Daft Punk & Stevie @ the Grammy's

 Last night's Grammy's provided one of its all time greatest live performances:  Daft Punk with Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers joined by Stevie Wonder and his crew doing a live performance medley of "Get Lucky" [Daft Punk], "Freak Out" [Nile Rodgers & Chic], and "Another Star" [Stevie].  It was undeniably great but even so a bit poignant in that Stevie is starting to show signs of losing his prodigious vocal chops.  Still, Stevie hitting on six out of eight cylinders tops almost anything else, and in this context it was just fine with me.  As always, Nile Rodgers is joyously cool, and I love the part when Daft Punk appear in the recording booth.  Pharrell Williams' vocals and charisma are 10 out of 10. [He also won for Producer of the Year].  Also the shots of the truly amped up audience are loads of fun.  I found a super HD link to the entire performance right here.   Crank up the decibels and go full screen.  

Beer commercial ear worm

I won't bore you with the details, but a few days ago I had occasion to hear the "Here's to good friends..." Lowenbrau commercial from the seventies.  As you may recall, it was sung by the great Arthur Prysock, and packed a whole lot of musicality (tune and lyrics) into a mere commercial ditty.  Anyway, ever since hearing it after all these years I can't get it out of my head.  I searched around for a good version of it to share with you all and the best I found was here.  You will need to scroll down to "Here's To Good Friends, Tonight Is Kind Of Special" and then down to the video portion.  The song is 100% authentic, but the video is a recent-ish parody as evidenced by the Red Bull cooler and the guy mouthing WTF.   Check it out, but BEWARE of a resulting ear worm.

~ Tom

Alexei Dmitriev -This belongs on "Birth of the Cool"

Holy cow, I was surfing around the Net and found this insane, brilliant piece of work, produced by Alexei Dmitriev:  "Dubus" "A slow dance of classical cinema to the music off Zelany Rashoho."  Extracted from: Sun Valley Serenade (1941), Casablanca (1942), Some Like it Hot (1959), Citizen Kane (1941), and On the Waterfront (1954).  Is the Internet cool, or what?

Klondike - Don't miss it.

Sometimes I read a rave review of a movie or TV show and get a "well I guess so, but show me" attitude.  My reticence in the face of the rave review can be caused by any number of factors:  the subject matter, the cast, past track record of the directors and producers, and so on.  But other times I read a rave review and just know that I am going to love the production, top to bottom.  Such is the case with the new mini-series "Klondike."  Today's SF Chronicle has a review of the series, which is off the charts.  My guess is that after you read it here, you will be setting your DVR or scheduling yourself to watch it in real time.  By the way, Ridley Scott is the executive producer.   Enjoy.

Cows aren't that stupid...

Shortly after I got my dog about six years ago, I had a revelation and stopped eating meat.  Not that I was eating dog before that, it was just that being so close to such a wonderful animal brought up my awareness of "lives," be they humans or animals.  Here is a perfect example of what I am getting at.

p.s.  I did not give up eating seafood.  Somehow fish don't pull my heartstrings.  

Verily, verily I say unto you...

Love this VERY much...

Happy New Year and "Have fun"

We have a local Safeway store in the small Harbor Bay shopping center, about a mile from our house.  I'm in there about every day because I have a UPS box at the UPS store, which is right next door.  Anyway, there is a Safeway checker who is pretty laid back and cool, but what makes him special is that once he rings up your groceries and you pay him he always says "have fun" as you depart.  He says this to everyone, every day, without fail.  I got to thinking about it and decided that "have fun" is a great "parting shot."  Better than "have a nice day" or "later" or "ciao" or "see you soon" or "take care," etc.  Think about it.  How can you say anything better than "have fun" to some one you are parting from?  Isn't that about the best thing that can happen to a person -- to simply have fun?  So, I've begun to use "have fun" myself and am finding that it makes me feel happy and seems to make the other person happy too.  So I say, "have fun."