Tuesday has settled into the spring groove. A light breeze frolics. Lawns and trees vibrate with greens and flowers add rainbow splashes. A dusting of high white clouds flavor the blue sky. Sunshine adorns every corner. The temperature is 62 F and we expect 81 F. Darkness will come after sunset at 8:34 this evening while sunset let the sun’s influence in beginning at 5:42 this morning. So it goes this May 24, 2022. The back door is open, bees dance and zip around, and the house felines are pleased.
The cats are responsible for today’s music. Both insisted on heading out around eleven thirty-ish last night, prompting me to say, “Okay, go dance the night away. Bang on the door when you want back in.” I said that even though I’d already created a mental note to let them in a few hours. Fast as you can say van Halen, the neurons brought out their 1979 song, “Dance the Night Away”. I’m always a little surprised that the group wrote it. It seems like, even feels like it could’ve been a cover of a song that already existed. It’s more mellow and light-hearted than the majority of van Halen offerings.
Stay positive, test negative, etc. I’m here for the coffee. Got any left? Here’s the tune. Cheers
Quiet day has come. Although it’s quiet right here right now (cue Jesus Jones and van Halen for the neurons – although the Jesus Jones song is “Right Here Right Now”, the van Halen song is always conflated because my late buddy Randy always knew “Right Now” but didn’t know “Right Here Right Now”, see?), news stories echo through the head. Several were about shootings or outrageous driving (and their results). This weekend also brought several tales about boats capsizing and people drowning. Was it always so crazy? some of the neurons ask.
It’s Sunday, April 24, 2022. Getting the calendar right requires a look down at the computer screen’s corner. Writing does that to me. Get deep into it, and then suddenly, I become confused about dates, time, food. I end up walking with Homer Simpson and Randy Newman singing “Left Foot, Right Foot” in my mind.
It’s forty now but the weather folks say that we’re heading to 71 F today. It’s a believable claim, when I peer at the cloudless blue sky. Sunshine is flashing off everything. Weather, though, can be deceptive, promising you, “Yeah, it’s warm and sunny out here,” then cutting off body parts with an icy knife when you step out to enjoy the invitation. Weather thinks humans are as dumb as the cats. The cats aren’t dumb about the weather, but they have short memories. Plus, whenever the weather isn’t to their liking, they blame me with stony gazes and tails curled up against their bodies.
I’ve always wondered how well that tail-curling really works to keep them warm. I bet some scientist has studied it. I’ll also bet that someday we’ll have genetic modifications that allow us to have tails, and there will be people walking around with tails hanging out. I’ll probably be dead by then, though, so I’ll need to haunt the planet until it happens.
Sunrise was at 6:16 AM. Sunset will be at 8:02 PM. Rain is expected later this week and the temperatures are gonna crash again. Get out and suck up some vitamin D while you can, if you’re in this area.
Turning to sports, the neurons have a firm hold on “Right Now” by van Halen from For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, 1992, and are relentlessly playing it around snatches of “Right Here Right Now” in the morning mental music stream. I gotta get off this crazy thing.
Stay positive, etc. Just read of a COVID-19 outbreak from a prom, but everyone’s symptoms were mild or they were asymptomatic. You never know when a new variant will unleash though, do you?
I need coffee. Here’s the music. RIP Eddie. He and Valerie had such great hair. Cheers
Twas the day after Christmas and all through the town, the snow had fallen, and was still coming down.
Yep, had three inches yesterday. Warmed to 34 F, melting some of that, but it became densely foggy yesterday. Then it started snowing after sunset and hasn’t stopped. We’re back up to three inches. Real winter has closed its fist on us. S’right. Snow is falling on the mountains, too, building our snowpack to survive the summer.
The winter sun rose at 7:38 AM. Current temperature is 30. That’s the day’s high. Tonight’s low will be 24. Plan for the same tomorrow. Sunset will come at 4:45 PM.
After dreaming about my old friend, Randy, the morning mental music stream is bursting with music from his two favorite groups, Van Halen and Boston. After a crazy mad dash by Tucker, the resident first floof, “Runnin’ with the Devil” has gained volume. That was an early Van Halen hit and came out while Randy was stationed in Korea, so it always meant a lot to him, as he often told me. Part of that was because his personal life was a mess at that point and the music helped him cope.
So let’s turn it up. Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax and booster. Got coffee? I do. Cheers
Buongiorno. We have arrived at Tuesday, March 16, 2016. The skyball came over the horizon at 7:21 AM and will hide beyond the horizon at 7:18 PM in Ashland, giving us a solid twelve of daylight. Times may vary where you live.
Winter continues its comeback campaign, with temperatures freezing us at 29 degrees F last night. While it’s 32 right now, we expect it to get up to 52 later on. Hope that’s a warmer 52 than than the 54 yesterday. Fronted by a stiff wind, fortified by a dour gray sky, that 54 would’ve put some frostbite on a brass monkey. Hope holds today because blue sky, sunshine, and optimism.
Van Halen’s 1983 song, “Jump”, commandeered the mental music stream this AM. Why for, don’t know; might be dream related, where anything goes. The song was released when I was still living and serving in Okinawa, Japan, with the U.S. Air Force. It entered our party rotation but suffered in comparison with the offerings from ZZ Top, Toto, Boston, Yes, etc., that our group preferred, music befitting three aging white men hanging on to their final pieces of youth.
Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, and get the vax.
Hello! Welcome to another edition of ‘Wednesday’s Theme Music’. Today is March 10, 2021. Skyorb rise was at 6:32 AM. Skyorb set will be at 6:12 PM. After dipping to 32 degrees F during the night, the outside temperature has bounced up to 39 under a flat gray sky. Wet surfaces glisten and shine outside as pine and oak trees peer out of fog banks a few hundred yards up the mountain. Rain looks imminent.
Music today comes by way of writing efforts yesterday. After writing, I was out on a walk, thinking through where the story was and the paths it was following, formulating the tactics for picking up the paths and taking them forward. After a time of this, satisfied with my decisions and directions, ready to turn home because sunrise was a few minutes away and I was a mile from home, Van Halen’s “Finish What Ya Started” (1988) arrived in my mental music stream. I enjoy the riff that begins this song, and how the song builds off it.
Stay positive — you know the rest. After a year of the coronavirus pandemic, you should, lessen y’all been hiding under a rock or sumpten. I’ll say it all anyway: stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, and get the vax. Of course, once you get the vax, some of the guidance changes for you, so stay up to date, ‘kay? Be smart. Stay safe.
Today is Wednesday, February 10, 2021. Sunset was at 7:14 AM. Sunset will be about 5:37 PM. Nice having that increased daylight. Winter’s worse aspect for me is that late sunrise and early sunset. Those effects are pronounced on this side of the mountain, where mountain narrows sunshine’s impact. The temperature is up to 34 degrees today with the high of fifty-five coming later today.
Randy was in my dreams last night. I’ve written about him before. A year older than me, he worked for me at my last military assignment. After he retired, he became a successful businessman. Colon cancer cut that career short when he was sixty.
He and I had a lot of fun together. Randy was a big Boston and Van Halen fan. I think he leaned toward Van Halen by a few degrees, probably because Van Halen had a larger body of work than Boston, but it was only by degrees. Anyway, I decided to go with one of his absolute favorites, “You Really Got Me”. Lord, what do you think of that attire? Definitely part of the big-hair rock era, innit?
Stay positive and test negative. Wear a mask and get vaccinated. Here’s the sound.
Why not, right? He’s on many people’s mind. Eddie Van Halen, an amazing musician who focused on guitars, passed away this week. He was sixty-five, one year older than me.
He’s a contemporary, then. But he’s that contemporary who took the dreams and applied hard work and persistence, added to a huge well of talent, and made the big time.
Van Halen the group broke onto the radio music world where I resided in 1977. By then, I was twenty-one. Eddie was twenty-two. His songs — because, let’s face it, Eddie Van Halen was the primary force in that group, the largest defining difference with what he did with a guitar — spread across the AM and FM bandwidths, into MTV and movies, and across our world and lives.
It’s not a great reveal that Van Halen has provided the theme music for many days. Technology will keep Van Halen fresh and available to us, even if Eddie has passed away. Of all the songs available, I chose “Right Now” from 1992.
Thinking about a big coming out party, someday, after the crises is resolved. (A.C.: After COVID-19. We’ll start a new reference system – “In 2 AC, the first normal baseball game was played.”) Maybe the theme should be dancing in the streets.
The song, “Dancing in the Street”, and its many versions jumped into the stream. I do enjoy the Mick and David version. But I don’t want to show favoritism, so here’s a few offerings. Looking at them, I’m surprised that it has sprung up as a new cover by some one, like, I don’t know, Kelly Clarkson.
David Bowie and Mick Jagger, 1985. Boy, the disco era is really displayed in their clothing style. Fitting for responding to a global problem, as this collaboration was done to raise money and awareness for “Live Aid” famine relief.
Martha and the Vandelllas, 1964 – the original, to me.
Van Floof(floofinition) American hard floof-rock (flock) band led by guitarist and keyboardist Eddie Van Floof, inducted into the Flock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.
In use: “People continue to argue whether Van Floof was better with David Lee Floof as the vocalist, or Sammy Floofgar.”
Someone’s overheard comment (complaint) about their daily-weekly-monthly routines about doing the same thing and wondering where have all the good times gone brought home today’s theme music.
I’ve selected “Where Have All The Good Times Gone” for today, and went with the Van Halen cover (1982). A friend of mine who was a big VH fan liked this song but thought it was a little simple. I told him that I thought it was better than the Kinks’ version, which was the original, from somewhere in the mid-sixties. (Turned out to be from 1965.) He wasn’t aware that it was a cover, thinking that it was a VH original, but decided, that’s why it was such a simple song.
On reflection, each version represents how pop rock sounded at the time of their release.
Michael Seidel, writer 