A no-skip commercial

The first brand-new car I ever bought was a 1988 Mazda 323. It was okay for the first few years, but then it started having problems. I kept if for ten years, sold it with 125,000 miles on it, and I haven’t bought a Mazda since then. With gas prices headed back over four bucks per gallon, I don’t see performance as being a big selling point, but I sure do like Mazda’s new commercial with Bo Diddley doing Road Runner.

http://youtu.be/aAwnN8n2_-E

Here’s the complete original performance by Diddley. I don’t know where this was filmed, but I’d say it was in England or Europe.

http://youtu.be/WOOFx9c6qyA

Art depreciation

After sixteen years of sitting in the same spot at work, I have to move to another floor in the building, at least temporarily, because of remodeling. The building has a lot of original art, and some of it is very good, but I won’t be appreciating what I will see every time I look up from my desk. I’ve heard several different interpretations of this picture and a similar one next to it, and none of them are very positive, including my own.

Emitt’s Merry-Go-Round

On my Logitech Media Server network I’m listening to Barnes Newberry’s online radio show, My Back Pages. Barnes played a couple of songs by Emitt Rhodes, who’s one of those musicians that seemed to have all of the ingredients needed to be a big name, and yet superstardom eluded him. Rhodes did some excellent stuff, and I remember alternative FM station WBCN in Boston playing his solo album, with the song Fresh As a Daisy.

Emitt was only seventeen when his band The Merry-Go-Round had a minor hit with She’s a Very Lovely Woman, and it holds up very well today.

A knight without armor in a savage land

I’m having a Have Gun – Will Travel marathon on the Roku. Netflix has HG-WT through its deal with Starz — a deal that expires on Wednesday, so I’m going through as many episodes as I can before then.

Most of what I’ve read about the Netflix-Starz contract focuses on the loss of recent hit movies, but my preference for casual viewing is for TV shows from the late 50’s and the early 60’s, like Have Gun – Will Travel, and Leave It To Beaver. (I like The Dick Van Dyke Show, but don’t revere it as others do.) How much money can there be left in owning the distribution rights to a 50-year-old TV series, anyway? It doesn’t appear that any restoration work was done on Have Gun – Will Travel, so any money it makes now must be pure profit.

This is my entertainment center, in the corner of the 4-season porch, where I do most of my TV viewing.

I’ve been considering replacing my 13-year-old Sony 32XBR100, but being the best conventional NTSC TV ever made for consumers it’s perfect for SD 4:3 material. If too much of the good, old stuff disappears from Netflix, and/or Turner Classic Movies goes HD, I’ll see about re-purposing the venerable, and extremely heavy, Sony as a setup for classic video gaming and getting a flat panel TV for the porch.