Friday!!

Garage Sale season starts tomorrow... cowboy up!

Wednesday Forgotten Oldie...

"I Think I Love You" is a 1970 single by The Partridge Family, featuring David Cassidy, composed by songwriter Tony Romeo. The song was released at the same time as the debut of the network television sitcom The Partridge Family. During the show's first season the song was featured on the show twice as it was climbing the actual Billboard charts. The song hit number one on the U.S. Billboard Pop Singles chart and in Canada on the RPM 100 national Top Singles chart in November of that year and #1 in Australia and New Zealand in 1971.
The only cast members of the television show to actually participate in the recording of the song were David Cassidy and Shirley Jones. The music on the song was played by veteran studio musicians such as Hal Blaine, Larry Knechtel, Joe Osborne, Louie Shelton, Tommy Tedesco, and others.

Still worried about the end of the world?

Don't be....

So my son went to New York on spring break...

He met lots of fun people. Recognize anyone?

Na na na na na na na....

BATMAAAAANNNNNNN!!!

(Have a great weekend guys!!)

Survivor - One World update

Ha ha ha!! That's how I feel after last night's episode... Colton is gone. Unfortunately he didn't get blindsided or fall victim to strategy from other players, he got medi-vacced with acute appendicitis.
Now you may have noticed I didn't update last week. I tried. But I couldn't write a summary without expressing my personal feelings about Colton. And I wasn't alone... the CBS blogs were loaded with comments from fans that despised Colton, and even said they couldn't watch the show anymore because of Colton. There has never been such a negative reaction to a Survivor contestant in the 24 seasons of the show!
So, to recap- last week Jeff Probst dropped a bomb when the tribes were re-formed. As luck would have it we wound up with a young, strong tribe and a weak tribe of misfits (led of course by Colton). Probst called the two new tribes "the mighty and the scrawny". The strong tribe won immunity, and for the second week in-a-row Colton engineered the removal of the tribe-mate he disliked most... bye bye Monica (one of the strongest members of the weak tribe by the way).
On to this week. We join our crew of castaways as Colton and Alicia are repeatedly telling Christina that she's the next one to go, for no reason other than she's the person on the tribe that Colton dislikes most. Aha, if you had any doubts before you now know that Colton and Alicia are truly nasty human beings! Not nice people!
At reward challenge, the mighty tribe wins and gets to spend an afternoon gorging themselves on Ice Cream and all the toppings you can imagine!
And then... Colton got sick. He got all headachey and complained of terrible pains in his stomach. The medics arrived, diagnosed appendicitis, and took him away. And just to prove one last time that Colton was always all about Colton, he told his tribe he was keeping his immunity idol as a souvenier (instead of giving it to someone he might help). Ha ha ha.
Sooooo.... both tribes were called to tribal council, the mighty were informed about Colton, there was no need for a vote, and Probst told them to drop their buffs because they were merged.
Sooooo... one tribe, everyone battling for him or her self from here on, and no Colton (see picture) to manipulate and get his way (and roll his eyes). Game on! Survivor just got a lot better!

Wednesday's Forgotten Oldie...

Today a song written by Bo Diddley and covered amazingly well by the Yardbirds, "I'm A Man". The song roared to #17 on the U.S. charts in October of 1965, and illustrated the experimentation with fuzz and amplifier feedback the Yardbirds were known for. In my opinion, the song is largely forgotten by oldie programmers today because they assume it's the same song as the Chicago and Spencer Davis hits of the same name... but it's not even close. Best known for launching the careers of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, the Yardbirds were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. They still tour today with two original members, Jim McCarty and Chris Dreja.
The Yardbird version of I'm A Man was featured in the opening episode of the Simpsons' 2007-2008 season on Fox, so even though programmers ignore the song today, Bart Simpson remembers...

Wednesday Forgotten Oldie...

Today's forgotten oldie is from Chase, a nine-member band that climbed into the charts in May of 1971 with "Get It On". Chase combined a lot of Jazz with their rock and roll, their leader Bill Chase had played trumpet with Stan Kenton, Maynard Ferguson and Woody Herman. One of several bands with a four-man horn section (most notably Chicago and Blood Sweat & Tears), the band eventually moved away from rock into jazz. Chase released three solid albums between 1971 and 1974 and were recording a fourth when Bill Chase and two band members were killed in a plane crash, effectively ending the band. But "Get It On" was a great song and was a big part of the summer of 1971 on my radio!

It's official!

Yup, it's official. Phil was wrong. Punxsutawney Phil, the much heralded prognosticating groundhog from Pennsylvania was wrong and Jimmy the groundhog of Wisconsin was right. Phil saw his shadow and said six more weeks of winter, and Jimmy didn't see his shadow and said an early spring. Here's to you Jimmy, and I'm sorry I ever doubted you!

Mondays...

Ugh!

Survivor - One World update

I have to admit I'm still in shock about this past Wednesday's episode... for a number of reasons. A quick re-cap - first the women won the reward challenge securing a tarp and shelter from the rain, Then the men won the immunity challenge easily when the women displayed terrible puzzle prowess. Then, with quite possibly the dumbest move in the history of Survivor, the men decided to give the women the immunity idol and go to tribal council.
Yep, they wanted to vote one of their members off. Using the smokescreen that the "other guy" alliance had been betrayed by Leif and he needed to go immediately, the men marched into tribal council, crowed about Leif's betrayal, and then voted Bill off (see picture).
I was shocked. Jeff Probst was shocked. Somehow Colton, the openly gay guy that just a few days ago was disliked by every contestant, has manipulated his way to leadership in the men's tribe. The whole Leif betrayal was a ruse to get to tribal and vote poor Bill off, and Bill was completely blindsided, but all that was cleverly disguised by CBS editing. And maybe you don't think it was all that shocking. But what was shocking was Colton's many racist comments about Bill... just go read some of the comments on some of the weekly blogs devoted to the show... I won't detail it all here. Colton has advanced to the level of super villain, and now I'm wondering if this isn't the worst Survivor ever.

Wednesday Forgotten Oldie...

Today a novelty song to make a point. The other day I heard a DJ refer to the song "Louie Louie" as a one-hit wonder by the Kingsmen. WRONG! True the Kingsmen had a huge hit with the controversial Richard Berry song, but the band (with various lineup changes) had NINE Billboard Hot 100 hits in the 60's including "Money", "Little Latin Lupe Lu", "Death of an Angel", "The Climb", "Annie Fanny" and today's forgotten oldie. "The Jolly Green Giant" was recorded as a joke, a takeoff on a TV commercial featuring a large green guy selling vegetables. Libby Foods, who owned The Jolly Green Giant brand didn't know how to react... the West coast office sent veggies for the band to give away at concerts, while the East coast office sued them.
Regardless, "The Jolly Green Giant" was never intended to be released as a single, but it roared all the way to #4 on Billboard in 1964... and today remains largely forgotten.

Spring... happening this week!

It's always interesting living in Wisconsin... last Saturday we grilled steaks on the deck, Sunday we had an inch of snow in the morning but it was melted by afternoon, and tomorrow the forecast says we'll have sun and near 60 degrees. Yeah, I can tell it's gonna be a good day!

Here's to Davy!

I guess I'm still in shock about it. I admit it, I was and still am a Monkees fan. Last night I looked through my extensive album collection and sure enough, I own several Monkees albums. More than I remembered actually. But I liked their music, and it got better with every album as the band improved musically. Even a lot of the music they wrote was pretty good.
But my favorite was Davy... he was British, he was funny, his vocals were great, and he always got the girl on the TV show (even though they were usually taller than him).
The news on Wednesday that he'd died of a heart attack was devastating to me. R.I.P. Davy Jones... I'll miss you.

Survivor - One World update

Let's call last night's episode "I Am Woman, hear me roar!" After losing every challenge prior to last night, the ladies kicked butt and won the reward challenge and the immunity challenge.
The reward challenge was a Survivor variation of the Memory Game, and the gals smoked the guys 5-0. It wasn't even close. Even Kat, who took several tries to arrange her objects in the same order as the display, beat her opponent. So the ladies received a canoe and fishing equipment. Surprisingly, they got weird about loaning the canoe to the guys even though it seems to me the guys have helped the women out on several occasions.
In the immunity challenge the men had a huge lead, exposing the women's big weakness again (anything that requires teamwork and the women are lost), but when it came to the thinking/puzzle part of the challenge, the men faltered and fell. Nice comeback girls!
And then the games began... okay, remember we have two distinct alliances among the men; the four muscle guys versus the five weird/other guys. The muscle is led by Matt (see picture) who wants everyone to take him seriously, the others are led by Colton who is showing signs of becoming a tyrant. I'm seriously dis-liking Colton. For a guy who contributes absolutely zero around camp or in challenges, he is becoming the gay version of Russell Hantz. So anyway, Matt finally seems to have figured out an alliance of four on a tribe of nine may not be a great idea, so he spends his time establishing a new alliance with Troyzan. Troyzan agrees with Matt 100%, and then tells the camera that "it wouldn't be Survivor without lying".
Uh oh Matt... looks like you weren't in control after all, bye bye. Strange too, because it appeared that the other guys in his muscle alliance voted for him too. He did not leave the tribal council gracefully either.
Finally it appears that this edition of Survivor is getting good!