going to happen now is anybody's guess
If I can't spend my time with love I guess I need a rest
Time is getting late now and the sun is getting low
My body's getting tired of carryin' another's load
And sunshine's waiting for me a little further down the road
The lyrics have an entirely different meaning today, as opposed to what I thought they meant when I first heard the song back in 1971. I'm tempted to quote that ol' "plus ça change" chestnut but it ain't quite that... it's sumthin' altogether different.
I've often said I love Pandora because of the way their musical curators seem to be able to reach right into my music collection for the songs they play, no matter what genre I choose to listen to... be it Beethoven, Mozart, The Stones, Steely Dan, Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush, Santana, Leo Kottke, Joan Osborne, and everything else. That's magic, pure and simple. But there's something even BETTER, and that's Pandora's ability to dive into my parents' music collection. Like this: Growing up in my household in the '50s meant being surrounded by music, mostly Big Bands... like the Dorsey Bros, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Glenn Miller, of course. There were others, as well. Crooners like Crosby, Sinatra, and Como. Divas, too... like Ella, Kay Starr, Edith Piaf, and Peggy Lee. EVERY single Broadway show Rogers and Hammerstein ever produced. My parents seemingly had it all and those were my musical foundations. So. Ain't technology grand? I can sit out on the verandah and be transported back into my very early youth while listening to Pandora and sipping my beer... and then I can come into the house and go on The Tube o' You and resurrect those old tunes and performances to my heart's content. Yours too, Gentle Reader... if you have a mind like mine.
Click for larger and note their belt buckles. I wanted one of those shiny brass buckles ever since I saw my first one, back in the late '60s when I was assigned to Wakkanai Air Station. I knew some Russian linguists who had been assigned to the 6912th Security Group in Berlin before coming to Wakkanai and it seemed like every single one of those guys had one of those belt buckles. Soviet military paraphernalia was fairly rare back in the day, unless you traveled from West Germany to Berlin on the Duty Train, which was one of the few ways for American armed forces to get to Berlin. Minor digression: One could fly into Berlin or ride the duty train and in VERY rare cases, drive in a convoy, if you had the proper permits. So what does that have to do with belt buckles? This: the duty train would stop three or four times on its way into Berlin and its occupants would be "inspected," as in "show me your papers." It also turned out that the Russian troops doing these inspections would give up just about anything on their person for a carton of cigarettes or a bottle of Jack Daniels. And I mean ANYTHING... hats, belts, uniform items, badges, rank insignia, and so on. I think the only thing those guys wouldn't trade away were their sidearms, or so I was told. So. Fast forward 20-some years, when EDS sent me off to Moscow on bid'niz. One of the big off-duty attractions while I was there was this big-ass open air flea market about six or seven subway stops from our hotel and we went to that market a couple o' times. It was there that I found it... this:
It took me over 25 years but I finally got my Red Army belt. I wear it sometimes and most people don't notice the hammer and sickle in the star, which is prolly a GOOD thing. I picked up some other military junk at that flea market, as well. The pics and stories are here and here.
I began following Earth_Pics on Twitter a couple o' few weeks ago for stuff like this:
The individual photos are much larger... this is just a matrix view of recent tweets. You get about a dozen absolutely magnificent photos every day; this is one of the best "follows" I've ever had, bar none. Highly recommended.
