Every Anxious Wave

Every Anxious Wave by Mo Daivau, 2016

Read in November 2020

This is a book every music nerd science fiction fan can love. A thirty-something bar owner and former rock musician finds a time traveling worm hole in his closet that he uses to go back in time to attend shows in the past. Him and a computer wiz friend develop a business of sending people back in time to see shows by their favorite bands. People bounce around time meddling with the past, having romances and changing the future. One character attempts to go back to 1980 to stop the murder of John Lennon but a type error sends him to that Manhattan street corner outside the Dakota in 980 instead where he eventually lives with the native clan in the area. Another character gets a glimpse of a dystopian future. 

A highly entertaining novel that's brilliantly done with lots of silly ideas that somehow work.

Elton John 11-17-70 - Vinyl Spins

Vinyl Spins - 17/11/70 by Elton John, 1971

I gave the 1971 Elton John album 17/11/70 a spin today up on the third. Today was the 50th anniversary of the live radio broadcast show recorded on 11/17/70. It sounded great. This was the first Elton John album I bought. I first had it on cassette for playing at sea on a Navy ship. When I got out I got the vinyl version along with a couple of other albums from the early 1970's.

This album certainly holds up well so many years later and I think it is one of his best records.

Sapiens

 

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, 2011

Read in November 2020

This was a very provocative history that spans the entire existence of humanity and challenges everything about being human. The book begins with a fascinating discussion of very early human history and the beginnings of the human species culminating in the rise and domination of homo sapiens. A lot of the rest of the book is the author's musings on the human condition throughout history with much of it glossed over but there were some really interesting points being made throughout and many thoughtful epiphanies. 

Some parts I read through quickly but there were many others were so compelling I needed to stop and ponder. The author was also good at presenting unbiased complex ideas in simple terms that also engendered a sense of wonderment. He also made the case that throughout human history the expansion of homo sapiens was an ecological disaster for the planet. 

Vincent Price

 

The actor Vincent Price was an icon for my generation. He seemed to be in an awful lot of the scary movies we saw as kids at our neighborhood theater on Saturday afternoons. I especially liked the string of great movies he made from about 1958 through 1963.

Then in the mid sixties he was in a bunch of teenage beach movies as some oddball villain. Very weird.

Then he came roaring back in 1971 as the very creepy Dr. Phibes.

All through those years he also made many appearances on many television shows and he was usually the villain.

He certainly mad a lot of memorable films. He was also a serious art collector and art historian. However, after his film work he was probably most known as a gourmet chef and the many cookbooks he has written. Definitely a man of many talents.

Some of the movies of Vincent Price that made an impression on me.

• The Song of Bernadette, 1943
• Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein, 1948
• The Three Musketeers, 1948
• House of Wax, 1953
• The Ten Commandments, 1956
• The Fly, 1958
• House on Haunted Hill,1959
• Return of the Fly, 1959
• The Tingler, 1959
• The Bat, 1959
• House of Usher, 1960
• The Pit and the Pendulum, 1961
• Tales of Terror, 1962
• The Raven, 1963
• Beach Party, 1963
• The Haunted Palace, 1963
• The Comedy of Terrors, 1964
• The Last Man on Earth, 1964
• The Masque of the Red Death, 1964
• Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, 1965
• Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs, 1966
• The House of 1,000 Dolls, 1967
• The Trouble With Girls, 1969
• The Abominable Dr. Phibes, 1971
• Theater of Blood, 1973

He had that fantastic role of the narrator in Michael Jackson's Thriller;

Throughout the sixties and seventies he seemed to pop up on TV shows all over the dial and was usually a villain of some kind. Here is a partial list of some of the shows he appeared on.

• Man From UNCLE
• Batman
• Have Gun Will Travel
• Alfred Hitchcock Presents
• F Troop
• Get Smart
• Mod Squad
• Night Gallery
• The Love Boat
• Columbo
• Brady Bunch
• The Bionic Woman
• and on and on

Transition Team

 

By not recognizing the Biden transition team Trump is throwing a tantrum. He has been terminated from office and will soon be consumed by lawsuits, deep in debt and will have lost his power in the party.

East Mt. Pleasant and Boyer

My daughter's house in the Mt. Airy section of Philadelphia is on the busy corner of East Mt. Pleasant Avenue and Boyer Street. It's one of the few uninterrupted cross streets in the neighborhood that runs from the Cheltenham Avenue shopping area through Mt. Airy and on to Lincoln Drive and the connector to the expressway to downtown so it gets a fair amount of traffic. It is also a bus route. I like sitting on the porch watching the world go by.

One day last fall I was sitting there when this praying mantis came by and hung out with me for awhile. She moved about on the porch railing and then slowly climbed up the column to the porch roof. She was a momentary distraction from the traffic and the people going by on the sidewalk. She was also a distraction for Henry.

It's a busy intersection. There are people waiting for the bus on that corner. It's a bus that I rode many times when I was growing up in Germantown. I sometimes rode that bus up to Cedarbrook Mall which was one of the first malls in the area back in the early 60's. I went by that corner many times. An interesting thing about riding the buses now is the phone apps that people have that tell them when the bus will arrive on their corner using a GPS mapping system. Select your bus and you can see it moving along the map. People arrive at the bus stop just before the bus arrives and you can see them checking their phone for the progress of the bus. I put the SEPTA public transportation app for Philly on my phone so I could follow the progress of the commuter trains while we were visiting.

I liked sitting on their porch in the afternoon with a book. There were people constantly working by. It felt like home. They live in a very walkable neighborhood. The train station is a couple of blocks away in one direction and Germantown Avenue is just a couple of blocks the other way. Both attract a lot of people walking by their house. We love that they are close to the avenue where there are lots of bars, restaurants, stores, shops, cafes, the library, playgrounds, the supermarket.  There is also a nice brewery. Lot's to do there in the evenings after being with the kids all day. Well, up until the pandemic that is.

We were fortunate to have some time there in October. We had been planning to go down for Thanksgiving but that didn't work out. We can't get wait to get down there again during the coming year. Hopefully in the late spring we will have been vaccinated. 

Janis - The Bio

Janis: Her Life and Music by Holly George-Warren, 2019

Read in November 2020

I just finished this biography of Janis Joplin. It was a sad, authentic and stunning portrait of a great talent and flawed person. The author delved into her personal and musical life as she explored the creative process. Often with drugs and alcohol. It was also a wonderful chronicle of the late 1960's.

She was intellectually curious and artistic. I was surprised to discover she was a voracious reader who always had several books in her bag along with her always present bottle of Southern Comfort. She read classic novels and did serious research into music. She embraced the Beats, was racially progressive and a hard working trailblazer. It was so sad that she died alone in a hotel room from an accidental overdose of heroin.

The author had incredible access to Joplin's family, friends, band-mates, letters, interviews, archives.

Buried Alive:  The Biography of Janis Joplin by Myra Friedman, 1973. I read this biography of Janis back in March 1975.

I also wrote about Janis last month on the 50th anniversary of his death. Janis Joplin 50 Years Ago

Record Store Memories - Sly

On a November Saturday afternoon in 1967 I was browsing the bins at one of my favorite record stores a few blocks from my house in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. There were probably about ten people in the store looking at records. The store clerk was playing music on the turntable and was talking with some customers. Then he said I got something here that came in yesterday that you should hear. He put on Dance to the Music by Sly & The Family Stone. Nobody in the store had heard it before and it was like an electric bolt shot through the space. Within moments there were people dancing in the aisles. Everybody who was in that store at that time bought a copy of that single... including me.

The record was released and in stores on Friday November 17th so this incident happened on Saturday November 18, 1967.

Pandemic Milk

This is a photo of a bottle of milk we got from Wegman's this week. It's one of the ways we have been getting food during this pandemic. Becky goes online and creates a shopping cart of food we need and then places the order. We then go to Wegman's and pull up to the special door after receiving a text message that the food order is ready for pickup. You text the store that you are out there at the pull up spot and then someone comes out and puts the bags of food in your car.

This particular bottle of milk has the label on it designating it for Becky Emery because it was not in a bag and was standing alone. You can see on the label that it was one of 11 items or bags. It has been a very efficient way of shopping that enables one to not enter the store itself.

Over the past 8 months of the pandemic we have also used the food delivery service from Prime Whole Foods which brings your order right to your door. The delivery person will text you when the delivery is taking place and you do not need to be there. They will leave the food on your porch. That is unless there is booze in the order. Then you must be there with ID.

Becky has also been using Dash's and the Lexington Coop which are both located right down Hertel Avenue from her studio. She is able to drive by and check out how busy they are by the number of cars in the parking lot. Most of the time she stops by there just after the lunch hour and is able to go in there and get some essentials on a regular basis.

The Coop is always fine but sometimes in Dash's she runs into people not wearing masks properly. They are usually older men with their mask down under their nose or dangling on their chin. Really dumb. Overall however we've been in good shape with groceries.

Now winter is coming and things are getting bad again.

Veterans Day Post

This is a copy of a social media post I made to a Navy veterans group today.

Happy Veterans Day. This is the USS Little Rock which was my flagship for a couple of Med cruises in the early 1970's. It's now at the Buffalo Naval and Serviceman's Park along with the USS The Sullivans and the USS Croaker which is about 10 minutes from my home. I walk through that park many times throughout the year and I have annually gone onboard the Little Rock to salute the flag on the quarterdeck, walk around and pay my respects. I always make sure I go to the berthing areas, the engine room, the mess decks and the dental office.

The first time I was on the Little Rock was in the Bay of Naples in 1972. I needed some dental work done and I took a boat from my ship, the USS Plymouth Rock which was anchored in the bay over to the Little Rock. I went up the ladder to the quarterdeck, saluted the flag and was taken to the dental office where I sat down in the chair and had two wisdom teeth removed. That chair is still there and every year I look at that chair remembering that day in 1972.

This year access to the ships has been closed because of the pandemic. I was down there a few times but no one could go onboard. Directly across the pier from the ships is one of my favorite area pub restaurants the aptly named Liberty Hound which specializes in seafood and local craft brews. I love sitting there on the patio gazing at the ships, the waterfront and Lake Erie. I always stop there for a couple of beers after my annual visit to the Little Rock and often have conversations with many old salts who come to town to visit the ships.

If you are ever in the Buffalo/Niagara Falls area visiting the Naval Park drop me a text and we can have a beer together at the Liberty Hound.