Ft. Wayne Childrens Zoo

To wear wool in this heat, you gotta be stupid... or stoned.

Whole buncha little kids on a tour.  They were as fun to watch as the goats.

Laurie, what ARE you doing with those goats?

Uhh... bad time for a picture?  (BTW, you should have heard him grunt!  "RRRRRRRUUHHHHH.... RRRRRRUUUUUUHHHH!!!"

Laurie was told they like being petted.  She'll believe anything...

Dingoes

Hee Haw front porch, Aussie style.

"Yeah, waddaya want?"

Momma and chick

Proud papa

Australian water ride

"Oh, no... the rapids!!!"

It looks like a fish, but it's actually me after lunch.

Seal training.  How's this catch for timing?

"Oh, c'mon, you're too kind..."

The winning bark in the loudest bark contest.

Boy, Scrappy would LOVE him...

From the safari sky ride

We saw something moving on the rock, but had to blow it up to see what they were.  Maybe if we'd noticed Mommy off to the side...

These are satu... sita... uhmm...

...antelopes.  These are antelopes.

Swamp monkeys.  Stars of a new series coming soon on the History Channel.

'Cause that's what I'D be doing if I were a pelican.

Bat-eared foxes

Servals chillin'

Mongoose in the hole!

Big cats pose great!

Winner of ugliest exhibit award.

Never been quite this close to a giraffe.

Laurie feeds him lettuce.

"I've got HAPPY FEET!"

Oh, and Bob, who needs Drew Blair when you got Lee Ann Okuly??!!

And now, for the baseball fan... or not...

Last night, I watched a pitcher have the worst night possible WITHOUT giving up a run.  The honors go to Cincinatti's reliever Bill Bray.

"I think a prayer to the Broccoli gods might be appropriate now..."

He comes in to start the seventh, with the Reds down 5-3.  He's facing Arizona's Miguel Montero, whose already drove in 4 of the five runs with a three-run double and a solo HR.  First pitch, low and way outside to the left handed batter.  In fact, even as I questioned his courage in facing this batter, he threw all four pitches to Montero IN THE EXACT SAME SPOT.  One one, nobody out.

Then comes Justin Upton, who the announcers have been describing as "not having the year he hoped for" and "wondering about the rumours that he's on the trading block."  First pitch is in the same spot, but as he is batting righty, it's low and inside.  Then outside and high.  Then Upton fouls off a pitch he had no need to swing at for the first "strike" of the inning. Ball three, foul, ball four.  Two on, nobody out.

Then comes Lyle Overbay, who shows bunt just to see if Bray can get ANYTHING over the plate.  He does, strike one.  Then a pitch so low it scoots past catcher Ryan Hannigan, all the way to the wall.  But before you can say, "Crap, wild pitch," it hits the wall and shoots right back to Hannigan, freezing the runners. Which interrupted the announcers going on about "Overbay showing a bunt on the first pitch when he hasn't hit a sac bunt but 5 times in a 12 year career."  Overbay then over swung at what would have been ball two, and finished off by hitting a double play ball that went first baseman Todd Frazier to Shortstop Zac Cozart and back to Brandon Phillips covering first.  Montero went to third, two out, and you think Bray might just survive.

Next comes Chris Young, hitting a whopping .203.  Two balls in the dirt later, you're not so convinced.  When the next pitch goes for ball three, manager Dusty Baker signals to just walk him and go after the next guy.  Now, for the baseball-deficient, when you walk a guy intentionally, the catcher stands up and puts his hand way out to the outside to signal it.  The pitcher is then SUPPOSED to throw the pitch where the catcher's hand is, so that there's no chance of the batter hitting it.

But of course, Bray throws only his third strike of the inning, right down the middle.  Hannigan and Young, both stunned, watch the ball fly between them, past the umpire, to the wall once again.  Montero races home.  Bray freezes, wondering just what the hell he has done, other than write himself a one-way ticket to Louisville.

And then... once again, the ball bounces off the wall, right back to Hannigan.  Bray wakes up just in time to beat Montero to the plate, gets the throw, and tags Montero out.  No runs, no hits, no errors, one man left on base.  For Bill Bray, one inning pitched, two walks, two wild pitches, the most thouroughly messed up intentional walk of all time, but no runs scored.

"Thank you, o Broccoli gods. Thank you!"

The pot calling the kettle black, and other fun things.

In my research of the goings on in the world, I tumbled upon two unrelated items I thought I'd share with you.  The first comes from an article on World news (wn.com) by a contributing writer named Dallas Darling.  Who is Dallas Darling?  Well, his basic bio is that he was a Master of Divinities from the Assemblies of God, who became an anti-imperialist after watching alleged atrocities by the US of A in the overthrow of Manuel Noriega.  His scorecard further reads that he was de-frocked lost "several careers", and received death threats that have caused him to move several times. Commentators about him have ranged from "...displays a kind of intellectual freedom sorely lacking in American politics..." and "...his subversive literature is necessary to confront the American Empire and globalization of the world..." to  " ...a left wing loon. A true Blame America First nut case..." and "  While it is all well and good to examine the options, it seems Mr. D's issue relies on a pragmatic approach to pragmatism. Using circular logic and employing the functionality of a particular issue to dismiss its functionality is incoherent. My beef is not that I am on the other side of most issues as Mr. D but that the argumentation used to justify his position is intellectually unsound. Mr. D needs to go back to school and learn the fundamental laws of logic...for the first time obviously..."

For my part, I can only (and hopefully will only) be able to judge on the basis of the article I read here Which discusses how "dishonest and intellectually lazy" Republicans are for coming up with words like Obamacare to perjure the health care act and other such things.  First thing I would ask Mr. Darling (no apparent relation to Briscoe Darling) is, if "Obamacare" is a perjorative, does that mean that health care has been perjured by connecting the Obama plan to it?  He goes on to various other (if I may be so lazy and intellectually dishonest) wooly-headed ideas as the Columbine massacre being blamed on liberalism, Republican domination of "basic idioms, phrases, and even complex issues" (One of these things is not like the other...), and "What if Democrats started saying 'Romneyneglect'?"

But the thing that caught me was this line, which puts his "intellectual argument" in its true light, was this bon mot:

Not only have Republicans weaved a web of intellectual (and emotional) dishonesty, but using the idiom "Obamacare" is a lesson in intellectual laziness. (Recall that "idiom" means idiot. It is an expression having a meaning that cannot be understood from the combined meanings of its actual words nor individual meanings of its component words.)

Did you catch that?  ""Idiom" means idiot.  Let's take a look at the definition of idiom, from Dictionary.com:

noun

1.

an expression whose meaning is not predictable from the usual meanings of its constituent elements, as kick the bucket or hang one's head, or from the general grammatical rules of a language, as the table round for the round table, and that is not a constituent of a larger expression of like characteristics.

2.

a language, dialect, or style of speaking peculiar to a people.

3.

a construction or expression of one language whose parts correspond to elements in another language but whose total structure or meaning is not matched in the same way in the second language.

4.

the peculiar character or genius of a language.

5.

a distinct style or character, in music, art, etc.: the idiom of Bach.

---

Origin:
1565–75; < Latin idiōma < Greek idíōma peculiarity, specific property equivalent to idiō- (variant stem of idioûsthai to make one's own, appropriate, verbal derivative of idiós; see idio-) + -ma noun suffix

 

So, while he used the fraction of the definition that pertained to his argument- which is okay- he also appended his OWN definition, contained in neither the ACTUAL definition nor the etymology of the word.  Hmmm, what was he saying about "intellectual dishonesty?"  Not to mention that he goes on to lament that Republicans not dominate idioms, thus working both sides of the street.  Using circular logic and employing the functionality of a particular issue to dismiss its functionality is incoherent, yes?

 

Reminds me of an old episode of Family Affair where Mr. French is trying to explain classical idioms to young Buffy and Jody, and Jody, innocently interested, asks, "Can you tell us any more classical idiots?"  Well, Jody, I think I can.

 

 

____________________________________

 

Scrappy has had a couple of incidents worth mentioning in the last few days.  We had been taking late night walks, and discovered we are not alone.  One night we encountered 5 dogs being walked, a guy sitting under a tree with his laptop, at least one person doing... something... in the exercise room WITH THE LIGHTS OFF, and a person changing his oil... all at 10:30 PM.  At any rate, We went out two nights ago, met a 6-month-old puppy named Oliver, and on the way home, Mr. Skunk was going down the street not thirty feet in front of us.  Which caused a rapid deceleration on my part and an equal-but-opposite acceleration on the part of Scrappy.  Mr. S noticed us and crossed the street- just as a car was coming in from behind us.  As I prayed aloud "Don't hit 'im, don't hit 'im", the car slowed.  Mr. Skunk saw the headlights and OF COURSE (Much like Mr. Darling's logic) headed right for them.  Fortunately, the car was able to adjust and Mr. S finally crossed the street and made for cover, tail straight up the whole way.

 

The other incident happened yesterday morning as we walked along "dead tree road".  I had seen two squirrels from down the road a ways; one headed as fast as his fat little butt could move for the woods, the other scrambled up a tree.  By the time we got to where they had been, I was searching the trees (and seeing nothing) and Scrappy was sniffing the scene.  Suddenly the dimwit squirrel FELL out of the tree- about 3 1/2 feet right in front of Scrappy. Scrappy's ears went, SPROING! and the squirrel just managed to vacate the area ahead of him, climing another, presumably safer, tree in which to change his underwear.

 

__________________________________

 

Finally, I tumbled upon this culinary treat in perusing the same news source the other day.

 

'Cannibal cult members' arrested for murder, eating raw brains and making penis soup

 

Authorities in Papua New Guinea have arrested 29 members of a suspected cannibal cult accused of killing seven people before eating their brains and making soup from their penises.

The accused are alleged to have been part of a 1000-strong group which was formed to take on suspected witch doctors.
They believed their victims had all been involved in 'sanguma', or sorcery, and that they had been demanding sex and money from villagers in return for exercising their spiritual powers.
A Madang Police Commander, Anthony Wagambie, confirmed reports that the cult members had eaten the victims' brains raw and had made soup from their penises.
“They don't think they've done anything wrong; they admit what they've done openly,” Wagambie said.
The group claimed witch doctors had begun charging large fees of 1,000 kina or $475 for casting out evil spirits and providing other services.
The accused also claimed the alleged witch doctors had begun demanding sex as payment.
The cult members believed that by eating the witch doctors' body parts they would attain their spiritual powers, and become bullet-proof.


Once again, another of those cultures I am glad God didn't decide to birth me in.

Sunday message

Whenever I get on my dashboard, being a statistic-minded person, I check to see whether I have any new followers or not.  And if I do (And if you look at the current count, you see it doesn't happen all THAT often), I make a point of visiting their profile and/or their blog page.Because I think it's the honorable thing to do, and plus, I am curious about them and why they showed up on my shores.  Many times, it's because I've commented on their blogs; sometimes, I can only assume, it's because they want me to follow them. Because they like statistics, too, or they have something to sell.

A few days ago, I acquired a new follower, and I dutifully went to their site.  And really, I'm still scratching my head over what I found.  Because their blog was basically taking ideas or characters from the Bible, putting a negative spin on them, and writing it up as a "humourous" news story.  Honestly, I don't know if their just trying to have fun, or they are a closet atheist trying to grind their axe.  Either way, it was uncomfortable to me because respect for God and respect for Jesus was one of the first lessons I learned in life.

When I was little, my mom read her Catholic prayer book every morning after dad left for work.  Her first silent 15 minutes to 1/2 hour every day was spent with God.  From her I learned ironclad faith that God is real, and He is what He says.  And, I learned the reverence in which He deserves to be held.

Mom sent me to Catholic school,  which taught me to have God in my life every day.  I felt bad for the CCD kids for whom God was a "Crap, I have to go to class on Saturday" experience.  And I learned what sin was, and its terrible consequences.

Along about seventh grade, the Gideons came to our school and gave us all New Testaments, which for most of us was our first real exposure to the Bible.  There I learned how Jesus told us not to pray in vain repititions, and questioned the Rosary for the first time.  I learned that we were to rely on Christ alone, pray to God alone, which threw everything I'd been taught about Mary and the saints out of whack.  Thus I got a Bible of my own, and learned to question.  And I learned that mom's answer, "Because it's in the Bible!" (e.g. when I asked her about life on other planets) wasn't good enough- unless I could find the verse that backed it up.

Later, I learned the concept of being born again, which was a rough one to come to terms with because of all that Catholic training I was beginning to question.  It took coming to the dead end of a dark road to get past the fear of Hellfire and casting out in an entirely new boat and make that step.

I would learn the concept of service and doing it His way the very hard way.  I was scared when I was asked to teach a Sunday School.  But God directed me, against my own will and fears, and walked with me every step of the way for some time.  But then I was asked to be a Deacon.  Unlike SS, where it was just my fear in the way, I had a pretty good idea that this was NOT the way I was supposed to go.  But I was told that my convictions were baseless and that I would do fine, and I told myself that hey, SS worked out.  Maybe this is just God's way of pushing me.  It was not, and it started a chain of events that culimnated many months later with my leaving the church, the pastor leaving the church, and seven in ten regular attnders going elsewhere.

In a hellish season in a trailer park on Moeller Road, I learned that I had a huge problem with controlling situations.  I had to learn the hard way that some things work better when you put them in God's hands, or even someone else more knowledgable (than me, not God!) These last two, I wish I would have learned MUCH earlier, how much better my life would have been!

And finally, over the years on this blog, I am learning what fights are worth fighting, and which are not.  Napoleon fought only when he had to for success; so, too, in WWI, the Germans finally learned (too late) that the only way to overcome the trench war they found themselves in was to Keep advancing, go around the rough spots, and clean them out afterwards, once their connection with their fellows was cut.  Progress didn't mean fighting for every square inch, but steady moving forward, and relying on the reserves to clean things up afterwards.  Two lessons come from this:  Knowing which is a fight you're called to battle, on the idea of reaching the goal being more important; and making sure that you have a well trained force in reserve.  The other combatants treated the reserve as those either to untrained to be of value, or those too shell-shocked to be good in a firefight.  Thus, even if they had done it this way, they would have gotten nowhere.

What does this have to do with God? Consider:  Most of us fight the battle loudly, across a wide swath- and only on Sunday. We thunder our Sunday guns, go charging out to overwhelm the enemy.  Monday comes, the counter-attack begins, and we run back to the trench until Sunday's guns fire once more.  The "German model" would be: Establish a strong reserve through prayer, discipline, reading the word, contact with fellow-travellers; Don't concentrate on moving the whole line, just the part you're assigned; Leave the rough spots to God (Martin's Second Law:  Jesus said tell the mountain to move, not go out and try to pick it up yourself);  and keep moving foreward, step by step, every day.

And what does this have to do with this "new follower"?  Just that, whatever the deal is, it's not a fight worth going on her blog and fighting.  My part is not to battle him/her, but to share what I learn as I move foreward every day.  And to keep in mind the lessons I have already learned, especially in this case, the lesson of the respect and reverence God should be held in.

The Great Eighties countdown week 11

We have come to the top one hundred at last here at the countdown, and as nothing more Friday the 13th-ish has happened, let's have at it.

100- Into The Groove, Madonna, b-side of #5 hit Angel, 1985.  You wouldn't have known it was a b-side around here; I don't even really remember Angel.

99- The Beat Goes On/Switchin' To Glide, the Kings, #43, 1980.  "Nothing matters but the weekend/from a Tuesday point-of-view..."

98- Goodbye, Elenore, Toto, #107, 1981.  From their lp Turn Back, had pretty brisk airplay on Rock 104.

97- Lost In Love, Air Supply, #3, 1980.  I was as big a fan as any when these guys first hit here with this song.

96- Walking On Sunshine, Katrina and the Waves, #9, 1985.  Katrina Leskanic was a cousin of Padres pitcher Curtis Leskanic.  He didn't know his cousin was THAT Katrina until she sang the national anthem at a Padres' game.

95- Synchronicity II, The Police, #16, 1983.  About a guy with a crappy life, a crappy job, a crappy boss, and the Loch Ness Monster creeping up to his front door.

94- Boulevard, Jackson Browne, #19, 1980.  From the classic lp Hold Out.

93- Don't Stand So Close To Me, The Police, #10, 1980. I got this lp (Zenyatta Mendatta) for my birthday one year.  A very good listen.

92- At The Sound Of The Tone, John Schneider, #5 country, 1982.  Yeah it's Bo Duke, but he was a helluva singer.  I really could/should have put in about 5 more of his, but this was my favorite.

91- I Want To Know What Love Is, Foreigner, #1, 1984.  The choir at the end (the New Jersey Mass Choir) is the best part.

90- Saved By Zero, The Fixx, #20, 1983.  A song that wrapped itself around a good dream about a girl I've forgotten.  Just got their greatest hits CD this past week.

89- Shakin', Eddie Money, #63, #9 Mainstream Rock, 1982.  Yes, another track from No Control, the first one in fact.

88- Edge Of Seventeen, Stevie Nicks,  #11, #4 MSR, 1982.  Another song whose chart numbers probably suffered because of how much it was played before it was released.

87- If This Is It, Huey Lewis and the News, #6, 1984.  I think every track but 2 on this lp (Sports) played on the radio around here.

86- Talking To The Moon, Gatlin Brothers Band, #4 country, 1986.  Reminds me of Ray Stevens' Misty.

85- Arc Of A Diver, Steve Winwood, #48, #11 MSR, 1981.  I couldn't stand While You See A Chance, but loved the follow up.  This was the title cut of his breakthrough lp.

84- Into The Night, Benny Mardones, #11 in 1980 and #20 in 1989.  The perils of dating a 16-year-old.

83- Games Without Frontiers, Peter Gabriel, #48, 1980.  I was hearing this in my mind as the squirrels at Pokagon hurled their half-eaten acorns at us.

82- Time After Time, Cyndi Lauper, #1, 1984.  Another benefit of work closing was not having to hear the karaoke-esque, screwed-up-lyrics version of this on the CD player.

81- Don't Go Back To Rockville, REM, non-charting, 1984.  Actually I only know this song from their greatest hits disc Eponymous.

And that wraps another excursion into the eighties.  Be sure to come back next week as we close in upon the end.

Time Machine week 24- A Very Friday the 13th edition

It's July 13th, 1970, and just to give you an idea about how messed up this week's Time Machine will be, let me give you two quotes. The first comes from The People History:

13th July 1970 : FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover named the Black Panther party the most dangerous terrorist group in existence today.
Now, from a site using the late Andrew Breitbart's Big Government blog as a source, from last October:

New photographs obtained exclusively by BigGovernment.com reveal that Barack Obama appeared and marched with members of the New Black Panther Party as he campaigned for president in Selma, Alabama in March 2007.
The photographs, captured from a Flickr photo-sharing account before it was scrubbed, are the latest evidence of the mainstream media’s failure to examine Obama’s extremist ties and radical roots.
In addition, the new images raise questions about the possible motives of the Obama administration in its infamous decision to drop the prosecution of the Panthers for voter intimidation.

My, how times change.  42 years ago, they were the biggest terrorist threat in the nation.  Now they only are a threat if you are a white Republican.  Come to think about it, that's all they threatened then, too.  But before we get into the whole subject of legitimacy and political hypocrisy...

Well, it was a Monday then, but it's Friday the 13th now, so hang onto your hats, as we learn:  Popes can name Counts; what's old in The Neighborhood; what the Hollywood Argyles and Hee Haw could possibly have in common (Hint it is NOT the fact- true story- that Alley-Oop was intended to be a country song); and a tune that went 49 years between versions hitting the charts- and the last time was 60 years ago!  Plus, Citizen Kane (the movie), T.S. Elliot, and our second visit this year to the set of the TV show Emergency!

Our normal order of business is going to be badly mauled as a result of the stories I'm about to tell.  Therefore, though I CAN tell you that I will be featuring 5 of the ten songs that debut on the hot 100,  I'm just not going to mention three of them yet.  Oh, and speaking of debuts, about three weeks ago I missed one of the top 40 debuts (how rude!) and this week, of COURSE it hits the top ten!  Anyhow, the debuts I can mention now are- at #97 Al DeLory with "Song from M*A*S*H" (AKA Suicide Is Painless), and at #79, Edwin Starr's War.   Now I think it is safe to go on now with MOST of our birthday songs this week.

Turning 30 this week:  Paul McCartney's Take It Away; Men At Work's Who Can It Be Now?; Billy Idol's first big hit, Hot In The City; the Alan Parsons Project's Eye In The Sky; and I Ran (So Far Away) by A Flock Of Seagulls.  Turning 35 are Strawberry Letter 23 by the Brothers Johnson and a very underrated band, the Outlaws, with a very underrated song, Hurry Sundown.  Helen Reddy's I Am Woman turns 40 this week.  Turning 45 are Glen Campbell's classic Gentle On My Mind and Neil Diamond's Thank The Lord For The Nighttime.  The Beach Boys' Surfin' Safari turns the big 5-0 this week, and here's the first of our "A funny thing happened on the way" stories.  Turning 60 this week is the Les Paul and Mary Ford version of the classic In The Good Old Summertime, a tune they would ride to #15.  It would be the lowest this song ever charted.  In a period of just under six months from October 1902 to April 1903, the song charted by five seperate acts- and hit #1 three times, #2 and #3 once each!  And was never seen again until Les and Mary some 49 years later.

One of those not recording it is our old-timer feature this week, John McCormick (or, more properly, COUNT John McCormick).  Born in Ireland in 1884, the wonderful tenor began his chart career in 1910 and rode the charts for 19 years, collecting 77 top 40s, 66 top tens, and 8 number ones along the way.  His biggest hit was I'm Falling In Love With Someone in June of 1911, but he's perhaps better known to have the first chart hit of the WWI classic It's A Long Way To Tipperary in 1915.  A tireless worker for Catholic Charities and the war effort in both world wars, he was named a Count by Pope Pius XI in 1928.  He was a friend of famous author James Joyce (Ulysses, Finnegan's Wake). His stardom translated into the big screen as well-if not AS well;  He had an uncredited part as the singer at the newspaper party in Citizen Kane (in which Nat King Cole also snuck in under the radar). He became a naturallized citizen in 1917, and immediately gave from the fortune he amassed to the war bond effort.  He also did the USO gig, even after he had "officially" retired in 1938, up until near his death in 1945.

Up next are the big movers for the week.  Climbing 19 spots to 77 are Neil Young and Crazy Horse with the original of Cinnamon Girl.  However, this time it's the big DROPPER that got lodged in the top 40.  But this week, it ain't gonna hurt to tell you, so let it be known that the big dropper is Which Way You Going, Billy?  The answer is down, a fall of 16 spots to 27.

Before we move on to the Where Are They Now segment, let me mention that another hot 100 debut this week was Mungo Jerry's In The Summertime.  It comes in at 84, and I held it back because I just HAD to see where you get a name like Mungo Jerry.  Turns out, Mungojerrie was a cat in a poem by T.S. Elliot.  So with Mungo Jerry, like Procol Harum, we have the feline community to blame.

Stupid cat names!  Why can't these guys have a good dog's name, like Bingo, or Spike, or... or Scrappy?

Moving on to the WATN feature, we find at the chosen position of #50 this week, Bobby Shermen, with the setting Hey, Mr. Sun.  Bobby's after teeny-bopper life actually began after starring on an episode of the drama Emergency! in 1974.  He went out and became a for-real EMT, joining the LAPD and later the county sheriff's department.  He founded and still runs the Bobby Sherman Volunteer EMT program, lining up EMTs to work events in the area.  But that is not the end of his philanthropic endeavors, no,no,no.  In fact, they led him to a like minded woman by the name of Brigitte Poublon , whom he married in 2010.  Brigitte was the daughter of refugees from 1960s Indonesia, and by 1996 had become a self-made millionaire in real estate.  She retired to concentrate full time on charitable causes, including work for Make A Wish and Special Olympics.  Last year, they founded Brigitte And Bobby Sherman Children's  Foundation to help children orphaned by AIDS, war, and other such things.  Working mainly in the nation of Ghana, they currently sponsor 30 children, giving them a place to live and a chance to learn and grow.  We're already in the sponsoring game, but if you'd like to help out, check out their website to learn more and help.

Thankfully for space concerns (and if I didn't drop the ball again this week), we only have two top 40 debuts.  Moving up 6 spots to #40, BJ Thomas hits with I Just Can't Help Believing.  And at 35, up 9 notches, Johnny Taylor's Steal Away.  So certainly it's a good time for another story from the hot 100 debut section.

Joni Mitchell sneaks in at 100 with her live version of her composition Big Yellow Taxi.  At this same time, another version (without her annoying laugh at the end) is in its second week on the chart at 77, by a nine -or so- member vocal ensemble called The Neighborhood.  The one thing that I learned, and quite quickly, was that they did some very nice, pleasant music.  The rest that I learned took a bit longer.

And much of that was from relatives of original band members on the comment sections of YouTube videos.  I'll try to smooth the story out from the disjointed way I learned it.  Around 50 years ago, give or take, two gentlemen named Michael Tomasetti (If you google it, this one is NOT the model- who is all you'll find)  and Mike Cavallo started a recording career as Mike and Michael.  They did a song called My Neighborhood, which if you look it up has an enjoyable Righteous Brothers feel to it.  They would then hook up with Louis "Chick" Stella, and record as (don't ask me why) the Taylor Brothers.  Their hit, Showdown, was a clone of late sixties Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and I thought very good.  But chart success waited until Stella and Tomasetti formed the Neighborhood.  Here, however, the info became much harder to come by.  The drummer, Bill Charmelo, apparently played on a kit he built around a 55-gallon drum he cut in two; he passed away sometime in 1999 or thereabouts.  (Tomasetti himself died in November 2008, according to his wife, and Cavallo followed soon thereafter.) There was a guitar player, who, depending on who you listen to, was either Bobby Bristowski or Robert Brotoski; Billy Mendes, Russ Rickman, and Joe Evans.  But the band was built around a set of identical twins who were called Ellen and Elaine, AKA "The Twins", for whom I drew little more than a blank.  One commenter says they were alive and well and lived in his building as recently as ten months ago; other than that they were, uh, well-endowed back then, I could confirm nothing more.  However, there was an act Elaine and Ellen who did some disco in the late seventies including a disco version of The Look Of Love.  If these are the same, then they looked like this in the late seventies:

Here they are with Big Yellow Taxi:



Trudging onward, we have three songs entering the top ten, so three fall out.  The Long And Winding Road slips down 4 to #12.  Get Ready drops from 7 to 14.  And I don't know what it is with Elvis spending a week at ten and then dropping, but he does it for the second time in a row; The Wonder Of You falls to 15.

Cracking the top ten at 10, up 6, are the Five Stairsteps with O-oh Child.
And gumming up the works at #9 is my next-to-last story.  The song I failed to notice slipping in the top 40 a month ago climbs 6 to #9 this week.  It is a reworking of Beethoven's Hymn To Joy called Himno A La Alegria, or A Song Of Joy, and it is done by Spanish superstar Miguel Rios.  This dude singlehandedly took the repressive monotony of the Franco-era music scene in Spain and turned it upside down.  The song became a huge worldwide hit, and so Rios did what any rock superstar would shortly thereafter- got busted for hashish possession and spent a few years planning his next lp in prison.

Vanity Faire falls a pair (poetic, no?) to #8 with Hitchin' A Ride.
Tony Burrows, this time as the Pipkins, leaps 7 spots to the #7 spot with Gimme Dat Ding.  True story, when I was in kindergarten, girl came up to me and asked in complete seriousness, "That song is being selfish, isn't it?"  Had I said, "Y'know, I think you're right" instead of, "ummm, yeah...", my success with women might have been forever changed.  But that's not my last story.  This is.

The final of the hot 100 debuts this week is actually on its 17th chart week- Bobby "Borris" Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers doing the Monster Mash at #89.  Now, you might ask, why on earth do you re-release a Halloween themed tune in the middle of summer?  I know I did.

I didn't get answers, but I did get a fun story.  Pickett took the song after coming up with it to Gary Paxton, a producer, who, BTW, was basically the Hollywood Argyles, known for the fellow-novelty hit Alley-Oop.  Trying to figure out just who the Crypt-Kickers were was a ton o' fun.  One site- the first one I saw- suggested that the Hollywood Argyles were in fact the CKs.  However, there were really only two (and barely that) HAs, and one of 'em wasn't involved.  So I dug on, and found that Leon Russell was there.  Then I found another story that said he arrived late, and while he was on the rest of the album they threw together to go with it, he was NOT on Monster Mash.  Was he? IDK.  Another place suggested that members of Ronny and the Daytonas were involved; but if they were, I sure couldn't prove it.  Then comes Mel Taylor, who would become drummer for the Ventures.  He was supposedly a CK; but then I found that the drummer on the lp and the drummer that toured with Pickett were NOT one and the same, because the studio drummer ( according to his daughter) didn't want to tour.  Which one was Taylor?  I'm not really sure, and I have no idea where I found the story from his daughter, whichever "he" it was.  That brings us to a lady named Ricky Page who was definitely in on it.  She had also been involved in a band with her daughters called Joanne and the Triangles and hit with After The Showers Come Flowers (which was a pretty good clone of the Murmaids' Popsicles, Icicles) as well as a Ricky solo called I Cry Inside.  My source further says that she became a member of something called the Nashville Edition.  And who, pray tell, were they?  Why, they were the two-man, two-woman vocal quartet that provided a lot of the background vocals for the Hee Haw TV show, including joining Sheb Wooley (AKA Ben Colder) on the show's theme song , which he wrote.

So, let's see if we can get done with the top ten now, shall we?
#6, up three notches, is Freda Payne's Band Of Gold.
Holding at 5, what would have been the six degrees song if the hot 100 debuts mess hadn't so thoroughly destroyed it, is Blues Image with Ride Captain Ride.
The Jackson Five drop from top dog to #4 with The Love You Save.
A notch to three, Melanie and Lay Down (Candles In The Rain).
A notch to two,  the Temps with Ball Of Confusion (quite possibly this week's theme song).
ANNNNND... a notch to the top spot.....

Three Dog Night- and if ever the song was appropriate to the post, this is it-  Mama Told Me (Not To Come)!!!!!

Thank God I typed this up Thursday night- if this is what Friday the 13th is doing already, I might be in jail or the hospital by  9 AM tomorrow!  See ya next time!

An open letter (actually, a sent letter), and some pics.

Dear Asphalt Care, Inc:

I would like it if you would point out to your crew that was working just west of St. Vincent’s school and church on Wallen Road aprox. 11:30 AM on 7/11/2012 that it would be a good idea to have a flagman working when you block an entire lane at the top of a blind hill. Unless of course you are shooting for accidents, wrongful death suits, etc. I realize your one worker who was actually working was busy, but the two that were standing off to the side discussing whatever while watching him work, might have been better employed in this critical piece of required safety work. Regards, CW Martin

 

(Sigh...)

 

_________________________________________

 

And now, this morning's walk:

 

Scrappy insisted that SOMETHING was on this stump... sometime...

She was just laying there, enjoying the day.  Never got up once.

I thought maybe that she had the fawn with her, but pictures don't lie.

"I still SEEEE you..."

Oh, and Mr. Meanie was around again.