I love this week's Bleat art - obviously, because I chose it and use it. Sorry. Let me find another way into the subject.

Hey how about that Bleat art huh? There's so much to love - the way the background uses freeway ramps as symbols of freedom and excitement. The laughing parents, having a witty conversation that completely ignores the untethered kid in the back, who's excited and happy to be on the road and it's keen to be with Mom and Dad because they're great and everyone's going to a place with Indians and ice cream!

Nowadays you're supposed to find everything wrong with this picture, but if you're so inclined you may contemplate the things that are right. And if you are so inclined, well, that's why you're here, no?

Testing the sprinkler system is a fine way to spend the night, if you know what you're doing. The system has been my bane for five years; several of the heads have minds of their own and will not hold their programming. (By which I mean, the adjustments you make with a screwdriver on the sprinkler head.) One of them is under the delusion that the street needs watering, and cannot be disabused of the idea. One zone has gone quiet altogether, like a major city a week after a plague outbreak. The rest seem capable of doing their job, which is to throw a certain amount of water six feet away and barely dampen everything in between.

I'm getting an early start on yard failure this year. The stubborn parts where nothing will grow? I'll try again. The place where the sod perished because there were weevils? I'll try again. The backyard work does not augur well - I put down some seed & patch mixture, which is GUARANTEED to grow. Absolute iron-clad 100%. I softened the earth, dug up the dirt, put it down, watered wisely, and I just looked: a bunch of seeds sitting on the ground. Just sitting there. <fredgynnevoice> The ground is sour. </fredgynnevoice> But here's the thing: my wife saw me work, saw me do it without nagging, and saw me water it every day, and that matters more than actual grass, because I am taking the initiative! Hurrah for Doing Things.

Next step: replace the Rainbird sprinkler controller with a WiFi connected unit that A) will let me water my lawn from Africa if I am ever in Africa, and B) will become useless when the company goes out of business and shuts down its servers, which you didn't know you needed, and didn't need in the first place. But it has good ratings on Amazon.

So today's work was a column and a series of videos for the paper; did them in my own green-screen studio, aka the garage. Had to stop when high-schoolers walked back from smoke breaks at the creek, yelling and laughing. Had to stop when a jet went overhead. Had to stop when a truck went rumbling by - with the spring it means constant construction around here, as everyone is doing something to the house. There's always something to be done.

Including this thing, which is starting to get out of hand. But that's Monday's Bleat.


And now, a round-up of everything I put in the "Misc" folder this week and didn't get around to posting. I know this may seem like a cheap way of filling it out, but it really isn't.

You need a dog photo:

 

 

Since "Cuck," or "cuckservative," is the term used by the alt-right to denigrate anyone who isn't licking Trump's ankles, I thought I'd drop this in.

 

 

It's a Devil-May-Care series, and you know what that means - lots of exciting locales in glorious black and white, with a guy in a white tux smoking and punching and smooching. See your Ziv man.

The show was called "Bold Venture," based on a Ziv-syndicated radio series that started two actors who went by the names "Bogart" and "Bacall." A likely story. The show made the two $312,000, which would be almost three million today.

Joan Marshall went on to do a Star Trek episode; she would marry director Hal Ashby, and imdb says:

She married film director Hal Ashby and, over the first six months of their marriage, and at his insistence, she related personal experiences of her life. Ashby (and Robert Towne) turned Joan's life into the romantic comedy film Shampoo (1975). She was not pleased that her husband had used such personal details in creating this film.

After he died she married someone else and moved to Jamaica and died of AIDS in 1992.

You can't see your Ziv Man anymore; the company - which pioneered first-run syndication - isn't around, and Mr. Ziv died in 2001 at the fine age of 96.

Ank sends me old postcards, and often includes a cryptic note. I enjoy them all. You learn the oddest things:

 

 

This beer six-pack art deserves a round of applause.

 

 

Finally, two tweets that appeared right after the other.

 

 

Art! Its intentions are presumably important and good, or it wouldn't be allowed by the modern scolds. The old scolds have more or less given up trying.

 

 

 

A little bit of everything today. First it's back to music cues for "The Little Things in Life," Peg Lynch's last continuously running sitcom. The cues run from substandard 60s cues to cringingly 70s.


     

Fast and deft; good "mail sent" sound for your phone.

     

Let's wrap up the scene with some suspense, and let's overdo it:

     

One note too many.

     

Same session, probably - hubby-bumble music with a suspenseful end.


     

Oh hah hah yeah.

     

From 1975, Final Net. Mom is desperate to stay thin and look attractive.

     

Fear and weariness in her voice.

     

 

But you always look good, Mom! Yes, but his secretary is twenty years younger.

This week's Bob & Ray sketch takes on, again, the grinding banality of . . .

 

     

Aunt Penny's Sunlit Kitchen

     

 

As noted, it's a spoof of Aunt Jenny's show - you know, the Spry lady. This time she doesn't mind at all that Danny's eating all the cookies. She's in a grand mood.

Note the phrase "going like 60," which - and please forgive me for remembering these things - appears in a "One Fella's Family" sketch, and suggests it was a saying people used to describe unreasonable speed.

 

 

 

This is odd. But not unexpected.

 

   
 

 

After a few hits and a rep as a radio friendly musician, you want to get a small combo together and show people you're capable of real art. You know, not that corny melodic stuff.

 

   

This isn't what you expect from big happy Al. It's like Twilight Zone music. It's called "Ballad for Al." Bonus: I don't think it's Al at all, but just the Dawn Busters.

That'll do, I hope - thanks for the visits this weekend. See you around . . . or will I?

No, I will, but still, Monday. Something I have to get off my chest.

 

 

 
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