Hope and Cagney dancing
An evening pause: From the 1955 Bob Hope film, The Seven Little Foys, with James Cagney playing George M. Cohan. Neither man is remembered for their dancing, but from this scene you wouldn’t know it.
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
Category: The Evening Pause
A nightly pause from the news to give the reader/viewer a bit of classic entertainment.
John Williams – Flying theme from ET
An evening pause: I have always thought Steven Spielberg’s E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) to be incredibly over-rated, poorly edited, shallow with a predictable script, and not very interesting. Why the public went mad for it in 1982 always baffled me. Nonetheless, Williams’ score was and is magnificent, and a listen here might explain that madness somewhat.
Hat tip Danae.
The United Kingdom Ukulele orchestra – Tubular Bells
An evening pause: There are no bells here, nor tubes, but it sounds right nonetheless.
Hat tip Danae.
Aaron Copland – “The Promise of Living” from The Tender Land
An evening pause, posted early for Thanksgiving: I posted this for Thanksgiving back in 2012. It is worth watching and singing again, in these terrible times. The hope of America will always live on, even when America is gone. Ordinary people want freedom, love, family, and the right to live their lives as they wish, without harming others, so they can bring in “the blessings of harvest,” whatever that harvest might be. It must be our goal to allow that to happen, and to stop those that wish to prevent it.
The promise of living
With hope and thanksgiving,,,
Tommy Emmanuel, John Jorgenson, Pedro Javier González – Sultans of Swing
An evening pause: Hat tip Danae. Stay with it, in only gets better.
Oldest known footage of New York City
An evening pause: Having left Brooklyn last night, let’s take a look at what New York City looked like to the first documentary filmmakers. I myself am struck by two things immediately: First, how much the city really still looks like this. The buildings might have changed, but New York is still crowded, packed with buildings and people. Second, how much change also occurred in a very short time. The streets went from horses and carriages to street cars to automobiles in just a few decades, quickly, and with relatively little difficulty. Today such changes are hard, slow, and very expensive, mostly because of the introduction of an unending number of regulations.
Gene Pitney – Last Chance To Turn Around
An evening pause: This 1950s song, which many think is titled “Last Exit to Brooklyn,” actually has no connection to the 1950s book with that title. As noted at the youtube webpage, “Maybe Hubert Selby, the book’s author objected or Gene didn’t want to confuse people since they are unconnected.” Thus, the different title.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
The Pacific Crest Trail in Three Minutes
An evening pause: I prefer to do it a bit slower, but this will give the couch potatoes here a sense of why I and others like to go hiking.
Hat tip Danae.
The Portland Cello Project – Denmark
An evening pause: Performed live December 19, 2010.
Hat tip Danae.
Vine to Wine
An evening pause: Making wine, the modern way. It is interesting how many steps here are still done by hand when they clearly could be automated. I suspect that it doesn’t pay for this winery to upgrade to more sophisticated equipment because their overall output is relatively small and it is more efficient for these steps to still be done by hand.
Hat tip Phill Oltmann, who tells me he is thinking of planting his own grape vines this year.
John Rich – The Battle of New Orleans
An evening pause: Hat tip Danae.
on account of because
An evening pause: From the 1941 Howard Hawks classic, Ball of Fire, about eight professors who hire a burlesque dancer to explain slang to them. Hat tip to Phil Berardelli, author of Phil’s Favorite 500: Loves of a Moviegoing Lifetime, who notes, “Barbara Stanwyck demonstrates the art of seduction, complete with luminously backlit hair, opposite the uncharacteristically prim Gary Cooper.”
“I’m going to show you what yum-yum is!”