A nightly pause from the news to give the reader/viewer a bit of classic entertainment.
An evening pause: If all goes well, I will be watching a variation of this live from Florida tomorrow morning. The action really begins at the five minute mark. Also, this particular video gives you the best flavor of what it was like to see the launch live, rather than on film or video.
An evening pause: The finale from the movie 42nd Street (1933). Stay with it, as it gets better and better.
An evening pause: An 8th grade project to build a Rube Goldberg device to turn on a light. I like how this video illustrates the difficulty of building such a device.
An evening pause: Part of an Italian show (unfortunately without subtitles), this clip shows a video of the taping session where Denver and Domingo recorded their stunning duet.
No surprise here: The White House takes a dim view of Boehner’s speech yesterday.
So my question here is there: Who is more serious about controlling spending, Obama and the Democrats or the Republicans in the House? Though it is very easy to find lots of reasons to criticize the various Republican proposals, at the moment they are the only proposals that are willing, even on a tiny level, to consider entitlement reform.
An evening pause: Fifty years ago today, America’s response to Gagarin and the Soviets, Alan Shepard’s suborbital flight.
Or as he said as he lifted off, “The clock has started.”
The flight actually lasted 15 minutes 22 seconds. Though only a fourth the size of Gagarin’s much bigger Vostok capsule, the Mercury capsule was steerable. During the flight Shepard adjusted the capsule’s pitch, roll, and yaw, proving that humans could pilot a spacecraft manually.
An evening pause: El Condor Pasa, played by a Peruvian flute and a Chinese E-Wu and Flute. As the youtube webpage notes, “This is possibly the best-known Peruvian song worldwide, partly due to a cover version by Simon and Garfunkel in 1970 on their Bridge over Troubled Water album, which is called “El Condor Pasa (If I Could)” in full.”
An evening pause: The last part of “The Guns of John Browning” from Tales of the Gun.
The documentary correctly honors Browning for the quality of his designs and workmanship. To me, it is more important to honor him for making the weapons that allowed the United States to defend freedom in the twentieth century. Without these tools in the hands of our soldiers, the wars would have been longer and many more lives would have been lost. And worse, the fascists and Nazis and dictators might have won.
As George Bernard Shaw wrote in Major Barbara, “The people must have power.”
An evening pause: As this year is the 100th anniversary of the M1911 pistol, probably the most popular pistol ever made, here is the part one of a four part documentary telling the story of the man who designed it, John Moses Browning.
An evening pause: Four minutes of paintings by artists from the Hudson River School.
Anyone who has ever hiked along or sailed on the Hudson River knows it to be one of the most beautiful rivers in the world, a quiet wide river winding south nestled between lush green hills. In the 19th century American artists Thomas Cole, Frederic Church and Albert Bierstadt among others were inspired by this beauty to paint some of the world’s greatest landscapes. If you can find the time, go to a museum that has some of these paintings and see them in person. They show us the majesty of the universe.
Update: Unfortunately, the video that I had originally embedded here disappeared from youtube last night. Here is the work of Alfred Bierstadt, set to the Connie Dover’s “Who will comfort me?”
An evening pause: This video of the JK wedding entrance dance went viral several years ago, but man, it is sure worth watching again and again. Ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
An evening pause What good musicians do in their spare time, play Pachelbel’s Canon in D at 3 am in the morning, without rehearsal. Or as they themselves describe it, “The Most Juicy Canon On YouTube!!!”
The violin players (l to r): Marie Samuelsen, Andrey Rozendent, and Alexander Gilman.
An evening pause: Though this took place last week, on the fiftieth anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s flight, I can’t let it go by, especially because it is so nicely done. Trust me, for two flute players to play a duet with one several hundred miles up in space and traveling more than 17,500 miles per hour while the other is safely on Earth is not easy.
An evening pause: Chorus by Robert Burns c1795, verses by Eddi Reader and Boo Hewerdine.
Oh the lights in this city are like diamonds
The street lamps, the signs and the cars
Though it’s bright in the city what are diamonds?
When they’re turning out all of our stars.
An evening pause: Because this band, Grey Eye Glances, is not that well known, there are very few videos of them on youtube. Yet, I found their 1997 album, Eventide, to be incredible. Though the video below of the song Angel shows only lyrics, it is worth listening to for the music alone.
