R.I.P., Dan Fogelberg
He died Sunday, December 16, 2007 of prostate cancer. He was 56. Somehow I never heard a lot of his music. I don’t know why. Listening to this song — “Same Old Lang Syne” — makes me sorry I never did.
Archive of entries posted on December 2007
Christmas music, new and old
Mannheim Steamroller has a new CD called Christmas Song. The Amazon reviews are mixed. One of the best oldies I’ve heard recently is Christmas Portrait: Special Edition, by The Carpenters. The Amazon reviews are uniformly top-of-the-line. Two of the more interesting tracks are medleys: one of Here Comes Santa Claus/Frosty The Snowman/Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer/Good …
Work, work, work
Usually I can emulate Tom Sawyer and get some help putting up the Christmas tree and decorating it. Not today. All the family elves were busy elsewhere, so it was me and me alone wrestling with a 5-6 foot sheared Noble fir. Other than getting the damned plugs wrong and having to reroute a string …
1968 and all that
It really wasn’t the hippies that gave us Republican rule, no matter what Brokaw and his father say: it was race. Specifically, it was the Democrats becoming the party of civil rights that finally tipped the South into the Republican Party, which may have been a winning strategy for the party politically, but which has …
By the sea, by the sea
If you’ve been dreaming of snorkeling around coral reefs during a future vacation, hurry, for they may be dead by 2050. “There is a dire future for coral reefs around the world if we continue the way we are going,” said Canada-based United Nations University professor Peter Sale, one of the Science [magazine] paper’s 17 …
Steroids in baseball? I’m shocked, shocked!
Newsday has a very good article on the Mitchell report of his investigation into steroid use in baseball. Those players include Lenny Dykstra, Todd Hundley, Chris Donnels, Mark Carreon and Josias Manzanillo. Lo Duca also is connected with Radomski, as is former Yankees reliever Ron Villone, according to the report. In all, there are 12 …
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Universal health care, achieved!
In a story on ABC News last night their medical correspondent Dr. Tim Johnson put a dollar figure on the various Democratic health care plans of $60-$110 billion a year. Yikes, right? Well, for contrast, the budget for defense spending has been trending upwards of $400 billion a year under George W. Bush. Search the …
Satire, well used
I don’t know who set up this website, but whoever it was knows how to write (Gosh! Could it have been — writers?). While the WGA’s members can clearly stage rallies, concerts and mock exorcisms, maintain unity in a large and diverse workforce, gain the support of a majority of the general public, prompt a …
An idea that died aborning, I’m sure
I was reading Jeralyn’s post about Brokaw’s “1968” program yesterday and discovered a link to a Rolling Stone music trivia quiz tailored to that specific year. I scored 35 out of 40, but that wasn’t what caught me. One of the (multiple-choice) questions was “Who was the lead singer for Big Brother and the Holding …
Programming Note
Monday night at 9:30pm on PBS we’ll get to see the following: Bob Dylan: Live in Newport 1963-65 This program includes unreleased Bob Dylan performances filmed by Academy Award-winning director Murray Lerner at the Newport Folk Festival, 1963-1965, capturing full performances of some of Dylan’s greatest songs. His 1963 and 1964 performances made him popular …