The day... The music...

It was such a Big Deal when it came out.

I thought everyone knew the basic story...

Gloomy Don McLean reveals meaning of ‘American Pie’ — and sells lyrics for $1.2 million - The Washington Post

Here is a link to one of many web sites with the lyrics to American Pie, Annotated: mudcat.org lyrics: AMERICAN PIE--PROGRAM NOTES.

I like the parent site, Mudcat Cafe,for lyrics to obscure songs only I ever seem to have heard of. 

Neither Ford nor Mopar...

A few other sets of wheels that caught my eye at the Federal Way Lions Club Car Show.

Nissan S-Cargo. Who knew the Japanese were given to whimsical punning car names?  Of course, lately they've just had a computer generate meaningless ones...

 Myself, I tried to avert my eyes and ignore the thing, but Mrs. Drang wanted pictures, and her Korean phone refused to take it.

 Mu high school buddy Jimmy had a Chevelle SS.  Good times, good times...

Yes, a VW Beatle..

A bit customized...

Did I say "a bit"...?

When they fired it up, it sounded not unlike a top fuel dragster...

Ponies, and their siblings

This next one is just gorgeous.
Growing up in Detroit, of course, even if one did not have a direct connection to the auto industry, you probably had a relative who worked at one of the plants or maybe in an office.
Not surprisingly, tyhe Henry Ford Museum/Greenfield Village held a classic car show every year, and one of the guys' fathers won with his painstakingly restored Model A.
I told this guy I thought that he'd win, too, if he wanted to flat-bed this back there...

Apparently I didn't get a pic of the rumble seat...

 64 1/2!

Mopar!

The local Lions Club had their annual car show a couple of weeks ago, the photos have been languishing on my hard drive...

As much as I liked my Dakota, I wouldn't own one again until someone I trust assures me that they've started putting a decent transmission in them, something that will stand up to 75k+ highway miles, no towing.
That said, a Shelby Dakota is tempting...

 Not really Mopar, per se, but fully accessorized...

This baby is for sale...

Our pokey little motoring show, held in the local shopping mall parking lot for the last half-dozen years or so, is turning into quite the concourse...

Earworm 9/8/14

Visiting the library last wee I wandered through the music section, and found a copy of "Herb Alpert's Greatest Hits", or something like that. (Distinguished? Distinctive? Something...)

Haven't really talked about it here, but I played the trumpet for a long time. Made First Chair in High School because I was technically more advanced than any of the others, until a couple of them (who probably had more talent) figured out that, if they took private lessons like I was...

Anyway, I enjoyed it, but not enough to pursue it as a hobby, let alone a career. But we all had our favroite players, and Herb was mine.

Ignore the thumping disco rhythm line, and the solo on this is magic.



That put me on a TJB YouTube search.  Same era:

This was probably my favorite.  I had a book of TJB hits, and Mr Bode, my tutor, found it and had me play some for him.  He laughed when I couldn't help but try and play it like on the recording:

Earworm 08/29/14

Can't believe I never heard this one before.

Who's (in) Yer cabinet?

Altrnate Title: Bobbi and Bill, we found your grandma's kitchen cabinet!

Hoosier cabinet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Hoosier cabinet (also known as a "Hoosier") is a type of cupboard popular in the first decades of the 20th century. Named after the Hoosier Manufacturing Co. of New Castle, Indiana, they were also made by several other companies, most also located in Indiana.

The typical Hoosier cabinet consists of three parts. The base section usually has one large compartment with a slide-out shelf, and several drawers to one side. Generally it sat on small casters. The top portion is shallower and has several smaller compartments with doors, with one of the larger lower compartments having a roll-top or tambour. The top and the bottom are joined by a pair of metal channels which serve as the guide for a sliding countertop, which usually has a pair of shallow drawers affixed to its underside. The whole assembly, with the counter retracted, is fairly shallow, about 2 feet deep; the width and height are generally about 4 feet and 6 feet respectively.

Not what one expects to find in a pottery shop in Eastsound, Orcas Island, Washington.

A Hoosier Cabinet.  Sounds like it may have been a fairly typical one.

Flour and sugar dispensers.

Cabinets on top.

In case you forgot what you kept here...

Multi-tasking!

Helpful stuff...

Flour bin.  Kinda small, but the drawer on the other side is another one.

what a mess

A tasty, tasty, mess.

While on vacation, Mrs. Drang asked my mother for a couple of her recipes.  I was so busy enjoying the scenery I failed to chime in with a request for one for my favorites: Mom's Corn Fritters. They were actually corn pancakes, since she cooked them on the griddle instead of deep frying them, but with a side of bacon and covered in maple syrup they were heaven on a plate.

And I woke up on my day off with a hankering.

If only there were some vast, interconnected network, a web if you will, of information...

Oh, wait!

So, after wading through two or three pages of search results, all making pancakes instead of corn muffins or corn bread, I found some that had actual corn in the pancakes, which is what made Mom's so special.

OK, the easy way is a box corn muffin mix, with a can of creamed corn added.

Yummy!  Eventually.  No pics.  To tasty to run get camera.

Mistakes: 

• If adding creamed corn, reduce milk.  I wound up with a far too soupy batter, and adding Bisquik to thicken.  I suppose you could use whole kernel corn, drained if canned, and not have that problem.
• Like someone whose kitchen experience is strictly watching Mom cook, I had the griddle turned up to high, and then turning it down when it was hot enough to cook pancakes.  And then not waiting until it had cooled off enough to cook safely.  Threw half the results out.
• Didn't have all my stuff ready before getting started. The "mess" mostly involved tossing stuff in the sink to deal with later, and in at least one case grabbing the wrong tool.  (Yeah, I know there's a fancy cook's term for this, whatever.)
• Posting to the blog before telling Mrs. Drang -- that sound you just heard is her reading this and wondering what state I left her kitchen in.

Ear Wormage

These gals are local:


From that page I followed a couple of links and found this:

Not quite the same version of Dougie MacLean's "The Gael" as heard on the soundtrack of the Daniel day Lewis version of the Last of The Mohicans, but I'll listen to the pipes any time, and a bagpipe version of the song makes sense, in so many ways...

There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering kaboom!

It's a boson: Higgs quest bears new particle


EDIT:  Title fixed.

!

I have had bad knees since almost when my Army career started.  Made it through Basic OK, went to Monterey and started hitting sick call.  See, that's back before the Army admitted that there was such a thing as "stretching before exercise"--at least they didn't even try to claim that the "Daily Dozen" met that requirement--and all PT was done in Combat Boots, including long runs.  (When I retired, there were still people who felt we should do it that way, "You're not gonna stretch and changed in running shoes in combat...")

The Presidio of Monterey, location of the Defense Language Institute, is built on a hill.  Company A, to which (at the time) all non-Slavic Language students were assigned, was at the top of the hill.  We would do a few jumping jacks side-straddle hops, some push ups, a couple of squat thrusts*, and then run down the hill and then back up it.

The diagnosis always varied, often containing a variation on "patella-femoral", which is a fancy way of saying "Your knee is shot." Amounts to bursitis of the knee.  Started in the left, by the time I retired the right was doing it occasionally.  I used to kjoke about sitting on the front porch in my rocking chair after retirement, rubbing my knee and saying "Yep, gonna rain..." or maybe "Gonna be a rough winter..."

This last winter I realized that I have gained a super power:  When both knees have me begging strangers to grab an axe and amputate, it's gonna rain.  Or snow.

Know anyone hiring a weather prophet?

*Later revealed to be an evil commie plot of an exercise, possibly introduced by the staff of the San Francisco Russian Consulate who liked to hang around PoM....

Auld Lang Syne

Not the highest quality video, and the audio drops out completely at one point, but still...

If you still want it with a Tannahill Weaver connection, here it is by Dougie McLean singing solo, w/lyrics:

I forget which Tanny album it was that included the full song, but the liner notes pointed out that it is not all that cheerful a piece...

Happy Blogoversary...

...to me.

Yay, me!

Courtesy Turk Turon, I learned that there is a no-doubt highly scientific internet "Leading Man/Hero" quiz.

Your result for The Classic Leading Man Test...

Humphrey Bogart

You're the original man of honor, rough and tough but willing to stick your neck out when you need to, despite what you might say to the contrary. You're a complex character full of spit and vinegar, but with a soft heart and a tender streak that you try to hide. There's usually a complicated dame in the picture, someone who sees the real you behind all the tough talk and can dish it out as well as you can. You're not easy to get next to, but when you find the right partner, you're caring and loyal to a fault. A big fault. But you take it on the chin and move on, nursing your pain inside and maintaining your armor...until the next dame walks in. Or possibly the same dame, and of all the gin joints in all the world, it had to be yours. Co-stars include Ingrid Bergman and Lauren Bacall, hot chicks with problems.

Find out what kind of classic dame you'd make by taking the
Classic Dames Test.

Take The Classic Leading Man Test at HelloQuizzy

Not too sure what to make of some of these "raw scores", though:

Compared to other takers

* 91/100 You scored 52% on Tough, higher than 91% of your peers.
* 17/100 You scored 5% on Roguish, higher than 17% of your peers.
* 78/100 You scored 48% on Friendly, higher than 78% of your peers.
* 1/100 You scored 0% on Charming, higher than 1% of your peers.

Me? Not charming? Harumph!

I Have A Bad Feeling About This

By way of this post over at The Adventures Of RobertaX, I learned of a plan to remake The Prisoner.

Oh, dear.

I cannot express the angst this fills me with. Aside from the general wretchedness of most remakes, I figure the chances of ITV/AMC resisting the urge to turn it into a political bash-fest are somewhere in the vicinity of nil.

(Battlestar Galactica being the only remake I can think of that turned out better than the original.)

I mean, yes, The Prisoner was all about the paranoia of The Cold War--but it made a point of being even-handed about it, i.e., the commies were Bad Guys just as much as the Free World. Somehow I doubt there will be any effort at even-handedness...

Also, so much of what was far-fetched fantasy is commonplace technology now.

Ian McKellen as Number 2? Maybe.

Jim Caviezel as Number 6? Local boy does good and all that, but...

Sigh.

This Will Not End Well.