Category Archives: Music

Boh Cameronian

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Not long ago I was informed that I could add a relatively inexpensive item to the Amazon basket to bring an order (that other people in the house wanted) up to the no-shipping-charge level. Funny how that works, but what to get?

I believe this is derisively known as a First World problem, but even in a context of affluence, that doesn’t count as a problem. It isn’t even an annoyance. Also, isn’t it time to retire that hoary old division of the world? (Not bad, but not my favorite song of theirs; that would be “Invisible Sun.”)

I decided I didn’t want to add to my household clutter, even things you (I) can’t have too many of — books, postcards, cheap coins, maps — so I got a box of Boh Cameronian.
Boh Cameronian! It’s been nearly 25 years since I had a fine cup of Boh, which is tea from the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia. I became acquainted with it on my first visit to that nation in 1992. Two years later, we visited the Boh tea plantation up in the highlands.
Cameron Highlands Boh tea plantationNote the long-sleeve shirt. The Cameron Highlands were a hill station for a reason.

I’ve never seen Boh tea on the shelf in the United States, unlike Typhoo tea, even in stores that carry unusual or rarefied imports. In more recent years, I checked on line for the tea. I found it, but at astronomical prices.

I hadn’t checked in a good while, and never on Amazon. When facing my First World problem, I was inspired to look for Boh. A box of 60 bags was available there for about $12, plus no shipping. Twenty cents a bag. More than, say, Lipton, but you don’t buy Lipton for nostalgia value, or much of anything but price.

Even if I took the recommendation on the box and limited one bag to making one cup of tea — which I suspect is merely to encourage more consumption — that would be 20¢ a cup. More likely I will make a pot with each bag, or about three cups: around 7¢ a cup. Entirely worth it.

The marketing blarney on the box is in English and Chinese. The English:

Boh Cameronian takes its name from the Cameron Highlands, one of those special regions in the world blessed with a superb environment for growing teas of unique character and quality. Here, at 5000 feet above sea level at the scenic Boh Gardens, time-honored methods and innovation are combined to yield fine teas. Founded in 1929 by J.A. Russell, the pioneer of Malaysia’s tea industry, Boh teas are today renowned for their freshness and distinctive flavour.

The company offers a short history of Russell and the Boh plantation here.

I haven’t opened the box yet. It came just yesterday. A pleasant moment over the weekend might be the time to make a pot of Boh. I doubt that I can wait for that first cup till it’s nice enough to sit out on the deck, but I bet I’ll enjoy the some Boh al fresco in the near future.

Thursday Sundries

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I’m glad to report that Jimmy Carter has become the oldest person ever to be President of the United States, at 94 years, 172 days, topping George H.W. Bush. For many years, life expectancy was such that no one bested John Adams, who died at 90 in 1826. Finally Ronald Reagan lived longer than Adams in 2001. Since then, so have the elder Bush, Ford and Carter.

I’m not glad to report that we’ve been getting a raft of calls from an “800 Service” lately, asking me to contact “Apple Support Advisor” for unspecified but ominous reasons. Ah, spring is coming, and that must be the season for phishing.

Turns out it isn’t even a new scam, but this one didn’t say anything about iCloud.

Email subject line recently from a news outlet that has my address: “Meet R. Kelly’s lawyer.”

I don’t think so. Some years ago, I introduced my daughters to the concept of the List of Things I Don’t Care About. A lot celebrities are on the list. More are added all the time, mostly without me being conscious of it. R. Kelly’s been there a long time, but since his recent legal problems, he’s on the list with a bullet.

Here’s something I’d never heard of until the Internet offered it to me completely by chance, despite the fact that it happened in Texas, near a place that I drive by often when I visit that state: the Crash at Crush.

“On September 15, 1896, more than 40,000 people flocked to this spot to witness one of the most spectacular publicity stunts of the nineteenth century — a planned train wreck,” the Texas State Historical Association tells us.

“The man behind this unusual event was William George Crush, passenger agent for the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad… As the arena for his spectacle, Crush selected a shallow valley just north of Waco, conveniently located close to Katy’s Waco-Dallas track.

“In early September 500 workmen laid four miles of track for the collision run and constructed a grandstand for ‘honored guests,’ three speaker’s stands, two telegraph offices, a stand for reporters, and a bandstand. A restaurant was set up in a borrowed Ringling Brothers circus tent, and a huge carnival midway with dozens of medicine shows, game booths, and lemonade and soft-drink stands was built.

“At 5:00 P.M. engines No. 999 and 1001 squared off at opposite ends of the four-mile track. Crush appeared riding a white horse and trotted to the center of the track. He raised his white hat and after a pause whipped it sharply down. A great cheer went up from the crowd as they pressed forward for a better view.

“The locomotives jumped forward, and with whistles shrieking roared toward each other. Then, in a thunderous, grinding crash, the trains collided. The two locomotives rose up at their meeting and erupted in steam and smoke.

“Almost simultaneously, both boilers exploded, filling the air with pieces of flying metal. Spectators turned and ran in blind panic. Two young men and a woman were killed. At least six other people were injured seriously by the flying debris.”

Say what you want about the 19th century, they knew how to stage a spectacle. A dangerous spectacle, but it must have been quite a sight.

The article doesn’t say, but I assume the conductors had some way of keeping the throttles open after they themselves left the engines before they gathered too much speed.

Another thing I didn’t know (there are so many): Scott Joplin named one of his pieces, “Great Crush Collision March,” after the event. Guess it counts as one of the lesser-known railroad wreck songs, unlike the more famous “The Wreck of the Old 97.”

Various Spacewalkers

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The daylight around the spring equinox around here stretched from an overcast sunrise to an overcast sunset. But at least it wasn’t especially cold. Hints of spring are around, such as croci peeking out of the earth and robins bob-bob-bobbing.

For the equinox, time to list to “Equinox” by Coltrain.

Or, more obscurely, “E.V.A.” by Public Service Broadcasting. After all, a few days ago was the anniversary of the first spacewalk, undertaken by cosmonaut Alexei Leonov. He very nearly bought the farm there in orbit in 1965, but survives to this day at age 84.

He didn’t get a Google doodle this year. You’d think it would be a good one to illustrate, with “Google” standing in for the Voskhod 2 spacecraft, and Leonov floating nearby.

Interestingly, looking at this table, I see that there were long gaps between Soviet spacewalkers in the early days. After Leonov, no cosmonaut did so again until 1969, when two did; and then not again until 1977, after which red spacewalking became more regular.

The first non-American, non-Soviet spacewalker? One Jean-Loup Jacques Marie Chrétien, who also happened to be the first Frenchman in space in 1988.

The first woman? That would be Svetlana Yevgenyevna Savitskaya in 1984. Bet neither she nor Chrétien ever got a Google doodle.

Valentain Day Special

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Time for a late winter break. Back to posting around February 24, much closer to the winter-springish domain of March-April, which is always worth looking forward to.

Saw this today on a package of sushi.
I won’t mock the grocery store for its spelling. I wasn’t a particularly good speller in my younger days. I have vague memories of teachers getting on my case about it. Later I got better, but never flawless, down to the present. Even now there are words I can never quite remember.

I have a hunch that my spelling deficiencies helped me become a more competent writer. I’d want to write a certain word, but couldn’t remember how it was spelled. So I’d think of another way to say what I wanted to say. If that isn’t an important writing skill, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.

Does anyone say that anymore? I queried Ann about the phrase. She’d never heard it. Come to think of it, I can’t remember the last time I heard anyone use it. I think my 8th grade math teacher used to say it occasionally, but that was 45 years ago.

This is in the public domain and I want to use it.

How often do we hear about James M. Cox anymore? Seldom to never. All it takes is 99 years. If anything, he’s noted as the running mate of FDR, even though Cox was top man on the ticket.

Let’s hear it for the public domain. Expanding again as it should.

Here’s a remarkable bit of animation, by a young Iranian named Majid Adin.

I’ll never hear “Rocket Man” quite the same again. But I also associate it with a fellow I knew in high school who attached a small rocket launcher on top of his station wagon and rigged it so he could shoot off small rockets while the car was moving.

The launcher was horizontal, so the rockets went backward from his car. I didn’t just hear about that, either. I saw him do it once on a highway, from another car not far away.

Glad to see that Merle Hazard is still recording. Still amusing, too.

Channeling Tom Lehrer some, I’d say, though Lehrer didn’t do much country and western, unless you count “The Wild West is Where I Want to Be.” I want to hear Hazard’s song about Weimar Republic hyperinflation too.

I’m sorry I missed this Joan Jett video when it was new 30 years ago. But definitely better late than never.

It’s a cover, of course, but who cares. I only learned about a year ago that AC/DC borrowed the title from Beany and Cecil, a cartoon from before my time and which never showed up in reruns that I knew of.

Finally, a comic in which a character makes up something on the spot: about bread mines in this case. I like that.

Thursday Detritus

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The rains have cleared away, leaving cold air in their wake. This pattern will keep repeating in the coming months, getting successively colder until snow replaces rain and mere cold air is a polar vortex or some such. Bah. At least the trees are coloring up nicely.

An open question for YouTube: how, in the age of digital spying on consumers — so I hear — can YouTube offer me such wildly off-the-mark ads? Lately I’ve been getting a lot of anti-vapping ads, for instance. Aimed at teenagers. Not, I have to add, ahead of much content that that demographic might watch on YouTube. The chances of me taking up vapping are pretty close to zero, YouTube.

Some time ago I picked up a copy of The Shipping News by Annie Proulx (1993) for $1 at Half Price Books. Now I’m reading it. It’s a good read and there are some good lines in it. Here’s one that helps introduce a character:

For the devil had long ago taken a shine to Tert Card, filled him like a cream horn with itch and irritation.

One of the author’s idiosyncrasies is constructions like that, with “filled” instead of “filling.” But you get used to it, and it works. That’s a wonderful sentence that pretty much sets the tone for Tert Card. We’ve all met people like that.

From a press release over the transom the other day, a subject I have no professional interest in. I’m more interested in how the thing was written. I suspect the writer is a fairly fluent but nevertheless non-native speaker of English (all sic):

Businessmen hailing from UAE have an interest in making some investments in Armenia. The trade turnover in between the two countries has risen 10-folks from twenty-five million to about 250 million USD in the last five years as told by Zaki Nusseibeh, the Minister of the State after the sidelines of the ministerial conference of 17th Francophonie summit…

After Ruddigore on Saturday, Ann wanted ice cream. At about 10 in the evening in Evanston, Andy’s Frozen Custard seemed the only place still open serving something close to ice cream. She agreed that was close enough, so we went.
That image doesn’t have many people in it, but not long after we got there, the place was packed. Seems that selling frozen custard late on Saturday evenings near a major university is a pretty good business.

I’d never been to Andy’s before. Turns out there are about 60 of them, mostly scattered around the central U.S., though as far north as metro Chicago and as far south as central Florida. Andy’s makes a good frozen treat. Too good, in fact. I should have gotten a small triple chocolate instead of a medium.

Who did the score for Doctor Zhivago? I found myself wondering that yesterday. Maybe that’s something I should know, but I looked it up: Maurice Jarre.

That came to mind because I’d turned on the TV and DZ was playing. In fact, the very scene in which Yuri and Lara reunited. The Lara’s theme leitmotif was part of the action. I watched about 15 minutes of it.

“What’s this movie about?” Ann asked. I had to think. It’s been how long since I’ve seen it? In the summer of ’81 at the Texas Union Theatre, or in Japan in the early ’90s, when I saw so many movies on VHS? Either way, over 25 years ago.

“Well, let’s see. Doctor Zhivago, that’s him there, Omar Sharif. He’s a doctor of course, and he has a wife. He likes her well enough, but he really loves this other woman, who’s on screen now. I don’t remember who played her. Anyway, there’s a love triangle and they all get caught up in the Russian Revolution and are often in danger. Bolsheviks show up. Zhivago’s also a poet and sensitive fellow. He spends a lot of time looking off in the distance. And there’s a lot of scenery. Wide shots of the steppes of Russia. It’s an epic of a movie. Did I mention that it’s over three hours long? It’s an epic of epic proportions.”

Despite my flip description, I remember liking the movie whenever I saw it. Odd how details of most movies you see or books you read or music you hear or places you go tend to evaporate over the years, leaving a residue like the one I told to Ann.

Never have read Pasternak, so I don’t even have a residue of the book. Maybe I should, but life is short and Russian novels are long. The most recent one I read, a few years ago, was August 1914. Pretty soon into it, I gave up trying to keep track of all of the many characters.

Maurice Jarre, I learned, is the father of Jean-Michel Jarre, known to me for Oxygène. Back when people had record collections, there was always one kid on each floor of each dorm at your college who had unusual records, things no one else had ever heard of. I can’t remember the lad’s name, but he was on my hall freshman year, and that was one of the records he had.

Trans-Pecos & Llano Estacado 3,600+ Mile Drive Tidbits

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Along U.S. 90, not far west of the town of Comstock, Texas, the road crosses the Pecos River. The east end of the bridge has a place to stop and take in the view. This is looking upriver.

Downriver, toward the Pecos’ meeting with the Rio Grande.

Hard to believe there’s that much water in West Texas. Anyway, the river (of course) marks the beginning of the Trans-Pecos.

One of the grand hospitality properties of the Trans-Pecos is the Gage Hotel in Marathon, originally developed in 1927 by West Texas cattle baron Alfred Gage (born in Vermont), and designed by El Paso architect Henry Trost. Fifty years later, Houston businessman J.P. Bryan bought the rundown property and made it into a modern boutique hotel.

I didn’t stay at the Gage, though I had a good meal there and used its wifi. Instead, I stayed at the Marathon Motel & RV Park down the road. It has all the charms of a tourist court — separate cabin-like buildings of two or four units, even a bottle opener fixed to the wall — at a more modest price than the Gage.

There is an astronomy enthusiast at the Marathon Motel in the evenings, Bob, who sets up a couple of sophisticated telescopes a short walk outside the property and shows guests the night sky, which is pretty dark out in Marathon. I spent about an hour talking with Bob and looking his scopes the first night I was there.

Trouble was, the Moon was waxing gibbous, which made the sky a lot less dark. But we looked at some easy-to-find brighter objects, such as Jupiter and some of the Galilean moons, as well as Mizar and Alcor, and tried to spot the Orion Nebula. Orion was trending toward the horizon, about to bid adieu for the warm months.

Bob said the sky would be dark again a few hours before dawn, but I didn’t get up at that time until the last morning I was at the motel. At about 5 that morning, I woke (for the usual reason), but also got dressed and wandered outside for a few minutes. Bob was right. The Moon was gone, and there was what I wanted to see, no telescope necessary — the wispy, luminous edge of the Milky Way, billions and billions of stars at a glance. It was like seeing an old friend.

Speaking of nighttime spectres, not long after I left Marfa, I stopped along U.S. 67/90 at the Marfa Mystery Lights Viewing Center, which is essentially a rest stop with extra windows in the wall.

I wasn’t about to come that way at night and wait around for a glimpse of a desert will-o’-the-wisp, so I had to be satisfied with a daytime view of the direction of the Marfa lights. Eh.

While driving along I-20 in metro Midland-Odessa, I saw an official highway sign for the Midland International Air & Space Port. What? Space port? Seems a little optimistic on the part of the local airport authority.

Indeed, in 2014 the FAA approved the airport’s application to become first primary commercial service airport to be certified as a spaceport. XCOR Aerospace was due to start flying its Lynx spaceplane from Midland, but the company went bankrupt in 2017 before that ever happened. Oops. Maybe Fireball XL5 will start using Midland International soon. (That theme song has more traction than I realized. Even Neil Gaiman did a cover; once, anyway.)

In Amarillo, I saw another kind of sign. Fake street signs. I was driving along I forget which street, and saw a diamond-shaped sign, off to the side of the road but actually on private property, that said WE CALLED HIM COUNT DRACULA. It was a non-standard color, too: black with red letters.

Huh? But I had driving to do, and other cars not to hit, so the thought passed. Sometime later, I saw another sign — different color, similarly located — that said MINE BY RIGHT OF CONQUEST.

This got me to wondering, and I actually remembered to look into these odd signs. Doesn’t take long to find image collections of the signs, which are all over Amarillo, apparently.

According to Roadtrippers Chronicles — “The Raddest Stories From The Road” — “the strange signs are part of an art installation called The Dynamite Museum. Partially funded by oil heir and patron of offbeat art Stanley Marsh 3 (most famous for his work with Ant Farm on Cadillac Ranch), there are even a few in the nearby town of Adrian (it’s said that Marsh liked the idea of putting the signs in towns that started with the letter A).

“There was no rhyme or reason to the messages on the signs; the people behind the project would come up with ideas, or vote on suggestions sent in, and then install their favorites all over town.”

If I’d known that before I went to Amarillo, I would have looked for more.

The morning I left Amarillo, I had the radio to keep me company on the open road to Oklahoma City (I-40 in our time), and for a while I got a strong signal from Turkey, Texas, to the south. That day was Bob Wills Day in Turkey, and it sounded like a big to-do. The biggest shindig of the year for the town, probably. After all, Bob Wills is still the king.

I didn’t know until I looked it up that the King of Western Swing spent some of his youth on a farm near Turkey. The town of Turkey clearly remembers him. Sounded like fun, but it was too far out of the way. Just another thing missed because of scheduling.

One More Spring Break

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The Quasi-Spring Break I had in March lived up to its name, as winter-lite conditions persisted both in metro Chicago and greater New York. Essentially, wherever I was. Even through April until yesterday, we joined much of the nation in complaining about the cold (though I read that Phoenix had its first 100-degree F. day of the year not long ago).

So time again for another Spring Break. Maybe a warmer one. Back posting around April 29.

Till then, some entertaining music videos to watch. Such as the delightful animated video for Caro Emerald’s “That Man,” released in 2010. A fine homage to Saul Bass, and that mid-century style.

For something with a different vibe, “Ghost of Stephen Foster,” a song by the Squirrel Nut Zippers (2000), and another work of homage. This time to the cartoons of Fleischer Studios.

Finally, a charming video for Joni Mitchell’s cover of “Twisted,” which she released in 1974.

I’ve long enjoyed her version, and in fact it’s the first I heard. Listen for the Cheech and Chong vocal cameo.

Thursday Havering

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A lot of the ads popping up lately on YouTube have been to promote Canadian tourism. Mostly the ads depict, in music video style, young people doing the kind of vigorous activities that (some) young people must imagine is the essence of traveling to exotic places like Saskatchewan. Actually, one today featured the Yukon.

I’m all for visiting Canada, and encouraging people to do so, but the ads don’t really speak to me. Besides, Canada’s not really top of my mind in November. Then again, it’s good to plan ahead, so you can visit Canada, and even the Yukon, during that short window of opportunity when the place is pleasantly warm.

I never knew until recently that The Proclaimers did a charming version of “King of the Road” back in 1990. No one does it like Roger Miller, but I smile when I hear lyrics like, “destination Bangor, Maine” in that burr of theirs.

“King of the Road,” in the way things go on the Internet, soon leads to a song stuck in mid-60s amber, “Queen of the House.” Even better, the song is done in a Scopitone.

I was in the city not long ago with a camera in the front seat, so I took a few pictures while stopped at traffic lights. Such as this place. So very Chicago.
Then there was Thunderbolt.
It’s an ax throwing venue, only the second one in Chicago, according to the Tribune, opening this spring.

“Ax throwing — indoor or outdoor — is a skill-based sport; [owner Scott] Hollander likens it to pool or darts, where participants can take the competition as seriously or lackadaisically as they please,” the paper says.

“Easygoing ax throwers can book an hour at a lane for $15 per person Wednesdays and Thursdays, and for $20 per person Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Food and nonalcoholic drink is allowed and can be consumed at the plywood stands behind each pair of lanes or at the picnic tables in the building. Thunderbolt also is available for bachelor or bachelorette parties, birthday parties and corporate events.”

What do I think of when I hear about ax throwing? Ed Ames, naturally. Tomahawk, but close enough.

Thursday Tidbits

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Last night Northern Illinois dropped below freezing, and it wasn’t a lot warmer during the day. A taste of winter, dressed like fall.
Fall colors, ChicagoI didn’t know until recently that Lotte Lenya, who can be heard here singing “Mack the Knife,” or maybe more properly “Die Moritat von Mackie Messer,” played Rosa Klebb, the SPECTRE operative who tries to off James Bond with her poison-tipped shoe in From Russia With Love.

Not an important thing to know. Just another one of those interesting tidbits to chance upon.

A rare thing: a YouTube comment that’s actually funny. It’s at a posting featuring “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag and Smile, Smile, Smile!” sung by Oscar Seagle and the Columbia Stellar Quartette, recorded January 25, 1918.

Someone calling himself Xander Magne said: ” ‘Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition’ ain’t got s–t on this, sonny. Damn 30s kids with their jazz and their swing and their big band and their ‘World War 2.’ We used to have a Great War and it was Great and you liked it!”

One more thing I saw at the International Museum of Surgical Science, a polemic cartoon by Edward Kemble that was part of a display about patent medicine, the Pure Food & Drug Act, etc.

International Museum of Surgical Science, Chicago“Palatable Poison for the Poor.” Whew. Good thing that’s not possible in the 21st century, eh?

Again, too melancholy a note on which to end. Here’s something I saw just before Halloween. Pumpkin π.

Pumpkin π

A bit o’ pumpkin whimsy.

Mr. Hall is Gone, But the Monty Hall Problem Lives On

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There needs to be a verb to describe reading an obiturary, or hearing about a recent death, with the reaction: He was still alive? Or she, to be complete. Happens a lot. Example I read about not long ago: Monty Hall.

I can’t deny that I spent some hours of my young life watching him preside over eager costumed contestants vying for a new car! etc. But I didn’t know until a few years ago about the Monty Hall problem.

Another example: Tom Paley of the New Lost City Ramblers, the other musical Tom P who died recently. How many people recorded songs about the war with Spain in the late 1950s?

For an even more obscure version, here’s “The Battleship of Maine” by Red Patterson’s Piedmont Log Rollers. Recorded in 1927, when the war was very much in living memory. It’s a little hard to (easily) scare up information about Red, but it’s possible.