Viacom is suing Google for a billion dollars, but a while back the BBC and Google reached an agreement, and here’s an example of the value of that deal — a 90-minute documentary on the next military target of the Bush administration, Iran.
Year: 2007
Phil Spector
Phil Spector’s songs are sometimes thought of as being so pre-Beatles. The old man producer whose orchestrated post-Do-Wop creations couldn’t compete with the fresh, new Fab Four’s guitars.
But Spector was with the Beatles on the plane that brought them to America for the first time (ignoring George’s prior solo trip), and Spector is, in fact, two months younger than John Lennon. And without Brian Wilson’s admiration of Spector there most certainly wouldn’t have been the stunning Pet Sounds.
Who knows when it happened, but Spector almost certainly must have crossed the line from eccentricity to insanity. And now he’s on trial on suspicion of murder, only a week after his ex-wife Ronnie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, eighteen years after receiving the same honor himself.
Here are three Ronettes songs in glorious stereo, presented as a single track, encoded at 256 kbps. The Phil Spector Wall of Sound, taken from a British LP I bought used 25 years ago and have played dozens of times.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/MAR07/Ronettes.mp3]It’s Stephen Colbert Day in Canada, Eh?
Did you know that tomorrow, March 20, is Stephen Colbert Day in the Canadian town of Oshawa (bless you!), near Toronto? You do now!
Lain And The Wired
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/MAR07/Lain.flv 400 300]
At the recommendation of son Eric, we’re watching Serial Experiments: Lain, a 1998 Animé series. I can see how one might wonder if the concept behind it had some influence on the The Matrix.
The character design for Lain was done by Yoshitoshi ABe, who also came up with the design for the previously-mentioned Niea 7. ABe self-published a manga called Haibane Renmei, which he later animated.
Netflix Fix
The latest update to the Netflix Watch Now player seems to have fixed a problem it was having with correctly determining the available space on my C: drive. Of course, what it should really have is the ability to look for other drives. It would find my D: drive much more spacious.
Netflix has added episodes of Red Dwarf, a British sci-fi TV series my brother-in-law Jim turned me onto years ago. If Black Adder shows up online, then I’ll really be happy!
The Seven Caves Of Mars
My sister Jean directed me to this BBC story, about the possibility of caves on Mars. Maybe they’ll find Commander Christopher Draper in one of them!