Time Machine co-ordinates VICXVIII55683060

And we're back after the week off, and we arrive in 1960 on August 30th.  The only noteworthy thing I hit today was "Boston 2b Pete Runnels goes 6 for 7".

Pete's sixth hit in the first game of a doubleheader with Detroit was a double that brought in the winning run in the bottom of the 15th inning in a 5-4 win.  Pete also got singles in the 13th, 11th, 9th, 3rd, and one in the 2nd on which he scored the first run of the game.  On top of that, he added 3 more hits in game two, two of them doubles, and scored again in a 10-inning win, capping a 9-for-11 day.


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So we shut down last week, which means we have a DOUBLE trip this week:  TWO Panels, TWO M10s, TWO 6Ds, and all this crammed in with 3 debuts and the Top M10 Summer Songs of the Year!  We better get busy!

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The first of two debuts on the M10 last week, it came in at #10- and moves up to 8 this week- Christian rockers Thousand Foot Krutch with a track from 2012:






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Welcome to the Browns on Time Machine!  You certainly have your work cut out for you this week...

Jim Ed:  Yes we do- two Panels!

Bonnie:  How do we want to do this?

Well, why don't we do last week's list first, and this week's in a bit?

Maxine:  So you did a list for EACH week?  So there will be TWO winners?

Potentially.  Four songs DO make both lists- so we also could have the same song win both!

M: I don't know why you would make this so confusing.  I mean, why wouldn't you just do the one week?

Aw, what's the fun in that?  Now here you go with list #1- 9 contestants from 33 stations.

JE:  Okay, so we have one vote each here for these songs:  Tonight's The Night by the Shirelles, which don't even debut for 2 weeks;  Storm Clouds by Buddy Knox, which was actually the flip side of Long Lonely Nights, which never even charted; Larry Verne's cut-up Mr. Custer, which debuts next week at #124- say, are ANY of these songs actually on the charts?

Yeah, Jim Ed, we had a bad "missed the memo week" last week....

JE:  Uh-huh.  Anyway, we also got a vote each for Pineapple Princess by Annette Funicello, which debuts at #90, and finally a hit, Bobby Rydell's Volare at #8.  Maxine?

M:  Boy, I get the bum's rush here!  The only song with more than one vote but not a finalist is the #2 song this week...

JE:  But hey, it's a mouthful!

M: Sure is- Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini by Brian Hyland.

B:  But the finalists for week one are:

Walk Don't Run by the Ventures at #3;
It's Now Or Never by Elvis at #1;
and Chubby Checker's The Twist at #5!

Great!  So while you figure out who to vote for on week #1, here is the second of last week's debuts: #8 the first week, up to #7 this week- the second time on the M10 for an act that was on the very FIRST M10 back in August of 2015!  Brand new stuff from Status Quo...






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Ready for week two?

JE:  Sure!  6 songs and 25 stations...

M:  Say, if you had four songs that overlapped, right...

Yes...

M: and there are six songs TOTAL on the second list- that means there's only two OTHER songs on this list...

Your point?

M: Why are we doing this?

Because it's never been done before!

M: Neither has flying to the Moon, but...

Actually, it has by now...

JE:  Maxine, just read the list...

M:  Fine.  The one-vote songs are Storm Clouds, which still hasn't debuted, Jimmy Charles with A Million To One at #66, and Johnny Bond with Hot Rod Lincoln at #51.

B: I don't know why you get so upset, Maxine!  The finalists for week two are... well, they are the same three songs:

The Twist was at #2;
Walk Don't Run at #3;
And Elvis at #1.  Hmmm....

"Makes things look pretty good for me..."

Yes, it does, but looks could be deceiving.  Tune in at the end and see how it turns out!

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A slam through the Stat Pack shows us our big mover week one was Paul Anka's Hello Young Lovers, 27 spots from 63-36, and the #60 in '60 was Preston Epps with a tune called Bongo Bongo Bongo.  Epps was a bongo player (Ya think?) who had a tendency to put his favorite instrument into his song titles.  On 12 singles and their b-sides, the word bongo (or some form of it) is used 20 times!  The only fairly big hit of the lot was a 1959 #14 with Bongo Rock.

Week one had two major debuts- Bobby Vee's Devil Or Angel in a tie for #100, and Sam Cooke's Chain Gang at #95- and a 51 notch climb the next week to #44 made it week 2's big mover!  The #101 song week one was Connie Francis's My Heart Has A Mind Of It's Own, which debuted the next week all the way up at 40- it would have been the big mover had it been one notch higher.

Week two's 60/60 was yet another iteration of the Beach Boys' later hit, The Wreck Of The John B by Jimmie Rodgers.  Week one Panelist, Tonight's The Night was at #101 in week two, and the UK top songs for the two weeks were part of the Cliff Richard empire- his Please Don't Tease in week one, and the Shadows doing Apache in week two.


Oh, and my favorite?  Roy Orbison with Only The Lonely.  It was #6 week 2.


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And how about the usual Martin irony?  The lone debut this week is ALSO by an act who was on that very first M10 chart!  With a little help from Godsmack's Sully Erna, here's Saint Asonia at #10...






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Hey, here we go with the top ten (actually 11) songs of Summer 2019!

T10- Imagination, Foster The People

T10- Simpatico, Silversun Pickups

9- He's 31, Geowulf

8- Keep In Line, Maybird

7- Now's The Time, Moon Taxi

6- Last Days In August, the Orwells

5- Drugs, M.A.G.S.

4- Running Scared, King Leg

3- Seeing You Tonight, King Leg

2- Mama, ELO

And the top song of this summer-

Agnes Obel with Riverside!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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And now, believe it or not, Bellbottom tells me I am "contractually obligated" for TWO 6 Degrees this week!  So week one goes like this:  Our good friend Elvis had 2 posthumous top 40 hits...

E:  POSTHUMOUS?  You mean I stole 'em from someone?

No, you idiot, it means... well, never mind what it means.  One of them was the Sinatra cover My Way, the other was Guitar Man.  It was originally done in 1967, but didn't get very far.  Elvis wasn't happy with the sound, and he told the producer to "get that redneck guitar picker" who did it first to play on his single.  That "redneck guitar picker" was Jerry Reed, who also played the electrified version that cracked the top 40 in 1981 and hit #1 on the country charts.  And Jerry wrote another song (one of many) called That's All You Gotta Do, at first the a-side of the first hit by a 15-year-old girl whose b-side the record company thought was 'too mature of material' for her.  However, that b-side became the hit, and it is week one's 6D song at #4- Brenda Lee and I'm Sorry.

The week two 6D goes this way:  Well, actually, it becomes yet another of my famous lists.  The song- again at #4, was Itsy Bitsy blah blah blah Bikini, written by Paul Vance and Lee Pockriss, about Vance's own daughter on vacation.  I noticed that this duo had quite a few other big hits, and so, here are their top ten biggest hits:

10- The Playmates, What Is Love, #15 in '59
9- Julia Lee and her Boyfriends, King Size Papa, #15, '48
8- What Will Mary Say, Johnny Mathis, #9, '63
7- The Cufflinks, Tracy, #9, '69
6- Gina, Johnny Mathis, #6, '62
5- David Geddes, Run Joey Run, #4, '75
4- Playground In My Mind, Clint Holmes, #2, '74
3- Calcutta, Lawrence Welk, #1, '60
2- Catch A Falling Star, Perry Como, #1, '58

And of course, the Bikini was the biggest.

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Geez, I'm whupped!  Maxine was right- I'm never doing this again!  Anyway, let me sort out the M10 chaos:

Prom Queen by Beach Bunny held at 9 last week and fell off this one.
Springtime Carnivore's Name On A Matchbook held at 7 last week, nudged up to 6 this week.
Running Scared, in addition to its #4 spot on the Summer Songs, fell last time from 3 to 6, and 6 to 9 this week.
Joy Downer's Stranger Places went up 3 to #5 last time, and one more to 4 this week.
MAGS dropped two spots to 4 with Drugs last week, and another spot to 5 this time.
And the top three did NOT change across the two weeks:

Mikaela Davis pulled into the 3 spot with Other Lover;

The Orwells stepped back to #2 with Last Days In August;

And taking #1 last week, and keeping it this week...

....Geowulf and He's 31!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


And the Panel DID pick the same song each week, and overwhelmingly so- with 51.5% the first week, and 52% this week!  The winner...

....of course, Elvis with It's Now Or Never!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Next week, 1961- and a much easier post (mainly because the POTM is already on staff!)  See you then!

Wednesday Bible Study- a man in a field

On my way to deciding what comes next for the WBS, I decided to ask a question.  But first, a musical interlude of sorts:

I met a Frenchman in a field last night

He was out there with an easel, painting carnival light

He said, I used to paint the princess; I used to paint the frogs

Now I paint moustaches on dangerous dogs

He said, Sometimes it's a country; sometimes it's a girl

You know, everybody got to have a purpose in this world

You Yankees are so silly about matters of the heart

Don't you know that women are the only works of art

You're drivin' with your eyes closed

You're drivin' with your eyes closed

You're drivin' with your eyes closed

You're gonna hit somethin'

But that's the way it goes

-Don Henley

This comes to mind for several reasons, but firstly because my question is about a man in a field:

Gen 37:13  And Israel said to Joseph, Are not your brothers feeding the flock in Shechem? Come, and I will send you to them. And he said to him, Behold me. 
Gen 37:14  And he said to him, Now go, see the welfare of your brothers, and the welfare of the flock, and bring word back to me. And he sent him out of the valley of Hebron. And he came to Shechem. 
Gen 37:15  And a man found him. And, behold, he was wandering in the field. And the man asked him, saying, What do you seek? 
Gen 37:16  And he said, I am looking for my brothers. Please tell me where they are feeding the flock. 
Gen 37:17  And the man said, They have left here, for I heard them say, Let us go towards Dothan. And Joseph went after his brothers and found them in Dothan. 


Now this is the second time we have encountered a seemingly anonymous "man" in just five chapters.  The first was the "man" that Jacob wrestled with- a man everyone on the Christian side recognizes as the pre-incarnate Christ.  More on this as we go on.  This man, however, the experts have an apparently different take.  Nearly unanimously, the Christian commentators ignore him (Lesson #1- if it's in God's Word, it's there for a REASON), but I found several Jewish references that point out that the man HAD to be an angel- because if Joseph had NOT found his brothers, all of the Bible, and history, would have unraveled differently.   You might say, "Well, he would have found them eventually, but consider two things:  The word "wandering" above translates thus:

A primitive root; to vacillate, that is, reel or stray (literally or figuratively); also causatively of both: - (cause to) go astray, deceive, dissemble, (cause to, make to) err, pant, seduce, (make to) stagger, (cause to) wander, be out of the way.

Joseph was helplessly, hopelessly lost, without idea one what to do next.  Also consider the timing.  It "just so happened" that the passing Ishmaelites the boys sold Joseph to passed by when they did.  Could he have ended up in Egypt if he had taken, say, an extra two or three days to get to Dothan?  Hmmm.

So why do the experts take a pass on this guy?  I don't know.  But what I did look at tied to a bunch of stories beyond this, and they all combine to tell me, in so many words, that the man of Genesis 32 and the man of Genesis 37 are both Jesus.  Having said that, let me fill in some connective tissue.

One of my things that connect here connects the wrestler with Jacob to the birth of Samson.  Huh?  Follow.  From the Jacob story, after the match, and the blessing that changes Jacob's name to Israel:

Gen 32:29  And Jacob asked and said, Please reveal Your name. And He said, Why this that you ask about My name? And He blessed him there. 

And in the Samson story, his mom was yet another of those Hebrew ladies having fertility problems.  So she and her husband Manoah prayed about it, and along comes the Angel of the LORD, which we all agree is the pre-incarnate Christ:

Jdg 13:17  And Manoah said to the angel of the LORD, "What is your name, so that, when your words come true, we may honor you?" 

Jdg 13:18  And the angel of the LORD said to him, "Why do you ask my name, seeing it is wonderful?" 

So this seems to be a standard pre-incarnate Christ answer when asked about His Name.  (You could further link this to Isaiah's listing of the names of the messiah, including "Wonderful", but this story is getting hairy as it is!)  The next chunk I saw a link in- and the Jewish sources developed it- was this part:

Gen 37:15  And a man found him. And, behold, he was wandering in the field. And the man asked him, saying, What do you seek? 

It was actually one of the Jewish blogs that pointed out that he asked WHAT, not who- thus indicating he was actually asking a deeper question about the direction of his FUTURE.  Now let me link this to another time we see this question:

Joh 1:35  Again on the morrow, John and two from his disciples stood. 

Joh 1:36  And looking at Jesus walking, he said, Behold, the Lamb of God! 

Joh 1:37  And the two disciples heard him speaking, and they followed Jesus. 

Joh 1:38  But having seen them following, Jesus said to them, What do you seek? And they said to Him, Rabbi (which being translated is called Teacher), where do You stay? 

Joh 1:39  He said to them, Come and see...

The standard question from Jesus, part two- what do you seek?  Now, let me put a little more sinew into the connective tissue.

Let us consider the commonalities of our contestants:  Jacob the first, Joseph the second, and John and Andrew in the third.

BEFORE the event.   Jacob had just made his stand to leave Laban and follow God's leading back into Canaan.

Joseph had just earned the enmity of his brothers for sharing his dreams with them and their father.  (Another connective:  v 11 says, "but his father observed the word", much like after Jesus gets 'rescued' from the Temple as a child, Mary "pondered these things in her heart" (Luke 2:19)- neither knew exactly what it meant, but knew it meant SOMETHING they would have to learn.)

John and Andrew had just heard John the Baptist declare Jesus- fresh from the desert and temptation, ready to start His ministry- the Lamb of God, and decided on following up on this.

DURING the event:  Jacob was directed by his blessing to a new destiny.

Joseph and the proto-Apostles had just been asked "What do you seek?"  Neither had any idea how the answer would change THEIR destinies.

AFTER the event:  Jacob would within hours have his long-dreaded reunion with brother Esau- a meeting he had God's assurance but not heart-certainty he would survive.

Joseph would fall into a chain of events that would see him next to the throne of Egypt, and all those dreams fulfilled.

John and Andrew, their question "where do You stay?" showing how little they realized where their next three years following Jesus- and all the years thereafter- would lead.

How like being saved.  You come to that point of choosing Christ.  You ask the question- "will you be my savior?"  You proceed into an unknown and unguessed destiny.

If you haven't gotten there yet, God is still asking HIS two questions- What do you seek?  Why do you want to know My Name?  If you have the right answers to the second question- "I'm lost in a field, and need a guide", "I want to know who it is that blesses me", then the answers to the second will work out in the walk.  And, you won't be "driving with your eyes closed."

Martin World News- Bobby G edition

Monday is a day I normally reserve for fun stuff on this here page, and I'm gonna try to get to that.  But it's harder now.  There's someone who I could always count on to comment, and more importantly, to get my sense of humor, when I posted some news-based, spam-based, or work based inanity.  And he's not there anymore.  Today, I had one of his old followers contact me.  And I thought about the others who might not have known.  And I thought about where it all began.


And that would have been on the site of another blogger that we lost not long ago, the Angry White Boy.  I was searching for the city info only he seemed to know, and followed a comment to Bob's place, The Pa-In Erudition. Thus began a long blog relationship, a very rewarding friendship, and a voice I valued when the worst of times were upon us.


Well, there here now.  But not Bob.

And I struggle with even going on with this.  Not that I think I was writing to an audience of one- when I started out, I didn't care if anyone listened.  But there came those who listened, and those who cared.   And Bob was definitely both of those.  We connected on a lot of fun levels- one of which was Doctor Who.  We both gave each other honorary doctorates, and Bob even went one step farther to add us to the group...

(Of course, he always did look a little more Doctor-y than I did...)


And this is in addition to all the OTHER logos that he made and I use on a weekly basis...

Buddy, I miss you on my comment section.   I miss you in my reading list.  And I miss you in my heart.  Now, let me see if there is a little Bob-worthy material out there today....


From FoxNews:  I'm thinking fingers would have helped


The story said, "Engagement gift from mother-in-law is unexpectedly X-rated".  Of course I had to look.  Seems the mother of the girl being proposed to got a snap of the magic moment, and used it to make a medallion of the moment.  However, when it was done...

...well, there MIGHT be a little controversy over what's supposed to be the non-proposing arm....


CNN- I know it's a reach, but...


Here I thought I might throw in one of my "mix the picture" deals where I couple a photo with the wrong headline.  However, I bent the rules just a wee bit.  First, as always, the headline...

Two historical female role models get their own Barbie dolls

Then the pic...

Although I have to question the headline on spelling ( I think they might have wanted 'hysterical' rather than historical) and accuracy (I never knew Barbies came in 10-foot-tall bronze models), but it's CNN so anything goes...


BBC- Yeah, let's see how long it takes to sink Borneo

Now this is one of those 'read the story and scratch your head at the logic" ones.  It seems that Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia, is sinking.  Rapidly, in fact, as the burden of pumping out groundwater for 10 million people is too much for the swampy, river-crossed ground it sits on.  So what is Indonesia's solution?  New water sources?  Drastic changes to the building code and zoning?  Nah.  Here's their answer...


Indonesia picks Borneo island as site of new capital

Yep, they are going to move the business of government about 800 miles to the northeast in the jungles of the next island up, Borneo.  Now, to me this brings up several questions.  First and foremost, are they bringing EVERYBODY- or just moving the gov'mint and letting the other 9 million "go float"?  Will the government leaving cut that 3-inches a year sink down to 2 inches a year?  And have they thought about, are they just moving closer to the next volcanic eruption?  Oh, wait, never mind.  This is Indonesia, where you're never more than ten minutes away from the nearest active volcano.  At least that's what it said on MY travel brochure...



Moscow Times:  There's a lot in that... er, flag...

To close us out, I hit a delightful article having a little fun at the expense of the flags and coats-of-arms of various Russian regions.  I thought I's share a few of them...


Perm region

The USA has the Bible Belt, Russia has the Bible Bear....

Khoroshevo, Moscow region...

"...and the third little beaver made his dam with bricks..."


Taldom, Moscow region...

Boy, the trash those Russian birds get into!  One foot in an old shoe, beak through a toothpaste tube...


Norilsk, Krasnoyarsk region...

"...I don't see why Superman can't unlock the door to the Fortress of Solitude his damn self..."

and finally, Novosibirsk region...

"You take it to Gordon Ramsey!"
"No, YOU take it to Gordon Ramsey!"
"No, YOU...."


Bob, I hope you enjoyed it!

Sunday Message- Joseph learns

As I begin to return to blogging life after  my flag-lowering of the past week, I turn to a meditation I was having when the second pillar of my current life got kicked out- about the story of Joseph.  David Jeremiah cites him as one of the few people in the Bible there is nothing bad said about, and I'm not here to dispute that, but I do think there is definitely one, and perhaps two, things the Bible showed us that he had to learn the hard way.

One of those is patience.  One of the lessons that Dr Jeremiah says Joseph teaches us about sin is that you can't effectively fight it in your life without having had a structure for resisting it already built in your life.  And so it is, that if one of Joseph's key attributes is the patience he showed in the Egyptian prison- and later in dealing with his brothers- he had to build it at some point.

If you go back in your mind to Joseph's early days, the Bible shows that, before he shared his dreams with his father and brothers, he had shared something else- a "bad report" about his brothers.  This is not saying he was a young tattle-tale.  The word, Jeremiah explained, is one indicating his brothers were giving his family a bad name amongst their neighbors- a bad rep surely started by Simeon and Levi's murder of the Shechemites, but not limited to it.  He told his father because he had already started developing his relationship with God- and this was an obedience TO God, to stand against his brothers' evil.  The very next thing in the Bible is about the dreams God sent him.  In other words, as I have learned, a major obedience "kicks you up a level."  And in his impatience, he shared with an unappreciative audience something he might have been better off not sharing quite yet.  Yes, it was all part of God's plan for him and his family, but consider:  His next few life events revolved to a great extent around being trapped in situations in which he had no recourse but to wait and do his best.  If God gives you a lesson, odds are you needed to LEARN it.


The second thing I feel he had to learn was being careful.  That he was still learning this in Egypt came to me in the story about Potipher's wife.  She had come at him with seduction more than once before the big moment when he had to run off without his robe and she cried rape.  And yet, what does it say about that particular event?

Gen 39:10  And as she spoke to Joseph day after day, he would not listen to her, to lie beside her or to be with her. 
Gen 39:11  But one day, when he went into the house to do his work and none of the men of the house was there in the house, 
Gen 39:12  she caught him by his garment, saying, "Lie with me." But he left his garment in her hand and fled and got out of the house. 

He blundered into a point where he was ALONE with her- apparently the first time, else the Bible writer wouldn't have pointed it out.  And because of that carelessness, he found himself BACK in a prison.  Mind you, he hadn't sinned, just let his guard down.  And this is the same man who would later come up with the intricate plan to weigh his brothers in the balance as Pharaoh's second in command.  And once again, God gave him time to meditate, so to speak, on it.


In all this, I am not disputing Dr Jeremiah's high regard for Joseph.  But what I want to do is point out, it wasn't EASY for him to BECOME that person in the end.  He certainly had that structure he needed to resist sin,  But also, as every obedience kicked him up a notch in God's plan, that new level left him new things to learn- and God very rarely has us learn such things the easy way.

Back with pictures

Company picnic

Nice scenery

Lotsa little ones

Strangely, Lawrence Welk made a cameo

The beach ball grab game- I didn't participate, but Laurie and I won the first 2 bingo games

The indestructible Dowco pinata- so tough was it...

...that the kids literally had to tear it to shreds to open it!

Hmmm... clouds look ominous, time to go

...right after the deluge

21st was a nice day for a walk

Bird bath

Later, a toast to absent friends...

More the next day

Yesterday was a family walk...

Like Gampaw, like Peanut

Later, we invade Ft Wayne...

...to check out the new park