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Exactly 50 years ago this week (half century), a British singer named Michael Redway burst onto the American charts with a melancholy song called "Good Morning." It should have been a bigger hit but it did spend a few weeks on the Billboard HOT 100 during that February. This is a haunting song about a man, obviously a mama's boy, who just spent the night with a woman he hardly knows. As dawn nears, he is feeling guilty and is looking for an exit strategy. Morning is breaking and he just wants to get out of the woman's house and...

Elton John - Crocodile Rock A half century ago, a song with the silly title of "Crocodile Rock" moved into the number one position on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Elton John's first number one hit in the United States, and yes, he had a number of hits before that but this was his first U.S number one. This song heralded the beginning of Elton's complete domination of mid 1970s FM radio that would continue until around the middle of the Bicentennial year of 1976, culminating with the number one duo hit with Kiki Dee called "Don't Go Breaking My...

Saturday night and here is one of the better modern country songs you will hear these days. Don't know much about Megan Moroney but she's got a winner here. A song about a Georgia girl whose father is a rabid fan of the Georgia Bulldogs college football team. She falls in love with a Tennessee boy and ends up wearing the colors of the Bulldogs arch-rival, the Tennessee Volunteers from the University of Tennessee for her new boyfriend. She is concerned that her Daddy will "blow a fuse" when he finds out but she has made her choice to wear...

The Pickle Jar ChallengeThe simple opening of a pickle jar can become quite stressful and complex when a girl asks her boyfriend, for the first time, to open a pickle jar for her. There are protocols to follow. Pitfalls to keep in mind. A man who is handed a pickle jar by his woman needs to handle this seemingly straightforward request very carefully as the situation is fraught with peril with many possible negative outcomes for the man. Yes, all the pressure is on the man in this sort of thing and he must find a way to perform this...

You read correctly. I have recently become reacquainted with this ancient and powerful non-verbal communication, this behavioral pheromone, through one of the most clichéd, predictable and nevertheless unsettling circumstances that we men who are now parents must own as much as we own the fact that the sun rises. My daughter, my sweet, innocent latency age child, performed a Hair Flip with less effort than I expend when bending over to tie my shoes. I remember Hair Flips as seminal events. I remember looking forward to Hair Flips in movies and television shows, and, most importantly, as signs that a...

The Dog & His Master's Dinner A Dog had learned to carry his master's dinner to him every day. He was very faithful to his duty, though the smell of the good things in the basket tempted him. The Dogs in the neighborhood noticed him carrying the basket and soon discovered what was in it. They made several attempts to steal it from him. But he always guarded it faithfully. Then one day all the Dogs in the neighborhood got together and met him on his way with the basket. The Dog tried to run away from them. But at...

My two millennial sons vouch for the linked article. These are the contributions that Millennials have made to our cuisine. I have had almost none of these foods listed, being an aging Baby Boomer, but those under the age 40 has likely had them all or at least heard of them. The "rolled" ice cream looks interesting. Charcoal Water, not so much. Normally I hate Internet lists like this because it end up being clickbait, with annoying pop-up ads taking over your screen before you can get to the next page. But this article (at least for me) had zero...

NOVEMBER MARKS THE 50th anniversary of Pong. Why should we care? For starters, Pong is the first video game that millions of people welcomed into their homes to play on their own televisions. Pong kick-started a global video-game industry that is now worth upwards of US $300 billion. And Pong still has a place in active research, for training AI algorithms, strengthening neural networks, and developing the brain-machine interface called Neuralink, among other things. And yet as a Gen-Xer born too late to have enjoyed Pong as a child, I have trouble fathoming how anyone could sit in front of...

A haunting song from the late summer of 1979 from the "Bombs Away Dream Babies" album of John Stewart. Mostly an overlooked album but one worth finding as it features the background singing of Stevie Nicks and the guitar work of Lindsey Buckingham on some of the tracks, including the more recognized Top 10 hit "Gold." John Stewart - Midnight WindAnyway, I hope you all like it. Should have been a much bigger hit (made it to #28 in October of 1979).

MORRIS — A 10-year-old boy was attacked by a bear Sunday morning, state officials say. Environmental Conservation police and state troopers responded to a report that a black bear had attacked the boy in Morris around 11 a.m. Sunday, a Department of Energy and Environmental Protection spokesperson said. The boy was taken by ambulance to Charlotte Hungerford Hospital for medical treatment, the spokesperson said, noting the child’s injuries appear to be non-life-threatening. "The bear was still present near the scene and was located and euthanized by EnCon police," they said.

When it comes to music videos, I find that honesty and simplicity is best. Sure, you can spend a million dollar budget showing twerking women riding around in Rolls-Royces and men in pimp clothing sipping on Hennessy making funny looking gang signs and such. But where is the art in that? In this song, Jason Ringenberg plaintively sings about how his beloved town of Nashville has been commoditized by tourism and urban sprawl. The video shot in downtown Nashville is very amateur and done on a budget that wouldn't get you a table for two at the Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville...

After the untimely and tragic death of iconic lead singer/song-writer Jim Morrison in 1971, The Doors found themselves casting about for a new sound. In 1972, The Doors were still a relatively young band with a recording contract to fulfill and many concert dates to perform. One of their post-Morrison singles from the 1972 album "Full Circle" was this little ditty called "The Mosquito" with decidedly un-Morrison lyrics such as this: No me moleste mosquito Just let me eat my burrito No me moleste mosquito Why don't you go home?Some of us may wish to debate the artistic merit of...

Conspiracy and Controversy in the Air? September 2022 saw World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen embroiled in a lengthy turmoil involving allegations of cheating against 19-year-old foe Hans Niemann. The younger Niemann has admitted to cheating in the past when playing online games, but argues that he has played it straight for quite some time. This would include his recent in-person games against Carlsen and other ranked players. Carlsen, who has reigned atop the chess world for over a decade, says he refuses to play against in Niemann, suggesting the American-born player has “cheated more… than he has publicly admitted.“ Across...

I thought this was a good landing video to post here. Spectacular views from a plane approaching LaGuardia airport on March 6, 2020. This was exactly a week before the city shut down for the stupid COVID scam. It would have been a Friday afternoon and I would have been in my office on Lexington Avenue (almost dead center behind the UN Building at 3:33 of this video). Exactly a week after that, I had to tell my people to take their laptops home as I was informed we were shutting down for a couple weeks (remember 15 days to...

Jelly Roll - Son Of A SinnerThis song from Jelly Roll came out of nowhere earlier this year and has gotten massive airplay on country radio. Is this a genuine country song? I think it is. Modern country music is often criticized for its blandness, its mediocrity, or famously derided by Tom Petty as "bad rock with a fiddle". Well I think Tom Petty would have liked this song. It's down to earth and from the heart. It's a song (as I interpret it) about hitting rock bottom and finding the will to climb out of it. When it first...

Lake - Time BombPerhaps one of the most influential pieces of rock music of the 1970s to a certain band or two, this incredible song exploded on the airwaves on several FM stations in late 1976 and early 1977 on progressive rock stations across America. I associate this song with Kelly's Roast Beef in Revere, MA. It was January 30, 1977. Jimmy Carter had been president for 10 days. Freddie Prinze blew his brains out in an apparent game of Russian Roulette a couple days earlier. A frigid blizzard moved across the Northeast, dumping multiple feet of snow in the...

Rapper Coolio has passed away on Wednesday at the age of 59. The musician - famous for his 'Gangsta's Paradise' song on the soundtrack of the Michelle Pfeiffer film, Dangerous Minds - was visiting a friend on Wednesday afternoon when he was found dead according to TMZ. The star's manager, Jarez, shared that Coolio was found unresponsive on a bathroom floor, with the paramedics suspecting he suffered cardiac arrest. The publication reported that the EMTs pronounced Coolio dead on the scene. An official cause of death has not been determined.

A federal judge in Florida has granted Donald Trump's request to have a special master review the documents seized during the raid on Mar-a-Lago – granting a key demand of the former president and tapping the breaks on the government's investigation. Judge Aileen Cannon approved Trump's motion to appoint a special master 'to review the seized property for personal items and documents and potentially privileged material subject to claims of attorney client and/or executive privilege.' The Trump-appointed judge also 'temporarily enjoins' the government from 'reviewing and using the seized materials' pending the completion of the review. That grants Trump and...

Poetry in motion. Thomas Dolby - She Blinded Me With ScienceWhen this song first came out, I at first thought the main lyric of the song was "She Blinded Me With Silence", which puzzled me at first. This was before I saw the video on MTV (which was played frequently) and was introduced to the "The Home For Deranged Scientists", a rather palatial rest home staffed with young svelte nurses in which mostly elderly scientists cavorted about in various stages of mental illness or dementia. The featured scientist, the one that repeatedly exclaimed "Science!", as well as ""Good heavens, Miss...