Cartoonist Jimmy Johnson has had some of the same sorts of struggles with his WordPress installation that I did. He’s working on a new and improved Arlo & Janis.com, and for now I have taken the site off my Links section.
Until Jimmy has the site back online, I recommend reading the origin story for his comic strip’s namesake characters. Click the pic to get started on the series.
A friend of James Bama reports that the great illustrative painter has passed away, the day before his 96th birthday. Often working from photographs, Bama had a more realistic style than his contemporary, Frank Frazetta. He’s best remembered by comic book fans for his dynamic Doc Savage paintings, when the pulp magazine stories were reprinted as paperbacks, beginning in the 60’s.
Happy Birthday to Prue!
It’s not often that I need cash on hand anymore, but today I probably will at a social gathering. While standing at the ATM in the alcove of my bank, the background music played Cheap Trick’s super cover of Roy Wood’s “California Man.”
This is the original by the Move. Jeff Lynne was in the lineup with Roy, when they were also the creative team behind ELO.
https://youtu.be/Upce8udOVnA
The collaboration of Noel Coward and David Lean produced some of the finest films in British cinema. One of them is the superb This Happy Breed, starring Robert Newton and Celia Johnson.
Remembered for playing villains, Newton is anything but menacing in this role. Celia is beyond wonderful, as she always was.
This is a YouTube video that’s sure to be pulled, so don’t save it for later. Watch it now.
https://youtu.be/8_6eBYUWk2Y
A perfect double-feature with this film would be the previously featured Here Come the Huggetts.
I have been listening to BBC radio stations since they first became available online. Before that, NPR began carrying selected hours of the BBC World Service.
This is the complete list of BBC radio stations.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/stations
Whether it’s the widely heard Radio 2 in London, or local station Radio York, announcers are actively engaged with their listeners in a way that’s nothing like American talk shows. (Which reminds me to say that when I renewed my SiriusXM subscription, I stepped down to the level that doesn’t include Howard Stern. Never have and never will listen to him.)
A favorite BBC station of mine is the sister of spoken word station Radio 4. Radio 4 Extra is where radio plays and features of all sorts from the archives can be heard.
The Beeb is under the same sorts of partisan attacks that NPR gets, with calls to change the funding model. The New Yorker has this to say.
Between 2010 and 2019, the BBC’s budget fell by thirty per cent in real terms. Punishing negotiations with the government have forced the corporation to find savings of up to a billion pounds a year.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/18/can-the-bbc-survive-the-british-government
I am sufficiently interested in, and devoted to the BBC, that I have ordered the Kindle edition of the new book that’s cited in the article.
