“It is tough,” she said, “to be that enthusiastic at that this time of day.”
She meant the morning, trying to wake up for breakfast, which is something to be excited about. And it was delicious:
And then it was cloudy and cold. Well, there was that part of the afternoon were it rained. That really changed things up. All week long. That’s pretty much been the way of it this week.
Today we learned that Harvey Updyke could be back on the street by May. I’m over the guy. He has so many probation conditions I’m sure he’ll get picked up again before too long.
More importantly something collapsed at the newly renovated terminal at the Birmingham airport. A family was hurt. Turned out they were standing under one of those large flight info screens when it fell off the wall. I was listening to the fire department scanner chatter. Three rescue units were there. And then a fourth and fifth were dispatched.
Meanwhile they were answering calls to an elderly person with trouble breathing, a teen who couldn’t see and a car crashing into a power pole. Listening to a scanner is addictive.
Late in the evening we learned a 10-year-old died in the airport accident. The people that picked up the info screen off the family said it weighed between 300 and 400 pounds. The mother had some serious leg injuries. Her younger children were also taken to the hospital. They were on vacation, returning home, and just passing through the Birmingham airport.
In a happier story, the US played Costa Rica in a World Cup qualifier and someone thought booking this in a Colorado venue in March would be a good idea. Craziest non-soccer game I’ve ever watched at the international level:
Welcome back YouTube Cover Theater, where we celebrate the talent of regular people who are playing on their sofas, at their bars and on their decks, in front of a camera and, now, the world. We do this by choosing a feature act and showing off covers of their original work. This week’s inspiration is Old Crow Medicine Show:
James River Blues:
There have been some 5,200 views of that one. I can’t believe this one of Caroline has less than 2,000:
This one just looks older because of the sepia:
Every other Old Crow Medicine Show cover is of Wagon Wheel. So we’ll just go to Mumford and Sons:
Hope you have a great weekend, and that it is a little warmer and a little drier where you are.
I made dinner last night, a new recipe for us, and very occasionally I share those here. So here’s the recipe.
My dinner started off with a chickpea salad with a homemade dressing. Make the dressing first:
1/2 cup – fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup – generic mild red wine vinegar
3 cloves – garlic
1 teaspoon – kosher salt
fresh black pepper
Mince the garlic cloves. Mix the liquids with the garlic. Add the salt and pepper. While that rests, put together your salad:
1 can – chickpeas/garbanzo beans
1 – large cucumber
1 tray – of grape tomatoes
1/4 cup – Athenos Garlic and Herb Feta cheese
1/4 cup – red onion
Fresh pepper
Quarter the cucumber. You should get around three cups. Halve the tomatoes, which should turn into about two cups. Rinse and add the chickpeas. Pour in the crumbled feta and diced onions. When ready to serve, strain any stray bits of garlic from the dressing and then pour into the salad, tossing to cover everything.
1 pound – fresh or frozen cheese ravioli
1 clove of garlic
1/2 teaspoon – kosher salt
1/4 cup – extra-virgin olive oil
2 – shallots
3 tablespoons – red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon – honey Dijon mustard
3 cups – arugula (It’s a vegetable.)
Pepper to taste
Boil a pot of water while mashing your garlic (over salt) into smithereens, making a nice past-like substance. Drop the ravioli in your pot and stir. Let them boil until they float.
Pour your oil into a small skillet over medium. Add in your new garlic paste and diced shallots. Brown that mixture, which should be about two or three minutes. Then pour over it your vinegar, mustard and fresh pepper. Remove quickly from the heat.
Your ravioli is probably done by now. Drain that. Put it in a bowl, pour in the skillet’s contents and toss with your arugula. This is where your pecorino or parmesan goes. Serve hot. Enjoy a reasonably healthy meal.
Every so often I find something online and think “This, beyond the obvious military and financial and communication purposes, is what the web was made for.”
As has been correctly pointed out in the comments at SB Nation, Ken Mattingly, so ably played by Gary Sinise, is an Auburn man, and thus should not be cheering. Everything else feels wholly correct, however.
Naturally Forrest Gump is driving the thing.
YouTube Cover Theater: We find covers online and allow the talent of undiscovered folks playing music in their bedrooms and living rooms and kitchens to shine through. It is like every third show on network television, but without the more annoying parts.
Today’s featured covered artist(s) are the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. If you don’t understand their relative importance, open another tab in your browser and do a bit of Googling as these videos play.
First, here’s an older gentleman playing through a ceramic tunnel into the most acoustically vibrant church designed in the galaxy singing American Dream:
Mr. Bojangles:
OK, so this guy is singing this to his grandmother on her 80th birthday at her request. Automatic entry:
Two of these songs were written by Rodney Crowell, so I guess next week we’ll have to feature covers of songs he performed.
I like, even more than covers, on-stage collaboration. Here’s Nitty Gritty Dirty Band, Allison Kraus and others covering a Johnny Russell classic:
This became way more country-folk than I’d intended when I started. Enjoy the arugula!
I think I spent pretty much the entire (non-cycling portion of my) day planning out classes. The exotic life I lead sometimes, I tell ya.
The best part about it is that it becomes a multi-directional puzzle. What can I do on what day for logistical purposes? What part of DEF needs to wait until ABC has been concluded? After a while it all starts to fit together nicely.
The frustrating part is that I know, I just know, there will be something I’ll miss or forget or write up incorrectly. I won’t catch it until after the class starts. C’est la vie.
Classes start back on Monday, hence so much time on it all this week. I’m on a quest to make a wonderful experience for the students. Hopefully it gets a little bit better every time I teach this particular class. I think I’ve removed most of the busy work and refined the most confusing parts. Now I just have to add in some more extra material. There can never be enough work, he thinks to himself.
And now the correspondent will share two stories bearing no resemblance to one another.
The Alabama Department of Homeland Security confirmed there has been a hacking attack on state computers but declined to describe the scope or severity of the intrusion.
A spokeswoman said the incident was still under criminal investigation.
“The Alabama Department of Homeland Security acknowledges that there has been a cyber-intrusion of state government IT infrastructure. It is currently under criminal investigation and at this point there will be no additional comments,” according to a statement issued by the department.
It is not immediately known which agencies were involved or if any state records were compromised.
First, isn’t this what the state Department of Homeland Security — and aren’t you glad they put that office into motion? — is supposed to prevent? Their public mandate is “Working to prepare for, prevent and respond to terrorist activity within the state.” So maybe not. It is unclear if these were terrorists. But the meaning of that word has become fluid in the modern age. You know know what else isn’t clear? The way the reporter wrote the story, “It is not immediately known” suggests that maybe the state officials don’t know what was compromised. Of course it means “the state officials aren’t tell us who got hit,” but still. Maybe it is their job to protect against all threats, foreign, domestic, terrorist and baud modem. Maybe it isn’t their job. Maybe they should just unplug all of the computers when they go home at night.
I’d write more about the state Department of Homeland Security but, as of this writing, their site seems to be down. Vexing.
Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, there’s a sheriff many people would vote for: Wis. sheriff urges citizens to get gun training. Part of Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke Jr.’s new radio campaign:
“I need you in the game,” he says.
“With officers laid off and furloughed, simply calling 911 and waiting is no longer your best option,” he adds. “You can beg for mercy from a violent criminal, hide under the bed, or you can fight back. … Consider taking a certified safety course in handling a firearm so you can defend yourself until we get there.”
The ad has generated sharp criticism from other area officials and anti-violence advocates. The president of the Milwaukee Deputy Sheriffs’ Association, Roy Felber, said it sounds like a call to vigilantism.
“That doesn’t sound too smart,” Felber said. “People have the right to defend themselves, but they don’t have the right to take the law into their own hands.”
I’m not exactly sure about the straw Felber is standing on. If you conflate protecting your family and vigilantism, there’s not really much point in even locking your doors, right? Here’s the sheriff’s actual ad:
I’m sure he’ll be a hit on Fox News before the weekend is over.
You know, it is Friday. We haven’t done this in a while. Here, then, is the impromptu return of YouTube Cover Theater, the segment where we discover the amazing talent of people sitting in their homes with an instrument, a camera and an Internet connection. This week’s covers will feature the great Same Cooke.
My favorite part of this one is where she gets a little frustrated with the bridge. And also the light and sound in the room. Also, the cover is pretty great:
Some guy laid all of that tile in this kitchen and never guessed it would be seen online more than 70,000 times. But you get a good sense of why:
I always thought this song worked better as a harmony. The ragged parts in this version help it, too. A lot of fun for what is, presumably their first try at it:
(I don’t think it was the first time they tried it, but it is a nice idea.)
Here’s a niceinteractive chart from NPR. It examines unemployment across the country, breaking it down demographically with respect to age and education.
Watched Thor. It wasn’t terrible. It wasn’t as good or as bad as it could have been. I’m detecting the comic book-turned-movie theme, though. The better ones are the movies without love stories. Thus, Iron Man is the best of the comic book movies, as a function of Tony Stark’s character flaws.
This isn’t an anti-romantic movie statement, just a comic book observation. Thor had to love interest in the comics, one an Earth woman and another from his home realm. I’m embarrassed to say I looked that up on Wikipedia just now. But I’m guessing kids didn’t pick up Thor for the love story. They wanted flying and hammers and thunder.
And since director Kenneth Branagh is beyond blame, this can only fall to Natalie Portman.
Oh someone will blame Loki later, but you’ll know better.
A little something different from YouTube Cover Theater this week. Here are three different perspectives on Hey Ya. Makes you think.
This is the most clever video cover I’ve seen so far:
The obligatory ukelele version, with lovely vocal accompaniment:
The most productive accomplishment of the day was in trimming the hedges. This is no small thing, as our house is surrounded on three sides by shrubbery. I’m not sure why the southernmost side is bare.
Everything along the front, save the door, the sidewalk and the garage, are bordered with green, growing things. All but one segment was trimmed. The lucky ones — and isn’t that just like a bunch of bushes, bragging to their neighbors? “You got chopped up, but I’m still here. Look at me grow! — I left alone because they’ll probably be dug out of the ground in a few weeks. Others along the front got lowered, including one that borders the garage. We’ve developed a little contour into it for the car’s side mirror.
There are also two at the end of the drive. These must be maintained to preserve the proper turning ratio as one backs out of the drive. This requires the acquisition of surveying tools, and chalk lines. I am the only person in America going through such precise measurements.
The unintended benefit, or consequence, is that one of them is growing around the mailbox post. I’d let it grow over the thing, but that would probably violate some nuance of the neighborhood and only make the mail carrier mad.
I do all of this, by the way, with the 24-inch Black & Decker Hedge Hog, which is like mounting an M-60 onto Excalibur and plugging an extension cord into the hilt. You hit the trigger, feel that dual blade action, wave it above your head and know: your kingdom is only limited by your vision.
And municipally recognized property lines.
Trimming up the northern side of the estate required the ladder, because there are some bushes on steroids on that side of the house. Two of them would have been easier to reach from the roof.
So I’m standing on the top of a multi-use ladder. We have a transformer of aluminum that makes shapes that are only limited by your imagination, and not its contortion. I dutifully set the ladder into a standard A configuration, straddling the center hinge point with a foot on either side. I realized I couldn’t reach the very back of the bush. OK then. So I find myself standing on the top of the A, in the hinge-point, waving about a whirring 24-bladed saw with shark teeth moving at 2,900 strokes per minute.
My kingdom is suddenly a lot less interesting from this vantage point. I climbed down quickly.
The curious thing about the greenery here is that there is a lot of variety. Once the offending shrubs are out of the front there will only be one place surrounding the entire structure where you see two of the same species next to one another. I haven’t yet decided if that’s a feature or a bug. If you had to dig them all up, every annoying root, what would you replace them with? Uniformity or everything that could grow in this climate?
And that’s the sort of thing you think about as you rake away the leaves leavings. That’s some way to start your Friday evening.
YouTube Cover Theatre, where we see the talent that people have, until the advent of webcams and the Internet, people were hiding in their homes. Since Irecently watched the George Harrison documentary, we may as well check out covers of some of his work.
The Beatles weren’t my band. I like them fine, they just don’t belong to me. Wrong generation. But, if I had been in the right group, I think Harrison would have been my favorite of the bunch. And since you can’t have Harrison without the band, we’ll start with a cover of All Those Years Ago:
That looks like an impossibly difficult tune and he did a nice job. Then he leaned back against his den’s wood paneled walls and enjoyed the rest of his evening.
This cover of My Sweet Lord has received 26,000 views, which may be the largest count that we’ve ever seen in YouTube Cover Theater. Aside, is it just me, or has this song always sounded like it should be appropriated as commercial bed music?
One of the cool things about the Beatles, I would think, would be introducing what has essentially become timeless music to kids. I mean the clean cut, less drugs portion of the catalog. And while this is essentially a Paul McCartney tune, Harrison wrote the main riff, which is enough of an excuse to show a cute cover by a father serenading his daughter for her second birthday.
When she’s older she’s going to be humming Beatles tunes and won’t remember why. Then she’s going to stumble through her dad’s YouTube uploads and it will all click. It will be adorable.
Hard to believe it has been 10 years since George Harrison died. I was doing a network newscast at the time, the last segment of which was a 30 second spot and outro. That day I just played this song for 30 seconds and signed off:
Just for fun, here’s a recreation of Harrison’s Bangladesh Concert with members of Wonderous Stories, Alan Parsons Live Project and more, covering Wah Wah:
Other things happened today, too, emails and organizational things. We’ll have wrapped up the latest big project at work by the first part of the week, it seems my part has largely been completed, except for showing up at the various events next week. Homecoming at Samford means advisory council meetings and wall of fame induction ceremonies and all of the attendant activities.
With those things now completed I can return to other work. Like digging up shrubs.
