A nightly pause from the news to give the reader/viewer a bit of classic entertainment.
An evening pause: Hat tip Mike Nelson, who adds this tidbit of the song’s history:
The lyrics are about Adam and Eve living “In the Garden of Eden” but Doug Ingles, the composer, consumed an entire gallon of wine the night he wrote it, and when he sang it to a bandmate to transcribe the lyrics he slurred words so badly it got transcribed as In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida instead, which in the end stuck.
An evening pause: Hat tip Tom Biggar, who notes pointedly, “Must be something wrong with this – it looks like a bunch of deplorables having a good time.”
An evening pause: Time for some silliness, brought to us by three dancers with six dolls.
Hat tip Jim Mallamace.
An evening pause: On this, the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, I must once again honor his memory, most especially because the Marxist, anti-American bigots who are now running roughshod across our once free nation wish to cancel him by actually accusing the man who freed the slaves of being a racist.
And though he freed the slaves, I think Lincoln’s most enduring contribution to American history, a contribution that now has sadly been lost, was his limitless good will for everyone, even to those who hated him and wished to kill him. Had he not been assassinated, American history might have been far better because Lincoln would have had the clout to ease the worst elements of Reconstruction, while forcing through reforms in the former southern slave states.
The modern Democrats in Congress — and their supporters nationwide — might benefit by reading some history about Lincoln. Alas, I have no hope of this.
As I wrote for last year’s tribute,
Lincoln stood for freedom for all humans, the central heart of the American experiment. He was willing and did die for that stance. We should all be willing to do no less.
The video below shows probably every photograph ever taken of Lincoln, in chronological order. You can see him age and mature. You can also see a gaunt and serious man who appears to care deeply about whatever he does.
An evening pause: Recorded live in 1976.
Hat tip Mike Nelson, who has found a nice alternative video site to Youtube by using the Wayback machine archive to find this video.
An evening pause: Hat tip Jim Mallamace, who rightly added, “No clue what this means, but I’m certain the student animators had fun making it.”
Fun to watch too. They might have done it on a computer, but it sure has the feel of hand-drawn animation.
An evening pause: I know I’ve posted this song more than a few times previously, but this version is truly unique. I had even posted it previously, back in 2012. More than enough time however has passed, so I think it okay to show it again. As I noted then, “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.”
This does that quite well I think.
Hat tip Frank Kelly.
An evening pause: This 9-minute documentary, made in 1952 by Bell Labs, provides a short and clear history of the transistor as well as its predecessor, the vacuum tube. It also tries to imagine the future that such a new invention might bring. As the youtube page notes,
While The Transistor’s vision of the future seems somewhat quaint in retrospect, it captures a moment in time before the transistor became ubiquitous; a time when Bell Labs wanted the world to know that something important had occurred, something that was about to bring tremendous change to everyone’s daily lives.
Hat tip Jim Mallamace.
An evening pause: It seems a lot of people took Evans singing in the center and did their own piece, singing along with him. This video puts many of them together. You can see the full list on the youtube page.
Hat tip Tom Donahue.
An evening pause: Russian-made, and filled with Russian fantasies and reality. Can you tell which is which?
Hat tip Mike Nelson.
An evening pause: The original is by Beethoven. The interpretation is American Boogie Woogie.
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
An evening pause: This live performance is from 1999. The song was a hit in 1966.
Hat tip Roland.
I am in need of evening pause suggestions. Those that have suggested before know the routine. Those that haven’t should note their interest in participating in the comments here, and I will contact you with the guidelines. Do not post your suggestion here however.
An evening pause: Long time cavers are very familiar with the carbide lamp, as it was used routinely until around 1998, when LED lights arrived and finally superseded it.
Until then, the advantage of a carbide light was the quality of the light it produced, a soft bright glow rather than the harsh reflective rings produced by older electric lights.
The disadvantage however was the endless fiddling required to keep them working. For example, near the end of this video when he finally gets the light to work, he turns up the water flow to brighten the light. I guarantee that very soon the light would go out, as he was flooding the carbide. The water drip had to be precisely right. Too slow and not enough gas. Too fast and too much water.
I personally hated carbide lights because of that fiddling, especially because lamps made after 1970 were junk and didn’t work well. Most cavers who used carbide would scour yard sales to find old lights like this one, as older carbide lamps were made well and would work reliably.
Hat tip Jeff Poplin.
An evening pause: Forgive the television artifacts in the video. Recorded live in 1982.
Hat tip Roland.
An evening pause: Performed live 2016.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
NOTE: Youtube will not allow me to embed this video. Click on the picture, and then click on the link to go to youtube where you can watch it.
An evening pause: This battle between an inventive physicist and an even more determined squirrel does raise the question, who really is smarter?
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
An evening pause: The future?
Hat tip Jim Mallamace, who added, “What is our responsibility to our devices when they become self-aware? And what will be our responsibility to each other?
