And YouTube Xmas comes early for STDPM

I've been waiting for someone to repost the higher-rez version of this rare vocal performance by Link Wray, and finally somebody did.



Trying to Find Your Love

BONUS:



LINCOLN HIGHWAY DEKALB illinois: Link Wray High Way

"Isn't there ANYONE who knows what Christmas is all ABOUT!?!"

Hey, this is pretty damn fancy, and kudos to the dude that frickita frakked that thing together, but ... something doesn't seem right.



"I have over 45,000 lights synchronized to music using 216 channels of Light-O-Rama [and synched to Linus and Lucy, man ... can you feel my might?]"

Compare and contrast.



Colicky Christmas, everyone!

"And on the continent of North America, winter became very, very unhappy. Decided to stay."-- Gil Scott-Heron

Winter in America (1990)



Winter in America & Whitey on the Moon (vintage unknown)



A Lovely Day (SNL, December 13, 1975)

David Eckstein is not scrappy -- but I am

While whiling away these gray and wintry days of winter, I have been enjoying the multi-post discourse about the alleged and vaunted, and allegedly vaunted, and vauntedly alleged "scrappiness" of Mr. David Eckstein (most notably in recent years, the very short shortstop for the St Louis base-ball Cardinals of Missouri, and next season to be a hyperbolically overpaid [and still underheighted] shortstop for the Toronto base-ball Blue Jays of Oh, Canada, blah blah blah, true patriot love in all thy sons command [repeat en français, s'il vous plait]) at the most excellent and hilarious skewerer of bad sports journalism (and particularly bad baseball journalism), Fire Joe Morgan.

Over there lately there has some good fun made of a crappy sportswriter's ado-making about a Google search on the assertion, "David Eckstein is scrappy," and the gnipgnopulously huge number of hits that result from that string. (Subsequently, a reader pointed out that many hits also result from googling "David Eckstein is crappy," which amused me a great deal ... so now you know just how easy to amuse I am.)

In connection with all of that, there's a thing I have just discovered that could be relevant to the analysis (but probably not). To wit:

If you Google the string, in quotes, "David Eckstein is not scrappy", you get ZERO hits. None. Nada. Bupkis, non-etc.

Therefore, there is nobody in the Internet that affirmatively affirms that this particular itty bitty ball player is "not scrappy." They either think he's scrappy, or they have held their tongues ... er, keyboard fingers.

What that means is nobody's guess, because nobody cares. Not that I'm letting that stop me. Because this is a scrappy blog, and I am a scrappy blogger. Scrappier than Dirt, even. Too small for the game, but scrappy to the finish.

Ess ayy tee yoo arr, dee ayy why ... NIGHT! YouTube Veddeos -- "Work Song" Edition

Music by Nat Adderley; lyrics by Oscar Brown, Jr.



Bobby Darin



Nina Simone



Ventures - Medley



Abluesados



Good Wood plays at The Coast Bastion Hotel in Nanaimo British Columbia



Shuffle Republic playing Work Song live at the Coogee Bay Hotel



Some dude wailing on a harp doing something along the lines of the Paul Butterfield version, which I can't find a better rendition of on these damns YouTubes, but I kind of like this one, and he sings the words, so it's copacetic, baby



Some other dude wailing on a harp and explaining himself



How many dudes wailing on a harp to "Work Song" are there on the Internet?



Cannonball Adderley

Just needs to work on the jowlage a little bit

In this pic cribbed from the NY Post, here's one David Letterman doing a pretty good impersonation of yours truly, Stronger Than Dirt Pete Moss. Welcome to the fraternity of the weird beards, Dave.

In other news, the electric baseboard heater in the war room here at CBRAT Central shorted out last night -- with a very loud buzz and a pop, sparks, burning wire insulation, acrid smoke -- all very adrenaline-pumping excitement indeed. I've shut off the relevant circuit breaker to keep the fire risk at CBRAT Central down to a minimum, but that means the other, nonbroken heater is also out of commission -- so it's cold in here. Colder than a witch's saline implant. Which, due to the salt content, has a freezing point well below 32 Fahrenheit, so you know that can get pretty cold. It's the same basic principle employed in yer old-fashioned ice cream makers. Yup.

Typing is not facilitated by these conditions. In a couple hours, when crocktrail hour rolls around, maybe that'll help. It won't hurt, I don't think. Later on, maybe I'll pretend I'm in an episode of my new favorite show, "Everest: Beyond The Limits," bloggically. So stay tuned, fellow Eskimos and Eskimixes. Frostbite and cerebral edema reports to follow.

UPDATE: The building manager came and fixed the heater, so now the only reason it's cold in here is because of my usual crazy old-man miserliness. Huzzah.

Karlheinz Stockhausen

The composer Karlheinz Stockhausen has died. I would be completely out of my league to try to talk about him. I don't really know anything about music. Or art, for that matter.

But back in 2000, I gave it a shot and tried to say something about that stuff in a piece for my old xerox zine, HUBRIS, and here are some jpegs comprising a piece I did for that zine using some Stockhausen polemics as text, superimposed over flatbed scans of a kitchen mishap involving hard boiled eggs that boiled to depravity during a absent-mindedness-inducing binge of the game "Sims," which I was into at the time.

"People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring." -- Rogers Hornsby

Tommy Skilling didn't lie. He said, chance of precipitation, 100%. And here it is, a goddamn veritable winter wonderland.

In anticipation thereof, yesterday, my hoarding instinct kicked in full-force and I collected enough food at "The Jewel's" (over by dere) to make myself spherical. My little fridge, she is full to overflowing. I did venture out into the "winter cocktail" this afternoon to get beer ... and that was enough for me. I think I'll skip the Iditarod® training yet again this year. Ribbie and Roobarb nod their inanimate stuffed agreements.

Hey, how many days till pitchers and catchers report?



Harry Caray



"Fear Strikes Out" (Jimmy Piersall Story) - Breakdown Scene



Bill Veeck Interview

POSTSCRIPT: To those who periodically chastise me for refusing to admire one Chicago major league ballclub to the exclusion of the other, I have a two-word reply: Bill Veeck. You can hardly get more iconographically "White Sox" than Bill Veeck. Yet, here he is in this video hoisting a beer cup adorned with a Cubs logo, apparently voluntarily. He planted the fucking ivy at Wrigley Field, for crying out loud. I'm sick of this shit where it's a mandatory Manichean duality. That horseshit is fucking bush league. Yeah, I know, why don't I tell you how I reeeeeeeally feeel??