Ah. Doesn't it make ya wish for days gone by? When good people were free to drink and smoke on teevee (as opposed to only the bad guys) and there were flat-out hotties around like Ms. Rigg? I mean hotties in that sophisticated and oh-so-stylish sense, of course. These days one tends to equate female hotness on the tube (but not in Real-Life) with bein' slutty... more or less... or is that just me?
This prolly sounds-oh-so-trivial to those of you with normal lives, which is to say being in possession of your very own washer and dryer. Read also as: NOT having to deal with laundromats. Ever.
I shall now join your company. Which isn't to say I figgered out a way to squeeze said big-ass appliances into El Casa Móvil De Pennington. Nope, not that, for it would be a near impossible task and I say "near" only because we all know nothing is actually impossible.
Just this: I found out this morning that our local dry cleanery also provides a "wash and fold" service for a mere one and half Washingtons per pound of dirty laundry. That sounds more than reasonable to me and we dropped off our filled-to-bursting laundry bag on their premises about 20 minutes ago. We shall be rewarded with packages of freshly laundered Levis, tee shirts, towels and the like on the morrow... and for a mere pittance of a fee. Which we'll gladly pay so as not to spend four hours in the company of oh-so-interesting people and their oh-so-interesting offspring doing less-than-interesting things.
Ah. Saved. In many more ways than one. You really have NO idea what a welcome development this is, Gentle Reader. It kinda sorta takes me back to Former Happy Days Part II, when we dropped our laundry off each and every week with this really nice Vietnamese couple just up the street from my apartment in Beautiful-Beserkeley-By-The-Bay.
Sent along by blog-bud Lin, a long-time rider who owns a vintage Norton and was once an officer in the US Norton owners organization. Like all humor, there's a grain of truth in this (if not a whole frickin' dump truck full). I tend to agree, never having been one of those guys who ride in the "sit up and beg" position. YMMV, of course.
We're (obviously) renewing our acquaintance with Blue and it's been at least a year and more likely two since we've had the pleasure. I'm struck immediately with just how light the taste is... and that's not all bad. Blue prolly falls into my "summer beer" category now, which is to say light on the palate, crisp, and most definitely NOT overbearing in any way, shape or form. But if it's REAL beer criticism you're looking for I'd suggest you head over to Beer Advocate. Be advised: they don't look kindly on Ol' Blue, rating it a C-minus and determining the beer is "not worthy." But taste is ALL in our mouths, n'est-ce pas?
So. It's a war, after all. And blog-bud Dan posted one of my... ahem... favorite old war horses. You just can't go wrong with Led Zep when it comes to straight-ahead rock 'n' roll, after all is said and done. They do a good job in the pretentious category, too... with MANY fine examples on Physical Graffiti.
But we're on about war horses here. I racked my brain for an inordinate amount of time on this one... for all of about four minutes, which is all the racking my poor ol' brain can stand these days... before I came up with this, another old friend with whom we've spent many an hour. About which, and before we begin, let's quote The Wiki:
In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine listed it at #25 on its list of "The 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time."
Deservedly so. Let's do it.
Boy, does this EVER work for me... on oh-so-many levels. It's got killer guitar, honkin' sax, and is just drippin' with sexual angst. The guitar solo at the end just might be Mick Taylor's finest work, ever. But it was usually the angst we were on about in the way-back. "Throw me down the keys," indeed. These days? Not so much. We're ALL about the memories now.
I've spent my morning neglecting my usual, customary, and reasonable blog-reads (with some exceptions) in favor of consuming a lot of the press on Stevie Y's new job, the reactions in the hockey world, and those of 19's MANY fans, yadda, yadda, yadda. And there is a TON of such reading to be had. I know there's all of about one of you Gentle Readers who might actually care about such things... so this link's for you, SN1. George Malik... the preeminent Wings blogger... has the best recap on the subject (and it's a link-fest). It's great good stuff. And this is but one of about elebenty-lebben of his posts on the subject.
Exit question... unrelated to the above... just WHAT is up with the NHL's scheduling of the Finals? Why must we wait until frickin' SATURDAY for the show to begin? Why not tonight? Or tomorrow, at the very latest? This sucks.
My favorite type o' clouds... at my favorite time o' day:
Mammatus clouds are fairly rare... they're also associated with severe weather.Both images were taken with my SLR with the 50mm lens mounted, rather than the grab-shot camera. The first pic was taken in full-auto mode, the second in shutter-priority mode at f1.4 and 1/320th of a second. The second shot is much closer to the true color of the sky.
I'm tempted to put out words out to the effect that this tune helped me get laid a lot. That may or may not be true; in the end any man with half a brain knows that women are the ones that decide when and where El Supremo happens... if it does.
Still. We included this tune in those "enhance the mood" cassettes we built back in the day and played to good effect during seduction scenarios. Or so we thought. At any rate... this song played in the foreground more than a few times when we got lucky in the way-back, either by accident or by design.
This tune also qualifies for the ongoing-and-still-alive-in-this-theatre guitar war/show... by virtue of the ten-second guitar outro at the very end, which is one of the most emotional guitar solos evar. The interplay between the acoustic and electric guitars throughout the piece is sublime, as well. On the whole: Marvelous.
"It's going to be so weird seeing the name Steve Yzerman attached to anything other than the Detroit Red Wings. You just never thought that would ever happen."
It's happened. After more than a quarter century of service, the Captain is changing ships. Senior vice president Jim Devellano confirmed to The Detroit News on Tuesday that Yzerman had accepted a long-term contract offer to be the general manager of the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Drapes has it right. There's been speculation about Stevie Y and that team in Florida for weeks now, but the general consensus was he wouldn't leave Detroit. I mean... how could he? He's been with the Wings since he was 18, and he's 45 years old now.
But I... like everyone else... understand. Stevie will make an excellent GM and I'm not just sayin' that: look what he did with Team Canada at the Olympics. It ain't beyond the pale to think the Lightning will be Cup contenders in five or six years... but Stevie REALLY has his work cut out for him. It remains to be seen if the Lightning's owners are as enlightened as the Ilitch family.
Update, 1755 hrs: The Ilitches are a class act (from mlive.com):
DETROIT -- Detroit Red Wings owners Mike and Marian Ilitch issued the following statement regarding Steve Yzerman's hiring by the Tampa Bay Lightning:
“Today is a difficult day for us, just as we know it is for Red Wings fans everywhere. It’s hard to imagine Steve Yzerman in anything other than the red and white Winged Wheel as he has been synonymous with the Red Wings and Hockeytown for as long as most of us can remember! We want to congratulate Steve on his new position with the Tampa Bay Lightning. This is an exciting and well-deserved opportunity for him and his family, and we know he will do a terrific job in this next chapter of his life.
“Yet, this is not easy -- we’re having a difficult time, frankly, because Stevie’s been with us from the start and we consider him part of our family. We drafted him as a young and shy 18-year-old -- just a year after we bought the team -- and he has been part of it all: the ups and downs, highs and lows, the Cups, the celebrations, really everything Red Wings over the last 27 years. We watched him grow and develop over the years into a Hall-of-Fame player, a wonderful husband and father and now, a very capable executive.
“We appreciate all Stevie has done for us, our organization and this community, and we wish him all the best. Stevie Y will always be a Red Wing and he’ll always be in our hearts.’’
One of life's deepest mysteries is why WOMEN always... without fail... get to choose "Our Song." A secondary but no less profound mystery is why we men go along with this... erm... stuff. Well, not really. We ALL know why. It's coz women have what we WANT and we, all of us guys, will do what's required to ensure we continue to get what it is we want. And need. Up to a point. I've passed that point and am therefore free to poke fun at "Our Song," in two cases and two cases only. Lord knows there are more, but let's just limit it to The Two Mrs. Penningtons, mm-kay?
First Up... this is the tune The First Mrs. Pennington designated as Our Song:
That would be Len Barry. I'm surprised this song is available on the Tube of You. I would have thought it sufficiently obscure as to be relegated to the trash heap of musical history... but no. Go figure. I hope the song is complete. I still can't listen to it. If I had to choose an "Our Song" for TFMP and I... it would be this:
We got married on a Monday as fate would have it and that song was in the Top Ten the week we married. I can still listen to this one. It makes me laugh.
Fast forward ten years or so and we get to 1975, or about the time I was courting The Second Mrs. Pennington. TSMP decided we should have not one but TWO tunes that would be Our Song(s) forever and ever or until divorce did us part. The first:
Ah, yes. The ever-popular-but-oh-so-obscure Golden Earring, with their ONE hit. I'll give TSMP major points for appropriate association; I was a Team Chief on a traveling USAF radar installations team stationed at Yokota AB in Japan when we met. There was that.
And then there was this:
Aiiieee. I cringed whenever I heard this song no more than a year after TSMP and I became One. Every. Single. Time. And this time around it remains one of those tunes about which I can only bear the first three bars before copying the embed code. It happens to be the sappiest goddamned song ever penned by man. Or woman. I mean really... "I got a taste of the real world when I went down on you?" Damn. Seriously? Do you REALLY mean that? Or, more to the point... did you?
I'll be the one to choose the next Our Song, if there ever IS a next time. I already have it picked out, as a s'matter of fact. Funny you should ask...
SHE can pick whatever the Hell she wants... whatever floats her boat... but this is mine. Ours.
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. I'll admit that the screen-cap above... reminiscent as it is of electric vomit... is MOST appropriate.
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.
So... I heard some Jerry Douglas on Pandora this mornin' while makin' the rounds and went off to the Tube of You in search of a tune called "Takarasaka." Alas... the clip I found isn't embeddable and more's the pity. But I'd encourage you to chase the link, coz the playin' is most excellent. But this piece is ALMOST as good and might could be better, since it features Bela Fleck on banjo:
But your post inspired me to try something different. So, last time at the market, I looked through their selection and for no particular reason picked out a six pack of Labatts Blue Light. I'd had Molson before but never Labatts. Best beer with food I've ever tasted. Best beer period. So out with the Miller and in with the Labatts. Thanks for the inspiration.
Well, I can now die a happy man... my efforts have borne fruit. Speaking of Blue Light...
That would be SN3 putzing around in the garage in Ra-cha-cha, Noo Yawk... July of 1998. We'd been playing in the summer rain, which is why his hair is so wild.
We have t-storms in the area around us but not ON us... at the moment, anyhoo. There were some interesting cloud formations right around sunset. Two examples:
I'm more than a little disappointed with these shots; they're very grainy for ISO 400. These were taken in shutter priority mode with my grab-shot camera at f/2, 1/1000 and 1/1200 sec (less than a minute apart), respectively.
How 'bout them Hawks, eh? Down 2-0 early in the game they battle back to win it, 4-2... the last goal an empty-netter. The Fish didn't choke in this series, they were simply outplayed by a superior team.
And just how tough are hockey players? Chicago D-man Duncan Keith lost FOUR teeth when he took a puck in the mouth, missed one shift and returned to play the rest of the game. Wow. Tough. To say the VERY least.
On to the SCF...
Update: Toews refuses to touch the Clarence Campbell Bowl, honoring an age-old hockey tradition. Good On Him... the Stanley Cup is officially assured.
Update 2: Keith talks about his injury during post-game interviews... "three on top and four on the bottom."
I was browsing the back pages of Beer Haiku Daily this morning and came across this gem:
Seeking out wheat beers
That go well with my porch swing
As the weather warms
Wheat beer IS the perfect summer drink. Too bad I didn't have this for yesterday's post about Sammy Adams' Coastal Wheat. Too bad I don't have a porch swing, too. Or a porch.
I used to have a home-built swing for two that was suspended under this huge oak tree (50 feet tall, or so) at my place in Oklahoma. The swing was made out of some old park bench-like thing... I inherited it when I bought the house. I spent more than a few quiet summer evenings around sunset in that swing, drinking Labatts... the beer of choice at the time. I loved watching my three dogs romp and stomp all over the place until it got totally dark... at which time they would come lay under the swing and keep us company until it was time to go indoors. Good times.
It's an indoor Happy Hour today... and the reason why is at right. It's miserable outdoors; we've been out and about a couple of times today but only briefly and mostly to move the sprinkler to a different area of the lawn weeds. Our shades are drawn tight against the penetrating rays of Ol' Sol and the AC is gettin' quite the work out. But we'll survive... thrive, even.
So... the Class VI store was out of our favorite suds when we made our beer run out to Cannon Airplane Patch a couple o' days ago... so we brought home a sixer of this stuff:
About which... it's OK. It won't get a spot in our starting line-up, tho. It's merely OK, not super... as the general consensus at Beer Advocate indicates. And life is just too short to drink mediocre beer.
Our cigar this afternoon is a Casa Magna Oscuro and this stick falls into the same category as the beer: OK, but not a starter.
Speaking of starters... our soundtrack is the roar of a disappointed but hopeful crowd at the Bell Centre in Montreal. The Flitterers are up 2-0 with about 13 minutes left in the third period... but the Habs are goin' on the powerplay as we type. I hope I don't have to write another damned crow post.
Maybe not as the entree but most certainly as an appetizer. I wrote this lil bit of prognostication a mere six days ago:
I'm not gonna go on at length right now, but here's how I think it'll shake out: Sharks in six; Habs in seven (or less).
Ahem. Sorry, Charlie. The Fish are sushi; the Blackhawks just won their third straight over the Sharks... in overtime... to take a 3-0 lead in the series. This one is over. The Hawks are just too fast, they dominate all three zones, and Niemi is MUCH better than "good enough" in goal. I'm thinking we're watching the Stanley Cup Final being played out before the East is decided. The Hawks are that good and a sweep isn't beyond the pale. Speaking of the East... I was holding off on my "crow" post after last night's come-back performance by the Habs; had they lost last evening that one would be all over as well. But it ain't over. Not by a long shot. The Canadiens played a statement game last evening and my prediction for the East may just pan out after all. But the point is moot - neither the Habs nor the Flyers are deep enough or strong enough to beat the Blackhawks. This is Chicago's year. I'm pretty confident about that.
So... there I was... waay the Hell off in The Land of Nod, 0815 hrs. I had gone to bed sometime after 0300 hrs and was deep in that sweet spot o' sleep when the phone rang. A way-too-cheery-for-the-hour voice on the other end of the airwaves identifies her sweet self as someone from American Home Patient Services and advises me of her intention to drop by in about an hour and a half with an oxygen monitor for to do this "are we gettin' enough oxygen while we sleep" test my doctor wants done. If'n that's OK with me.
Fine, sez I. C'mon down.
And so we rolled out, fired up the coffee pot, cleaned ourself up, and tidied up the abode so as not to offend anyone's sensibilities.
My new lady friend arrives at the appointed time and proceeds to demonstrate how one employs this device. Except it doesn't freakin' WORK. Dead On Arrival. Oh, well. Sorry about that. See ya Monday.
She really was a nice lady, though, with a way-cool biker tee shirt. We had a short and pleasing chat about mo'sickles and then she was gone.
A couple o' tunes from Dire Straits' first album... first off... "Water of Love:"
I believe I have taken enough
yes I need a little water of love
Water of love deep in the ground
But there ain't no water here to be found
Some day baby when the river runs free
It'll carry that water of love to me
The guitar playin' is first and foremost in this track. The lyrics are secondary and cut a lil bit close to the bone these days. And then there's "Wild West End."
Excuse me for talking I wanna marry you
This is the seventh heaven street to me
Don't be so proud
You're just another angel in the crowd
And I'm walking in the wild West End
Walking with your wild best friend
Dire Straits first album came out when The Second Mrs. Pennington and I were living in Oregon sometime around the 1978 - 1979 time frame and the album immediately became a favorite. Little did we know when the album hit the charts that we would be "you and me/ we can BE/ walkin' in the wild West End" a little over a year and a half later. Fate, and all that... GOOD fate, as it were.Those years in London were some of the best years of my life.
―:☺:―
An update, of a sort... Lou, in comments to the post below, asks:
So, did you wait around to see if DVEST8R was married?
Funny you should mention that, Lou. Just as I was pulling out of the commissary parking lot a comely young captain attired in a flight suit... long strawberry blonde hair tied back in an appropriate military bun... happened to walk right in front of me as I was leaving. I stopped to let her pass and was gifted with an oh-so-brief but dazzling smile in return. Flight suits aren't the most flattering thing that women can wear, but this young lady's bearing... upright, confident, proud... made THAT point moot, as she was a wonder to behold. My mind immediately raced to all sorts of wild conjecture but I put it all away. Immediately. Fantasy is one thing, reality quite another.
The simple fact is this: there ain't a woman alive and on active duty at this point in time that would even think about giving an ol' retread like me a second look. And, truth be told, I wouldn't be much interested if she DID. Unless she happened to be a colonel or a CMSgt on the cusp of retirement, which is to say at the end of a 30-year career. Most of life is vertical (as opposed to horizontal) and I simply wouldn't have much... if anything... in common with someone younger than 50. I might could make an exception if a fling were in the cards, but that's just more wild conjecture on my part. Reality sucks.
