Breaking the Blog…

I guess it’s obvious at this point that I am taking an extended blog break. Even though I had hinted about it for a while, I clung to the idea that I could post a couple of times a week and continue visiting other blogs. But that’s just not going to happen right now.  

Thanks for all the inquiries, emails and even the snarky comments. I assure you that “nothing’s wrong”. I am not sick, I’m not angry at the blogosphere and I am not in jail. I’m just really busy in almost every area of my life right now and have found it difficult to carve out some time to blog.

I may pop in occasionally over the summer with an update but otherwise I am calling a break to the blog (and Twitter and Facebook) until fall.

Thanks again and I hope everyone has a great summer…

Friday Five - “Bad” Songs

I’ve been a bad blogger lately. I haven’t written many posts, I’m rarely reading other blogs and even more rarely commenting. Suffice it to say that I have a lot going on right now (with even more to follow) and blogging is pretty far down on the list of priorities. I may even be taking a blog break in the near future.

In the meantime, here are five six songs with the word “Bad” in the title:

• Badfish by Sublime
• Bad Side Of A Good Time by Drag the River
• Born Under A Bad Sign by Albert King
• Bad Habit By Offspring
• Bad Days Ahead by Michael Dean Damron
• I’m Bad, I’m Nationwide by ZZ Top

Of course there are others… don’t be silly!

Update - I think I got the Box.net widget to work. Look the the right and click a song to listen. The files are the copyright material of the individual artists and are presented here only for purposes of demonstration and discussion. Now, someone let me know if this thing works…

Have a non-bad weekend!

Random iPod Shuffle

Nothing much to write about today so, once again, you get a little peek into my iPod:

• Hideaway - Freddie King
• The Angels Rejoiced Last Night - The Louvin Brothers
• I Turned Out A Punk - Big Audio Dynamite
• Fix It Jesus - The Blind Boys Of Alabama
• Everybody Hurts - The Meat Puppets
• I’m Getting Sentimental Over You - Frank Sinatra
• The Boys Are Back In Town - Thin Lizzy
• She - Gram Parsons
• Lay Down - Priestess
• Crack Shot - The Fox Hunt
• All The World - O’Death
• Who Do You Love - Bo Diddley
• I Will Buy You A New life - Everclear
• Wabash Cannonball - The Carter Family
• Mystery Train - Elvis Presley

Well, that was ridiculous…

Friday Five - Nation Songs

We’ve done states and cities in song so why not nations?

Five songs that mention the name of a nation in the title:

• A New England by Billy Bragg
• Mexico by Incubus
• America by Razorlight
• Spain by Chick Corea
• Impossible Germany by Wilco
• Mexico by Dick Dale
• Going To Brazil by Motorhead

Yes, I realize that was more than five but I also know there are more so…

At any rate, have a great weekend whatever country you’re in!

Random iPod Shuffleation

Hmmm… what should I write about today? Clinton’s big win in PA?

Nah… How about some music from the iPod?

• White Lightening - George Jones
• Clash City Rockers - The Clash
• Hey Joe - Jimi Hendrix
• The Wicks Have Met - Wrinkle Neck Mules
• Punk Rock Girl - The Dead Milkmen
• Doin’ My TIme - Johnny Cash
• China Girl - David Bowie
• Pony Blues - Sonny Boy Nelson
• Freak Scene - Dinosaur Jr.
• God Loves His Children - Flatt & Scruggs
• Thirteen - Wilco
• Killing The Blues - Allison Krauss and Robert Plant
• Calling In Twisted - Reverend Horton Heat
• Lola - The Raincoats
• Hard Time Killing Floor Blues - Chris Thomas King

So there. Take that, Hillary!

I’m Back.

After a week and a half away from blogging, I returned to find that I have nothing to write about! I haven’t really followed the news or current events as most of my leisure time was spent cooking, doing yard work and chauffeuring my son around. I also got a rather drastic haircut and a severe case of poison oak. Exciting, I know.

We did manage to find the time to rent several DVDs and saw a couple of movies on TV as well so I guess I’ll write about those:

• Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story - We saw a trailer for this in the theater earlier this year and thought it looked funny. It was… the trailer that is.
• Raiders of the Lost Ark - The kids had never seen any of the Indiana Jones movies. Almost three decades on, it’s still pretty good and I was really surprised at how good the special effects have held up.
• There Will Be Blood - What is it with these Oscar nominated movies? I didn’t care much for this one. The narrative was disjointed and I thought Paul Dano’s performance was better than Daniel Day-Lewis’.
• Alvin and The Chipmunks - Yep, the kids again. Cute, innocently silly, nice special effects and I’ve had that stupid “hula-hoop” song stuck in my head for three days.
• Grand Theft Parsons - We caught the last 2/3 of this one on the IFC channel. I had wanted to see this since it first came out but never got around to it. I wish we’d seen the beginning but what we saw was quite good. It is an absolutely unbelievable plot though. Of course it’s based on a true story.
• My Boy Jack - On PBS last night. This was a wonderful film adaptation of David Haig’s drama, starring Haig as Rudyard Kipling, Kim Cattrall as his wife Carrie and Daniel Radcliffe as their son John (Jack) who died in WWI after Kipling called in favors to get the nearly blind teen into the war.

It’s worth noting that the two movies we found most interesting were the two we saw on TV!

Well, that was my week in a nutshell. I plan on posting a bit less frequently for the next few weeks and I’ll spend the time in between catching up with everyone.

Friday Five - Vacation Songs

What else, right?

Five songs mentioning ‘vacation’ (or ‘holiday’ for the British speakers) in the title:

• Vacation by Simple Plan
• Holiday in Cambodia by The Dead Kennedys
• Vacation by The Go-Go’s
• Holidays in the Sun by The Sex Pistols
• Permanent Vacation By Aerosmith

Throw out some others if you can think of them.

My vacation is nearing its end and I will return to semi-regular blogging next week.

Have a great weekend!

On Vacation!

Beginning today, I am officially on vacation!

I won’t be around the computer very much and I won’t be be posting anything this week except for a guest post at Two Write Hands on Wednesday and a prewritten Friday Five which will post automatically.

In the meantime, check up with me on Twitter and have a great week!

Friday Five - TV Theme Songs

Is it just me or are the more recent TV theme songs pretty lame by comparison to those of days gone by?

Maybe I’m just getting older but it seems that the best TV music happened between the 60’s and the 80’s. Here are five of my favorite TV themes from yesteryear:

1. From Sanford and Son - Streetbeater by Quincy Jones. A great show. A great song. What else do you need?
2. From The Benny Hill Show - Yakety Sax by Boots Randolph. Can anyone hear this song without immediately thinking of the late great Mr. Hill? Bonus: check out Chet Atkin’s Guitar version (called Yakety Axe, of course)
3. From The Dukes of Hazzard - Good Ole Boys by Waylon Jennings. Waylon Jennings was one of the few good things about this dog of a show (and the movie that inspired it).
4. From Hawaii Five-0 - The original orchestral theme by Morton Stevens. The Ventures’ cover is commonly believed to be the TV theme but it’s a later version. I loved watching 5-0 as a kid but only for the first 30 seconds or so.
5. And from The Beverly Hillbillies - The Ballad of Jed Clampett by Flatt and Scruggs:

 

Lots of trivia and legends about that last one… This song was written for the show by producer Paul Henning and it WAS recorded by Flatt & Scruggs NOT by studio musicians. But for some reason the studio executives decided to bring in singer Jerry Scoggins to re-record Lester’s vocal track. Why? Because they thought Mr. Flatt sounded too “Country”… Right, too country for a show about a bunch of hillbillies from the Ozarks? Go figure… There’s also a video posted on the internet which claims some generic bluegrass noodling is “the original” theme music. This too is false. Another version of the song was used in the horrible 1991 movie,  again with Scoggins singing but with banjo viruoso Bela Fleck and Randy Scruggs (Earl’s son) providing the instrumentation.

So there you have it. Five of my favorite TV theme songs And yes, I realize that 3 of the 5 are not technically songs…

So what are your favorite TV Themes?

Great Headline…

As seen on Goofball.com

Surely someone should have caught this! If anyone can confirm that this is a real headline, I’d appreciate it.

 If anyone can confirm that this is a photoshopped fake headline, I’d appreciate that even more!