Solid as Santana

Great outing from Johan Santana today in a Mets pre-season game against the Braves. In five innings of work only gave up two hits, both of them in the fifth - a home run and a double.

For you newcomers (hello Facebook pals), both Mackey brothers have been Mets fans for the past 44 years or so. Optimistic old me thinks that this is the year we finally see a New York Mets no-hitter. This is a cause we've been taking up for the past several years, actually inspiring the creation by others of a more intensive site devoted to the quest, nonohitters.com. We will continue to update our counter on this website. I'm hoping this is the last year we even have a counter.

Three Little Bops Musicians

It took more than three of those little piggies to play Shorty Rogers' score for the 1956 Warner Bros. cartoon "Three Little Bops", which we discussed a while back. I found a credits listing on Wikipedia which you may take with a grain of salt as you should anything on Wikipedia.

The Shorty Rogers group was actually a sextet. At times the pigs are seen playing several different instruments depending on the scene.

Shorty Rogers is playing trumpet. That's the easy one.

Pete Jolly is playing piano, and Barney Kessel is definitely the guitarist.

The other instruments are a little more vague. The baritone sax is either Pepper Adams or Jimmy Giuffre (of "Four Brothers" fame). Drums may be Stan Levey or Shelly Manne; my money's on Manne just because of the whose West Coast Jazz brotherhood. (Manne's drumming is also heard on DePatie-Freleng cartoons of the late 60's.) Bass may be Red Mitchell or Red Callender, just call him Red.

And Milt Franklyn did slate the session - I finally tracked down the music-only tracks and he does indeed bellow "Production number 1429, the 'Three Little Bops'."

Dude, Where's My Blog?

Hi. Some of you may have noticed all my posts disappeared. Hopefully with this new post and republication we can get that fixed.

If you want to know how we did at the crossword tournament that wrapped up this weekend, please visit www.thepuzzlebrothers.com and see the whole report plus photo gallery.