The BBC under the headline Margaret Thatcher funeral attended by 'Essex Man' (which sounds like an Onion headline, or a perambulatory Neanderthal skull) paying his respects to Baroness Milk Snatcher:
But it was the speech Lady Thatcher delivered the day after the bomb that he remembers most vividly.
"The speech was magnificent. There was an explosion of support for her," he said.
Yes, but a little earlier there had been an explosion of non-support for her, right? That's what a bomb is.
A bit of deja vu this morning when just about everywhere exploded with the news that in Argentina's Buenos Aires, ferrets on steroids are sold in the market as toy poodles.
As a long-term reader of alt.folklore.urban and the Jan Harold Brunvand books, I knew this was a variant of one of the oldest urban legends of all - in fact, it's "The Mexican Pet", the title of Brunvand's 1986 book. He collected a similar story "in the wild" in 1983. Snopes has the details from the book and more:
[Brunvand, 1986] A woman from La Mesa, California, went to Tijuana, Mexico, to do some shopping. As any visitor to this border town knows, the streets near the shopping areas are populated with stray dogs. The woman took pity on one little stray and offered it a few bites of her lunch, after which it followed her around for the rest of the afternoon.
When it came time to return home, the woman had become so attached to her little friend that she couldn't bear to leave him behind. Knowing that it was illegal to bring a dog across the international border, she hid him among some packages on the seat of her car and managed to pass through the border checkpoint without incident. After arriving home, she gave the dog a bath, brushed his fur, then retired for the night with her newfound pet curled up at the foot of her bed.
When she awoke the next morning, the woman noticed that there was an oozing mucus around the dog's eyes and a slight foaming at the mouth. Afraid that the dog might be sick, she rushed him to a nearby veterinarian and returned home to await word on her pet's condition.
The call soon came. "I have just one question," said the vet. "Where did you get this dog?"
The woman didn't want to get into trouble, so she told the vet that she had found the dog running loose in the street near her home in La Mesa. But the vet didn't buy it. "You did not find this dog in La Mesa. Where did you get the dog?"
The woman nervously admitted having brought the dog across the border from Tijuana. "But tell me, doctor," she said. "What is wrong with my dog?"
His reply was brief and to the point. "First of all, it's not a dog — it's a Mexican sewer rat. And second, it's dying."
I guess in the modern variant, the man actually pays for two of them. No one seems to be saying how he found out his weasels (or ferrets, or giant rats - the reports vary) were not actually dogs.
Apropos yesterday's comment about the BRAIN project, I was listening to the radio on Wednesday and they interviewed someone or other in the Brains Community who said, "The human brain is the most complex object in the universe."
Is it? Is that some sort of guesstimated fact, or is it one of those things like "humans only use ten percent of their brains" and "turkey makes you sleepy because tryptophan and BRAINS" that everyone knows but are bullshit?
Surely a whale's brain, being larger, is more complex? And what about those four-square mile funguses and Pando? Or does it only count if the complex object in question has developed Auschwitz, the atom bomb and Kim Jong-Un?
Emo Philips: “I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.”
President Obama has called for a Brain Initiative - Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies. Apparently a whole hundred million dollars has been allocated to it, whatever "it" is. I have to say it sounds like something dreamed up by some president from Idiocracy. I can imagine the scene:
President: I need something megabig, for my legacy. Like the War On Drugs, War Against Cancer, War On Terror...
Advisor (in a whispered aside): Does he know we aren't winning those? (Out loud) The Apollo moon shot project, sir? Mapping the human genome?
President: Exactly. One of them. Or one like them. I want the biggest thing ever. What's the greatest mystery of all?
Advisor 2: God, sir.
President: We can't solve God. It says so in the Bible.
Advisor 3: Women?
President: Good one. "The Human Women Project." Wait, women might not like being seen as a problem to be solved, even though they are, hey fellers? And they have the vote, so no.
Advisor 2: The Greatest Mystery Of All is...The Yooman Brane!
President: I love it! The Human Brainome Project! My legacy is secure! Get someone at NIH on to it, will you?
It's always nice and warm at the San Juan Capistrano Swallows Day Parade. There's always great food to be had and we're always invited to at least one party, to which I send my party reviewer who unfortunately does not have a blog but remarked privately that the Pig Roast this year was fantabulosa.
The parade was as wonderful as usual. It's the largest non-motorized parade in the US, which means the Shriners have to pull their little hat behind them on wheels - no miniature cars for the Shriners!
We had the original inhabitants (as far as anyone knows) of SJC, the Acjachemen nation.
We had the Mexican Cowboys, who were second. And had the pranciest horses.
Then SJC had a wave of northern European cowboys. (These are cowgirls, the Winchester Widows.)
We had the Aliens. I'm not sure the aliens were actually inhabitants of SJC at any time but they threatened to blow us up with the Death Star if we didn't put their picture in.
And we had the newest inhabitants of SJC, the Mexican Chinelo dancers. (See yesterday for close ups.)
I also got a lot of shots of horses - dancing horses, cart horses, foaming-at-the-mouth horses, and even miniature horses that were knee-high. I'll look through those and put them up somewhere too. Edit to correct "Chinelo".
Today was the San Juan Capistrano festival of the swallows. It's a vernal equinox festival, or if you prefer, St. Joseph's day, or if you're a local, it's the day the swallows fly back from Argentina to nest in SJC.
The swallows actually arrived a few days ago. Here's a couple of photos of the Swallows Day Parade.
Woke up in the middle of the night to check Twitter and see the planet has been hit by a meteorite. You don't get that every day. Came down over Russia (why is it always Russia?) Four hundred hurt, mostly by broken glass and debris, and the roof of a factory collapsed.
Ah, Russian dashcams:
(One video was removed by user)
[video removed by user]
My learnings from that are as follows: If something travelling at many times the speed of sound goes overhead completely silently, don't stand near plate glass windows until *after* the sonic boom arrives.
There were clearly two fragments travelling together. There seems to be substantial confusion about whether they actually exploded or it was just the shockwave that did the damage. We hear that there is an 'impact crater' in the ice of a lake but I guess we'll know more when I get up again in the real morning.
There's another one due in a few hours, size of an Olympic™ ® swimming pool (who estimates hurtling sky rocks in units of 'the swimming pool'? Bloody astronomers) but this is slated to miss the planet by about 17,150 thousand miles which sounds like a lot but is less than the mileage on what I think of as my new car. And is closer to Earth than our communications satellites.
Also, the Pope recently resigned. Does he know something we don't know? Any Mayans want to comment?
Youdopia unearths an amazing find - a Led Zeppelin proto-song that was well on its way to become In The Light. From the Alternate Graffiti disc 1 set, this unreleased track just blows me away - at first and second listen, I'd rate it above In The Light itself. What a lovely track just to listen to and what a great adjunct to the final released track on the album Physical Graffiti (one of my favorite records).
Dangerous Minds, which finds the coolest things, recently updug a clip from French TV of T. Rex playing as a three piece at the Taverne De L’Olympia in Paris in January 1971.
Marc Bolan's baby, Tyrannosaurus Rex, was a two-piece band with Marc on vocals and acoustic guitar and Steve 'Peregrin' Took on bongos, vocals, squeals, howls and Pixiphone. Singing mostly about elves, seals, Celts and the general milieu of Lord-of-the-Rings British landscape, the duo played hippie haunts as the quiet antidote to the brain-burner bands like The Who and Jimi Hendrix. This worked, though Took's hippy outlook compared with Marc's all-encompassing ambition eventually caused friction and Took was out, replaced by the high cheekbones of Mickey Finn - who stepped up to congas as well as bongos and did less vocal theatrics.
The sound was more electric, too. With Took, Marc had recorded King of the Rumbling Spires, a loud rock track, and with Finn, he produced two albums filled with elves, landscapes, Celts and strangely incongruous guitar feedback and extended solos. (They were A Beard of Stars and, once they shortened the name, the album known as T. Rex.) No drums though, and they had producer Tony Visconti filling in on bass on the few occasions anyone deemed it necessary.
But Marc had always wanted to be a rocker - in the sense of Eddie Cochran. (Not in the sense of 'opposite of Mod' - he was definitely a Mod.) In October 1970, Marc's muse came through big time and he wrote and recorded a song that combined, yes, witches, landscapes etc., but also a slice of glorious danceable pop. This was Ride A White Swan, and once in place, the pop talent was not to desert him for several years. Realizing the sound needed to be fuller to support the heavy rock of Jewel, or Elemental Child, he brought on bassist Steve Currie in December 1970 - announced in the press on the 12th, in fact. And the trio toured as Ride A White Swan hit the charts
Marc's muse revisited quickly, and Hot Love was out and charting in February 1971. A drummer was brought in for the session - Bill Legend. But on TOTP, as Hot Love went to #1 in the UK charts, Mickey Finn played congas and the band was still formally a three piece. Bill Legend did not join the band permanently until March 1971.
The clip that Dangerous Minds found is from that tiny portion of T. Rex's life when the band was touring as a three piece (with Currie, but with no Legend), with Ride A White Swan in the repertoire in its stark contrast to the earlier electric efforts still being played in the same set. It's incredible that this little sliver of rock history was pro-shot, and the film survived.
Here it is.
“Jewel”
“Ride A White Swan”
“Elemental Child”
“Summertime Blues”
(For the picture at the top I used one from the same session as Dangerous Mind's picture, just in case there's any collectors out there who would like a second one!)
Dr. Feelgood was one of the bands that woke me up out of my dinosaur-loving placidity. There's only so much Led Zeppelin you can like before wanting a little bit more rough trade, so to speak, and Dr. Feelgood's Pub Rock-epitomizing run in the mid to late seventies certainly provided that. There was no mistaking singer Lee Brilleaux's Canvey Island gangster roots or Wilko Johnson's astounding machine-gun rhythm guitar and blocked speedfreak gait. And the drummer was called The Big Figure. I mean.
In a tribute today, a friend on a newsgroup pointed to an appearance of Dr. Feelgood's on a 1975 Geordie TV program, which I'd never seen before. The audience was all in its post-glam baggies and Dr. Feelgood was all larger than life and sharp and hard and proto-punk. My parents wouldn't let me watch ITV, so this Tyne Tees programme was completely news to me when I heard it today.
Wilko sings!
Amazing stuff.
And for the second chorus of the last one, Route 66, does Lee Brilleaux really sing "Saint Bernard Hinault" instead of "San Bernardino"? It makes me love them all the more, as my way of judging a real English R&B band is by how many place names they mispronounce in Route 66. It means they learned it off the record rather than from a book on how to be hipsters. (He has several guesses at "Flagstaff" as well. Not having flag staffs in England, I suppose Blackstuff or Blackstop seems much more likely as a place name.)
Hope everything goes well for you, Wilko, and thanks for everything.
It still sounds good after all these years. I was surprised to find that Rod Stewart was the only currently-famous person on it. For some reason I'd convinced myself that either Jeff Beck or one of the famous bass players of the period was on it, but according to Wikipedia, it was just the band + Rod the Mod. It was recorded by John Peel and went unreleased until 1970 though I don't remember hearing until '72, when it was re-released and became a temporary favorite.
The Dead Weather are together again. Of course they may not be playing music together, they could be just taking in local donkey shows, we don't know. But Third Man Records posted this picture to their instagram account.
It certainly seems to show Alison, Jack, LJ and Dean (as well as Lalo) hanging out in Mexico City and wishing us a happy new year.
I am *so* ready for some classic Dead Weather right now...
I sometimes mention a product on this blog, and I give a URL to Amazon or similar sites. Just to reassure you, I don't get paid to advertise anything here and I don't get any money from your clicks. Everything I say here is because I feel like saying it.
I also got a lot of shots of horses - dancing horses, cart horses, foaming-at-the-mouth horses, and even miniature horses that were knee-high. I'll look through those and put them up somewhere too. 
