Tuesday, September 16, 2008
28 Years Later
No, not Part Three of the zombie series (which would probably be 28 Months Later, anyway, and is entirely beside the point)...
I finally solved the Rubik's Cube!
Yeah! Woo Hoo!! I Rock!!! (OK, I had a little help.)
Still, I can leave the 80s and get on with my life now. Well, as soon as I find Waldo....
I finally solved the Rubik's Cube!
Yeah! Woo Hoo!! I Rock!!! (OK, I had a little help.)
Still, I can leave the 80s and get on with my life now. Well, as soon as I find Waldo....
Labels: Nostalgia
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Getting Allan Sherman
Growing up, back in the day of pterodactyls and vinyl records, I often stole my folks' albums to play on my turntable (and more recently I ripped quite a few to MP3 format). Not the Perry Como, the comedy records. Smothers Brothers. Bill Cosby. One called Comedy Caravan with, among others, Andy Griffith out of uniform, and Stan Freberg doing Dragnet spoofs. They had two Allan Sherman records: My Son, the Celebrity and My Son, The Folk Singer. The "Weird" Al of their generation (or vice versa).
I didn't get all the musical references. Mexican Hat Dance, I did. Sir Greenbaum's Madrigal, yep. Harvey and Sheila, but of course. Years later I'd make the connection between The Bronx Bird Watcher and Gilbert & Sullivan's Mikado.
A few months back I picked up a Louis Armstrong CD. One of the tracks was St. James Infirmary, which includes the lyric
Then earlier this week I picked up the Jimmy Stewart version of Flight of the Phoenix. Along with Ernest "It's not a disaster film without me" Borgnine and George "Me, either" Kennedy, the movie includes a small role played by Barrie Chase. Oh, I thought to myself, I know her -- she's from that Allan Sherman song, Barry is the Baby's Name:
Granted, I have no idea (at the moment) what tune the song is based on, but at least the last line make sense now.
There's a lot more on the records I still don't get. They say everything comes back into fashion, eventually. Maybe next time the 50s and 60s swing by again, I'll figure out a little more.
Poor Phil, though. He's gonna have to figure out Allan Sherman and "Weird" Al when he's older...
I didn't get all the musical references. Mexican Hat Dance, I did. Sir Greenbaum's Madrigal, yep. Harvey and Sheila, but of course. Years later I'd make the connection between The Bronx Bird Watcher and Gilbert & Sullivan's Mikado.
A few months back I picked up a Louis Armstrong CD. One of the tracks was St. James Infirmary, which includes the lyric
I went down to the St. James Infirmarywhich immediately recalled Sherman's spoof
Saw my baby there
Stretched out on a long white table
So sweet...so cold...so fair
I went down to Mt. Sinai Hospital
To see my old zaydie there
And I said, Thanks God for the Blue Cross
And I wish we had the Medicare
Then earlier this week I picked up the Jimmy Stewart version of Flight of the Phoenix. Along with Ernest "It's not a disaster film without me" Borgnine and George "Me, either" Kennedy, the movie includes a small role played by Barrie Chase. Oh, I thought to myself, I know her -- she's from that Allan Sherman song, Barry is the Baby's Name:
We'll call him Barry, Barry.
That'll be the baby's name.
We thought of Lance or Josh,
But, oh, my gosh,
They're not the same.
But if it's Barry, Barry,
That's a name with style and grace.
And if he's not a he,
It still could be
Like in Barrie Chase.
Granted, I have no idea (at the moment) what tune the song is based on, but at least the last line make sense now.
There's a lot more on the records I still don't get. They say everything comes back into fashion, eventually. Maybe next time the 50s and 60s swing by again, I'll figure out a little more.
Poor Phil, though. He's gonna have to figure out Allan Sherman and "Weird" Al when he's older...
Labels: Nostalgia
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Memories
My guess is it's been about 20 years since I got my first computer. Not the family computer, not the computer my brother and I shared to learn programming (tho' my brother started out on this, also shared). My own first computer.
It was this beauty. Two floppy drives (not the 3.5" discs, mind you, these were the glorious 5.25" floppy floppies), 9" amber screen. detachable keyboard, 30 lb freeweight carrying case. Lasted me through college (got it some time during my junior year of high school IIRC), though the monitor died on a Thanksgiving trip to Oregon (thanks Bob & Sue for the loaner TV so I could write my paper) and the second disk drive eventually got wonky (nothing like swapping WordPerfect disks to load the program, spell check, thesaurus, and then a fourth disk to save your paper). It's up in the attic, along with computer #2, which lasted a year or so less than the first ... not that it broke, but tech advanced so quickly in the 90s (from a DOS 3.31 PC in '92 to a Win98 machine in '98) that you had to upgrade more often (managed to skip Win95 somehow, thank goodness). The '98 machine only lasted 3 years when XP came out in '01. It doesn't get much use these days since I got the PowerBook two and half years ago. Hmmmm, I'm due for a new computer next tax refund season...
As outdated as it is now, I still remember Oliver fondly. (Named the PC after the brainy kid in Bloom County; remember Bloom County?) King's Quest. Infocom text adventures (the computer where you first got the babelfish is going to have a special place in your heart). Asteroids knock-offs. Good times.
It was this beauty. Two floppy drives (not the 3.5" discs, mind you, these were the glorious 5.25" floppy floppies), 9" amber screen. detachable keyboard, 30 lb freeweight carrying case. Lasted me through college (got it some time during my junior year of high school IIRC), though the monitor died on a Thanksgiving trip to Oregon (thanks Bob & Sue for the loaner TV so I could write my paper) and the second disk drive eventually got wonky (nothing like swapping WordPerfect disks to load the program, spell check, thesaurus, and then a fourth disk to save your paper). It's up in the attic, along with computer #2, which lasted a year or so less than the first ... not that it broke, but tech advanced so quickly in the 90s (from a DOS 3.31 PC in '92 to a Win98 machine in '98) that you had to upgrade more often (managed to skip Win95 somehow, thank goodness). The '98 machine only lasted 3 years when XP came out in '01. It doesn't get much use these days since I got the PowerBook two and half years ago. Hmmmm, I'm due for a new computer next tax refund season...
As outdated as it is now, I still remember Oliver fondly. (Named the PC after the brainy kid in Bloom County; remember Bloom County?) King's Quest. Infocom text adventures (the computer where you first got the babelfish is going to have a special place in your heart). Asteroids knock-offs. Good times.
Labels: Nostalgia
