Friday 5 for December 17: Are you prepositioning me?

Here are my answers to the latest Friday 5 blog entry.

1. When did you recently do something on the sly?

If I had to tell anyone, it would not be "on the sly". Pleading the 5th and moving on.

2. Which of your plans for the coming week is still up in the air?

All of them. I live mostly day to day, though I have a plan that will be in motion come January 3. This coming week... nah....

3. What’s happening across the street?

Noise. Big trucks honking their horns, driving to the loading bay area at the nearby supermarket discount store. Directly across the street, cars and other vehicles are passing by, a homeless person is lying on the sidewalk, with birds occasionally chirping. 

4. What have you heard recently through the grapevine?

Um... three versions of this song....

1. Gladys Knight & the Pips 2. Marvin Gaye 3. Creedence Clearwater Revival

5. What kinds of videos on YouTube are likeliest to send you down the rabbit hole?

I love YouTube mainly because it is FREE and has all kinds of short and long subject videos. Surely most of it is not high brow television, but there are a lot of good stuff to be viewed there. And all of it is FREE... no subscription fees required except for your internet service.

Oh and if you are annoyed by ads, on a Mac computer just use an ad blocker. 99% of the ads are gone.  That said the Top 10 video subjects that pull me down the rabbit hole:

1. MUSIC - Whether it is the latest music videos, audio of albums I am thinking of getting or looking up old and obscure music, this is the place to be. Plus there are a ton of full on concert films, concert video clips and documentaries, opinion pieces and everything else about music artists, genres, history, technology, etc. 

2. PLANE CRASH VIDEOS - A morbid but fascinating subject. There are several people posting air crash videos and the most interesting ones are those that give you the outcome of the crash investigation as to why that aircraft went down.

3. TECH NEWS and VIEWS - If you are into tech of all types, YouTube has everything. The entire TWIT slate of podcasts and live video stream here for free. Learn a lot about your Mac, iPhone, Android, Windows, Linux, Google and a whole lot more not only on the TWIT channels but also from others. Smartphone videos, internet privacy, dumb phones, old computers, old handheld video games, record players, cassette recorders, TV antennas, cord-cutting are all great subjects for tech news, views, instructional videos. Yay!

4. FOX NEWS CLIPS - Since I don't have cable and am to "pake" to subscribe to any news service, I watch the clips Fox News post to YouTube just to see what Ann Colter, Sean Hannity or my other favorite commentators have to say about the current stupidity in our nation.

4a. STOSSEL - Gotta love John Stossel's videos.... love most of his practical ideas.

5. NEWS in GENERAL - I can also watch live streaming from ABC, NBC and CBS on YouTube... big tornado or other storm hits, you go here and jump from channel to channel... terrorists, war, disasters, political crap live from wherever, yep... you can count on the live feeds from the news networks here... This also includes SKYNEWS, BLOMBERG, The Weather Channel, etc. Good for cheap news junkies (not to forget that a lot of this stuff also streams for free on Pluto TV).

5a: Our local news channels have clips and occasional live feeds. KHON TV, Hawaii News Now, Big Island Video News, Hawaii State Legislature, etc.

6. SPACE - NASA TV, SPACE X and more. IF you love stuff about outer space... well you can watch it all here. Live launches and splashdowns, activities on the space station, views from the space station (24-7 live), planetary exploration, Mars, opinions, history, the future, etc.

7. DUST - Occasionally I love watching the DUST channel full of short, interesting science fiction stories.

8. MOVIES - If you know where to look on YouTube there are free streaming movies. Some fairly well known, others classics and many obscurities + public domain films. YouTube itself has its own free streaming movies (with commercials) as well as pay option movies. But there are others putting movies up that you can watch for free. Can't say they are legit or not, but they are there.

9. DISASTERS - Shipwrecks, earthquakes, volcano eruptions, terrorism, fires, storms, current and historic. I can start on one and never end... go from Titanic to possible calamity that may explode at Yellowstone... and speculative video on the end of the world and when our sun becomes a red giant 5 billion years from now... or was it 5 million? Oh well....

10. And everything else... YouTube bloggers, families, wildlife, animals, cats, dogs, car crashes, Hawaii, stupidity, you name it... it's there. YouTube!

Friday 5 for August 21: One-decade rewind

1. What are some albums you really like from 2010?

By the year 2010 I was mostly buying digital singles from Amazon or iTunes. But I did get a few albums. Here are my top 10.

1. Caro Emerald - Deleted Scenes from the Cutting Room Floor
2. Maroon 5 - Hands All Over
3. Neon Trees - Habits
4. Bruno Mars - Doo-Wops and Hooligans
5. Taylor Swift - Speak Now
6. Elton John and Leon Russell - The Union
7. Jack Johnson - To the Sea
8. Katy Perry - Teenage Dream
9. Ringo Starr - Y Not
10. Selena Gomez and the Scene - A Year Without Rain

I really love the Caro Emerald album. It is played with regular frequency to this very day. Discovered her in 2009 on that now defunct The61.com website. She is my most played solo female artist on my Last FM.




2. What are some songs you remember fondly from 2010?

Kind of in numerical order,  here are 10 of them (in retrospect)

1. Need You Now - Lady Antebellum
2. Animal - Neon Trees
3. Misery - Maroon 5
4. Rhythm of Love - Plain White T's
5. Cool My Heels - Nikki Yanofsky
6. Back It Up - Caro Emerald
7. Alejandro - Lady Gaga
8. Hey, Soul Sister - Train
9. Break Your Heart - Taio Cruz
10. Just the Way You Are - Bruno Mars

Here are some other notables (in my book)

- A Year Without Rain - Selena Gomez and the Scene
- Bulletproof - La Roux
- I Heard of a Girl - Miss Li
- Back to December - Taylor Swift
- A Night Like This - Caro Emerald
- Walk With You - Ringo Starr
- I Saw The Rain - Lovers and Poets
- Colors - April Smith and the Great Picture Show
- Good To Be Me (Feat. Kid Rock) - Uncle Kracker
- The Sweetest Thing - Camera Obscura
- Bad Romance - Lady Gaga
- A Stitch in Time - Smashing Pumpkins
- We No Speak Americano - Yolanda Be Cool and Dcup - This one is for you Scrivener.

3. What’s your favorite movie released in 2010?

I hardly ever watch movies these days. It started from the 2000s as prices at theaters steadily went up. I kind of had to stop buying DVDs too as I had too much and pay cable was out of the question. In 2011 I cut my cable cord. I only watch streaming video and mostly only on the free channels.

That said the only two movies out of that list that I saw are the following:

- Shrek Forever After - Just saw this a few weeks ago on Tubi TV. Pretty good wrap for the franchise.

- Chronicles of Narnia - Voyage of the Dawn Trader - The only movie I actually paid money to go see at the theater that year. I had seen the previous 2 on the big screen in prior years. This was the 2nd best of the three movies, the original being the best one.

4. Which television programs* debuting in 2010 did you rather enjoy?

- Caprica - Sadly it was cancelled after 18 or so episodes. This was a good prequel to the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series of 2004.

- Hawaii Five-0 - I watched it regularly for the first 2 or 3 years and then grew tired of it. For 2010 it was not bad + plus it kept Hawaii's TV industry alive after LOST wrapped up that year.

- Storage Wars - I never watched this when it first came out, but watch it and its location centric offshoots on TubiTV or Pluto TV when I just feel like vegging out on something stupid. I like free streaming.

5. Which events in 2010 bring back good memories?

The most memorable events that bring back good memories in my life that year was spending a week or so with my Mom and Dad. Dad was in his last months of life. On several days he wanted to see different places on the Big Island where he grew up and lived. I drove Mom and Dad up to Pauuilo Mauka, Kalopa, Ookala and Laupahoehoe all in one day. The plantation camp that he grew up in was torn down years before we revisited the place in 2010. He was kind of sad. I shot a lot of pictures.

I also made a 20 minute video of him talking about some of the memories he had while growing up in Ookala. Here is a one minute clip of that video.




Dad passed away in November of 2010.

Second most memorable event of 2010 was doing a press tour for HawaiiReporter and sailing out on the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier that July for the RIMPAC exercises.

Friday 5 for August 24: Lyrical Gangsta

Questions from Scrivener's Friday 5 blog....

1. What’s a stupid lyric from a song you like?

I really love the music of Caro Emerald. Way back in 2009 I discovered her on "The 61" website when I stumbled into her song "A Night Like This"... good song.. and I shortly found "Back it Up" on the same site. Both songs were eventually issued to her debut album Deleted Scenes from the Cutting Room Floor. Both songs became big hits in Europe but never clicked so much in the U.S.

I bought the album on iTunes and have followed Emerald for the past 10 years or so. She is one of my most played artists on Last FM. Caro is not a native English speaker as she is from Denmark. So I guess when they needed lyrics, non-sensical ones were added into the song... and guess what.. in their own quarky way they work!



Caro Emerald - Back it Up

I can't stop shakin'
The room has a groove and the floor
It's almost earthquakin'
Uhuh

Look what we're makin'
History out on the floor
And it's just awakin'
Uhuh

So get that needle in the core
Scratch that back and gimme more
You know zactly what I came here for
Back it up and do it again

From the middle to the top to the end
Ba dlu dla dlun dloday
Ba dlu dla dlun dloday
Back to the middle to the front to the end
Za dlu dla dlun dloday
Everybody ba dlun dloday
I don't care if he's a friend
From the front to the middle to the back to the end

Back, back, back, back it up (I wanna)
Back, back, back, back it up (I wanna)
Back, back, back, back it up (I wanna)
Back it up and do it again
Back, back, back, back it up (I wanna)
Back, back, back, back it up (I wanna)
Back,…

2. What’s a pretty good lyric from a song you dislike?



It is quite funny that through the many songs that pioneering rock n roller Chuck Berry is known for, the guy never had a #1 hit with such stalwart songs as "Johnny B. Goode," "Rollover Beethoven," "Sweet Little Sixteen," or "You Can Never Tell" in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Berry was a huge influence on rock artists such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.

In 1972 Chuck Berry finally got a #1 record on the Billboard Hot 100... and it was not a rock n roll song! The novelty hit "My Ding A Ling" was very popular on the radio in the late summer and fall of that year... so much so that it went to the top and annoyed a lot of listeners back then.

I don't exactly hate the song, but it certainly is not on my Top 12,000 or 23,000 of favorite songs... it is far down in the ranks of my 24,000 song iTunes library... but I have it (was included on one of those year by year Billboard Top 10 CDs issued by Rhino Records in the 1990s).

The song goes way beyond the mentioned "my grandmother bought me a cute little toy".... and holds it in a swim across old turtle creek...

In the end he comes up with this....

Hmm, this here song it ain't so sad
The cutest little song you ever had
Those of you who will not sing
You must be playing with your own ding-a-ling

My ding-a-ling, my ding-a-ling, I want you to play with my ding-a-ling!
My ding-a-ling, my ding-a-ling, I want you to play with my ding-a-ling!

Oh, your own, ding-a-ling, your own ding-a-ling, we saw you playing with your ding-a-ling

Yes, the song is NOT a masterpiece but is there to make you snicker and laugh... and well, I am sure that helped Berry with his retirement years later....


3. What’s a good non-Weird-Al-Yankovic lyric about food and drink?

By disallowing Weird Al, I had to go fish in my Doctor DeMento library of food songs... and of course I came up with this classic... lucky it was not animal songs cause I would have given you "Dead Puppies" or "My Dead Dog Rover".... muhahahahaha....  So just "Eat It!"



Barnes and Barnes.... FISH HEADS!

Fish heads, fish heads
Roly-poly fish heads
Fish heads, fish heads
Eat them up, yum

Fish heads, fish heads
Roly-poly fish heads
Fish heads, fish heads
Eat them up, yum

In the morning, laughing, happy fish heads
In the evening, floating in the soup

Ask a fish head anything you want to
They won’t answer, they can’t talk

I took a fish head out to see a movie
Didn’t have to pay to get it in

They can’t play baseball, they don’t wear sweaters
They’re not good dancers, they don’t play drums

EAT AT HOME

Paul McCartney and his wife Linda have a pretty good song about "eating" heh... I don't think he's singing about food...

Come on, little lady,
Lady, let's eat at home
Come on, little lady,
Lady, let's eat at home, eat at home, eat at home

Come on, little lady,
Lady, let's eat in bed
Come on, little lady,
Lady, let's eat at bed, eat in bed, eat in bed

Bring the love that you feel for me
Into line with the love I see,
And in the morning you'll bring to me love

Just thought of another one... only people in Hawaii will probably know this... "Filipino Christmas" by Frank DeLima.... "black dog roasting on the open fire" It's a mashup of well known Christmas melodies.



4. What’s a good song lyric to describe your week?

The music more than the lyrics are frantic and somewhat descriptive of my week or even just a day or days, depending on the month. Been having some anxiety lately about the hurricane and feeling not as prepared as I could be... like forgot to buy a bath tub stopper, and they are now all sold out... plus I am working on an online newsletter and the people either send their articles at the last minute or even worst change their articles after I send out 3 proofs and have the thing set up for automatic mailing on Monday.. and now I have to make those changes... not very hard but I like to think when something is done... it is done... move on to the next project...



Billy Joel - PRESSURE

You have to learn to pace yourself
Pressure
You're just like everybody else
Pressure
You've only had to run so far
So good
But you will come to a place
Where the only thing you feel
Are loaded guns in your face
And you'll have to deal with
Pressure

You used to call me paranoid
Pressure
But even you can not avoid
Pressure
You turned the tap dance into your crusade
Now here you are with your faith
And your Peter Pan advice
You have no scars on your face
And you cannot handle pressure

All grown up and no place to go
Psych 1, Psych 2
What do you know?
All your life is Channel 13
Sesame Street
What does it mean?

I'll tell you what it means
Pressure
Pressure

Don't ask for help
You're all alone
Pressure
You'll have to answer
To your own
Pressure
I'm sure…

5. What’s a good song lyric about inclement weather?

I get frustrated when it is sunny, I am outside... and then it starts to rain... like what the f***??? Of course this weekend I am waiting for BIG RAIN and WIND blowing in from Hurricane Lane. Ugh!



Creedence Clearwater Revival - Have You Ever Seen The Rain
The song was also covered by Joan Jett in 1990.

Someone told me long ago
There's a calm before the storm
I know!

It's been comin' for sometime
When it's over, so they say
It'll rain on a sunny day
I know!

Shining down like water
I wanna know, have you ever seen the rain?
I wanna know, have you ever seen the rain
Comin' down on a sunny day?

Yesterday and days before
Sun is cold and rain is hard
I know!

Been that way for all my time
'Til forever on it goes
Through the circle fast and slow
I know!

It can't stop, I wonder
I wanna know, have you ever seen the rain?
I wanna know, have you ever seen the rain
Comin' down on a sunny day?