“I saw a sign that said, ‘NEXT REST AREA 25 MILES.’ I said, “That’s pretty big.”
Steven Wright was/is/will be pure awesome, and your pastor never has to block Wright’s commentaries from his 12 year old daughter either. Heavy duty clean comedy.
Ten Years After was (is) one of my favorite blues-rock bands before I knew what blues-rock was. Those English whiteboys played it nasty.
Next up is Edgar Winter, one of the whitest of the white boys, playing one of the biggest instrumental rock hits ever. Personally I liked his brother Johnny‘s stuff better, but so what.
Now about Rick Derringer…
Okay, I’m going to roll the dice and ask you loyal followers an honest question. What was your favorite song / band when you were 20 years old? Leave your answers in the comments below. I’ll try not to cringe.
Have a great weekend, folks, and we’ll do more stuff tomorrow.
Self-taught John Harrison spent 43 years overcoming engineering challenges to develop the first marine chronometer. Harrison won a British competition to resolve deep sea navigation problems, but it took him several years to win the full prize.
In 1714, the British government offered a longitude prize for a method of determining longitude at sea, with the awards ranging from £10,000 to £20,000 (£2 million to £4 million in 2019 terms) depending on accuracy. John Harrison, a Yorkshire carpenter, submitted a project in 1730, and in 1735 completed a clock based on a pair of counter-oscillating weighted beams connected by springs whose motion was not influenced by gravity or the motion of a ship. His first two sea timepieces H1 and H2 (completed in 1741) used this system, but he realized that they had a fundamental sensitivity to centrifugal force, which meant that they could never be accurate enough at sea. Construction of his third machine, designated H3, in 1759 included novel circular balances and the invention of the bi-metallic strip and caged roller bearings, inventions which are still widely used. However, H3’s circular balances still proved too inaccurate and he eventually abandoned the large machines.
Harrison solved the precision problems with his much smaller H4 chronometer design in 1761. H4 looked much like a large five-inch (12 cm) diameter pocket watch. In 1761, Harrison submitted H4 for the £20,000 longitude prize. His design used a fast-beating balance wheel controlled by a temperature-compensated spiral spring. These features remained in use until stable electronic oscillators allowed very accurate portable timepieces to be made at affordable cost.
£20,000 in 1714 = ±£3,837,000 in 2018 = ±$4,733,000 USD.
$110k/year is not a bad payoff for a 45 year-long side project. Harrison began as a 21 year-old, and was 66 when he resolved the problem and received the full amount of the prize. He died 17 years later in 1776.
“In 1565, twelve years after the death of François Rabelais (1494-1553) — the French Renaissance author best known for his satirical masterpiece The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel, the bawdy tale of two giants, Gargantua and his son Pantagruel — the Parisian bookseller and publisher Richard Breton brought out Les songes drolatiques de Pantagruel (The drolatic dreams of Pantagruel). The slim volume, save a short preface from Breton, is made up entirely of images — 120 woodcuts depicting a series of fantastically bizarre and grotesque figures, reminiscent of some of the more inventive and twisted creations of Brueghel or Bosch.” […] “Despite the claims (echoed too in the book’s subtitle), the book’s wonderful images are very unlikely to be the work of Rabelais himself — the attribution probably a clever marketing ploy by Breton. […] The creator of the prints is now widely thought to be François Desprez, a French engraver and illustrator behind two other sets of imaginative designs, similar in style.”
Laverie Vallee, known better as Charmion, was a Sacramento born trapeze artist who possessed strength and a physique most men would be envious of. However, she was most well known for her risqué striptease performances. The act was incredibly impressive and provocative for the era. One of her greatest fans was Thomas Edison. As a result of that adoration, on November 11, 1901 Charmion committed a simplified version of her act to film for Edison. Charmion eventually retired to Santa Ana, California. She passed away on February 6, 1949 at the age of 73.
[Video found here. It’s silent. Talkies didn’t become commercially viable until the 1920s, so don’t crank up the volume and blow your speakers later.]
The Al Cohn Quartet at the Sanremo Jazz Festival 1987. Al Cohn (1925-1988) was one of the greatest improvisational jazz saxophonists of all time. Now check this out:
That’s Shaye Cohn, Al Cohn’s granddaughter, playing stride.
Now check THIS out:
Shaye Cohn – Cornet, Piano, Fiddle, Accordion, Banjo & Spoons
Craig Flory – Clarinet & Saxophone
Barnabus Jones – Trombone, Banjo, Fiddle, Guitar, Vocals
Todd Burdick – Tuba
Gregory Sherman – Vocals, Guitar & HarmonicaMax Bien-Kahn – Guitar & Banjo
Jason Lawrence – Banjo & Guitar
Robin Rapuzzi – Washboard & Drum set
Erika Lewis – Vocals & Bass drum
Dang. I’ve been impressed with Shaye Cohn’s stuff for years without knowing her pedigree, and now I know where she got it from. Note how she cues the band while playing.
Have a great weekend, folks, and we’ll do something else tomorrow.
“A Marine dentist sets up his office on Saipan, using a Japanese box as a footrest, a Japanese pail as a waste-bucket, and a Japanese shrine (left background) as decor for his waiting room. In order to keep his dentistry really ‘painless’ a Marine patrol nearby kept on the alert for Jap snipers.” (U.S. Naval Institute Photo Archives)
[Caption and image found here. Story at the link.]
Tacky Raccoons 