An evening pause: Performed live February 2020 in Tennessee. Note how normal everything is. No masks, no social distancing, and especially no fear. Just a bunch of people enjoying themselves.
Hat tip Tom Wilson.
A evening pause: Performed live in 2017. It is sad that too many now no longer honor someone who follows these words, but despises them instead:
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 Mike Nelson.
An evening pause: Bob & Ray, performing live in 1979 with the three very talented ladies from the original Saturday Night Live crew.
Hat tip Charlie Tutino.
An evening pause: Originally aired January 1, 1961. For those too young to know, Benny had two running gags that help explain some of the humor. First, he was ridiculously cheap, and second, he never admitted he was older than 39. Above all, you must recognize the intended silliness of everything said or done.
Note also that the telegram delivery man is Mel Blanc, who provided the voices for Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and almost all Warner Brothers cartoons from the 1940s to the 1960s.
An evening pause: A nice rendition, with appropriate visuals, of a 1930s song. It also happens to be John Batchelor’s theme song.
Hat tip Charlie Tutino.
An evening pause: A nice sequence from the British series that brutally but with great humor described the reality of what goes on in high political circles. This clip comes from the follow-up to the original series, Yes, Minister.
Hat tip Phill Oltmann.
Sorry for the late arrival of this evening’s pause. It didn’t post when it should, and I only just realized it.
An evening pause: I suppose some disco dance music might be a good way to start the weekend.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
An evening pause: Hat tip to Robert Pratt of Pratt on Texas, who adds that David Buxkemper is an actual listener to Pratt’s podcast, and the song was written by Watson with that person in mind.
An evening pause: From the YouTube webpage:
Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s “The Banjo: Grotesque Fantansie”, composed in 1853, is based on African-American banjo playing from his native New Orleans, specifically using West African banjo techniques and musical structure.
Hat tip Charlie Tutino.
An evening pause: Stay with it. The story Billy Gibbons tells in between the songs is fascinating about how he got started. And this sudden jam session music is fine indeed.
Hat tip Mike Nelson.
An evening pause: Performed live 1983. It appears this became the band’s traditional closer at all of its concerts.
Hat tip Dan Morris.
Banned because the author expressed an opinion.
After a year of daily reporting the blacklisting of hundreds of innocent Americans for merely expressing dissenting opinions, I am sad to say that the new leftist McCarthyism has finally come after me.
In December I was blackballed by most of the Arizona caving community because I had disagreed with their decisions to discriminate against anyone who had not gotten a COVID shot. One of the local clubs was going to run an outdoor camping/caving event and had decided to require everyone who attended to either prove they had gotten the jabs or could show they were tested negative for the Wuhan flu in the past two days. I objected, first because this was discriminatory and was demanding private medical information from people that by law was forbidden, and second because the policy made no sense because the shots provided no certain protection against the virus.
Realizing that their policy was not going to do anything to protect anyone from COVID, the organizers cancelled the event out of fear, and then made both me and one other protesting caver scapegoats for their decision, demanding we be banned from all caving organizations. What made this particular action especially hurtful was that it was pushed and imposed by a number of people who I thought had been close friends. I instead discovered that they really didn’t give a damn about me, and if I didn’t bow to their political will they were most eager to make me a non-person.
So much for friendship, eh?
I hadn’t reported this at length in public because it was essentially a personal matter. Now however this new fad of blacklisting anyone who disagrees with the new fascists and their medical mandates has reached out to try to hurt me and others professionally.
» Read more
A evening pause: Performed live 1999. The words are worth considering:
How ’bout no longer being masochistic
How ’bout remembering your divinity
How ’bout unabashedly bawling your eyes out
How ’bout not equating death with stopping
Hat tip Dan Morris.
An evening pause: This is so silly, which is why it is funny and worth watching. Silliness is good. The world needs more of it.
Hat tip Charlie Tutino.
An evening pause: From the movie The Sound of Music (1965), a song about teaching children to face fear, to push past it, and live boldly and with courage. And to do it with humor. As Ray Bradbury wrote in his book, Something Wicked This Way Comes, you defeat evil and fear by laughing at it. The world needs to recapture this idea, or else we are doomed.
Hat tip Tom Wilson.
An evening pause: A nice song to start the new year. Performed live 2017 in London.
Hat tip Dan Morris.
An evening pause: The first Annie sings live at the 1977 Tony Awards. Seems as appropriate a song to greet the New Year as Auld Lang Syne.
An evening pause: Performed live 1970. Seems fitting as this bad year rolls to an end, since it looks forward with optimism and hope. And what other choice do we have?
Hat tip Dan Morris.
An evening pause: I like how they describe themselves on their YouTube page: “We sing in stairwells.”
Hat tip Cotour, who actually sent me a different performance by these guys. I had seen this performance elsewhere, and decided to use it instead.
