From Paula Abdul to Warren Zevon, “Rock Around The Clock” to “Smells Like Teen Spirit”…and everything in between.
“Ranking the Rock Writers” is a reference book written by Bill Carroll. The book is 902 pages and is the first systematic bottom-up look at the writers of the rock era (1955-1991) using publicly available information including copyrights, royalty rights, labels, and crowd-sourced databases. The huge dataset includes 24,426 songs, 11,834 writers, and 10,773 writer teams. Each song is scored, then the score is allocated to the writers to rank each writer and writer team in the era.
The third film in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe (SSU).
“Morbius” is a superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name, created by writer Roy Thomas and artist Gil Kane. The movie is directed by Daniel Espinosa and stars Jared Leto in the lead role of Dr. Michael Morbius, a biochemist who suffers from a rare blood disease and attempts to cure himself using experimental treatments that transform him into a living vampire. The film also features Adria Arjona, Matt Smith, and Jared Harris in supporting roles.
Decorative designs made from stone surrounding spouts used to drain water from buildings
In Gothic architecture, a gargoyle is a carved or formed grotesque: 6–8 with a spout designed to convey water from a roof and away from the side of a building, thereby preventing it from running down masonry walls and eroding the mortar between.
An Ode to Great Album Art
I started a new feature, for my blog, in May of 2022 with posts about “Colored Vinyl“. I’ll be adding Picture Disc posts later on but I thought this would be a good time to review one of my favorite books. Taschen’s latest is a celebration of great album art, of the designs that helped define some of the most iconic artists of all time.
UFOs to Portals to Shapeshifters
Skinwalker Ranch is a place of high strangeness and is associated with all sorts of phenomena from UFOs to Portals to Shapeshifters. The television series “The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch” on the History channel got me interested in the location. My friend Katie gave me this book for Christmas and I just finished it. Not the best-written book, nor the best editing (misspelled words) but it certainly kept my attention to the end. Ryann Skinner has written a whole series of books on the Skinwalker Ranch.
Sealing food and more!
I recently replaced my Tilia Inc. FoodSaver Vac 550 with a new model. It hadn’t stopped working, just was in need of new gaskets and was 20 years old. It had worked great over the years and I was sad to see it go but the parts are hard to come by these days.
One of the most sacred places on Earth and is called, by many people, the magical mountain.
Part of the Shasta–Trinity National Forest, Mount Shasta is a potentially active volcano at the southern end of the Cascade Range in Siskiyou County, California. The Cascade Range is a major mountain range of western North America, extending from southern British Columbia through Washington and Oregon to Northern California.
One of the country’s most recognized and adored comics
Louie Anderson was born Louis Perry Anderson on March 24, 1953, in Saint Paul Minnesota. His father was a trumpeter for singer Hoagy Carmichael. Anderson described his father as “abusive” and an alcoholic. His mother Ora Z gave birth to 16 children.
The First Lady of Television
We got the bad news today, New Years’ Eve 2021, that the near 100-year-old Betty White had passed away. She was an American actress and comedian born in Oak Park, Illinois, on January 17, 1922.
What was happening 100 years ago this year?
We made it, through another year of the Covid pandemic, worsening at the end of 2021 with the Omicron variant. But it’s 2022. I never thought, as a child, that we would ever make it this far. I thought this would be a good time to look back 100 years to 1922.
