Cyd Charisse is gone. She’s best remembered for the Broadway Melody sequence with Gene Kelly in Singin’ In The Rain. Charisse was later featured in a relatively unknown movie called Party Girl, directed by Nicholas Ray, who made Rebel Without A Cause. Charisse, lookin’ great at 36, had a couple of big dance numbers in Party Girl, and you can watch them on the video player.
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Category: All Posts
Coaxing Coax for FiOS
Six months ago I talked about my options for TV on the remodeled porch. I was going to string coaxial cable with the assumption that the analog channels on Verizon FiOS TV weren’t going away. Well, they went away. But now I have something much better. Free FiOS TV.
Verizon provided two free digital converters. They don’t control the HD DVR like a full-featured set top box can, but they give me everything I want. The converter needed to be small for the porch, and I was frustrated that I couldn’t find a picture of one online. So here one is.
It’s the Motorola DCT-700, and as you can see it’s plenty small. It’s sitting on top of a Magnavox DP100MW8 DVD player, made by Funai, that I bought at Wal*Mart for $27.88. I think this is the best inexpensive DVD player, partly because it has an S-video output, which is something other super-cheapie models have been dropping. The picture is excellent on the old Sony XBR 32-inch set, but on the Panasonic video projector its progressive component video image can’t compare to my Panasonic DVD-recorder.
My friend tastewar lent me his well-stocked tool kit, and after my contractor drilled a hole in the floor of the porch, Eric and I strung new RG-6 coaxial cable. Eric got the hang of using the stripper and crimper, and soon I was ready to activate the boxes online. The process took about 20 minutes, and when it was done everything worked. Thanks again for the parts and loan of the tools, tastewar!
Happy as I was with having FiOS TV on the porch so I can watch The Colbert Report up there, I’m even happier now that downstairs I have all of the HD channels I was supposed to be getting. My friend across the street and my buddy Bismo followed my lead and got FiOS, but both had many more HD channels than the meager five I was getting. A phone call to Verizon fixed that in a matter of minutes. What a difference! I now have over 20 HD channels. I also now have access to free Video on Demand HD programs, about which I’ll be saying more in my next post.
Am I mad Verizon didn’t set the HD service up right in the first place? Not really. Did I hassle them for a credit? Nah, not after getting two free digital converters. What’s the second converter doing? It’s set to Comedy Central and patched into the DVD recorder. Its sole purpose is for recording The Colbert Report for my friend Morris, who doesn’t have cable TV.
So just who the heck is Larissa Kelly?
Last month, this blog saw a ten-fold increase in its hit count, thanks to my posts about Jeopardy! champ Larissa Kelly. A comment from Anonymous that you’ll find back here says that UC Berkeley has done “a big splash” about Larissa. Click here. You can tell the article was written at a university — it includes footnotes! Thanks for the tip-off, Anonymous. I read a lot of your poems in English Lit.
Five Dead In Iowa
Tuesday afternoon I saw my eye doctor, who gave me good news and bad news. Good news is my retina is healing fine from the laser ZAP! last week. The bad news is, it’s still healing, so I can’t go running for at least another two weeks. Running on the road, that is. I can get on a treadmill, so that’s what I’ll do, at the gym at work.
Driving back to work after the appointment, I went over the Zakim Bridge and past whatever Boston Garden is being called these days where, minutes ago, the Boston Celtics won the NBA championship. The last time they did that, 22 years ago, I was living in a one bedroom apartment in Melrose, Massachusetts, and Carol was a couple of months away from moving in with me. That was a very long time ago.
But I want to at least mention Iowa, because I feel so sorry for those people. They have a lot more to worry about now than $4.15 gasoline. What a mess out there. So many lives disrupted, and an entire region’s economy devastated. The Boston Globe has an excellent set of photos of the flooding in Iowa at this link. The first one, of a tornado, is terrifying, and looks as though it could almost be a special effect in a movie.
My buddy Dennis made some noteworthy comments about what’s happening in the midwest.
When bad things happened in New Orleans, those on the religious right proclaimed that it was “God’s Wrath on Sinful New Orleans.” So, what is this? “The Heartland” is facing the same wrath now. Maybe because Iowa voted for Obama? Where is the “They had it coming” and “Well, they built the city below water level” stuff? I’m sure that 50 years ago, most of the land flooded in this disaster was farmland and absorbed the water in time. Today, houses and buildings sit there, awash in a toxic sludge. Would someone say “They had it coming”?
Good question. Why is the flooding of Cedar Rapids and Des Moines different from the punishment that Hurricane Katrina was supposed to be for the sinfulness of New Orleans? I would add the question, why are so many who claim to feel the forgiveness of Christ so full of judgment, and lacking in forgiveness themselves?
Is It a Bird? A Plane? No! It’s Free Souffriau!
D.F. Rogers wants more Mega Mindy! He didn’t even have to ask, I just know. OK, so maybe I want more Mega Mindy too. She’s played by a woman with the unlikely name of Free Souffriau (SUE-free-oh). Free is quite versatile, and as you’ll hear her English is impeccable. I still haven’t heard how Karen, Kristel, and Kathleen of K3 are with English.
The first video has a live performance of the Mega Mindy theme song with a band and no lip-synching. Near the end she holds out her mic and you can hear the kids singing along. Isn’t that great? The second video on the playlist has Free out of costume, being interviewed with, and by, kids, followed by a video of a song from the show, “Toby Toby.” The last video is the most interesting, with Free as herself, free of Mega Mindy.
Cilla Black, British Import
Will the three K’s in the girl group K3 ever find fame beyond Belgium and the Netherlands? I suspect not, with language being the reason why. Do any American network television producers even know about K3? Oh, yes. As of yesterday I am 100% sure of that.
But now let’s go back to 1965, when Petula Clark had a string of hit records that was perhaps unprecedented for any solo female singer. Certainly no other British woman has met with such success before or since. Julie Andrews specialized in musicals, of course.
Dusty Springfield broke onto the U.S. charts some months before Petula, and she was quite successful, although she never had a #1 hit here. But there was also another female English solo singer seeking success in America. Cilla Black was, like the Beatles, from Liverpool, and she was likewise discovered and managed by Brian Epstein.
Cilla Black provides an interesting contrast to Petula Clark. They’re both petite, with strong voices, but where Cilla’s appeal was being cute and coy, Petula’s primary charm was sexiness. With great popularity in England, Brian Epstein behind her, and George Martin producing her records, Cilla had the necessary advantages to succeed in America. But it didn’t happen.
Cilla Black made one appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. It was on September 12, 1965, the same night the Beatles made their last live appearance for Sullivan. I featured a bit of it at this link eighteen months ago. And this is Cilla on that night.
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In the recording studio, Cilla had the benefit of not only George Martin, but several songs written by Paul McCartney.
The first is “Love of the Love,” from 1963, which I think should have been done in a more laid back style.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/JUN/LoveOfTheLoved.mp3]Then there’s “It’s For You,” from 1964, which I think has Martin making Cilla sound conspicuously like Shirley Bassey, who he had recorded recently singing the famous “Goldfinger” theme.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/JUN/ItsForYou.mp3]… and “Step Inside Love” from much later, in 1968, with production values that point towards George Martin’s work with McCartney on “Live and Let Die.”
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