I Have To Flip All The Cards...

I'm steadfastly convinced that with the personnel they currently have and at this juncture of a losing season, the New York Mets will not pitch a no-hitter this season. Therefore, I've advanced the No-Hitter count to its terminus for this season. See you next year.

OCC Band, Part Deux

I am announcing my return to the Ocean County College concert band, now under the direction of Mr. Tony Tafrow. I will be playing baritone horn this time around. We start rehearsals next Tuesday and will have a Christmas concert in December. The music page will soon be updated to reflect this.

New Blog on our Blogroll

We've added MetsBlog, a very informative and somewhat official blog about the New York Mets. Just came forth with the news 2 minutes ago that Billy Wagner, who just came back last night for the Mets after Tommy John surgery, has been claimed on waivers. We don't know by who yet. Bye Bye Billy... thanks for everything.

SNY Piece on Nonohitters

This week's "Mets Weekly" did a short piece on Dirk Lammers' Nonohitters.com website. Dirk, who lives in South Dakota (a hard place to live if you're a baseball fan), was in New York for a game and was interviewed about the site and its many features. Watch for some familiar names to show up on screen at some point in the video.

The CBS Children's Film Festival

Back in the days before federally-mandated children's programming, CBS was kind enough to expend some time each week for a presentation called "The CBS Children's Film Festival". Hosted by Fran Allison and Burr Tillstrom's famous puppets Kukla and Ollie, the show aired from 1967 to 1984. The show specialized in children's cinema from around the world. It must have been some coup for CBS to hire the services of Allison and the puppets away from their longtime home at NBC, where they appeared on and off from 1947-1966.

Phil of a Kukla, Fran and Ollie tribute site has been nice enough to put clips on YouTube of some of these films, many of which have become very hard to find over the years. These titles may sound familiar to people of my generation: "Skinny and Fatty", "Boy With Glasses", "The Magnificent 6-1/2", "On Snowhite" and "The Goalkeeper Also Lives On Our Street." Remember any of those?

Every so often, CBS would air a 1967 film from Czechoslovakia called "Lost in Pajamas" (original title "Tana a Dva Pistolnici"), in which a 10-year-old girl named Tanya (Dasa Pazderova) somehow leaves her sleeper train when a cow gets on the tracks and is stranded in the wilderness. There, Tanya meets up with two boys camping out overnight. I liked this one and always watched it whenever it was on. Unfortunately Dasa Pazderova didn't do too much more in the cinema, making only one other film, also in 1967. Here's a clip and if you click on the user name you will find more.

AI Live 2009 Tour

As we did last year, we loaded up Tracy and the girls in the van and trekked down to Atlantic City for this year's version of the American Idols Live Tour. The 2009 edition featured winner Kris Allen and the nine runners up.

Loudest cheers (and female screaming) for runner-up Adam Lambert.

I was impressed with all the performances, we heard just enough of the lower-tier finalists - the Michael Sarver, Megan Joy type - to know why they couldn't go farther in the competition. But once we got to Lil Rounds, the performers started getting a little more face time with the audience. Lil was astounding. It's a shame the voting public was so done with her after about three weeks of the finals, because she was very impressive last night. The bottom six did a great first half closer of a lesser-known Frankie Valli song, "Beggin'".

Alison Iraheta, the night's youngest performer, blew me away. Belting out those songs at 17 isn't easy. She also came back out for a duet on Foghat's "Slow Ride" with Lambert.

I noticed a lot less fluff last year. Gone from this year's festivities was a presenting sponsor. No Pop-Tarts for you this year. There was also no halftime Guitar Hero competition. I missed neither.

The show promoters do need to make a longer reel to entertain audiences before the show. I must have seen the same Carrie Underwood, Daughtry and David Cook videos about half a dozen times each throughout the evening.

Can't say if I'll be back next year - all depends on the caliber of next year's field.

Cash for Clunkers

I don't mind car companies using "Cash for Clunkers" as a way of getting people into their showrooms, but why do the auto companies make it sound like it was their idea? If you could think of such juicy incentives, maybe you guys wouldn't be all Chapter 11 on us.

Why The Mackey Family Needs A Reunion

Tomorrow, in Verplanck, NY, the descendants of William Mackey will be gathering for a cousins' reunion. William Mackey (1878-1943) is my paternal grandfather. He and his wife Ida had ten children from 1902 to 1921, the last of whom was my father, Richard Mackey. My dad, as well as all his brothers and sisters, are gone (a few stray aunts and uncles by marriage remain). However, all those brothers and sisters save one (Tex) had enough children whose own children have been able to make possible a reunion that may number in the hundreds tomorrow.

Verplanck, NY is significant in Mackey family history because of the family business that once thrived there, the Mackey Yards brick foundry. Many houses in Verplanck, Peekskill and thereabouts were built with Mackey bricks.

The Original "K-Jee"

I love posting YouTubes that are records because sometimes it's the only way to hear some of these songs. If you remember, one of the songs on the "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack was an infectious instrumental called "K-Jee", recorded for the movie by the soul group M.F.S.B. However, I was a little surprised that the "SNF" version was not the original. A few years ago, while listening to XM radio's "IT" countdown of pop music, I stumbled upon the original "K-Jee" by a group called The Nite-Liters, from very early in 1971. It's a little less polished than the movie soundtrack remake and perhaps that's why I like it. The Nite-Liters were a group put together by Harvey Fuqua (producer who was at one time a member of the Moonglows), who co-wrote the song with Charlie Herndon.

Fre (as a) berg

I'm not at the San Diego comic convention this weekend, but if I were, I would certainly make time today for the first-ever convention appearance of Stan Freberg. Simply put, Stan is one of the geniuses of our time. He's spent a lot of the last 50 or so years entertaining the world in many different ways. We laughed at him growing up, whether he was doing the voice of Pete Puma in a Looney Tunes cartoon, or working the puppets on "Time For Beany", with his comedy records and radio show, or even when he wasn't on camera, engineering one of many award-winning TV ad campaigns in the 60's. This blog post from Mark Evanier explains his career better than I ever could.

Evanier is moderating the panel, entitled "Two Funny Frebergs" (the other being his wife Hunter), which is today at 3:30 in Room 6A, but they're going to be making appearances in the autograph section throughout the weekend. If you're at the convention, take time away from the heroes in spandex suits and make time for one of my heroes.

Jack Paar's WC Joke

Explaining a recent reference to "Wayside Chapel" on FB. Johnny Carson's immediate predecessor as host of "The Tonight Show" was Jack Paar, one of the more literate among the late night talkers. He hosted the show from 1957-1962, and this joke caused such a furor that Paar walked off the show the next night. This audio clip tells the story. NBC had censored part of this broadcast of February 10, 1960, covering over with a brief newscast. By today's standards, this joke is rather tame, but in 1960, network censors were upset.

The next evening, Paar walked on stage, talked for three mintues, walked off, and left Hugh Downs to run the rest of the show from the sofa. Paar returned to the show on March 7. This is audio only, no video is known to survive. This has just been posted on YouTube today.

Heart on "Fridays"

Here, preceded by some of the show's comedy, is a live performance from Heart, from the short-lived TV show "Fridays". The show couched itself as a one-night-earlier, hipper version of "Saturday Night Live". It aired on ABC and among its more notable cast members were Michael Richards and Melanie Chartoff (EDIT: and Larry David, too... how could I forget him?). Heart, led by sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson, cover the Aaron Neville classic "Tell It Like It Is", with the Tower of Power horn section in very strong support (that very bushy haired guy on tenor sax is Lenny Pickett, who would later become music director for that other late night comedy program). The leather-jacketed, sunglassed man who introduces them "at five minutes before the hour on a very live and very hot Friday" is one of the show's writers/producers, Jack Burns. The show didn't last for more than a couple of seasons and was notorious for an Andy Kaufman incident in which he broke character during a skit and a brawl ensued involving both Richards and Burns. Enjoy this, it's a great performance.

Bye, Ken Levine

Ken's blog is going into the penalty box for a while due to gratuitous profanity in recent posts. I love his blog, but right now it's a little too much on the raunchy side for me to comfortably link to it. Ken will be back.

Another All Star Snoozer

Ho hum. AL wins again, Mariano closes it out, and NL fans are discouraged for another year.

But I'm heartened by the fact that the home field advantage that the AL has enjoyed for the past six seasons has only resulted in three World Series wins for the AL.

Billy Mays' Final Commercial

NSFW

Beach Vacation

Beginning tomorrow, I will be away for 11 days. There may not be too much in the way of new posts, and the Mets No-Hitter Count may not be updated as timely as I'd like - as always, Dirk's site is the first stop there. Think of him as DiamondVision, and me as an auxiliary scoreboard.

I am not bringing my notebook computer, but will have my BlackBerry and will be blithely checking my email on it. IN July, I'll be back. (Yes, always!)

Michael Jackson 1958-2009 and Farrah Fawcett 1947-2009

Okay, Michael Jackson was a bit of a flake. Especially in later years. But absolutely no reason to characterize him as Jacko The Clown. I am very appreciative that the newsmedia, in general, have refrained from using this nickname in their news stories about his death today from a heart attack at the age of 50.

I would rather focus on his accomplishments as a songwriter and musician, and apart from the songs he made famous, this is perhaps my favorite of the songs he wrote. "Centipede" was the only record charted by his sister, Rebbie, who was eight years his senior. Michael sings backup on this along with one of his other sisters, LaToya. It was a big hit in 1985, and very frequently played on Y107 when I was working there and it was a hit music station, so I heard this song maybe four or five times a day. And it grew on me. The embed is to an audio capture, instead of the actual music video which unfortunately I cannot embed.



Now Farrah Fawcett. Spectacular embodiment of 70's beauty. Who didn't want to be Jill when playing "Charlie's Angels"? All flowing blonde hair, white teeth. And, as known to anyone who hung That Poster in their bedroom - me included - nipples. She did show acting chops later on, but in later years, like Michael Jackson, became a bit of a flake, as evidenced by a wild appearance on CBS' "Late Show with David Letterman" in 1997. Farrah had been fighting cancer for years, finally taking her today.

Whatever judgments you want to make about their personal lives, all we know is that two giants of entertainment have left us, cruelly on the same day.

One More Blogroll Addition

Drew Carey now has a blog. He's one of the most tech-savvy guys in Hollywood yet is using plain vanilla Blogspot to create his blog, called "Drew From TV". You may know Drew from his long running sitcom, or "Whose Line Is Is Anyway", or his current pet project, "The Price is Right", for which he's just begun taping his third season as host. Drew's taking it to the fans big time - imagine Barker doing that.

Now You Don't Have To Watch

The Gosselins have filed divorce papers today in Bucks County, PA.

That's all I have to say. From here on this is a Gosselin-free zone.

Changes To The Blogroll

We are making a few changes to the blogroll. We have added a thoughtful blog from Case Wagenvoord, who is a member of my church choir. We have moved Pastor Adam's blog to the taxi squad, as Pastor Adam Tietje will be leaving our church and will be on active duty as a chaplain at Fort Campbell, KY. It's going to be pretty much Landy and Tricia's call on a new blog for the youth ministry.

And we have totally removed "This Week In Milford". Yeah, we get the point. Gil Thorp sucks, and we're done with it.