"Right" Thinking 7

[Episode 7 of 12, running here on Saturdays from January 16th through April 3rd.]

Thanksgiving in February

Late to the party as usual, I just realized that TODAY is Thanksgiving in February. Please eat out tonight at a participating restaurant so that 20% of the price or your meal can be donated to help the hungry in Montgomery County. (yes, we have them ,too)

I've decided it's a good night for a spinach & mushroom calzone. :)

Gossamer/Rudolph

aka, the big hairy orange monster:





"Don't think it hasn't been a little slice of Heaven...because it hasn't."





"A wee bit small, but it'll have to do."

My Hero...

...and the origin of my "Bugs Bunny face". (Look for it at 4:10)


Hyde and Hare - The best bloopers are here


For my imaginary audience who hasn't seen my Bugs Bunny Face, it's sort of a stress signal and stress reliever in one. When I recognize that I'm getting stressed, I make the Bugs Bunny Face to remind myself of what stress does to me. And it makes me giggle, so that's a less philosophical bonus.

"Right" Thinking 6

[Episode 6 of 12, running here on Saturdays from January 16th through April 3rd.]

Andrea Bocelli

with Elmo:





and with Sarah Brightman (to make it up to you for having to hear Elmo sing):





and finally, Bocelli's break-out, Miserere:





The not-very-succinct (or rather very-not-succinct) Andrea Bocelli wiki.

Can't Let Fat Tuesday Pass...

This is Mardi Gras in New Orleans, where Mom was born, 2 years before her birth:




And this is in the early 1950's, the way she might have remember it:




Here it was in 1962, the year Mom met Dad:




Here's someone's sightseeing footage of New Orleans in 1978, the year we went to Egypt and Greece:




Here's some video footage of New Orleans in the 1980's (the decade in which Mom's 3 children graduated from high school), year not specified. It's apparently part of a documentary called "Yeah You Rite" ("I just don't think people in the Garden District have any accent."), but the audio was disabled for some reason:




We can represent the 90's with Stevie Ray Vaughan's performance at the 1990 jazz & heritage festival (3 years before the tumor was found and her left kidney was removed), something Mom would not have appreciated in the least, alas:




Here's a photo montage of New Orleans shortly before Hurrican Katrina hit in 2005 (the year we found out the cancer was back, this time in Mom's brain):




And here's a video of the Fat Tuesday costumes just last year, after the first of the Scary Emergency Room Visits, but before the HellaScary Hospitalization and hospice intake and everything that has passed since:

Life is just a bowl of cherries
Don't take it serious,
Life's too mysterious
You work,
You save,
You worry so
But you can't take your dough
When you go, go, go

So keep repeating "It's the berries."
The strongest oak must fall
The sweet things in life
To you were just loaned
So how can you lose
What you've never owned

Life is just a bowl of cherries
So live and laugh,
Laugh and love
Live and laugh at it all!

So keep repeating "It's the berries."
The strongest oak must fall
The sweet things in life
To you were just loaned
So how can you lose
What you've never owned

Life is just a bowl of cherries
So live and laugh, aha!
Laugh and love
Live and laugh,
Laugh and love,
Live and laugh at it all!

Miss you, Mom...

Not Always a Story

Animation does not always tell a story. Neither do songs.





But we tend to find stories, don't we? Our minds work to make them up from what we see/hear/feel, whether or not we want to or mean to.





Sorry for the poor sound quality on this last one, but it's one of my fav pieces of music and IMO historically interesting/significant. Betcha can't keep from seeing a story...




OK, I totally cheated, the music in that last one has a story, and the animation follows it. How does the music have the story? By what means? And how does the animation show it? How do the shapes and their movement represent characters and a story? How do some of the shapes seem more or less abstract to us than others?


Great stuff. Way to go, Norman. May all beings benefit from your life & work. R.I.P., eh?


Who's Norman McLaren?

Nat King Cole New Year

OK, so I know it's Losar, but it's also Valentine's Day, and my wish for all beings in the Iron Tiger Year is L-O-V-E:





Let there be love...





...for sentimental reasons.





Love in the New Year & Tashi Delek!

"Right" Thinking 5

[Episode 5 of 12, running here on Saturdays from January 16th through April 3rd.]

Rainbow Connection

With Debbie Harry! :)

Girl from Ipanema

With lame animation, but a good version musically:

Not Ruben Gonzalez

...but not bad. See, I was looking for Ruben Gonzalez's Almendra b/c I heard it on Pandora and it rocks, but I can't find it, and I thought this sextet was quite good, so here they are, Sexteto Latino Moderno:

Rodrigo y Gabriela

No video, just awesome sound:





RyG are at the 9:30 Club February 28th & March 1st. Tryin' to talk my concert buddy JMax into going with me...




Not a hard sell. He was booking tix as he texted me back. :) Good friend.




Sunday was sold out, so we'll go down Monday night. Happy Happy!!! Joy Joy!!!!

Kung Fu Raccoon vs. Sumo Rabbit

& a lot of red-eyed rabbits:



(Is it just me or does the kung fu raccoon sound Mexican?)


The guy who did these (myshland) had previously done the following cartoon, which he describes thusly:

Two bureaucrats guard the passage between this world and the next one, guiding those who died to their next incarnation. Their routine is interrupted by a man who doesn't play by the rules.

This one's a talkie, but since it's in...Hebrew, I guess?...(which might as well be Greek to Leamur), and since it doesn't seem to require the meaning of the words to "get" the 'toon, it's in a gray area as far as whether it has the feature of great cartoons of not requiring speaking or narration.


Dude seems to escape rebirth, but not the Buddhist way...

"Right" Thinking 4

Remember, it's about the thinking, not about the "right".




[Episode 4 of 12, running here on Saturdays from January 16th through April 3rd.]

Strollin' Down Sesame Street with Yo Yo Ma

The Sesame Street Chamber Music Society:





And big fiddle, little fiddle with Elmo:



OK, so now I have to make up for that assault on my imaginary audience's ears. This Dvorak piece (Silent Woods) spotlights the cello nicely:



Ears happy now. :)

Tito Puente Makes Happy

We can transition from the cartoons to Tito Puente via Sesame Street:





On to Montreal (1980):







Happy, right?

Happy-Groundhog Day!

Note that I do not mean Happy Groundhog-Day, but instead Happy-Groundhog Day.





The great thing about animation that tells its story without words is that karma is so much easier to see in actions than to sort out from messages. Karma is action.


May all mother sentient groundhogs be happy.

Our Wonderful Nature

OK, so here's animation with verbage, but it's a classic anyway. BoomBoom sent me this last year & I thought I'd post it while I was thinking of cartoons:




(be sure not to miss reading the credits at the end ;)