I could post about how I am thankful for my Family.  How I am Thankful for Music etc.  I am very thankful for all those, but most of you would hit the snooze button on this blog if I wrote a whole post about my family or music.  So Instead I would like to point out I am thankful for the Earth.  Which means I am thankful for all those people who are doing their part to be green!

1976 – Taxi Driver





1980 – Raging Bull




1990 – Goodfella’s





1995 – Casino




2002 – Gangs of New York



2006 – The Departed



Present Ongoing TV Series – Boardwalk Empire



“Now more than ever we need to talk to each other, to listen to each other and understand how we see the world, and cinema is the best medium for doing this.”
- Martin Scorsese
 

 

 

November is….

Aviation History Month





Child Safety Protection Month

International Drum Month

National Adoption Awareness Month

National Epilepsy Month

National Model Railroad Month

National Novel Writing Month

Native American Heritage Month

Peanut Butter Lovers Month



Real Jewelry Month

National Sleep Comfort Month

Looking forward we have:

4th – King Tuts Day



5th – Book Lover’s Day

6th – Marooned without a Compass Day

7th – Cook something Bold Day

10th – Sesame Street Day



13th- World Kindness Day

17th – National Unfriend Day (clean out your FB clutter)

20th- Name your PC Day (just don’t name it after someone you Unfriended)

23rd – Eat a Cranberry Day and National Cashew Day

25th- National Parfait Day


27th – National Day of Listening

29th – Square Dance Day

30th – Stay at home because you are well day.

 

 

 

 

Then it happened, the doodles mutated and some became, ((Gasp)) interactive! The most famous of the interactive species is the one celebrating Les Pauls 96th Birthday! It can be found HERE.

 

 

 

Peanut Butter Banana French Toast Enchiladas

Ingredients:
-6 flour tortillas (I use wheat tortillas)
-3 bananas, thinly sliced
-1/2 cup peanut butter ( Use any kind; all natural, organic, flavored etc . You could even use Nutella)
-4 eggs
-1/4 cup skim milk (or soy, almond, rice or any other kind of milk)
-pinch of cinnamon

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350F. Spread each tortilla with peanut butter and line the center of the tortilla with 2 rows of bananas (approximately 8-10 banana pieces per tortilla).
2. Roll up each tortilla and place it in a casserole dish.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk eggs with milk and add a large pinch of cinnamon. Pour egg mixture over the tortillas.
4. Bake at 350F for 25-35 minutes, until egg mixture is set and the outside of tortillas is firm and crisp. Allow to cool for 5 minutes before serving.

 

I wear a yellow rose
In honored memories sweet repose
A rose among life’s thorns I suppose
To herald a cruel life, cruel captor’s compose
Shed now for brothers a tortured tear,
Fathers and sons missing lo many a year,
Fate of our prisoners of war my heart sear.

May my yellow rose
Hope in failing hearts enclose
For lost comrades hearts still rack
Till they find their way to glory back,
Reborn to a mother land of milk and honey,
Reborn to a future no longer bleak, but sunny
Reborn to a land to brave men forsaken
The very essence of freedom taken.

In memory forever I wear the yellow rose,
Envisioning fellow warriors pitiable pose.
Long may we hold sweet memory of Prisoners Of War
Tightly to our bosom
America’s sons deserving freedoms chosen.
Wear a yellow rose in blessed vigil,
Till the stories close,
Bring an end of cruel sentence, cruel captor’s impose.

Oh God, let sons and brothers at last come home
Let a final chapter come in their book of war tome.
For lives in rancorous servitude atone,
Let them not die from loved ones alone.

Give them healing vision of the yellow rose
Clutched tightly in memories compose
Till it leads them to their beloved land
A land above all others chose.
Let it’s shining light guide the way back
From cruel oppressors recurring attack.

Give them strength their captors to overcome,
To escape lives darkning glum.
For I see them there across the forever sea,
Waiting,
Watching,
Hoping we will see.
Ease troubled minds condemned by abandonment numb,
Let our boys return to a fair mother lands womb.

Let he who served with honor at his nation’s behest,
Gave a legacy, a brave warrior's bequest.
Be restored to his land of liberty
Reap a righteously earned victory.
Forever waiting now are our brothers, just for me...
Welcome my son, our finest and best,
Welcome father you've passed God's greatest test,
Welcome home my brother to a final rest.

Conway Twitty
Dr. Phil
Terry Bradshaw
Keanu Reeves
Beyonce
Jesse James (the Outlaw)
Bob Newhart
Raquel Welch
Jennifer Tilley
Buddy Holly
Patsy Cline
Harry Connick Jr.
Jesse Owens
Walter Reed
William Howard Taft
BB King
Orel Hershiser
Greta Garbo
Jimmy Fallon
Stephen King
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Meatloaf (The singer not the dish)
Happy Birthday to all and Have a great month…
Oh and Mateys
Please remember ye need to tawk like a Pirate
on September 19.

Why These Questions?
1. Many kids may keep the money, or it may be lost or stolen or bullied away from them. Many schools have gone to an electronic debit type system that helps with this and allows parents to see transactions.
2. Many schools especially high schools offer al a carte items like chips, soda and other unhealthy foods (a friend of mine found out her daughter only had bottled tea and pretzels her entire freshman year).
3. Again, the same friend noted that her young sons lunch from school consists of a hamburger and fries with chocolate milk (veggies or fruit must be picked up on a little food bar separate from what is served to them – do you think an 8 year old is going to make a trip over to the bar to get an apple?)
4. School lunches tend to be small to fit into “nutritional guidelines”
5. Most children have less than 30 minutes to line up, go to the cafeteria, wait in line, find a place to sit, eat, use the bathroom and if they choose to eat that means no play time.
6. Some cafeterias and lunchrooms can be very frightening for young children, for older children it becomes the center of where cliques are formed.
7. This is the ultimate question… My friend again told me that her son’s elementary lunch costs $3.75 a day. That’s 18.75 a week. That is approximately $750 a school year on lunch.

I am sure you think by the title of this blog, that I am writing about Jeans, but the fact is I am writing about another “J” word.. Jingles…..

The Jingle. You know; that piece of music advertisers put in commercials to make the ad stick in your head. You hear just a few bars of the jingle and sometimes without the company’s name being said you already know what company it is for…..

Some say it’s a dying breed… But there may be hope. But will new jingles live up to the classics?

Some good examples are:

“You deserve a break today..” (McDonald’s for those too young to remember)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBqFSad9Z88

Also from, Mickey D’s “I’m Lovin’ it…”
Sorry I couldn’t find a proper video

How about…
“I want my baby back, baby back, baby back , ribs”
From Chile’s (Did you just sing the word “Chile’s”)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1l87Wzselg
(Yes, that’s the “Nsync version)

Or…
“I am stuck on Band Aid Brand….”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7MtLNK02lI

And you can’t forget….
“Like a good neighbor…..”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB6r2Wi0E98

And although we sometimes didn’t know exactly what it was for… (chicken, yes???)
“I feel like chicken tonight…. Like chicken….” (Start flapping your wings)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJ9M7bsx10I

There of course many more national Jingles I could share….
But from my Southern California friends…..

“Keyes, Keyes, Keyes…” (Who is finishing it right now?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iqvEBmIyRg
and
I cannot leave out…
“Well, you won’t get a lemon, I wouldn’t have gotten a lemon.” (From Toyota of Orange)
Sorry I couldn’t find a video – It’s mostly a radio commercial


I am sure you are wondering, why, I decided to rant about Jingles. Welll, I heard someone singing a new one, this week, and started thinking…. Jingles may not be dead……
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNDfreK0Yno


And for my own Jingle…
Saturday… Come to my gig... It’s at the Pig … Get CD for Free…..



 

With everything going on in the world right now…. I have turned to music (as I have done often)for inspiration. This morning, I was part of an interesting conversation on music. The conversation somehow wound up discussing Nirvana and Smells Like Teen Spirit, the ultimate anthem for the 1990’s.

This got me to thinking….

What other songs have defined decades? Do not worry I am not going to go through a list detailing For What It’s Worth by Buffalo Springfield, Thriller by Michael Jackson, Stairway to Heaven and then arguing between Amy Winehouse, Eminem, and Outkast for ‘00’s.

We have a ways to go in this decade, before an “anthem” is chosen. Something tells me it will likely refer to the tumultuous times we have been incurring.

Smells Like Teen Spirit was that for the 1990’s. There is more behind Smells Like Teen Spirit than a blond stringy haired singer (may he rest in peace) and deodorant. Perhaps it is best explained by someone with an internet pseudonym of Nirvana (For the full article go here):
 

But, like it or not, Kurt Cobain was, by sometime in early 1992, the voice of Generation X.

The question is, why?

And the answer is, "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

The song burst like a thunderclap upon a rock music scene—and upon an American pop culture in general—that had grown tired and stale as the go-go 1980s passed into the recessionary early 1990s. Rock music had fallen into a rut dominated by so-called "hair bands", preening pop-metal acts whose sappy "power ballads" and overdone make-up sometimes bordered on self-mockery.

Times were changing. The financial boom that had characterized the Reagan Era crashed into a short but sharp recession in the early 1990s, and a new generation of teenagers and young adults—a generation soon to be tagged "Generation X"—came of age in an angst-inducing moment of great economic uncertainty. The warmed-over '80s stylings of music like Warrant's "Cherry Pie"—a much-maligned radio hit in 1990—didn't do much to thrill these young listeners. They wanted something new, something more authentic, something that rang truer to their own experience. (And their own experience usually didn't involve skin-tight leather pants, caked-on mascara, and gallons of hairspray.)

Enter Nirvana.

The band emerged from a vibrant Pacific Northwest music scene that valued, above all else, a do-it-yourself independence from the contrived excesses that defined the major-label hair bands. Cobain and his bandmate Kirst Novoselic emerged from the hardscrabble logging town of Aberdeen, Washington, where they learned their musical chops from the local sludge-metal outfit The Melvins, whose heavy, uncompromising sound can be almost unlistenable for the uninitiated. As Nirvana forged its own style, the band became one of the Northwest's most promising acts by developing a sound that was one part punk, one part metal, one part classic '70s rock—and zero parts Poison or Whitesnake.

The "Seattle scene"—as it came to be known after Nirvana helped turn it into a national fad, much to the dismay of many of its members—came together in the late 1980s, with the city's cheap cost of living and sheer geographical distance from the traditional capitals of American culture fostering a certain musical experimentation. The local music scene supported a staggering array of local bands that eventually went on to national and international fame—Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Mudhoney, Screaming Trees, and many more. The bands each had their own style, but many favored a heavy rock sound that was both thicker (with heavier bass) and less polished than the stuff on the radio. And they almost all shared a fiercely independent outlook, valuing "authenticity" above all while scorning the idea of selling out to corporate major labels and their overproduced pop sensibilities.

Ironically, it was the Seattle scene's very authenticity that soon led major record labels to begin sniffing around the Pacific Northwest in search of the next big thing. And the next big thing, it turned out, was Nirvana.

Nirvana's first studio album, Bleach, had been recorded for exactly $606 and released by Seattle's famous indie label Sub Pop Records, selling a respectable 30,000 copies on its first pressing. The band's second album, Nevermind, released by the major label DGC (part of David Geffen's media empire), hit #1 on the charts—bumping Michael Jackson from the top spot—and eventually sold more than 10 million copies.

The album's first single, the song that made Nirvana into the biggest stars in rock and ended the reign of the '80s hair bands, was "Smells Like Teen Spirit." The song's raw energy, its driving bassline and crashing guitars, its tormented if incoherent lyrics… all combined, in the fall of 1991, to blow away everything else on the radio.

And the song's video, which soon became a nearly ubiquitous presence on MTV, only cemented Nirvana's suddenly dominant place in American music. It was the video, as much as the hard-to-decipher lyrics, which gave "Teen Spirit" its meaning for many listeners. In the video, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" becomes the anthem for adolescent revolution, as high school misfits and outcasts transform an ordinary school pep rally into a raging mosh pit of anarchy. In a matter of weeks, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" became the most requested video on MTV and Kurt Cobain became the voice of his generation.

 

Will anyone single handedly become the voice of the current generation? While 00’s did not have a single voice, we were all unified by the horrific incidents of 9-11-01. With everything going on in the world: financial issues, government issues, riots, revolts, natural disasters etc… No one voice is standing out… Will this change? It will be a question we cannot answer for years…. 8ish to be exact.

 

August, Augstus, Awst, Thang Tam, Parwol, Kolovoz…..
All meaning August the eighth month in the Gregorian and Julian calendars….
Birthstone: Peridot or Onyx
Flower: Gladiolus or Poppy

This week ushered in the month of August.  A summer month that signals that school is about to start again. That fall is on its way. So what else is unique about this month?

Historically:
The month of August’s history reads like a blues song:
In 1944 Anne Frank penned her last entry…
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were Bombed in ‘45
Nelson Mandela arrested and Marilyn Monroe passed on in 1962…
The riots in Watts happened in 1965….
In 1974 Richard M. Nixon resigned as POTUS…
Then years later in 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait….
and 1997
Princess Di was killed

Popular Culture:
August is…
National Immunization Month
National Psoriasis Awareness Month
National Goat Cheese Month
Children's Vision and Learning Month
Happiness Happens Month
And my favorite
What Will Be Your Legacy Month

For more information please visit:

• Pictures of the winners
•Article about the Awards
•CDC