Doing my part to help move the economy along, and move myself along, I bought a Garmin 305 GPS for running. J&R had it for a fantastic price on one of their typically tempting close-out deals.
The damn thing works! Too well. It revealed that my 8-mile running route is actually 7.63 miles, and my 6-mile run is in fact a mere 5.5 miles. Therefore, my pace is slower than I previously believed.
You know what that means. I need to do more running and less blogging!
On NPR this morning I heard author Daniel Wilson suggest that by now, 40 years after landing on the Moon, we could have made it to Mars. But I’m sure he knows as well as anybody that the reason America went Lunar roving was not for its own sake, but to beat the Soviet Union in the space race. With that goal accomplished, the pressure was off.
My opinion is that a journey to Mars is still too ambitious and costly an undertaking. The scenario postulated in “2001: A Space Odyssey” is what I favor — a Moon base with a way station. The future was indeed set in 1969, but it was the Arpanet going online, and not Apollo 11, that changed everything.
Which reminds me. Way back in my first month of turning my old web site into this web log, and I wasn’t yet embedding audio, I said that Buddy Holly recorded only three songs in stereo. That is incorrect. There is a fourth recording, called “Moondreams”, although this particular dub doesn’t bring out the full stereo effect.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2009/JUL/Moondreams.mp3]And back on the subject of Mars, my son Eric has of late taken an interest in the early works of David Bowie, who has a song on “Hunky Dory” called “Life On Mars?”.
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Whoever posted “Life On Mars?” on YouTube disabled embedding, so I had to work around that. I got the poster picture of Bowie looking like Keith Richard playing the Cavern Club from a 1972 issue of Rolling Stone magazine.
As I’ve said before, I don’t keep up with the music biz like I used to do. Bands come and go and I really have no idea — I’m middle-aged, OK? — although recently I’ve been listening to the World Cafe, and playing Music Choice’s adult contemporary channel. Past exceptions to my lack of awareness include Green Day‘s “American Idiot”, which caught my attention instantly, radiohead’s “Creep”, and a song that I can’t believe is already more than ten years old. “The Way”, by Fastball.
I don’t know if this was intended to be an homage to Elvis Costello, but that’s what it is. That’s not a knock! It’s hard to convey just how much I admire something like this, that gets everything right and really gets under my skin, whether it’s a scruffy indie band or a piece of slick, commercial fluff — like this. Forty years ago, “Whole Lotta Love” and “Sugar, Sugar” were on the radio at the same time, and I loved listening to both.
Another tune that I think shows something of the influence of Declan McManus is by a MySpace friend of Lía Pamina en España, named Prudencia Valenica, aka: Prudence.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2009/JUL/NoNameNoPlace.mp3]Love that last chord! Very Beatles-ish. This tune is a real gem. On one of the music programs I mention above, I heard something new from Sting, and it was just a long atmospheric drone with no real idea behind it. In contrast, in just the first ten seconds of “No Name No Place”, it’s obviously a winner. You should listen to everything on Prudence’s playlist. I guess I’m just a frustrated A&R man.
And here’s more of Lía! First her lovely performance of Margo Guryan‘s “Someone I Know”, which borrows from J.S. Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”. Then you’ll see Lia’s creatively animated video for Guryan’s demo of “Love Songs” that she later revised and refined for Margo’s studio recording.
You’ve already seen this everywhere else, but now it’s here too. Sir James Paul McCartney at the Ed Sullivan Theater, a place he hasn’t played since 1965.
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I’m sure you’re dying to see the front door that has caused me so much anxiety. I’ve applied the first coat of tung oil to the threshold. The rest of the wood trim will be primed and painted white. Not sure yet if I’m going to gel stain the fiberglass door or paint it. I’m using an old tablecloth for a dropcloth. Hey, not all of the items I post can be exciting and entertaining!
The Old Guard has now truly come to an end. As Bismo said tonight, it’s perhaps fitting that Walter Cronkite passed away during the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11’s flight to the Moon. This video clip is from a 2007 CBS special celebrating Cronkite’s 90th birthday. The program was produced by Nancy Kramer, who Carol and I helped last year with some background material for an installment of 48 Hours|Mystery.
I also agreed with Bismo when he said that he never warmed up to Huntley and Brinkley as TV news anchormen. Many adults apparently preferred the team, but they were much too severe to appeal to kids. Cronkite was The Man. He narrated the audio book of his autobiography, “A Reporter’s Life”, and I listened to it twice, all the way through. It was abridged from his book, but I trusted Walter to leave in all the good stuff.
Cronkite is indelibly associated with not only NASA in the 60’s, but his live coverage of the assasination of JFK, and his landmark editorial asserting that the Vietnam War, in his opinion, could not be won. Cronkite’s credibility and judgment were held in such high esteem that LBJ realized his Presidency was doomed and he declined to seek re-election.
Another noteworthy accomplishment of Cronkite’s was that he helped introduce The Beatles to America. Here is a video clip from Nancy Kramer’s TV special that I first posted over a year ago.
© 2007 CBS Worldwide Inc.
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Lastly, I would like to point out that Walter Cronkite was a big fan of the comic strip Peanuts, and he wrote the introduction to volume 2 of The Complete Peanuts. Walter cried on air when John Kennedy died, he cried on camera again when Apollo 11 landed on the Moon, he denounced the Vietnam War, he has a Beatles connection, and he loved Charlie Brown and Snoopy. I loved the man and everything he stood for.
