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YouTube Banter! Tellin’ It Like It Is… Will Be!

just LOL .. im 50 and about dead and? love to listen to this and you kids are arguing about shit…

before you know it time will make you 50 too and you will be like WTF happened i was so young..

hahahaha

I love it…

fucking kids.

Somethimes, Good Things Happen! Part 387,279

Sometimes, things come together without planning.

My duo group, Taylor-Martin, my project with Jim Rust, has grown! With the addition of Jorge Apsey, we are now a trio, and Laurel Canyon is born! As the historical name implies, we are modeling our sound after the bands that came out of that area – CSNY, Byrd’s, Buffalo Springfield. Tons of acoustic guitar, and all the harmonies you would expect.

I’m really looking forward to playing these songs!

Now, for the challenge. For the moment, we’re a cover band, and i have absolutely no problem with that. I love playing other peoples songs. But we do intend on presenting new material as well. I’ve written many songs in the past that had some harmonies in them, but now I’ll have to sit down and write stuff with three part harmonies as an integral part of the song. My problem here is that I like wordy and complicated lyric structure; stuff that Paul Simon and Neil Finn typically write. I’ll have to tone that down to make this work. There might also be some songs in my back catalog that I could adopt to the trio-harmony format. Will keep everyone posted on the progress.

Here is a song we’re working on!

How “Cool” Is This!

An “I Was There” moment!

Many parts of the U.S. are experiencing very unusually cold weather. Here is a blerb about the current weather in the mid-west:

“White Christmas… Again!

Earlier in the day, a glaze of ice from freezing rain led to numerous accidents in Oklahoma City.

Euclid has brought the second white Christmas in a row to Amarillo, Texas; the last pair of back-to-back White Christmases there occurred in 1894 and 1895!

After thunderstorms and hail in the morning, Dallas-Ft. Worth saw its first accumulating Christmas Day snowfall since 1975 this afternoon.“

Ha! I grew up in Dallas, and was there when this happened! I was ten at the time! It was awesome!!!!

Of course, as an adult, snow can be not nearly as awesome, especially if you still have to go to work, and have to shovel your car out a blanket of the stuff, or have to drive in it… Not worried about my driving, it’s the “other guys” of course! But, a a kid, experiencing snowfall when you live in an area that very rarely gets some is so exciting!

And yes… I do blame Global Warming!

Remembering A Friend. Kevin Kirby.

Kevin Kirby passed away on Christmas day last year, at the all-too-young age of 42.

He was a great guy, extremely smart and with a wicked sense of humor. We were going to get together at our house for the annual Dr. Who Christmas special, and got the horrible call from his brother John just an hour before we were to kick things off.

What hell that evening was.

Of course, the gathering was all but called off, but after consulting with each other, we decided we would get together after all. There was no joy in it though. We had to do something, and we all agreed, as much as anything, we needed to be around each other. It was, maybe, the first wake for our friend and brother. We got to share what comfort between us we could, and help each other start to deal with our loss.

It’s a year later, and the latest installment of the Dr Who Christmas Specials is set to be shown to a select crowd. A few, including Kevin’s brother John, are now living too far away to make it to this gathering. But the biggest absence will still be Kevin, because unlike the others, there is no chance he’ll gather with us again.

That’s maybe an odd way to put my feelings.

Maybe I should just say this.

Kevin Kirby – You were a great friend. We will always miss you.

More reflections on Kevin’s passing here.

PS. There were other more serious pictures of Kevin, but, knowing him, he would have yelled at me for posting the more serious stuff. Plus… He liked cake! 😉

Snow Fall! Journalism Success… And Fail!

Here is the latest web offering from the New York Times. It’s being touted as the future of web content, and will supplant blogs and newspapers as our source for information.

Layout wise, it is impressive. But are they expecting us to want to read, or, for those of us wading in the blog-pool, produce, a story or narrative on this scale? For most of us bloggers, it’s like asking a guy with a 16mm movie camera and no budget to go out there and make a Ken Burns Documentary, or, if the next one is even slicker, The Hobbit!

They don’t get it at all. The reason we like blogs is that there isn’t all the huge production and links to all sorts of sidebars to the story, we like focusing on the main points without too many distractions. Coincidentally, that is why newspapers worked for so long. You read what you wanted, and skipped what you didn’t. Within an instant, you can turn to the comics if the news of the day is not to your liking. The best blogs also work in this manner.

Yes, Snow Fall is an impressive technical piece of work. But I got bored with it very quickly and moved on to something else.

Another critique here.

Shoe… Meet The Other Foot!

Remember when Liberals were horrified and vilified the Bush administration when various law enforcements organizations had investigated and sometimes even infiltrated various civil rights organizations on the grounds that they could be aiding or participating in terrorist activities?

It even happened in our neck of the woods.

Well, turns out, the current administration is still doing the same thing! I wonder if those who made such a huge fuss over those violations during the Bush years are going to be as vocal now since it’s their guy who is doing it.

Note: I was against it then, and I’m against it now. Unless there is some specific reason to suspect this, or any other group exercising their legal right to protest, stop with this waste of resources and unconstitutional invasions of privacy.

YouTube Banter! It’s Broken.

Just This:

That chameleon was broken. I could? see him the whole time.

Climate Crisis – A New One!

Well….  Someone has done it now!

They’ve leaked the IPCC AR5 onto the interwebs!

The IPCC is SHOCKED and saddened this kind of thing could possibly happen!

I would post the statement they released concerning this matter, but, as a writer, one of my talents I’m told is my ability to make long drawn out explanations more concise. Thus, here is what the IPCC actually is saying, without so many unnecessary words getting in the way:

“You IDIOTS! You interfered with THE PROCESS!!!!!!!!!”

The Political Question – Why Am I Who I Am Politically? Part 1

A couple of people on my Facebook page have wondered why my politics are what they are – libertarian with a dash of conservative. I started to write what I thought was going to be a short answer, but realized there is no short answer, and it was going to be longish, so I moved it over here.

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I’ve always been a non-conformist…. A non-conforming non-conformist actually! 🙂 I’ve never felt connected to things the way others have… Have always found myself standing outside of things even if I’m right there in the room… Oh… that probably sounds like crazy talk… maybe it is!!!! 🙂 Perhaps because of that, I’ve never felt at home in either party. I hope that short statement will make more sense after I’m done writing this post.

Chapter One – The 70’s:

Where to start? Nixon? Read more »

Guitar… So Far.

Just a quick update. Played with a bunch of musicians up at Bill Hunter’s Auberry mountain hide-a-way. What a fantastic bunch of musicians we have in this area.

It’s late and I’m on my Kindle… Typing iz a bear on this thing. Will write more and post a couple of pics tomorrow.