The shot heard round the world
An evening pause: Though this video is about Switzerland, its philosophy jives perfectly with the events that took place on this day, April 19, at Lexington and Concord in 1775.
Category: The Evening Pause
A nightly pause from the news to give the reader/viewer a bit of classic entertainment.
Harp music of Paraguay, played by the Japanese
Puffer fish chases laser
Strange Charm: A Song about Quarks
Rod McKuen – Jean
An evening pause: This Rod McKuen song, “Jean,” performed here live by him on the Johnny Cash Show on February 4, 1970, was originally the title song for the wonderful movie The Prime of the Miss Jean Brodie (1969), starring Maggie Smith.
A new record for the longest Rube Goldberg machine
An evening pause: The Purdue Society of Professional Engineers team set a new record last week for longest ever Rube Goldberg machine, taking 300 steps to flawlessly blow up and then pop a balloon.
Piff the Magic Dragon
Russian flash mob – Putting on the Ritz
An evening pause: From frigid Russia, some Russians put on the Ritz.
The Little Mermaid – Part of That World
Bonnie Tyler – Total Eclipse of the Heart
Mathilda’s solo
What happens when you put a koosh ball in liquid nitrogen?
Issy Emeney – Appalachian Flatfooting
Boney M – Rivers of Babylon
Henry Dagg – Somewhere over the rainbow
Japanese Dragon Painter
Candide: Make Our Garden Grow: Bernstein at 70
An evening pause: The finale of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide. Just before the song begins, Candide says this:
We will not think noble, because we are not noble. We will not live in perfect harmony because there is no such thing in this world, nor should there be. We can only promise to do our best, and to live out our lives. Dear God, that is all we can promise in truth. Marry me, Cunegonde.
Edwin McCain – I’ll Be
April Fools – Math Class Shadow
The Muppets – Bohemian Rhapsody
An evening pause: A very talented actor once told me that a great deal of all comedy is based on contrast, on juxtaposing extreme opposites in unexpected ways.
The Black Stallion
An evening pause: The central sequence from the 1979 movie, The Black Stallion, when the shipwrecked boy Alec succeeds in taming the shipwrecked Arabian horse. The combination of Carmine Coppola’s music and Caleb Deschanel’s photography in this sequence is unmatched.
Richard Feynman – The beauty of a flower from a scientist’s perspective
The Statler Brothers – Flowers On The Wall
How to make a potato gun
Crossing the Wabash Cannonball Bridge
An evening pause: Driving across the Wabash Cannonball Bridge going from Indiana to Illinois. The bridge is single lane, with a wooden deck, and over a hundred years old.
What’s really cool is how the driver is able to drive while holding his camera overhead through his sun roof.
Wrecking Crew Orchestra
Ennio Morricone: Gabriel’s Oboe and theme from Cinema Paradiso
Chet Atkins – Mr. Sandman
Celtic Harp Orchestra – Morrison’s Jig
An evening pause: Here’s some more harp, this time played in a way you’ve never heard it by the Celtic Harp Orchestra.