The last video I put up wasn’t at all creepy or disturbing, so I’m making up for that this week. Apparently, Hall & Oates were sitting around in their basement rec room one night getting stoned, and they decided to make a video. So they called up the couple next door and asked them to go to a costume shop and pick up the sparkliest, porn-iest devil costume available in 1974, and walk back and forth in front of them while they kind of pretended to mumble the words sometimes. And then the next day, everyone looked at it and still thought it was worth releasing, and it didn’t nip their career right in the bud. Amazing. Good song, though, so here’s “She’s Gone,” by Hall & Oates, their first single from 1974.
(Incidentally, I wonder why so many older videos look so bad. I realize they didn’t have digital recording back then, so these have been converted from VCR tapes. But still, they look like they were rerecorded from tape to tape about 20 times, and then the tapes were left in the sun for a few years. Or they were recorded by pointing a camcorder at the TV, possibly through several layers of wrinkly cellophane.)
It’s been a busy week, as we’re getting ready to sell pulled-pork sandwiches at Trade Days at Stone’s Prairie Market in Plainville again this year. The hog is being processed right now—can’t get much fresher than that!—and we’ll be slow-cooking it tomorrow. We got a lot of compliments on the pork last year; and if I may so so myself, you won’t get better pulled pork anywhere. We’ll have it in salt and pepper (my favorite) and BBQ flavors, and we’ll have chips and soda as well.
We’ll be starting at 9am and going until 3 or so, or until we run out. There will also be music by the Ragtag Irish Band and others; demonstrations of flint knapping, rope making, and other historical crafts; a farmers’ market; and more. It even looks like the weather is going to be nice. So come on out to Plainville on Saturday, May 22, and have a sandwich and say hi!
This one isn’t really a favorite, and there are at least a half-dozen Manfred Mann songs I like better. But when I lived in Iowa, my friends and I used to listen to this one a lot more than it deserved. It’s got kind of a spooky vibe to it that I like, especially the “Mayday this is Echo Hotel” part. I have no idea what it’s actually about, and there only seem to be about six lines. Maybe it really is about being stranded in Iowa. Unfortunately, there’s no real video, just snowy pictures to go with the song. Here’s Stranded, by Manfred Mann, from 1980.
When I was a kid, we used to do a lot of puzzles and play a lot of board games, and we also got Games Magazine. It had all sorts of puzzles, but one kind I never did was the cryptic crosswords. The clues seemed like gibberish and were way too hard, like they were designed for super-geniuses or something, and I couldn’t get the hang of them at all. To make matters worse, unlike a normal crossword where each letter belongs to two words, one across and one down; in most cryptics, only about half the letters are “crossed” (see picture). So even if you get all the across words, you still only have half the letters of the down words.
A few years ago, I happened upon a stack of those old magazines and started going through them looking for unfinished puzzles to do. Since the cryptic crosswords were still completely unmarked, I gave them another try, and something just seemed to click this time. I know I’m not any smarter, so maybe the convoluted nature of the clues was just too complex for a kid. I don’t know why it took so long, but now they’re one of my favorite types of puzzle. Read more »
It’s been about two weeks, so it’s time for an update. Most things are growing pretty well. I discovered that tacks aren’t enough for holding the floating row cover in place; they tore through in the high winds yesterday. So now I’ve got it wrapped around a 1×2 on each side. That’ll actually be handier anyway, since now it’s not attached to the bed at all, so I can move the whole thing if I want. On to the pictures! Read more »
There may not be words to describe how awesome this video is. It’s got everything you could ask from an 80s video: medieval setting, a pretty girl who keeps her clothes on, a dwarf in jester’s livery, puppets, and a lead singer who looks like a Viking with great hair who plays the whole thing completely straight. The song’s not bad either. Enjoy Men Without Hats, from 1982.
