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timelesstimesgoneby · 1 year

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EPISODE

Season 1

DISC 1

S01E01 movie pilot Little House on the Prairie 1970

S01E02 A Harvest of Friends 1970

S01E03 Country Girls 1970

S01E04 100 Mile Walk 1970

DISC 2

S01E05 Mr. Edwards' Homecoming 1970

S01E06 The Love of Johnny Johnson 1970

S01E07 If I Should Wake Before I Die 1970

S01E08 Town Party, Country Party 1970

DISC 3

S01E09 Ma's Holiday 1970

S01E10 School Mom 1970

S01E11 The Raccoon 1970

S01E12 The Voice of Tinker Jones 1970

DISC 4

S01E13 The Award 1970

S01E14 The Lord Is My Shepherd (120 min) 1970

S01E15 Christmas at Plum Creek 1970

DISC 5

S01E16 Family Quarrel 1970

S01E17 Doctor's Lady 1970

S01E18 Plague 1970

S01E19 Circus Man 1970

S01E20 Child of Pain 1970

DISC 6

S01E21 Money Crop 1970

S01E22 Survival 1970

S01E23 To See the World 1970

S01E24 Founder's Day 1970

Season 2

DISC 1

S02E01 The Richest Man in Walnut Grove 1970

S02E02 Four Eyes 1970

S02E03 Ebenezer Sprague 1970

S02E04 In the Big Inning 1970

DISC 2

S02E05 Haunted House 1970

S02E06 The Spring Dance 1970

S02E07 Remember Me (1) 1970

S02E08 Remember Me (2) 1970

S02E09 The Camp-Out 1970

DISC 3

S02E10 At the End of the Rainbow 1970

S02E11 The Gift 1970

S02E12 His Father's Son 1970

S02E13 The Talking Machine 1970

DISC 4

S02E14 The Pride of Walnut Grove 1970

S02E15 A Matter of Faith 1970

S02E16 The Runaway Caboose 1970

S02E17 Troublemaker 1970

S02E18 The Long Road Home 1970

DISC 5

S02E19 For My Lady 1970

S02E20 Centennial 1970

S02E21 Soldier's Return 1970

S02E22 Going Home 1970

Season 3

DISC 1

S03E01 The Collection 1970

S03E02 Bunny 1970

S03E03 The Race 1970

S03E04 Little Girl Lost 1970

DISC 2

S03E05 The Monster of Walnut Grove 1970

S03E06 Journey in the Spring (1) 1970

S03E07 Journey in the Spring (2) 1970

S03E08 Fred 1970

S03E09 The Bully Boys 1970

S03E10 The Hunters 1970

S03E11 Blizzard 1970

S03E12 I'll Ride the Wind 1970

S03E13 Quarantine 1970

DISC 4

S03E14 Little Women 1970

S03E15 Injun Kid 1970

S03E16 To Live with Fear (1) 1970

S03E17 To Live with Fear (2) 1970

S03E18 The Wisdom of Solomon 1970

DISC 5

S03E19 The Music Box 1970

S03E20 The Election 1970

S03E21 Gold Country (120 min) 1970

Season 4

DISC 1

S04E01 Castoffs 1970

S04E02 Times of Change 1970

S04E03 My Ellen 1970

S04E04 The Handyman 1970

DISC 2

S04E05 The Wolves 1970

S04E06 The Creeper of Walnut Grove 1970

S04E07 To Run and Hide 1970

S04E08 The Aftermath 1970

S04E09 The High Cost of Being Right 1970

DISC 3

S04E10 The Fighter 1970

S04E11 Meet Me at the Fair 1970

S04E12 Here Come the Brides 1970

DISC 4

S04E13 Freedom Flight 1970

S04E14 The Rivals 1970

S04E15 Whisper Country 1970

S04E16 I Remember, I Remember 1970

S04E17 Be My Friend 1970

S04E18 The Inheritance 1970

DISC 5

S04E19 The Stranger 1970

S04E20 A Most Precious Gift 1970

S04E21 I'll Be Waving as You Drive Away (1) 1970

S04E22 I'll Be Waving as You Drive Away (2) 1970

Season 5

DISC 1

S05E01 As Long as We're Together (1) 1970

S05E02 As Long as We're Together (2) 1970

S05E03 The Winoka Warriors 1970

S05E04 The Man Inside 1970

S05E05 There's No Place Like Home (1) 1970

DISC 2

S05E06 There's No Place Like Home (2) 1970

S05E07 Fagin 1970

S05E08 Harriet's Happenings 1970

S05E09 The Wedding 1970

S05E10 Men Will Be Boys 1970

DISC 3

S05E11 The Cheaters 1970

S05E12 Blind Journey (1) 1970

S05E13 Blind Journey (2) 1970

S05E14 The Godsister 1970

S05E15 The Craftsman 1970

DISC 4

S05E16 Blind Man's Bluff 1970

S05E17 Dance with Me 1970

S05E18 The Sound of Children 1970

S05E19 The Lake Kezia Monster 1970

S05E20 Barn Burner 1970

DISC 5

S05E21 Enchanted Cottage 1970

S05E22 Someone Please Love Me 1970

S05E23 Mortal Mission 1970

S05E24 The Odyssey 1970

Season 6

DISC 1

S06E01 Back to School (1) 1970

S06E02 Back to School (2) 1970

S06E03 The Family Tree 1970

S06E04 The Third Miracle 1970

S06E05 Annabelle 1970

DISC 2

S06E06 The Preacher Takes a Wife 1970

S06E07 The Halloween Dream 1970

S06E08 The Return of Mr. Edwards 1970

S06E09 The King is Dead 1970

S06E10 The Faith Healer 1970

DISC 3

S06E11 Author! Author! 1970

S06E12 Crossed Connections 1970

S06E13 The Angry Heart 1970

S06E14 The Werewolf of Walnut Grove 1980

S06E15 Whatever Happened to the Class of '56? 1980

DISC 4

S06E16 Darkness is My Friend 1980

S06E17 Silent Promises 1980

S06E18 May We Make Them Proud (120 min) 1980

S06E19 Wilder and Wilder 1980

S06E20 Second Spring 1980

DISC 5

S06E21 Sweet Sixteen 1980

S06E22 He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not (1) 1980

S06E23 He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not (2) 1980

Season 7

DISC 1

S07E01 Laura Ingalls Wilder (1) 1980

S07E02 Laura Ingalls Wilder (2) 1980

S07E03 A New Beginning 1980

S07E04 Fight Team Fight! 1980

S07E05 The Silent Cry 1980

DISC 2

S07E06 Portrait of Love 1980

S07E07 Divorce, Walnut Grove Style 1980

S07E08 Dearest Albert, I'll Miss You 1980

S07E09 The In-Laws 1980

DISC 3

S07E10 To See the Light (1) 1980

S07E11 To See the Light (2) 1980

S07E12 Oleson vs. Oleson 1980

S07E13 Come, Let Us Reason Together 1980

S07E14 The Nephews 1980

DISC 5

S07E15 Make a Joyful Noise 1980

S07E16 Goodbye, Mrs. Wilder 1980

S07E17 Sylvia (1) 1980

S07E18 Sylvia (2) 1980

DISC 5

S07E19 Blind Justice 1980

S07E20 I Do, Again 1980

S07E21 The Lost Ones (1) 1980

S07E22 The Lost Ones (2) 1980

Season 8

DISC 1

S08E01 The Reincarnation of Nellie (1) 1980

S08E02 The Reincarnation of Nellie (2) 1980

S08E03 Growin' Pains 1980

S08E04 Dark Sage 1980

S08E05 A Wiser Heart 1980

DISC 2

S08E06 Gambini the Great 1980

S08E07 The Legend of Black Jake 1980

S08E08 Chicago 1980

S08E09 For the Love of Nancy 1980

S08E10 Wave of the Future 1980

DISC 3

S08E11 A Christmas They Never Forgot 1980

S08E12 No Beast So Fierce 1980

S08E13 Stone Soup 1980

S08E14 The Legacy 1980

DISC 4

S08E15 Uncle Jed 1980

S08E16 Second Chance 1980

S08E17 Days of Sunshine, Days of Shadow (1) 1980

S08E18 Days of Sunshine, Days of Shadow (2) 1980

DISC 5

S08E19 A Promise to Keep 1980

S08E20 A Faraway Cry 1980

S08E21 He Was Only Twelve (1) 1980

S08E22 He Was Only Twelve (2) 1980

Season 9

DISC 1

S09E01 Times Are Changing (1) 1980

S09E02 Times Are Changing (2) 1980

S09E03 Welcome to Olesonville 1980

S09E04 Rage 1980

S09E05 Little Lou 1980

DISC 2

S09E06 The Wild Boy (1) 1980

S09E07 The Wild Boy (2) 1980

S09E08 The Return of Nellie 1980

S09E09 The Empire Builders 1980

DISC 3

S09E10 Love 1980

S09E11 Alden's Dilemma 1980

S09E12 Marvin's Garden 1980

S09E13 Sins of the Fathers 1980

DISC 4

S09E14 The Older Brothers 1980

S09E15 Once Upon a Time 1980

S09E16 Home Again (120 min) 1980

S09E17 A Child with No Name 1980

DISC 5

S09E18 The Last Summer 1980

S09E19 For the Love of Blanche 1980

S09E20 May I Have This Dance? 1980

S09E21 Hello and Goodbye 1980

DISC 1 red pink

S0E01 The Little House Years (180 min) 1980

S0E02 Look Back to Yesterday (120 min) 1980

S0E03 The Last Farewell 1980

DISC 2

S0E04 Bless All the Dear Children 1980

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brookstonalmanac · 10 months

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Birthdays 11.27

Beer Birthdays

Felix Geiger (1834)

Michaele Fallon; Miss Rheingold 1947 (1920)

"Crazy" Dave Heist (1956)

Chris Flaskamp (1962)

Matt "Batman" Brynildson (1971)

Five Favorite Birthdays

Jimi Hendrix; rock guitarist (1942)

Bruce Lee; actor, martial artist (1940)

Thomas Malory; English writer (1405)

Johnny "Blood" McNally; Green Bay Packers HB (1903)

Alison Pill; actress (1985)

Famous Birthdays

Kirk Acevedo; actor (1971)

James Agee; writer, critic (1909)

James Avery; actor (1945)

William Bliss Baker; painter (1859)

Charles A. Beard; historian (1874)

Julius Benedict; composer (1804)

Kathryn Bigelow; director and screenwriter (1951)

Les Blank; film director (1935)

Samantha Bond; English actress (1961)

Mike Bordin; drummer (1962)

Randy Brecker; jazz trumpeter (1945)

Nicole Brossard; Canadian author and poet (1943)

Kelly Bundy; Christina Applegate's character on Married with Children (1972)

Anders Celsius; astronomer (1701)

Zoe Colletti; actress (2001)

Sharlto Copley; South African actor (1973)

Frederic Crowninshield; artist and author (1845)

L. Sprague de Camp; historian (1907)

Frank Dicksee; English painter and illustrator (1853)

Tsuguharu Foujita; Japanese–French painter (1886)

Robin Givens; actor (1964)

Jackie Greene; singer-songwriter (1980)

Kevin Henkes; writer & illustrator (1960)

Robert Livington; signer of the Declaration of Independence (1746)

Shy Love; porn actor (1978)

Joseph Mack; passenger bus inventor (1870)

John Maddox; Welsh chemist, physicist (1925)

Anatoly Maltsev; Russian mathematician (1909)

Konosuke Matsushita; Japanese businessman, Panasonic founder (1894)

David Merrick; Broadway show producer (1911)

Katherine Milhous; author & illustrator (1894)

Alec Newman; Scottish actor (1974)

Bill Nye; the science guy (1955)

Steve Oedekerk; comedian, actor, writer, film director (1961)

Lars Onsager; Norwegian-American chemist and physicist (1903)

Eddie Rabbitt; country singer, songwriter (1941)

Liviu Rebreanu; Romanian author & playwright (1885)

Michael Rispoli; actor (1960)

Connie Sawyer; actress (1912)

Charles Scott Sherrington; English physiologist, & pathologist (1857)

Gail Sheehy; writer (1937)

Jose Asuncion Silva; Argentine poet (1865)

Arthur Smith; English comedian, actor, and screenwriter (1954)

"Buffalo" Bob Smith; television show host (1917)

Michael A. Stackpole; game designer (1957)

Fisher Stevens; actor (1963)

Richard Stone; composer (1953)

Mika Tan; porn actor (1977)

Cornelius Vanderbilt II; businessman (1843)

Fredric Warburg; English author (1898)

J. Ernest Wilkins Jr.; nuclear scientist & mathematician (1923)

Cal Worthington; Automobile dealer & TV personality (1920)

#Birthdays

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colewicki · 1 year

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Top 25 Nicknames I've given to NASCAR drivers

The Siegster (Ryan Sieg)

Brad Kozelawsgi/Kemselovski (Brad Keselowski)

Alan Cool-wits (Alan Kulwicki)

Kewin Heiwick (Kevin Harvick)

Wah Beyin (Ward Burton)

Chase Brick-code (Chase Briscoe)

Martin Chuwex, Chunior (Martin Truex, Jr.)

Chrissy Bell (Christopher Bell)

Joey Legumes (Joey Logano)

Russell Wallacine (Rusty Wallace)

Jerry Nadusky (Jerry Nadeau)

Billy Elliott (Bill Elliott)

Johnny Benzene, Jr. (Johnny Benson, Jr.)

Michael Waltrippas (Michael Waltrip)

Unregistered Biffle (Greg Biffle)

Borased (Boris Said)

Carlyle Long (Carl Long)

Rickster Craven (Ricky Craven)

Cody Shoney's Ware (Cody Ware)

James Davisonner (James Davison)

Mark Mádèng (Mark Martin)

The Weatherboy (Kyle Weatherman)

Ernie Irvine (Ernie Irvan)

Jack Sprahetz (Jack Sprague)

Ron Hennaday (Ron Hornaday, Jr.)

Honorable Mention

Aleeniseed/Klintsyy Bowyer (Clint Bowyer)

#nascar #colewicki

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rainingmusic · 5 years

Video

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Earshot - Tongue Tied

#earshot #tongue tied #two #two album #wil martin #scott kohler #mike callahan #johnny sprague #chas stumbo #alternative metal #nu metal #hard rock #music #music is life #music is love #music is religion #raining music

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thesehauntedhills · 3 years

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GHOST FLIGHT 401

This is a true story. My great uncle used to work at Eastern Airlines and told this story to my family. He told the story about seeing Don Repo himself as he was checking an Aircraft. He also told us about the missing logbooks, the ones about the ghostsightings. Everyone who reported seeing a had to be okay by a psychiatrist before going back to work.

The accident and the subsequent ghost story were mentioned by Dan Aykroyd on the Tonight Show hosted by Johnny Carson on the 6th of June 1984.

Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 was a scheduled flight from New York JFK to Miami. Shortly before midnight on December 29, 1972, the Lockheed L-1011-1 TriStar crashed into the Florida Everglades causing 101 fatalities. The pilots and the flight engineer, two of 10 flight attendants, and 96 of 163 passengers died;

75 flight engineer,passengers and crew survived.

This was the worst avionic crash in history.

The crash occurred while the entire cockpit crew was preoccupied with the burnt-out landing gear.

The cockpit crew removed the light assembly 102 and Second Officer Repo was dispatched to the avionics bay beneath the flight deck to confirm via a small porthole if the landing gear was indeed down. Fifty seconds after reaching their assigned altitude, Captain Loft instructed First Officer Stockstill to put the L-1011 on autopilot. For the next 80 seconds, the plane maintained level flight. Then, it dropped 100 ft (30 m), and then again flew level for two more minutes, after which it began a descent so gradual it could not be perceived by the crew.[5]: 4 In the next 70 seconds, the plane lost only 250 ft (76 m), but this was enough to trigger the altitude warning C-chord chime located under the engineer's workstation. The engineer (Repo) had gone below, and no indication was heard of the pilots' voices recorded on the CVR that they heard the chime. In another 50 seconds, the plane was at half its assigned altitude.

As Stockstill started another turn, onto 180°, he noticed the discrepancy. The following conversation was recovered from the flight voice recorder later:

Stockstill: We did something to the altitude.

Loft: What?

Stockstill: We're still at 2,000 feet, right?

Loft: Hey—what's happening here?

Less than 10 seconds after this exchange, the jetliner crashed:

Cockpit area microphone (CAM): [Sound of click]

CAM: [Sound of six beeps similar to radio altimeter increasing in rate]

CAM: (Sound of initial impact.)

The location was west-northwest of Miami, 18.7 mi (30.1 km) from the end of runway 9L. The were 4 ypuooplane was traveling at 227 miles per hour (197 kn; 365 km/h) when it hit the ground. With the aircraft in mid-turn, the left wingtip hit the surface first, then the left engine and the left landing gear, making three trails through the sawgrass, each 5 ft (1.5 m) wide and over 100 ft (30 m) long. When the main part of the fuselage hit the ground, it continued to move through the grass and water, breaking up as it went on the ground.

Ryan Sprague, host of the Somewhere in the Skies podcast and co-host of the CW television series Mysteries Decoded, wrote about Flight 401 for a paranormal website in 2017. He notes the consistency of the reported sightings and the innocuous and/or helpful nature of the apparition. “I do tend to believe most of the ghost stories related to Flight 401 because they seem very simple and innocent,” Sprague says. “These aren’t evil spirits trying to torment passengers or witnesses. They are merely trying to find any way to connect or communicate with us through the only things) they have in common with us — the stories they left behind.”

In early 1973, the captain on an Eastern Airlines flight from Newark, New Jersey, to Miami was asked to check on a passenger in first class. The passenger in question was another Eastern pilot — apparently “deadheading,” or flying home off the clock — who wasn’t listed on the flight manifest. The man, dressed in full captain’s uniform, hadn’t responded to the questions of the senior flight attendant. He was just staring straight ahead, as if in a daze. When the captain approached the passenger, he exclaimed, “My God — it’s Bob Loft.”

It should have been a welcome meeting between old colleagues. There was just one problem: Bob Loft had been dead for months.

Over the next year and a half, numerous Eastern employees reported seeing the ghosts of Repo and Loft on other Eastern flights. Flight attendants claimed to have seen Repo’s reflection in an oven door in the galley. An attendant on another New York-Miami flight opened an overhead bin to see Loft’s face staring back at her. An entire Eastern cockpit crew saw Repo sitting among them on another flight — they claimed the dead man warned them about a faulty electrical circuit, which was found and repaired. Even an Eastern vice president saw Loft on a plane preparing to take off from JFK.

Eastern employees who reported sightings to supervisors were typically referred to the company shrink. Eventually, the tales became so persistent and prevalent that Eastern management allegedly warned its employees that they would be fired if caught disseminating the ghost stories.

Meanwhile, logbooks from nearly all the flights on which the sightings were reported began to disappear. This is significant because Eastern flight crews were trained to note any and all onboard incidents in the flight log, no matter how small or questionable.

At some point, it emerged that Eastern had reportedly salvaged parts from Flight 401. Many of those parts were fitted onto aircraft 318, another L-1011 in Eastern’s fleet. Coincidentally — or maybe not — most of the ghost sightings occurred on aircraft 318.

The idea that departed souls might be able to retain some relationship with inanimate objects — like salvaged airplane parts — is known as psychometry. “I do believe in psychometry to an extent,” Ryan Sprague says. “I have several colleagues who claim [to have] haunted artifacts. I have personally witnessed unexplained phenomena occur in the vicinity of several of these items. While there’s certainly no way I can verify the authenticity of these items, the stories behind them or the phenomena that seem to be connected to them, I do think that certain energies can attach themselves to inanimate objects. When it comes to the salvaged parts from Flight 401, I could definitely understand some sort of residual energy being left behind.”

Regardless of Eastern’s official position on the who survived s, all parts salvaged from Flight 401 were eventually removed from other aircraft.

#flight 401 #haunted #real ghost stories #these haunted hills #ghostcore #ghost and hauntings #ghost and spirits #haunting #real ghost photos #ghost

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lizabethstucker · 5 years

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The SFWA Grand Masters,Vol. 1

Edited by Frederik Pohl

Pohl has selected eighteen short stories and novellas written by the first five Grand Masters ever selected by the Science Fiction Writers of America: Robert A. Heinlein, Jack Williamson, Clifford D. Simak, L. Sprague de Camp, and Fritz Leiber. A great debt is owed to Jerry Pournelle for this recognition of the best of the best and to Frederik Pohl for both introducing and reintroducing me to these authors in one handy volume. Actually, in three volumes as I know there is one more to be searched out in the interlibrary world.

Thanks to my library’s willingness to go out of state, I can read the first volume in this series, having started off 2020 with Volume Two. Thank you also to the Woodridge Public Library in Woodridge, Illinois. Now I need to find the third volume. 4 out of 5

We start out with Robert A. Heinlein. I can still remember the first Heinlein that I read, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. My memory is so clear that I can recall to this day seeing it on the library shelf when I was working through a list of Golden Age writers that my father thought I should check out. I understand how controversial he is to many readers, but I always found that his stories were worth reading, even when some of the plotlines were uncomfortable (I’m thinking primarily of Farnham’s Freehold). Even if I didn’t agree with his ideas explored in his books and short stories, they made me think.

“The Roads Must Roll” by Robert A. Heinlein

(Future History 3) The United States had moved from automobiles to solar-powered people movers beginning when oil and gasoline were rationed during World War II. It led to less pollution, a spreading out of the population from the congestion of the cities, and a working class who were ripe for agitation by self-serving megalomaniacs with self-worth issues like Shorty Van Kleeck. It is up to Larry Gaines, the Chief Engineer, to stop the destruction and disruption of the roads. Heinlein is remarkably prescient in this 1940 tale, predicting the congestion of the automobiles and their increasing dangers as well as the importance of solar energy. It’s a shame such people movers, whether this style or high-speed trains are kept from actually being implemented. It is also true that the disenfranchised can be easily manipulated. Just look at our current political environment, not just in the United States and Great Britain. A brilliant tale. I can see the workers being militarized considering how a minor disruption, much less a major one, could not only bring the nation to a halt, it could have serious and deadly ramifications. 4.5 out of 5.

“The Year of the Jackpot” by Robert A. Heinlein

Statistician Potiphar Breen has been taking note of strange and unusual events, including a large number of women taking their clothing off in public. Meade Barstow, the latest befuddled stripper, is seen by Pot. Pot intervenes when the police arrive, offering to take care of her and see her safely home. Instead, when she is worried about what her landlady will say, he brings her to his home so that she can put herself back together. Meade agrees to answer his questions for his kindness. Pot reveals what he believes the numbers are telling him, that the planet is facing something that scares him. Intense, sad, and entirely too realistic. The idea of cycles with world events both good and bad is all too true. The gentle romance between Meade and Pot was a lovely addition. Side note: I was surprised to see the inclusion of transvestites in this story published in 1951. Heinlein treated the couple and the subject in a much nicer manner than I might have expected. I wonder why they were included as they weren't truly needed, nor was the subject of needed for his argument. Others could've sufficed. This was a first time read for me, as is the next story. 4 out of 5.

“Jerry Was a Man” by Robert A. Heinlein

When Martha van Vogel accompanied her husband to a genetics lab that alters DNA to make workers out of apes and vanity pets, she was unaware of how the mutated ape workers were treated once they were no longer useful, that they were euthanized. After raising hell, Martha is allowed to take one of the younger workers, whose eyesight had him put in the death pen, home with her against her husband’s wishes. Refusing to look the other way, Martha fights all the way to court to not only get Jerry free of the lab, but to help keep all the others alive, leading to a precedent making court case. This is an incredibly uncomfortable story on so many fronts. I found it most disturbing that Jerry’s speech pattern is a caricature of poor uneducated blacks. I understand that this was intentional on the part of Heinlein. I’m hoping that it was to give his readers a unique viewpoint into their prejudices, especially considering that the story was copyrighted in 1947. Especially with the return of black American soldiers from World War II to a country that still considered them as less than human. 3.5 out of 5.

“The Farthest Place” by Robert A. Heinlein

(Extract from Tramp Royale) This is non-fiction, an account of the Heinleins and their visit to Tristan da Cunha when the tramp steamer they are on makes a call there. The island is in the South Atlantic, over 1500 miles from the nearest other community. I may have enjoyed this excerpt, but in another context. However, this is a collection of science fiction and fantasy. This particular piece really had no reason to be included. I decline to rate it.

“The Long Watch” by Robert A. Heinlein

Lieutenant Johnny Dahlquist was approached by Colonel Towers regarding the danger of having politicians in control back on Earth, that the Guard should oversee keeping the planet safe. Towers wants Johnny’s expertise as junior bomb officer in his rebellious group. While Johnny saw his point about the instability of politicians in general, he couldn’t agree to use his bombs to make a point, a point that would lead to the deaths of innocent people. He had to make the bombs unusable, then hold watch until a ship from Earth will arrive in approximately four days. This story … Heinlein literally reached into my chest and ripped my heart out. My notebook still shows the faint marks of tears. There are many types of heroism. John Ezra Dahlquist is a fine example of doing what is right even when others try to dissuade you. (You should also look up Rodger Young on Google. I was unaware of this Medal of Honor recipient until this story.) 5 out of 5.

Next is Jack Williamson, another writer from the Golden Age of Science Fiction. And yet, somehow, I never have read any of Jack’s works. Based on these stories, that was a great crime.

“With Folded Hands” by Jack Williamson

(Humanoids .5) Poor Underhill is already struggling to keep his android business afloat. Now a new company has suddenly appeared, providing slick new humanoids that are taking over the town of Two Rivers. His new boarder, Mr. Sledge, claims to be an inventor. The new humanoids are known by him and he appears to be frightened of them. Williamson explores how actions, discoveries, and inventions meant to make man’s life better can sometimes serve to harm him. The story, published in 1947, is even more relevant today considering the growth of A.I.s and robots. This really is as much horror as it is science fiction, terrifying on a deep level for those aware how close we are to this possible future. 3.5 out of 5.

“Jamboree” by Jack Williamson

A robot self-called Pops is Scout Master of boys from birth to the age of 12. Periodically it takes the boys to a Jamboree to meet Mother. Younger boys can indulge in pink ice cream and gold stars plastered on their faces. For the oldest boys, it will be their last Jamboree. But one boy thinks there is a way to stop the cycle. Another tale of robots making decisions for the good of mankind. A very different take. 3.5 out of 5.

“The Manana Literary Society” by Jack Williamson

(Excerpt from Wonder’s Child: My Life in Science Fiction) Another piece of non-fiction, but at least it is about science fiction. Once again, I find it out of place and will not rate it. The selection is, however, a good look at the Los Angeles science fiction scene.

“The Firefly Tree” by Jack Williamson

Forced to move with his family to his grandfather’s farm, the unnamed protagonist is without friends, home-schooled, and lonely. Then he finds an interesting plant that his father calls a weed. He is moved to save the plant from destruction and nurtures it until it grows into a tree. One night he goes out to find the tree covered with fireflies. He begins to dream of them, hearing who they are and what they are there ready to do. Doesn’t Jack ever write happy endings? Any at all? As a child who was a loner and lived in a neighborhood with no children near my age, I could relate to this young boy. Truly engrossing. 3.5 out of 5.

Now on to Clifford D. Simak. I’ve read some of his short stories, but it was a long time ago. I don’t remember much of his style or even whether I liked his works or not.

“Desertion” by Clifford D. Simak

To explore the planet of Jupiter, men are physically converted into one of the more intelligent native species, the Lopers. The last five men sent out by Kent Fowler, the head of the survey project, haven't returned. The exploration must continue, but Fowler can't face sending another man out to what appears to be certain death, so he decides to go in their place, accompanied by his elderly dog. This was a beautiful story. I wish it had been longer. 4 out of 5.

“Founding Father” by Clifford D. Simak

Mankind wants to spread out among the stars, to colonize other planets, but the amount of time that would need to be spent on a spaceship would be an issue. Immortals have no problems with time per se, but the loneliness is another matter. A solution was found, a solution meant to be a temporary fix. But what happens with temporary when that is over one hundred years? Whoa, this might’ve been short, but it was so intense, thought-provoking, and a bit sad. Winston-Kirby will have some decisions to make regarding comfort or duty. 4 out of 5.

“Grotto of the Dancing Deer” by Clifford D. Simak

Archaeologist Boyd discovers a hidden fissure at his latest sight, one filled with fantastical and irreverent art. He also finds something else, something impossible. And yet. Another fascinating story with a deep well of sadness and depressing loneliness in a different way than the previous story. 4 out of 5.

L. Sprague de Camp is a writer that I used to read quite a bit of, mostly his earlier works in short story collections. And the Conan books he finished from Robert Howard’s notes and uncompleted manuscripts. Frankly, I found de Camp’s renditions to be better written, although I know that is heresy for some.

“A Gun for Dinosaur” by L. Sprague de Camp

When a time machine is invented, one that can’t go back to a time more recent than 100,000 years ago, a big part of its users are big game hunters taking clients back to kill a dinosaur for trophy. Rivers, of Rivers and Aiyar, one of those hunters, explains to a potential client why he has strict rules about who he’ll take back to what periods based on size and ability to use a particular caliber weapon. All I can say is poor August, braver than he thought he was, and how Courtney deserved everything he got and more. Entitled asshole. 3.5 out of 5

“Little Green Men from Afar” by L. Sprague de Camp

A non-fiction look into the persistent myths, legends, and outright lies that still garner hopeful believers, from flying saucers to the Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis to cults. I do like the five criteria given by Francis F. Broman regarding any and every story: 1) the report be firsthand; 2) the teller shows no obvious bias or prejudice; 3) that the reporter be a trained observer; 4) that the data be available for checking; and 5) that the teller be clearly identified. I’ve enjoyed many a hour reading von Daniken and the various UFO books, but they have always clearly be put in the fantasy fiction category for me, fun if not taken seriously. Again, no rating for a non-fiction piece in a fiction collection. I’m particularly disappointed as de Camp is left with just two fiction pieces as an introduction to his works.

“Living Fossil” by L. Sprague de Camp

Nawputta, a zoologist, and Chujee, his guide, are searching the Alleghany Mountains for interesting specimans and signs of the cities of Man, long extinct, when they meet a suspicious explorer. They also stumble across something they didn’t expect. Cute. Obvious, but still very fun to read. 3.5 out of 5.

Fritz Leiber is the author of a favorite series from my early 20s. While my father was devouring Conan the Barbarian, I was deep into Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Strangely enough, I don’t think I read anything else by Leiber in those days or later. So many books, so little time, so few selections at the libraries with whom I had memberships.

“Sanity” by Fritz Leiber

World Manager Carrsbury had researched and planned and schemed for ten years to understand insanity and to replace all the members of the World Management Service with his own people, all of whom had been trained under his exacting guidelines. Just as he had directed the world’s citizens in what they could read, watch, drink, and do in their daily lives. Or so he thought had been done. Leiber’s look at sanity is fascinating and a bit disturbing. Add a backdrop of world government and you have a thoughtful and frightening tale that resonates today. 4 out of 5.

“The Mer She” by Fritz Leiber

(Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser) The Gray Mouser was sailing home to Cif and Fafhrd, his holds filled with treasure and good as befits a successful merchant. When he discovers a stowaway in a chest, he must fight his way through magic if he ever hopes to see his island home again. It has been an extraordinarily long time since I’ve visited this series. The language is as flowery and somewhat archaic as ever, but I missed the boys working together. It just doesn’t have the same punch without that. 3 out of 5.

“A Bad Day for Sales” by Fritz Leiber

Robie, the first sales robot, is on the street, but having a hard time making sales. Then things get a lot worse. Very short, very cute even with that "worse" part. 3.5 out of 5.

#book review #The SFWA Grand Masters #science fiction collection #science fiction #fantasy #Frederik Pohl #Robert A. Heinlein #Jack Williamson #Fritz Leiber #L. Sprague de Camp #Clifford D. Simak #short story collection

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deebeeus · 6 years

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This can’t wait for #TeleTuesday! My good buddy @iamtheosdad is selling this pretty, paisley #partscaster to fund another exciting purchase. See details below. Asking price is $2695 (Canadian Dollars) plus shipping. International shipping can be arranged too. Contact Matt (@iamtheosdad) if you are interested. Here are some details from the original builder: “This is a project Partscaster that I put together and it might be the best one of these I've ever done. I really put a lot of consideration into every part in this project, but I pretty much always move them along to fund the next one. I actually commissioned this body to be made last year by Joe's Vintage Guitars and Joe did an outstanding job with the vintage accuracy of the paisley and overall finish. It has the faded edges like you see on the old late '60s examples of the pink paisley Tele. The pickguard is custom made by JVG. It has been moderately aged by JVG as well. The pickups are Electric City Johnny Hiland 12 Gauge Pump signature set and sound fantastic. The body parts are modern aged to match the overall look of the guitar and the natural patina of the vintage neck. It also has a Martin Six String Customs wiring harness with a NOS Sprague Vitamin Q .047 PIO tone cap and highly spec'd 275k CTS pots. Speaking of the neck, it's from a 1971 Fender Telecaster, so it has the features that an original pink paisley Tele would have. The tuners are originals from the '70s as well. One of the ferrules fit a little loosely, so I bought a set of aged conversion bushings and used only one for that particular hole. The 5 other conversion bushings as well as the single unused original bushing are included in the sale, but not installed. The fretboard has been oversprayed at the time of the refret. To make a really tight connection to the body, I have a thin wooden shim in the neck pocket on the bass side.” #telefriday #fender #telecaster #tele #guitar #guitars #guitarra #chitarra #guitarre #electricguitar #vintageguitars #fenderguitars #vintagefender #tone #guitargear #guitarsofinstagram #geartalk #guitargear #vintagegear #guitarsdaily #fendersofinstagram #guitarphotography https://www.instagram.com/p/BuwVq2xHDWx/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1mja1zssj1e36

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pcndemoniums · 5 years

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CASH CARPENTER - ROCKNROLLA VERSE

FULL NAME: cash jefferson carpenter. cash for johnny cash and jefferson for jefferson airplane

NICKNAME/S: cash, buck, c-man

D. O. B.: september 1st

AGE: 33 years

GENDER: cis male

ORIENTATION: homosexual

NATIONALITY: american

PREFERRED PRONOUNS: he/him

SPECIES: human

BIRTH PLACE: seattle, wa

CURRENT LIVING SITUATION: an apartment in nyc

OCCUPATION: musician | bassist for saltwater burial

LANGUAGES: english (fluent), spanish (conversational)

ACCENT: pacific northwestern

OTHER TALENTS: musical prodigy. cash can play many instruments including the guitar and the piano. he is also a very talented singer and songwriter. knows how to box and is learning krav maga

APPEARANCE:

HEIGHT: 5′9

BUILD: well defined, athletic

SKIN TONE: fair. he usually carries a bit of a tan

HAIR COLOR: light brown

EYE COLOR: green

GLASSES OR CONTACTS: none

BIRTHMARKS/SCARS: a scar on his left knee from falling off a tree when he was 8

TATTOOS/PIERCINGS: paul’s floral tattoo on his right shoulder, and this on his right forearm. on his left side he has something similar to this but with the music notes of the first song he wrote that made it big. and then this quote on his right ribs

LEFT HANDED/RIGHT HANDED: right handed

MOST PROMINENT FEATURE: a very chiseled jaw

CLOTHING STYLE: something like this or this. basically pretty casual. lots of t-shirts and jeans

FACE CLAIM: paul wesley

RELATIONSHIPS:

FAMILY: james carpenter ( father ), anne marie carpenter ( mother ), colt carpenter ( twin brother )

PETS: none

BEST FRIENDS: ruby valentine, jason sprague, august knight, jessica conrad, sebastian ballard, georgie lawrence

FOES: neal holbrook, nick walsh

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: engaged to michael conrad but sleeping with sebastian ballard ( oops )

PERSONALITY:

WHAT WOULD BE THEIR CHARACTER ARCHETYPE: the creator

STRONGEST CHARACTER TRAIT/S: passionate, genuine, goofy, loyal, witty, compassionate, humble, friendly.

WEAKEST CHARACTER TRAIT/S: perfectionist, compulsive, stubborn, defensive, temperamental

PHOBIAS/FEAR/S: flying, failure, open water

BIGGEST SECRET/S: currently his biggest secret is the fact that he is cheating on michael with bass

BAD HABITS: he jumps to conclusions, can be very defensive, tries to please people even if that makes him unhappy. has trouble making big decisions, specially when it comes to his personal life.

MENTAL DISORDER/CONDITIONS: not really a mental disorder but he has synesthesia.

OBSESSIONS: music

RELIGION: catholic - non practicing

ZODIAC SIGN: virgo

HOGWARTS HOUSE: ravenclaw

MORAL ALIGNMENT: he is actually a chaotic good but has been trying really hard to live his life as lawful good. which explains his current predicament

OPINION ON DRUG USE: some drugs can help in the creative process like pot or acid. anything else is dangerous. so is excess

OPINION ON ALCOHOL USE: tastes good but it goes to his head pretty quickly. boy is a lightweight.

OPINION ON SWEARING: fucking yeah!

QUIRKS:

HOBBIES: reading, writing lyrics, playing guitar, anything music related

OUTDOORS OR INDOOR PERSON: mostly indoors but he enjoys doing some outdoor activities as well.

FAVORITE TYPE OF MUSIC: his own? he also likes some johnny cash and classic rock

FAVORITE COLOR: grey

FAVORITE FOOD: pizza & sandwiches ( all kinds ). oh and anything sweet

FAVORITE ANIMAL: the wolf. but he loves dogs too.

FAVORITE BOOK: fight club

FAVORITE SCENT: freshly made coffee, chocolate, fresh waffle cones. guy has a sweet tooth

INSTAGRAM: thecashcarpenter

WHAT DOES THEIR VOICEMAIL MESSAGE SOUND LIKE: “hey! Its cash. wanna hear a joke? knock, knock! who’s there? not me, so leave a message and i’ll get back to you as soon as i can!”

PAST /FUTURE:

WHAT WERE THEY LIKE AS A CHILD: curious and creative. has been exposed to music since birth so he was always writing.

DID THEY GROW UP RICH OR POOR: well off

DID THEY GROW UP NURTURED OR NEGLECTED: nurtured. his parents are super sweet

WHAT DID THEY WANT TO BE WHEN THEY GREW UP: he always wanted to do something with music like his dad.

SMELL THAT REMINDS THEM OF THEIR CHILDHOOD: cookies from the over when his mom used to bake, and the smell of cigar cause his dad smoked cuban cigars.

BEST CHILDHOOD MEMORY: learning to play guitar with his dad until very late in the evening while his mom baked and served them chocolate chip cookies.

WORST CHILDHOOD MEMORY: just colt being an asshole to him all the time. bullying him at school and pushing him around

ARE THEY/DO THEY WANT TO GET MARRIED: they do but are currently having some doubts

WILL THEY EVER SETTLE DOWN SOMEWHERE: depends on where it is. right now he is happy with being in new york and plans to stay for a while.

#( c. cash carpenter )#( stats. cash carpenter )#( v. rocknrolla )

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otoradio · 4 years

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#436. KIKOK - / Panama /

Свежий микс от KIKOK. Паша Федосеев известен вам как барабанщик группы GNOOMES и по собственному проекту KIKOK. Летом Паша покинул группу и сейчас занимается своим третьим сольным и многообещающим альбомом. Будем держать в курсе и обязательно расскажем о новом релизе. Поддержать музыканта и послушать предыдущие записи можно здесь: https://kikok.bandcamp.com 1. Fleetwood Mac - Albatross 2. Santo And Johnny - Sleepwalker 3. The Doors - Indian Summer 4. Prince Vaseline - China 5. BEAT RHYTHM FASHION - Turn of the Century 6. Big Sky - Beta Decay 7. Boyd Rice and Friends - People 8. Bradford Cox - Harlem Crepescular 9. China Crisis - Jean Walks In Fresh Fields 10. De Witte Kunst - Toets van goud 11. Emily Sprague - Your Pond 12. Giddle Boyd - Bonnie Clyde 13. Panda Bear-Tropic of Cancer 14. Vangelis - Wait For Me

#otoradio #otopodcast #podcast #Mix

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youngandhungryent · 4 years

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East Cleveland’s Kipp Stone Connects With Chicago’s Mick Jenkins For “Sprague Street,” Announces New Project

Source: Lonell “LJ” Swoope / @wonton_swoope

Kipp Stone burst on the scene in 2017 with his debut prokect Dirty Face Angel, a solid introduction to his blend of gritty lyrics placed atop soulful production that showed amazing promise. As the East Cleveland producer and rapper prepares for his latest mixtape releasing next month, Kipp connected with Chicago’s Mick Jenkins for the single “Sprague Street” and the pair’s powerful performances mesh well over polished boom bamp production.

The “Sprague Street” single serves as a precursor for HOMMÈ, Kipp’s fist full-length project for the year. It serves as a followup to Kipp’s aforementioned Dirty Face Angel project, a 12-track affair that sounds just as potent today as it did three years ago and cementing his place as one of his hometown’s sharpest prospects.

HOMMÈ will be the first full-length from Kipp to be released by Closed Sessions out of Chicago and is slated for release in October. Joining Kipp on the mixtape is rising Cleveland rappers Nuke Franklin, and Torre Lott, with production handled by Blokhead Johnny and Kipp himself. Kipp is framing HOMMÈ as an autobiography of sorts, sharing the tale of his rough upbringing in the 216 but never from a position of glorifying his woes.

Making Kipp’s story even more interesting is the honesty is apparent not only in his music but how he presents his actual life. Kipp works as an essential health care worker during the day, recording his project in what was reportedly a dilapidated home. Thus “Sprague Street” is titled as it was to celebrate Kopp’s new home in his native East Cleveland.

Check out “Sprague Street” featuring Mick Jenkins by following this link for the DSP of your choosing.

HOMMÈ is set for release on Oct. 20.

—

Photo: Lonell “LJ” Swoope

source https://hiphopwired.com/907944/kipp-stone-mick-jenkins-homme-annoucement/

#fucu #fucul #young and hungry ent #boss of bosses #instrumental type beat free

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manualstogo · 4 years

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For just $3.99 Released on October 15, 1945: Nick Condon (James Cagney) is a reporter in pre-Pearl Harbor Japan, and he discovers their plot to rule the world, and my lose his life because of his knowledge in this oscar winning motion picture. Genre: Drama Duration: 1h 38min Director: Frank Lloyd Actors: James Cagney (Nick Condon), Sylvia Sidney (Iris Hilliard), Porter Hall (Arthur Bickett), John Emery (Premier Giichi Tanaka), Robert Armstrong (Colonel Hideki Tojo), Wallace Ford (Ollie Miller), Rosemary DeCamp (Edith Miller), John Halloran (Captain Oshima), Leonard Strong (Hijikata), James Bell (Charley Sprague), Marvin Miller (Yamada), Rhys Williams (Joseph Cassell), Frank Puglia (Prince Tatsugi), Philip Ahn (Secret Police Captain Yomamoto), Hugh Beaumont (Johnny Clarke), Edward Biby (bar patron), Oy Chan (Chinese servant), Hugh Ho Chang (Secret Police Major Kajioka), Gregory Gaye (Amercian newspaperman Bogardis), Sam Harris (bar patron), Joseph Kim (Hayoshi), Grace Lem (Amah), Arthur Loft (American newspaperman), Harold Miller (bar patron), George Paris (hotel manager), Emmett Vogan (American newspaperman Johnson), Billy Wayne (American newspaperman). *** This item will be supplied on a quality disc and will be sent in a sleeve that is designed for posting CD's DVDs *** This item will be sent by 1st class post for quick delivery. Should you not receive your item within 12 working days of making payment, please contact me so we can solve this or any other questions. Note: All my products are either my own work, licensed to me directly or supplied to me under a GPL/GNU License. No Trademarks, copyrights or rules have been violated by this item. This product complies with rules on compilations, international media, and downloadable media. All items are supplied on CD or DVD.

#vintage #classic #film #theater #movie #theatre

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fieldsofplay · 5 years

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Top Albums of 2019

Top Albums of 2019.

25. William Tyler – Goes West

For those of you reading along, I want to thank you for sticking with this blog for basically an entire decade at this point. Jeez, where does the time* go? To that end, I’m gonna put out a decade list sometime next week, so to keep my sanity somewhat in check, this years tops list is going to be a little more abbreviated than usual. A few less records, a few less words, but still the same self indulgence you’ve come to know and expect. To that end, William Tyler. Tied for my favorite cover art with IGOR. This is beautiful finger-picked cosmic acoustic guitar music with some nice flourishes added by Brad Cook and the usual suspects. Perfect for fall days. I accidentally heckled him at a concert about the Andy Griffith show, but I was only trying to say he shouldn’t be ashamed about liking that program. The shame still haunts me, much like this music. *A fictional social construct

24. Floating Points – Crush

Now I’m not going to sit here and pretend to know much about electronic music. I don’t know the deep history, I don’t know the technical lingo, but like pornography, I know it when I hear it. Much has been made about the impact opening for the XX and being limited to minimal gear while doing so had on Sam Shephard, and I’ll admit the differences from Elaenia is palpable. Where that album felt minimal, Crush is maximal, bursting with colors and ideas, not unlike the beautiful painting that adorns its cover. I never quite knew what the phrase Intelligent Dance Music was supposed to mean, but to me, that’s precisely what this is. You could dance to “LesAlpx” if you wanted, or you could just throw it on headphones and drift away to its unceasing pulse. Find you a man who can do both.

23. Nerija – Blume

Let me be the first to tell you that jazz is back! Centering largely in London, there is thrilling music being made by the likes of Sons of Kemet, The Comet is Coming, and this year, by Nerija. Breathing new life into a long moribund form (at least until Kendrick Lamar started featuring jazz musicians on his albums), Blume literally does just that, unfurling jazz from a long dormancy. While I’m not normally a fan of the guitar in jazz, here it keeps the whole thing moving forward, as the horns swirl around in a supportive role and the percussion cooks. “Riverfest” is the best exemplar, as the guitar chimes with joy while the cymbal-crashes enliven the vibe.

22. Florist – Emily Alone

A tale as old time (song as old as rhyme): member of ambient-electronic band puts out solo acoustic album, about the sadness of moving to LA and finding oneself. No one is reinventing the wheel here, but I can’t help but feel little touches of Florist’s electronic full-band output in Emily Sprague’s solo record—the way the words repeat, subtly, but building meaning with each little phrasal repetition. Plus, the ocean is a recurring image, and dear lord do I miss the sea. If you want to listen a sad girl sing sad songs accompanied by acoustic guitar, you aren’t going to do better than Emily Alone this year.

21. Kevin Morby – Oh My God

Possibly the best Kevin Morby record? No one else would say that, but I will. If so, why is it so far down the list? Well, when you consistently put out amazing records year-after-year it becomes difficult for any individual album to make an imprint on the “culture.” I think “Seven Devils” is possibly his finest tune.

20. Sacred Paws – Run Around the Sun

My friend David turned me on to this band right before I was about to embark on a road trip up north in the middle of the summer, and let me tell you, that was the perfect time to first experience Run Around the Sun. Noodly guitars burst out of every seam on this record, as bubblegum lyrics tie the whole shebang together. If you ever wondered what the Shangri-las would sound like if Johnny Marr played lead guitar, I give you Sacred Paws.

19. Jamila Woods – Legacy! Legacy!

On Legacy! Legacy! Woods takes the R&B of the excellent Heavn and applies a jazzier sheen, to excellent results. One need look no further than the track titles (“Frida,” “Miles,” “Basquiat,” “Baldwin,” “Sun Ra” etc.) to see that Woods is consciously engaging with the titans of history, and here, while she doesn’t exactly reach the heights of those innovators, she certainly begins to carve out a legacy of her own as one of the best voices in a currently thriving R&B scene.

18. Mt. Eerie & Julie Doiron – Lost Wisdom, Pt. 2

On Lost Wisdom, Pt. 2 Phil Elverum (of The Microphones) and Julie Doiron (of Eric’s Trip) recapture the magic they bottled on the first Lost Wisdom back in 2008. It is hard to imagine sparer music than this, but the duo make so much of a pair of voices and few plucked guitar or banjo lines. As with all of his music of late (for obvious reasons), loss hangs all over Elverum’s output, but here, the loss is more mood and less of a literal presence (with the exception of the blistering “Widows”). Few songs I can think of capture a single, specifically odd phenomenon quite like “When I Walk Out of the Museum.”

17. DIIV – Deceiver

As capital-G guitar music recedes further into irrelevance, it’s good to still have a band like DIIV kicking around, who make shoegaze like it’s still 1991. And it’s a good thing they are still making their beautiful walls of feedback, as heroine has repeatedly knocked this band off the rails of what appeared to be a very promising career. This is ominous, portentous music, that swirls with white noise and black despair. Shoegaze is premised on making beauty out of the squall of overdriven electric guitars, and DIIV make beauty of the squall of 21st century opiate addiction.

16. Earl Sweatshirt – Feet of Clay

Earl continues the excellent experimentation of Some Rap Songs in the (slightly) more structured Feet of Clay. Whereas Some Rap Songs felt like fragments, the tracks on Feet of Clay (almost) feel like “songs” proper. Earl continues to quickly sweep the ground out from underneath you, whether it’s in the form of oddly woozy backing tracks that can’t really be called “beats” or the sub 2-minute run times, but he seems to pack slightly more structure into those abbreviated entrants, even if there are a lot less of them than there were on Some Rap Songs. Right now no one is pushing the boundaries of hip-hop like Earl, and each new release, even if the total run time is under 15 minutes, is a thrilling event.

15. Better Oblivion Community Center – S/T

Yes, last year I had Boygenius as my number one record, but if I’m being frank, and I am, this is the better collaborative album put out by Phoebe Bridgers. At first blush a record between the up-and-coming Bridgers and the largely has-been Conor Oberst seems like a desperate grab at continued relevance by the latter, but having seen them live, I must admit the pairing makes perfect sense. The energy between the two is infectious, and while they share a common fascination with emo, they really draw the best out of each other. Bridgers plays the Emmylou Harris role from I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning to perfection, and Oberst plays the Kenny Rodgers in “Islands in the Stream.” For a period I could not turn on Radio K without hearing a song from this album, which is strange because, as a college radio station, every hour is usually completely different.

14. Chromatics – Closer to Grey

In a certain way, Chromatics are victims of their own tendency towards self-mythologizing. Their last two official albums were absolutely perfect slices of Italo-Disco, equal parts late night ennui and seething dancefloor longing. There was way more guitar on those albums than most anyone would appreciate on first glance, and yet Ruth Radelet’s smoky vocals were unquestionably the star. In the interim Johnny Jewel (the mastermind behind the band and basically everything on Italians Do it Better) famously destroyed all the copies of the long teased Dear Tommy after a near death experience, provided essential music to Twin Peaks: The Return (which included multiple Chromatics performances at the dear Road House), and then suddenly dropped Closer to Grey out of the sky, with neither warning nor fanfare. This record is everything you would want a Chromatics record to be, but perhaps that is part of the reason it didn’t really make a major impression. It felt a little Chromatics-by-the-numbers, right down to the cover of “The Sound of Silence” to open it up. I absolutely love this album, and if it weren’t for the incredible quality of albums put out this year, it would certainly be a top-10 or top-5 in any other year (hell, in the terrible-for-music 2018 it would have been number one by a mile). Perhaps the biggest frustration is just how fucking good “Light as a Feather” is. It hints at a version of Chromatics influenced by Portishead, and now that’s all I want more of.

13. Thom Yorke – ANIMA

Doubt it if you will, you sneering youngsters, but Thom Yorke and his more well-known band are currently making some of the best music of their careers. Just as A Moon Shaped Pool was a much needed return to form after the completely forgettable King of Limbs, with ANIMA Yorke gets back to what made The Eraser so compelling all the way back in 2006. While a fondness for Aphex Twin is no longer at all exceptional in rock music in 2019, it was in 2006, and with ANIMA, Yorke gets back to the creepy, clicky, paranoid distrust of modern consumer culture that is solidly his wheelhouse. Bonus points for using Netflix and a pairing with PTA to make America care about a long form music video again in 2019.

12. Black Marble – Bigger than Life

I would call black Marble my favorite new band of the year, but the thing is, they aren’t new, just new to me. Bigger than Life is their third record, and first for Sacred Bones (whose distinctive album art is what first caught my eye). Because their music is comprised solely of arpeggiated synths, melodic bass, and clinking drum machines, overlaid with melancholicly narrow vocals, it is easy to accuse Black Marble of being a little same-y. However, if you, like me, worship at the temple of New Order, than this is the band for you. I have lived with their three extant albums the last couple months (the second, It’s Immaterial, being my favorite), and in reality, this is really the only music I want to listen to.

11. Big Thief – U.F.O.F. / Two Hands

If you’re reading this than you likely already know how much I love Big Thief, and you might be a little surprised that one, if not both, of the records they put out this year is not sitting atop this list based on how much I’ve professed my love for this band over the course of 2019. So here’s the thing, the highs on both of these albums--“U.F.O.F.” “Not”--are better than anything else anyone has done this year, but to my ear both records suffer from a flew blah-ish passages that prevent either album, on its own, from achieving top status. However, if you borrow a few tracks here (Cattails, Contact) and a few tracks there (Shoulders, Two Hands) and made one album out of the highlights of both sessions, you would unquestionably have the album of the year. That Big Thief gave us two records brimming with amazing folk rock ideas is a blessing.

10. Sharon Van Etten – Remind Me Tomorrow

Hey, do you remember Sharon Van Etten put out an amazing record in 2019? I bet you don’t. The culture moves so fast these days that albums from January might as well have been released five years ago, and it seems to me like this record slipped off a few peoples’ radars as the year progressed, which is a shame, considering how damn good it is (her best imho). There are few runs on an album I’ve enjoyed more this year than “Jupiter 4’s” electro-throb into “Seventeen’s” Springsteen chug into “Malibu’s” comedown. Bonus points for being my dear friend Hadley’s downstairs neighbor for all those years. Ah Brooklyn, how I miss thee.

9. Black Midi – Schlagenheim

Yes, that most reliable of music-critic tropes: the hot young band from London. Black Midi made waves with a legendary youtube video of their live show, and having seen it in person, let me tell you, even that now infamous video doesn’t do them justice. Much like its gobldy-gook made up title, Schlagenheim is an amalgamation of strands of music that don’t really fit together but somehow they pull off with aplomb. At times they play with the hardcore fury of Minor Threat, while at others the proggy interconnectivity of Rush at their most arena-rockish, all with a weird dash of David Byrne wiry energy holding it all together. If they come to your town, go see them, just don’t stand in the front unless you want to be swept into the maelstrom.

8. Helado Negro – This is How You Smile

Did you love Little Joy (the Strokes sideproject) but wish it was occasionally electronic and periodically in Spanish? If so, I give you Helado Negro. This is the prettiest record of the year; it never goes above a certain emotional register / decibel range, but it inhabits the spectrum in which it lives like a ghost in its occasional electronic flourishes. This is a record for someone with a long drive with something to think about. “Seen my Aura” is simultaneously funky and restrained, acoustic and electronic, and emblematic of the joys of This is How You Smile.

7. Sturgill Simpson – Sound & Fury

Each of Sturgill Simpson’s last three records have been fundamentally different from one another, and each has been excellent, which is almost impossible to accomplish. Metamodern Sounds in Country Music introduced many, like myself, to a new voice in an often overlooked medium, A Sailor’s Guide to Earth dusted off the horns from Elvis’s stax-era and romped around, and now with Sound & Fury Sturgill looks to the outlaw tradition (and ZZ freakin Top) he’s so-often been associated with, but rarely resembled, to crank out an incredible record that is far more “rock” than it is “country.” Throw on a heaping of 80’s-era Springsteen synths and you have the recipe for a record that makes me very, very happy. The two halves of “Make Art not Friends” have little business coexisting within a single track (the first half sounds like Tangerine Dream, the second half Arcade Fire) and yet it is precisely in this tenuous cohabitation that Sturgill has produced his best record to date.

6. Vampire Weekend – Father of the Bride

Vampire Weekend started out their career being accused of stealing from Graceland and ended up becoming Paul Simon. Funny how that works out sometimes. Modern Vampires of the City has become, next to Sound of Silver, the definitive record about life in New York during my era (2005-2016). On the follow up, the band, newly shorn of Rostam Batmanglij (whose solo record is also phenomenal, even though he’s maybe one of the worst performers I’ve ever seen), decamped to California, and Father of the Bride revels in both the California sun and a well earned sense of accomplishment. “Hold You Now” is my favorite song of the year, it is simply stunning.

5. Bill Callahan – Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest

There is a bit of theme developing here at the top of the list: established artists putting out arguably their best work deep into storied careers, and no one on this list is deeper into a more storied oeuvre than Bill Callahan. Between Smog and under his own name, Callahan has been releasing consistently great albums since 1992, and to me, Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest is his finest work to date. Having found domestic bliss, so the press materials state, Callahan is content to sit back and let that world-weary baritone spin out all the comforts of a well-worn chair near a fire in a hearth. This is the type of record that gives you hope that happiness isn’t the exclusive provenance of the young.

4. Purple Mountains – Purple Mountains

If I were to really sit and write out all of my thoughts about David Berman this blurb would probably be 10 pages long, at least, so rather than spill a bunch of digital ink lamenting the loss of a true inspiration, I’ll just try and stick to the album itself, which is almost impossible now in the wake of his suicide shortly after its release. Even on first blush this was a difficult hang, clearly the product of someone who lost their wife to a series of poor decisions / mental difficulties, and who hadn’t come to terms with it. Understandably so. Berman remains endlessly quotable, right up to the very end, and “we’re just drinking margaritas at the mall” remains emblematic of his ability to compress the tedium of middle american misery into a single haunting, yet, hilarious, image. While “Nights that Won’t Happen” lives on as his suicide note directly to the fans (“The dead know what they’re doing when they leave this world behind” ; “all the suffering gets done by the ones we leave behind”), and it is hauntingly beautiful, it still makes me cry every time I hear it. As does most of this record. So the song I’ll carry on with me, and can still actually listen to, is “Snow is Falling in Manhattan.” Just a beautiful song from a beautiful man.

3. Tyler, the Creator – IGOR

I really don’t have the words (well, clearly I have some) to express just how impressed I am by the arc of Tyler’s career. The one-time shock-rap flash in the critical pan quickly turned into forgettable homophobe who perfectly fit a description of Eminem’s fan base I once heard: kids who call their mom a bitch to their face. The first startling change came with Flower Boy, which came right on the heels of his step out of the closet. Flower Boy is a really great record, but it still largely sounded like Tyler, just a more mature version who stopped saying cringe worthy shit. IGOR is something entirely different. I honestly don’t even know what to call it. It’s not a rap record, and there are honestly entire tracks on it where I’m not sure what it is he does on them, but my god, this thing is incredible. It’s basically a Parliament album for the end of the world, and if the earth is going to burn down around us, we might as well dance our way out, which is precisely the party Tyler has orchestrated here. I cannot wait to see what he does next.

2. Angel Olsen – All Mirrors

All Mirrors isn’t just clearly Angel Olsen’s best album by a clear margin, it is the best pop album made by anyone in sometime. Just like black clothes make anyone a little slimmer, orchestration can make any pop song sound symphonic, but most pop acts don’t have the power of Angel Olson’s voice to match the bombast of the string section and percussion. It feels like the term Beatlesesque has started to fade from the critical lexicon, but this music is truly akin to the orchestral richness of “I am the Walrus” or “A Day in the Life.” People celebrate Lana del Ray for her torch songs (and I really liked Norman Fucking Rockwell, even if it didn’t quite make this list in a stacked year) but no one carries a torch like Angel Olsen. I was initially reticent to catch her live show this tour, it was on a weeknight, it was cold, I had to go downtown, I’d seen her a couple times already, yadda yadda yadda, but I knew deep down I really wanted to see if she could recreate the power of these songs on stage (the inverse of how that equation usually goes). Reader: she did.

1. (Sandy) Alex G – House of Sugar

House of Sugar may not be quite as experimental as IGOR, or as pop-perfect as All Mirrors, but it takes those two impulses and melds them together into what is my favorite album of the year, even if strictly speaking it may not be the “best” as measured against the other entrants in this top 3. “Hope” was actually a “hit” song on the local college radio station, and understandably so; it sounds like Elliott Smith and tells a comprehensible story about a friend who died from an overdose. But “Hope” is jut one facet of House of Sugar, which is a veritable hall of musical mirrors. “Walk Away” is hypnotic in its repetitions, “In My Arms” is a legit straightforward acoustic love song, “Sugar” sounds like The Knife (no joke), “Sugarhouse” could have been on The River, and while I already said “Hold You Now” is my favorite song of the year, “Gretel” has something to say about that. I saw a show right when this album came out, and as the band left the stage for the final time the soundguy cued up “Gretel” not, I’m guessing, because the band requested it, but because it rules and he just wanted to share it with everyone as they receded into night.

#top albums of 2019 #best records of 2019

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rainingmusic · 7 years

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Earshot- Nice To Feel The Sun

#earshot #two album #two #nice to feel the sun #wil martin #scott kohler #mike callahan #johnny sprague #chas stumbo #alternative metal #hard rock #alternative rock #rock #nu metal #music #music is life #music is love #music is religion #raining music

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thecomedybureau · 6 years

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For years, we’ve enjoyed Some Kinda Monster’s improv extravaganza known as Dramedy. On one show, some of the best teams around town improvise based off carefully curated, out-of-context TV and film drama clips. Then, Some Kinda Monster themselves does a wonderful improvised episode of Law & Order.

They’re about to a last show at the venue where they started, The Clubhouse in Los Feliz, (they’re keeping their UCB slot FYI) and, as such, will be stacking the line-up with a whole bunch of our favorite teams as follows:

SOME KINDA MONSTER **performing Law and Order** Jacquis Neal, Dan Prevette, Kara Luiz, Skot Phillips, Noah Holcomb, Christine Renaud, Ryan Coil, Emily Dahm ROCOCO Jake Sprague, Lilan Bowden, Ego Nwodim, Londale Theus Jr, Cody Kopp, Heather Woodward, Hillary Anne Matthews, Dhruv Uday Singh, Rose O'Shea TOLEDO REP Johnny Meeks, Joel Spence, Suzi Barrett, Tricia McAlpin, Eugene Cordero, Billy Merritt, Timm Sharp, Julia Meltzer, Talia Tabin WHITE WOMEN Carl Tart, Lamar Woods, Ishmel Sahid, Ify Nwadiwe, Ronnie Adrian

As always, admission for shows at The Clubhouse are donation based.

You best make sure you get there early as it will probably be standing room only. Get more details here.

The rest of our listings for comedy shows, events, screenings, open mics, maps, and more can be found at www.thecomedybureau.com.

#dramedy #some kinda monster #long form improv

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swipestream · 6 years

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Remembering a Friend

My friend Steve Tompkins has been gone for ten years as of March 23. Seems like yesterday I found out about his passing. I had had a bad feeling as I could not get in touch with him and it turned out to be the worst.

Steve was a writer of non-fiction. There is a type of writer involved with certain literary genres who puts things in perspective or gives new insight. Robert E. Briney comes to mind. He wrote non-fiction pieces for Amra and and about Sax Rohmer. Steve Tompkins was in that vein.

I got to know Steve when I was the Official Editor of the Robert E. Howard United Press Association. One of the members gave me his address and I sent Steve a spec copy of the mailings. This would have been in early 1995. Steve had been writing letters to the Conan comic books for some period.

He read a piece I wrote for my fanzine called “Lin Carter: The Inept Pastichist” (later reprinted and slightly touched up as “The Inept Pasticheur”). Steve said when he read that, he knew he was in the right place. He joined the apa and joined in the fun with “Lin Carter: Fan Gone Wrong” and “Rolling in the Aisles.” “Rolling in the Aisles” was a humorous deconstruction of the very irritating Lin Carter character Sigurd of Vanaheim, a supporting character in the L. Sprague de Camp/Lin Carter novels Conan the Buccaneer and Conan of the Isles. Steve was happy when Roy Thomas killed Sigurd in a gruesome fashion in the 1990s in one of the Conan comic books.

Not long after joining, I received a phone call from Steve which initiated the first of many, many phone calls up to his death. I remember we talked about Hitler and the Third Reich a lot.

Steve tackled various characters and writers in fantasy, especially sword and sorcery. He had an unfinished overview of Charles Saunders’ Imaro stories. He wrote one on lycanthropy and winter settings examining Karl Edward Wagner’s “Reflections for the Winter of My Soul.” He looked at “the northern thing” including Howard, Tolkien, and Keith Taylor’s Bard series.

Steve was a graduate of Columbia University. His job at the Bank of New York was to write apology letters for the bank that were written in a way the bank in no way was responsible. His writing background was put to good use for greater things.

His writing style could take a little getting used to. I can remember a few members of REHUPA grumbling about perceived pretense. In time people got used to him. He certainly bulked up the page count of the mailings.

His essays brought in all sorts of things. He might mention Slotkin’s theory of regeneration through violence on page and then Johnny Rotten a couple paragraphs later. Steve was also addicted to puns.

We traveled to Howard Days in Cross Plains in 1998. We met up in Dallas and I introduced him to the joys of beef fajitas at the Blue Goose Restaurant in Dallas. Two years later, we met up and shared a hotel room for Pulp-Con in Dayton, OH. There we checked out a diner called The Breakfast Club that he liked immensely.

Steve introduced me to David Gemmell. There was little in the way of sword and sorcery fiction in the middle 1990s. I happened to mention seeing this guy Gemmell’s books at the new Barnes & Noble bookstore. He urged me to give him a try.

Living in New York, Steve would take advantage of cheap flights to London. He would catch a flight on a three day weekend, hit the bookstores and return with suitcases of books. I have a number of David Gemmell books in hardback and paperback brought back by Steve in my den. I got to read those often more than a year before they were released in the U.S.

I can remember Steve calling me up in late 1996 and telling me that George R. R. Martin had just released a big fantasy novel. If I could only hear him now on Martin’s unfinished series.

In time, Steve moved from the amateur press to small press publications including The Dark Man journal, The Robert E. Howard Companion, and The Cimmerian. He wrote the introduction for Bison Books The Black Stranger and Other American Tales. He was the guy who figured out that George Orwell had read some of Robert E. Howard’s boxing stories in the pages of Fight Stories. He had an essay, “Gigantic Gulfs of Eons: Kull, Conan, and Tyrant Time” in The Barbaric Triumph, Don Herron’s follow up book of critical essays to The Dark Barbarian.

Steve expanded our horizons on what could be done with examinations of genre fiction. All to often, non-fiction pieces consist of surveys telling the name of a story and what happens and “Oh boy! Is this great!” fan-boy enthusiasm. He showed you could bring in all sorts of things and dig deeper exposing eternal truths present in fantasy fiction.

One of the biggest issues was Steve was getting some idea finished before something else grabbed his attention. Seems he was always enthusiastic about some new discovery.

I was probably the last one from REHUPA to talk to him on the phone. He had gotten food poisoning eating at a Burger King. At the time, he hoped to muddle through it drinking Gatorade to keep his electrolytes up. He ended up being admitted to the hospital with anemia. The sequence of events resulted in a fatal heart attack at age 48. I can remember feeling punched in the gut when I found out about his death. There was a hole in my life when that happened. I wrote up a short piece for the old rehupa.com site and a tribute for REH: Two-Gun Raconteur. I miss his humor. I can remember e-mailing him about a dog we had at the time, Pepper the Shih-Tzu. Pepper had a very short fuse and snapped at my wife. She was going to have him put down. Steve sent me an e-mail with the message heading “Pulling for Pepper.” I ended up talking my wife out of having the dog put down and Pepper died of cancer at age 13. Steve, hopefully we will see each other again.

Check out his bibliography at isfdb.org.

Remembering a Friend published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

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