To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
I’m not referring to my cousin-in-law; I’m referring to this cover of the Phoebe Snow song by Jessy J: It loses a bit without the lyrics, but it’s still a pleasant melody. I have not been listening to the DirecTV streaming music stations as all the remotes from the entertainment center have been confiscated until […]
Inside a record I bought earlier this month, I found a mimeographed copy of the Licking High School Pep Club Constitution. In purple, as Ditto intended. Click for full size Licking is a small town a little northeast of here. I’ve never been, but I’ve tried on occasion to subscribe to the local paper, The […]
A poor unenlightened soul refuses to acknowledge the primacy of Eydie Gorme in all things musical, so I feel the need to offer a direct comparison. We’ll take Keely Smith on her home turf, with “I Wish You Love”, the title track from her 1957 debut album. Here is Eydie Gorme doing what she does […]
It’s been almost a day since a small business owner came around the counter and put me in a martial arts hold, but we’ll come to that by an by. I bought this book in December at the same time I bought Taekwondo Kyorugi. I don’t consider myself a martial artist, but here I am […]
This is the second of the two books I bought about Cassatt last fall (the other was entitled simply Mary Cassatt). Of course, the book has the standard art book template: A bit of bio in the beginning and full color plates of samples of Cassatt’s work along with a couple paragraphs of text about […]
I don’t really consider myself a martial artist, even though I have studied at a Satori martial arts school for five years and have considered trying out another martial art style “for fun.” I mean, some of the people who study with me are at the school three or four days a week, take teaching […]
I bought this book at ABC Books earlier this month; the author was in the store with a book signing, so I stopped by and picked up a copy of his book. ABC Books has signings on a lot of Saturday afternoons, but I haven’t had much luck slipping up there when an author was […]
Sunday provided me with an excellent opportunity to browser art books (Mary Cassatt being the other). Unfortunately, it won’t take too many Sundays to go through the art books I got last weekend. Which will make me sad. Anders Zorn was a Swedish painter and etcher from the end of the 19th century, so roughly […]
As I said when I bought the book, you could expect me to take a look through this book immediately while nominally watching a football game. Watching football these days really does just provide a pretext for me to sit on the sofa in front of a fire and browse great works of art. Also, […]
As I mentioned, I picked up a Scandinavian gospel album from a band called the Teen Tones. The album itself is called, simply, From Scandinavia. My Internet research doesn’t give it a specific year. Discogs recognizes the album but doesn’t give it a release year. The back of the record says the band formed in […]
As I mentioned, I bought a Spyro Gyra album on Friday after having heard a Spyro Gyra song on WSIE in the last couple of weeks. I was surprised, actually, that it was a pleasant, smooth jazz song that I heard on the radio. The album is, too. Apparently, Spyro Gyra is a jazz fusion […]
I prefer Linda Ronstadt’s rendition of “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered”. Here is Ella Fitzgerald’s version, which I’ve enjoyed for decades: Back when I was filling my evenings with eBay doings and then writing a book, an Ella Fitzgerald compilation featuring this track was in the 6 disc CD changer in my office, so I heard […]
I have a cousin who listens to a lot of hard rock and heavy metal, so this year for Christmas, I gave her a framed hard rock album since I couldn’t find a different one at the thrift stores before Christmas. I put it in a frame and put some text on a label, and […]
As you may know, gentle reader, I have a growing collection of Spanish songbirds, including classic artists like Rocío Jurado, Rocío Dúrcal, Claudia Acuña, and others as well as pop equivalents Shakira and Paulina Rubio. I’ve also picked up a small collection of singers in Portuguese, such as Astrud Gilberto, Beth Carvalho, and Gal Costa, […]
This book is the third I read on vacation. As you might remember, it is one of three books I bought at the Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library this spring amid oh so many albums. It’s a short book–111 pages. It’s not a play, it’s a short novel, with dense, vivid prose that draws […]
I remember this book being mentioned explicitly (well, not that explicitly) in George Carlin’s comedy routine in his album What Am I Doing In New Jersey?. The bit is the driver behind him has his high beams on, and Carlin says that’s great because he just happens to have his copy of this book with […]
The critics predicted it: Gay marriage becomes the law of the land, and people would start buying albums of show tunes. Although, in my defense in this case, it was a collection of Pat Suzuki singing show tunes: If Mark Steyn can listen to show tunes, I can, too. At any rate, the acquisition stems […]
Tam K. on collecting the old-fashioned way: (I’m not going the internet auction site route, because it always feels to me like the gun collecting equivalent of hunting over a baited field. It’d be like having a computerized database of exactly what old sports cars are in which barns across the country, or having clear […]
So we visited a church garage sale at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton church in Springfield on Saturday. It was bag day, and that’s like catnip to me. I rub my cheeks and roll on the junk you can buy, especially late in the day on bag day. No, this isn’t a Good Book Hunting post, […]
All right, so I read a book on Swedish history, which led to my new taste for lingonberries and then to commenting on Swedish news. When will it end? When will Brian J. cease with this little blog goofery fixation on Sweden? Not yet. So I mentioned I went to the Friends of the Clever […]