Tag: Retro & Vintage

Saturday Matinee – GoPro Gato, String Bean, The Blasters & Trombone Shorty

Guy fitted his cat with a GoPro to find out what it does while he’s away, and no, it doesn’t  sleep [via].

Ever hear of David “String Bean” Akeman? No? Here’s a documentary of the comic/iconic speed banjo player. Video starts at 06:00 for his rendition of the traditional folk song “Li’l Liza Jane. [Related post here.]

Akeman and his wife were murdered by burglars at their rural Tennessee home in 1973. The killers took only a chain saw and some firearms and were later apprehended and convicted.

The Blasters perform “Jubilee Train” at the 1985 Farm Aid concert in Champaign, Illinois. (Check out the impressive list of performers at the link.)

“Buckjump” by Trombone Shorty – a nice retro-funk groove to wrap things up.

Have a great weekend, folks.

Saturday Matinee – Shirley Bassey, Goldfinger, Nena & Nina Hagen with Don Rickles & Merv Griffin

Dame Shirley Bassey‘s classic “Theme to Goldfinger” as captured on film in 1965. I didn’t know she was Welsh until today.

Goldfinger‘s cover of Nena’s “99 Luftballons” is pretty good.

Nena‘s “Rette Mich” (Save Me) is from the same album as 99 Luftballons.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I once confused Nena (Gabriele Kerner of Hagen, West Germany) with  Nina Hagen (Catherine Hagen of East Berlin, East Germany). Never again.

Have a great weekend, folks. More is yet to come.

Saturday Matinee – Clanadonia, Mickey Hart / Planet Drum & Joe Bonamassa with Tina Guo

How ’bout something primal? Nothing better than Scottish tribal drums and bagpipes. Clanadonia is what it is, and it’s loud. “The Last of the Glaswegians” is going to be stuck in my head for days.

Mickey Hart & Planet Drum perform “Fire On The Mountain” (24 July 1999, Rome, New York).

Amazing speed cellist Tina Guo jams it with Joe Bonamassa on “Woke Up Dreaming” at Carnegie Hall (June 2017?). Takes them a bit to get in synch, then it soars. Guo’s take on Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” is fun, too.

Have a great weekend folks.

Time to Pot or Get Off the Excrete [Updated]

Folks–

Might have to go dark, but it’s only temporary.

My old XP mule (2005 Compaq Presario SR1750NX) is having sporadic seizures, messes with the files and programs, and otherwise shows signs of dementia. Bessie has no viruses, rootkits, worms or other detectable infestations according to MalwareBytes Premium and Kaspersky Anti-Rootkit, but she no longer wishes to reboot to an earlier date, even in safe mode. In the words of hospice providers, she’s “in transition.”

Bessie also no longer recobanizes Firefox. Her memory is fading, some of her RAM is gone for good, and I think her hard drive is giving out after so many rotations. Sometimes she grunts incoherently and speaks in tongues on a blue screen. After so many years of loyal service, I’m forced to put her out to pasture, and I’ll miss her.

But I have a backup that I’ve been avoiding using, mainly because of Windows 10. It’s a Dell XPS with a solid state drive, a lot of bytes and a big ‘ol honkin’ wad of RAMMAGE that should last me for a few years. That’s what I’m posting on now.

I haven’t named this new-and-improved, cutting-edge, state-of-the-art, wave-of-the-future, now-more-than-ever computer yet, so any suggestions are welcome.

Bunk

[Image found here.]

Update: Successfully made the transition. A full system malware scan used to take hours, but now it takes under a minute. Now all I have to do is spank Windows 10 a bit, realign the monitor, and increase the font size to something legible. 6 pt sucks.

Quarter Past Noon and the hour hand is stuck.

And the hour hand is stuck…

[Found here.]

One Pint Too Many

[Found here.]

Squirrel Acting Lessons

[Found here.]

I’ll See You on the Dark Side of the Hot LInks

“Look, I got this. Just gimme a coupla minutes.” –Cristobal Columbo circa 1492

The Great American Solar Eclipse is tomorrow. Plug in your location here to find out what time you need to start banging your pots and pans to drive the dragon away. If anyone tells you it’s safe to look at with the nekkid eye, he/she is a fool.
Don’t do it.

Apparently The Ancients blamed dogs for the temporary darkness of a solar eclipse.

Every time I hear it, it seems she’s singing about her cat. On the other hand, it’s a good Solar Eclipse party song.

The Mystery of the U.S. Navy’s Ghost Blimp is still unsolved after 75 years.

84 year-old folk artist Denny Lunn tells some stories [via].

The last Blockbuster store is still open for business.

An honorary statue in New Orleans, depicting a famous military figure on a horse, was defaced with the words “Tear It Down” recently. The honored warrior was captured, tortured and killed by fire decades before Europeans even knew about this continent, and centuries prior to the founding of the United States of America. TRUE.

Walter E. Williams on Rewriting American History.

[Top image from here.]

 

Canary in a coal mine.

THAT was one dangerous job.

[Found here.]

Spuds

“My friends call me either ‘Jennie’, OR ‘Ida.'”

[Found in here.]