I’m beginning a short two-day non-vacation vacation here, so sorry for diminished work hither and yon. (G)Nat has two days off from school, so I’m taking time off too – but I will be posting at buzz.mn with Lance Lawson and other delights, and I’ll be spending the carefree mint-julip-sipping day off editing two videos. Perverse as it sounds, I enjoy working more on my day off.

Did I mention why I haven’t posted the video of the concert? I forget. Well, it’s like this: you can’t see me or hear me, and the sound is mud. But I am not weaseling out here – we’re doing another show in a week, and this one contains actual Elvis. Which means I have to brush up on my rockabilly licks, because there’s two solos in “Blue Suede Shoes.” Most of the solos are rather basic and poorly done, too; a fellow could go a long way on a few stumble-fingered licks in those days. The other song is a Jonas Brothers tune – it may be prefab pop, but hang me if you can’t make that one rock – and a dreadful Hannah Montana song that will defy our best efforts. I can’t even tell what key it’s in. Z major, I think.

As for the video - I shot it Wednesday afternoon at the Home and Garden show, and the footage is . . . well, I’ll have to work to get three minutes out of this one. You can only shoot so many window replacement booths and garden-stone displays before the viewer’s attention wanders. Plus, my camera battery sank fast – from a full charge to nothing in 45 minutes, and yes, I used every battery conservation technique I know, including panning slowly. (Kidding.)

I ran into a fellow from college Italian language class; hadn’t seen him in many a year. He’s building water features now. He had an enormous water feature up, and I mean enormous; I couldn’t begin to think how much it cost, so I asked.

It cost the same as the Oak Island Water Feature.

I laid down by the shores of the Water Feature, and yea, I wept.

A few more of the Manhattan Scans. Meet the sisters, in for a night on the town. The one of the left appears to be wearing some sort of clay hat based on a trod-upon traffic cone.

And what, you ask, are they looking at? This. In some ways, New York was so much larger when things were smaller.

This is interesting: the Rockefeller Center roof garden. This is the original, which has been slumbering for decades undisturbed by photons on the library files:

Click here for a larger version run through a few filters. Ah, the things that hide in the shadows of old photos. That's not a Hollywood stage set from an Astaire movie; that's New York in the 40s.

In Bleat Radio Theater I like to showcase interesting shows that illustrate the finer side of old radio – good plots, great voices, snappy performances, or just details that bring bygone cultural signifiers back to life so we can examine them, shrug, and say “well, yes, that’s certainly bygone.” But what of the lesser shows, the minor efforts that had only a season’s run before the signal evaporated in the empyreon beyond?  Do not these unheralded shows deserve attention as well?

Often, no. Here’s proof. I’ve only listened to one episode of “Dark Fantasy,” a product of an Oklahoma City station, but I will never forget it. The first act is the dramatic equivalent of Chinese Water Torture. Listen, and you’ll see what I mean. It makes you want to go back in time, burst into the studio with Indiana Jones’ whip and make they ACT FASTER.

New addition to the venerable, much-loved Sears 1973 site here. See you at buzz.mn! Lance Lawson up around ten AM.