 Nostalgia, DVDs, old movies, television, OTR, fandom, good news and bad, picks, pans, cute budgie stories, cute terrier stories, and anything else I can think of. Contact me at theyoungfamily (at) earthlink (dot) net . . . . . . . . . .
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» Thursday, July 04, 2019
...If Only They'd Stop Shooting at Me
 We had a very nice Independence Day. I can't say it was the same for poor Tucker. People have been popping of fireworks all week and it has frightened him so much that he doesn't want to walk before bed. Best of all, Colin Butler was visiting for the weekend. He had to go out of state (Salem, MA) to find a job in his field (nutrition), and is finally adjusting—after getting snow his first week there in March. He's getting some great experience designing foods for well-known restaurants, and is also working part time as a personal trainer hoping to get experience at that. If he's up there still in October, he'll have a great time in the craziness that goes on in Salem at Hallowe'en. Clair, alas, had to come without Daniel; he'd had a dental visit yesterday and the dentist recommended cool and rest, so she and his brother left him with Netflix and the cat in the cool. It has been so hot lately that just parking and walking a few feet up the hill and up the driveway was a chore. A little after six folks started wandering off. Alice and Ken and James and I had the same excuse: going home to keep the dog placated. My problem when we got home was trying to get Bloomberg.com on some type of large screen. After two years of broadcasting the Boston Pops concert on Bloomberg TV, they decided to just do it on TV in the Boston area and do everyone else on their website. My natural choice was to go through the browser on our "Smart" television. Unfortunately the browser is stupid. It won't do live feeds, and there's apparently no way to update the stupid thing. I thought the Blu-Ray player had a browser in it, but it doesn't. So the natural choice would be to pull it up on the computer in a Chrome browser and then "cast" it to the TV, since the Chromecast has worked flawlessly when we've used it previously. Well, guess what. It cast fine, but all it cast was a Bloomberg logo. Apparently they're trying to stop you projecting events for a paying audience or something. However, I was skimming through Facebook posts and someone was watching it through the Bloomberg channel on Roku. Hey, we can do that! And that's how we watched. The concert was pretty good. The young lady (I think from America's Got Talent or one of those reality things) who sang the National Anthem sang it straight and didn't warble or wail. The "1812 Overture" was great as always. The only problem came at the end. The bimbos from Bloomberg declared that the whole last portion of the show ("1812," "Stars and Stripes Forever," and the fireworks) would be shown without commercial interruption. Maybe on Bloomberg TV, but we suckers watching on Bloomberg.com got two nasty commercial breaks, including one that completely ate up the fireworks finale. Creeps. When we got through with that, I put on "Capitol Fourth," which I'd recorded previously. Some nice musical selections, a nice tribute to the moon landing, but a little bit too much of the Sesame Street Muppets interacting with John Stamos, who was a terrible host. He kept mugging to the camera and kept dragging his toddler son on stage. Gawd, what a farce. Then because it was still overcast in DC after the rain today, the smoke from the fireworks pretty much obliterated most of the view of them. They seemed to use a lot of red and yellow, which came together in waves of orange that made it look like the British were burning the city again. While we were enjoying all the pops and bangs, Tucker was miserable. I made sure to take him out immediately when we came home so he wouldn't have to go out after dark and he was still reluctant about it, even though there was not much popping. But as soon as darkness fell the fireworks began. The people down the street were the quietest: they just shot off some small things and had crackers and poppers. But someone, or two someones, rather, on the main street, in two different locations, had come armed for Iwo Jima. Heck, all we would have had to do was walk out to the main street to get a show almost as good as on TV, and if the trees were shorter could have seen it from the front porch. Tucker was either tucked shivering between James' legs or lying a-tremble under my seat all night, and he would not even come sit in my lap (or James' lap for that matter) as he has done on previous years. I had put Snowy's birdcage next to me on the sofa so he could listen to the music with us, and he was singing happily throughout both shows. I finally said soothingly to Tucker, "See, brother isn't afraid. Listen to him singing." Darned if Tucker didn't move himself under the birdcage for a little while (until James came back to sit in his recliner, anyway). I remember Willow doing this when she was scared, curling up under Bandit's cage, the budgie guarding the dog! Luckily the noise didn't go on as long as it has in previous years and by bedtime it was quiet, and he was okay with receiving his cookie and going to bed. Labels: birds, concerts, dogs, food, friends, holidays, Independence Day, pets, television  » Tuesday, July 04, 2017
Pops Go the Fourth!
 Things settled down and I was finally able to watch "Making a Revolution" from Alistair Cooke's America (watched the first two episodes last night). About one-fifteen put on 1776 and had a good time singing along, although even after all these years I miss "dancing" with Bandit to "He Plays the Violin." This is the new Blu-ray release and it looks spectacular. You can almost walk right into the picture and be part of the action. After 1776 went back to America for "Inventing a Nation." Managed to get Tucker out late in the afternoon with a combination of treats and tugging. There were some pretty big pops and booms by that time, and I gave him a little treat each time he stood his ground. We had our ribs tonight, but were originally in despair of getting them to cook in a reasonable time. James wanted to do them in the oven, but according to all the recipes this takes over two hours, and he didn't "get off" until five! Eventually he did them over the grill on the stove, having done a rub on them last night. Not too bad. Next time we need to do them at lowest temp, longer, with a better foil tent to seal in the flavor. Still moist and juicy. As a side we had gold potatoes with a thin coating of olive oil oven roasted. Forgot completely about the sweet corn, but my teeth probably wouldn't have taken it. For dessert we had Marie Callendar chocolate satin mini-pies. As anyone who reads this blog knows, we have been watching the broadcasts of the Boston Pops concert on (and off) television on the Fourth for years. Originally we watched on A&E, back when A&E was about arts and education rather than sleazy reality shows. This was broadcast in conjunction with WCVB-TV in Boston and hosted by Jack Perkins from A&E and Mary Richardson from WCVB. It took them a year or two to work out the kinks, and then it was aces from then on. Then the sponsorship changed and went to WBZ (which was an NBC station when I was a kid but is now CBS), and most years there has been a simulcast nationwide with CBS—but CBS only showed the last hour, joining in progress the very end of the Pops' famous "1812 Overture" performance and changing the order of the concert performances to plug the latest pop stars and their new albums. Even the year or two they showed the whole concert the Pops themselves were downplayed to promote This Year's New Singing Sensation. Last year's broadcast was probably one of their worst, with the pop music loud, discordant, and intrusive. The only really good broadcast we saw was the year CBS dropped the showing and it was streamed live on the internet. The sponsorship ended last year and we were faced with a drought of Pops once more, but some investment company stepped in to fill the gap. For the next three years the broadcasts will be on Bloomberg Television, and also streamed live on Bloomberg.com. Well, so far Bloomberg has blown CBS out of the water (of course, given CBS's dismal coverage, that wouldn't be hard). Everything is back where it belongs and the pop star they had on (Andy Grammer) actually sang some good songs. Guests included Brian Stokes Mitchell, who sang a brand new Alan Menken song, Leslie Odom Jr from Hamilton, and Melissa Etheridge. Labels: concerts, dogs, food, Independence Day, pets, television, work » Monday, March 24, 2014
Not Myself
I've been feeling pretty dispirited since Willow died, but it's a hard slog to fight it off. Friday was perhaps a nadir in the whole post-euthanasia depression: I had an order that had to get out on Friday and ended up getting out at 5:15 rather than 3:30 because I hadn't done a follow-up e-mail yesterday. I didn't mind for my own part—you make a mistake, you have to correct it—but someone else had to stay late on my account and that wasn't fair. Not to mention the poor car had to chug its way through 80 minutes of traffic rather than 40. James brought home chicken wings from Zaxby's for supper, which helped a lot.
Saturday we drank up sleep the way a thirsty man tosses back a beer. In the afternoon we went to JoAnn with a coupon, stopping to have brunch at Golden Corral. Interesting: this former "steak house" doesn't serve steak at lunch any longer, just hamburgers. I had bourbon chicken, pork ribs, and pot roast instead, with a nice side of peaches and mandarin oranges and some popcorn shrimp, and an amazingly delicious low-sugar blueberry pie. We picked up a few things in JoAnn, and also used some coupons at Michael's, and then I sat in the car reading while James ran into Hobbytown looking for "Sport Rocketry." Alas, no March "Best of British" yet at Barnes & Noble, and I used a coupon on Mary Roach's new book Gulp in paperback. We came home for a light supper before driving up to Roswell to UUMAN, the Unitarian Universalist Metro Atlanta North church. Louis Robinson and some other musicians were appearing at their coffee house. I did have to laugh when Louis looked out over the audience and commented on how many people he saw from concerts in other places; he looked straight at us and said "My time travelers are even here!" (Because we always see him at panels at Timegate. He then proceeded to promote 221B Con...twice!) It was a lovely night. The sanctuary had great acoustics and the musicians did a nice variety of different styles: 30s-40s standards, blues, and at the end, rock, which James liked the best. I liked the old-fashioned things, of course, including "Pennies from Heaven," "Ain't Misbehavin'," and "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face," which, perhaps oddly, perhaps not, brought Willow to mind and I had to fight down the tears. Sunday was another sleep-in day, the usual Sunday chores of getting ready for Monday, and the usual trips to Publix and Kroger. We'd talked about going to the Home Show at the Galleria, but I woke up thinking I didn't want to go, and James voiced the same though a bit later. We didn't really need anything and he was afraid he'd be tempted into buying the pressure cooker we've seen previously. We don't have room for it and a big one such as he wants would be expensive. Instead we drove out to Hiram and strolled around their larger Michaels and also around Five Below. Petsmart, next door to Michaels, was doing adoptions, but it was cats only. On the way homeward we hopped from Walmart to Walmart until we found one with James' favorite deodorant, which we can find only at Wallyworld, and got BreatheRights at CVS before arriving home. We had chicken and sesame teriyaki noodles, and there was Cosmos to end the night. As always Sunday night was a pain. I had four hours sleep and paid accordingly at work, sleeplessness usually engendering other problems. Nevertheless, I got a satisfactory amount of work done. I'm guessing my allergy kicked in after lunch, with a perfect storm of sneezes and coughing. Really, tell me why I'm supposed to look forward to spring! Labels: books, concerts, errands, food, health, shopping, work |
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