Category: The Evening Pause
A nightly pause from the news to give the reader/viewer a bit of classic entertainment.
Phil Collins – In The Air Tonight
Penguin Cafe Orchestra – Prelude and Yodel
Judy Garland – Somewhere over the rainbow
An evening pause: I posted this performance back on November 23, 2010, had forgotten, and found it again by accident. It bears another viewing. As noted at the youtube link,
Judy Garland only performed “Over The Rainbow” twice during her many television appearances, which spanned 14 years. She performed it on her first TV Special, “Ford Star Jubilee” in the episode called “The Judy Garland Special” in 1955, and sang it to her children on The Christmas Edition of her weekly TV show “The Judy Garland Show” (1963).
Here Judy is dressed up [in the first special] as the tramp character she played when doing a duet with Fred Astaire in the film ‘Easter Parade’.
Watch. It shows why she was both a great singer and a great actress.
Tim Weisberg – Margarita
Bird loves GoPro
Don McLean – American Pie
Bond Girls – Korobushka
TU Delft – Ambulance Drone
An evening pause: This demo of a proposed use for drones highlights again the magnificent potential that engineering always has to improve our lives — if we use it right.
Hat tip Phill Oltmann.
Frank Sinatra – My Way
An evening pause: Performed live, 1971. If anyone ever tries to tell you that you can’t say or do something, just think of this song, and these words:
For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught.
To say the things he truly feels;
And not the words of one who kneels.
The record shows I took the blows –
And did it my way.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
Vince Carrola – Pachelbel’s Canon in D
An evening pause: Absolutely one of the most original performances of this classic piece of music I have ever seen. And man, can he play the guitar.
Joni Mitchell – Both Sides Now
An evening pause: Performed live, 1970. One of the best and most profound pop songs ever written. It is subtle and simple, deep and shallow, all at the same time.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
Brainstorm – the world’s smartest mouse
An evening pause: You might say this a variation on a Rube Goldberg device, except that instead of gravity running the show it is a mouse.
Hat tip Phill Oltmann.
Readers: I am always looking for tips for my evening pauses. If you see a video you think might fit, make a comment here mentioning that you have something, but don’t post the link. I will email you to get it from you.
James Taylor – Still crazy after all these years
Take 6 – Star-Spangled Banner
Jonah Morgan – A GoPro view of surfing in Indonesia
An evening pause: Taped on August 25, 2014. Hat tip Danae, who wrote, “It was 111.4 degrees under the side porch roof this afternoon, which explains why this video appeals to me. The visibility of the sea floor is just frosting on the cake.”
To me, this probably gives one who has never surfed (like myself) the best sense of what it is like to do it.
New Japan Philharmonic World Dream Orchestra – The Windmills of Your Mind
An evening pause: The conductor, Joe Hisaishi, is also the composer for the music in Hayao Miyazaki‘s best animated films.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
Cher – Gypsys, Tramps, and Thieves
An evening pause: From a performance during the 1970s the Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour.
Hat tip Danae. As she notes, this was when Cher “still seemed semi-normal.” Without doubt, she could sing, and act. Too bad in later years she stopped focusing on where her best talents lay.
The mighty J58 engine, the SR-71’s secret powerhouse
An evening pause: For the geeks out there, this video is a very nice and detailed explanation of the engineering that makes this jet engine so powerful.
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
Tiller’s Folly – Panhandle Rag
Art Garfunkel – Bridge Over Troubled Water
An evening pause: From the September 19, 1981 Simon & Garfunkel concert in Central Park.
Hat tip Danae for suggesting the song in this troubling time.
ISS Symphony – Timelapse of Earth
Woods – Rain On
An evening pause: I especially like the simplicity of the music, combined with the interplay between the guitarist and the singer.
Retired test pilot buys his own Harrier
An evening pause: Here is an fine example of a man following his dream and making it happen.
Hat tip Danae.
The Swiss Top Secret Drum Corp
Cat Choir
All that Jazz – audition scene
An evening pause: Stay with it. The last bits of dialogue are worth it.
Hat tip to Phil Berardelli, author of Phil’s Favorite 500: Loves of a Moviegoing Lifetime.
SpaceX – The Blue Danube
An evening pause: This SpaceX video taken by a camera attached to the fairing of the Falcon 9 rocket is cool not because of the video itself. Cameras on rockets have become routine, even for NASA. What is cool is that they have unveiled it using the same Johann Strauss waltz used in the move 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). It shows that SpaceX is aware of the cultural impact of what they do.
Hat tip Tom Wilson, Tom Biggar, and others.
Peter Gabriel – Solsbury Hill
The truth about bottled water
An evening pause: Tonight’s pause is a bit different, in that it has a newsy aspect to it, illustrating the uncertainty of knowledge that makes science so difficult. It is also incredibly entertaining and funny, almost like the 1960s TV show Candid Camera. Would you be fooled like these people were?
Hat tip Phillip Oltmann.