A Brief Musical Interlude

I’ve always been a fan of the odd and esoteric when itcomes to music. As a white country boy in western New York in the early 80’s I was listening to Melle Mel, the Sugar Hill Gang, Van Halen, Ozzy and Black Sabbath, Herbie Hancock, Witchfinder General, Buddy Rich, Rush, Pink Floyd, The Grateful Dead – a bit of a mix.

I lke some odd things.  Southern Culture on the Skids, Cherry Poppin’ Daddys, Wall of Voodoo. X. Siouxsie. The Violent Femmes. 18th and 19th century classical music. English broadside ballads.  I find The Clash pretty mainstream and all second- and third-wave ska pop-py. I know the difference between country and western.

PS – I’m old.  

But I have a soft spot for the truly odd. The most hilarious oddball parody? Hayseed Dixie. That shit is funny and good music rolled into one. I once had my wife convinced that I had come up with the idea of covering AC/DC songs as bluegrass and those guys stole it from me (we weren’t a couple yet or she’d have seen right through me), which actually is far from the funniest story regarding our courtship.

Should I Ever Meet Them

I owe these gentlemen a nice dinner, with drinks, on me.

Firefighters in WI save a family’s yellow Labrador by performing mouth-to-nose resuscitation

H/T to PhlegmFatale

Mwuahaaahahahaha

As my friend Joe would have said (though I probably would have had to explain this to him).

If you’ve ever had a dream where you were locked in a room with Alexander Hamilton, a rabid dog, one gun, and two bullets, and in your dream you shot Alexander Hamilton twice….you might be a Libertarian.

Hindsight is 20/20.

 

H/T to Unc.

So…

..last day as an adjunct (P/T faculty). Monday is the first day as F/T faculty, even if it’s only through the end of the academic year.

Finally.

First Car Meme

Sure, why not.

A 1980 Chevrolet C10 – my parents bought it for me in the summer of 1984 as a high school graduation present. 292 V-6, 3-on-the-tree, 2 wheel drive. – talk about underpowered! Of course I didn’t know any better at the time and it represented freedom, so I was happy.

Very similar to this one:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good times in it? Well, it was the summer before I went off to college and I drove it for 3 years so you can connect the dots. Many good times, some bad ones. That was almost 30 years ago so I’m probably romanticizing it as I am wont to do with my childhood.

On The List of Things I Did Not Know

André Roussimoff (André the Giant) used to be driven to school by Samuel Beckett (an excellent if eccentric playwright, mediocre novelist, piss-poor poet and someone who should have never been allowed near television though his radio scripts were hit and miss), whom it seems was friends with his father. Yah Wikiwandering!

I saw ‘Waiting for Godot’ with Steve Martin and Robin Williams back in ’88 (is there anything more pretentious than a review of a theatrical production in the Times, especially back then? TOGL is a sad, sad shell). It was…OK. We saw Robin Williams dragging his son down some street or other and being kind of a dick (it seems he was busy acting, doing meh stand-up, banging his son’s nanny and from what I can find drinking a lot).  This was during my Connecticut-living-prepped-out phase right after college.

Oh, and it’s true – never get involved in a land war in Asia. And study your Agrippa – which I have *g*.  (N.B. I have known the author since he was an undergraduate, his work is solid).

It’s Funny Because It’s True

Via Dean Dad:

Learning to manage difficult students is part of teaching. I knew a professor at Proprietary U who was fresh out of grad school, where she had been trained in finding ever-more-finely-ground evidence of social injustice in the unlikeliest places. Her first class ate her alive. Her exquisite sensitivity left her without the thick skin needed to handle actual people.

This is, in large part, what graduate schools of education do best (my wonderful wife being a glaring exception *g*).

I’ll Have a Large, Please

This Would Be Me

and may well be my friend Craig.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

H/T to The Feral Irishman

 

Supplier to My People

Leon Bean.

I’ve been wearing items from his company for probably 30 years now.; at one time it was some of the best outdoor gear you could buy. That was back when Land’s End still sold nautical gear,  Brooks sold prep staples, Yvon ran both Chouinard Equipment and Patagonia, and Hickey Freeman was owned by Hart Schaffner & Marx, not HartMarxCorp (Emerisque *ptugh*).