A nightly pause from the news to give the reader/viewer a bit of classic entertainment.
An evening pause: Some quick visual space station history. Note how almost all the non-U.S. stations are essentially assembled using revisions of the same early Soviet-era modules. Note too how the future private stations are all very different from each other. The contrast illustrates the difference between what you get when governments control everything, and when competition and freedom rule.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
An evening pause: I’m not sure why, but the video makers and dancers all appear to be Italian.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
An evening pause: Seems the perfect piece of music to herald in the first weekend of spring. This is first movement of Vivaldi’s The Seasons. Performed here by Alana Youssefian and the Voices of Music.
An evening pause: The visuals come from the 1927 German film by Fritz Lang, Metropolis, and cover the scene dubbed “Maria’s Dance.” You can see the full movie here, as well as many other places on line.
Hat tip Judd Clark, who adds, “To understand what’s going on here, one needs to see the whole movie, preferably the latest restored version, and to really understand, one needs to read Lang’s wife Thea Von Harbou’s book “Metropolis”.
An evening pause: Though I do not think his hypothesis goes far enough, this short TED talk posits some intriguing ideas about leadership. And it seems somehow appropriate today on the Ides of March, which also makes me wonder what Julius Caesar (and other successful leaders, both good and evil) would think of these ideas.
Hat tip Doug Johnson.
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An evening pause: This woman regularly posts videos of her grooming sessions with different animals. This particular session is quite entertaining. It also shows the necessity of regularly combing/brushing long-hair cats. If you own one, do it! Both you and your cat will be happier.
Hat tip Diane.
An evening pause: The video shows a long flight of a majestic Red-tailed Hawk, periodically being harassed by a small Red-Winged Blackbird, which even periodically hitches a ride on the hawk’s back. Appropriately, the mustic is Hitch a Ride, performed by Boston.
Hat tip Ferris Akel.
An evening pause: From the Youtube page:
Ann-Margret set to the Champs’ eternal hit “Tequila”. Scenes from “Viva Las Vegas” (1964), “Bye-Bye Birdie” (1963), “Made in Paris” (1966), “The Swinger” (1966) and “The Tiger and the Pussycat” (1967).
Hat tip Judd Clark.
An evening pause: The music is great, but I generally dislike these music videos that put the performers in some beautiful place that is also a place where it is absolutely impossible to record a performance. They then do lip synch and editing to hide the fact that the performance is faked. Ugh.
Still, as I said, the music is great, and the scenery is beautiful.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
An evening pause: Another bit of cultural history from the 1960s. From the Youtube webpage:
Marilyn footage singing to JFK on his gala birthday bash on May 19th 1962. The running joke for the evening, as planned, was that Marilyn was late! it was planned that way for the event. Everything we see Marilyn do on stage was rehearsed right down to her arm movements and jumping up and down at the end of the song as we can see in the rehearsal photos before the event. so Marilyn did this spot on as planned.
Sadly, she would be dead by August, and Kennedy by November of the next year.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
An evening pause: Performed live on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1967. The costumes scream the late sixties.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
An evening pause: Makes a nice contrast with yesterday’s evening pause.
Hat tip Robert Pratt of Pratt on Texas.
An evening pause: It has been six years since I posted Dire Straits performing this song, and that version is now gone on Youtube. Time to post it again, especially because this official music video focuses so nicely on the performance itself.
Hat tip Cotour.
An evening pause: Performed live on television, probably sometime in the 1970s.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
An evening pause: Performed live on television in 1973. Back then, a song like this was entirely okay for a mainstream band to perform and mainstream TV show to air. Today, such songs are put into a “Christian music” ghetto, regardless of their quality.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
An evening pause: Performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra. I think this makes for a good way to start the weekend. If you have time, get the movie and watch it. One of the greatest ever made.
Hat tip Doug Johnson.
