About a year ago I put up a post listing what I saw as the four best songs by the Beach Boys, though some readers responded that they couldn’t stand the group. While I agree that many of their songs are forgettable, I still maintain that they made some very great rock music, and that […]
I like to end the work week with animal videos, and here’s a delightful 5½-minute series of animals reacting to music. Note the music-loving kittens at 2:43, Paul McCartney vs. the locusts at 3:08, the concertina-loving cows at 4:19 and the green parrot at the end who, hearing the Titanic theme, plays “king of the […]
I’ve long argued that today’s music sucks, well aware that for saying this I’ll be accused of being a curmudgeon who simply likes his generation’s music and can’t make way for the innovations of the new kids. My response to that accusation is threefold: that there are no groups today that even begin to rival […]
For a while I’ve been saying that liberal media like the New Yorker and the New York Times are turning into HuffPost, with their biases seeping into their reporting, but few people agree with me. I used to look to the Times, for instance, as a beacon of objective reporting, with a Leftist editorial slant […]
UPDATE: If you click on this video link, you’ll go to a whole playlist of musical flashmobs (h/t: reader Malcolm) _____________________ I found these videos on YouTube and thought they were cool. Both involve classical musicians showing up in public venues to play familiar but lovely songs. In this first one, the Orchestra of Opera North […]
First we have some photos from a visit to the University of Hawaii’s Lyon Arboretum, not far from downtown Honolulu. I can’t identify the plants, but some are native and some are not. Readers are invited to weigh in. First, the source of Hawaiian plants. It wasn’t until about 20 years ago that I learned […]
Yes, even though I’m an apostate Jew, I still like a few Christmas songs, and I’ve put them below to celebrate the beginning of my personal holiday. All three songs were written fairly recently—since 1962. This is a lovely one by Sarah McLachlan and a children’s chorus; it even includes an antiwar message, included in […]
Shappi Khorsandi, comedian and previous president of the British Humanists, tweeted some misheard lyrics: I’m in shock. Let’s play the Mondegreen game. I have JUST realised that it’s not ‘Lets hit the B square’ what’s the actual lyric? pic.twitter.com/jMS8DeHNPT — Shappi Khorsandi (@ShappiKhorsandi) December 20, 2018 I suspect that the lyric she was thinking of, […]
Yes, it’s that time of year: holly, mistletoe, fruitcakes, eggnog, premature Christmas music—and the carping of Authoritarian Leftists who want to ban the song “Baby it’s cold outside” for its supposed lack of affirmative sexual consent. Here are two older articles from the Washington Post and Vox explaining why the outrage brigade demonizes the song. In […]
Most donkeys make noises that would rouse the demons of Hell, but this Irish specimen, Harriet the Singing Donkey, has a sonorous and mellifluous voice. As BoingBoing reports: She became an internet sensation when Martin Stanton, who lives not far away and has visited Harriet the donkey regularly for more than a year, posted a […]
