Happy Halloween 2008

Here are a few Halloween-themed tracks for your enjoyment. There are only 8 (I think) here, 'cause I've been pre-occupied with another holiday that's coming up soon. But I know you'll enjoy these as much as I did. As usual, they're all from my own vinyl, recorded with love and care right here at Ernie (Not Bert) Central. The link is right here: Halloween shares 2008 Don't forget about last year's share, too! Oh, the vultures above were just outside the Saturn V Center at Cape Kennedy earlier this year. Heaven knows what they were doing there...

OK, I've got a few minutes here, so let me see what I'm actually sharing.

Johnny Puleo And His Harmonica Gang-Ghost Riders In The Sky from Western Songs (1959)
Manny Albam-That Old Black Magic from Brass On Fire (1966)
Shep Fields And His Rippling Rhythm Orchestra-Satan Takes A Holiday from One Man-Two Bands
Irene Reid-Theme From Bewitched from Room For One More (1965)
Pee Wee Hunt And His Orchestra-Boneyard Shuffle from Dixieland Detour
Arthur Winograd Conducting The Virtuoso Symphony Orchesta-Funeral March Of A Marionette from Marches For Children (1959)
Phil Harris With Orchestra Conducted by Buddy Cole-Some Little Bug from The South Shall Rise Again (1959)

Short list, but good stuff. Like I said, I've been obsessed with Christmas music for the past three months, so this is all I had on my hard drive for you.

7-Election Huh?

So, 7-Eleven is having this deal where they offer you one of two coffee cups in their stores. You can get either a cup that say McCain, or you can get a cup that says Obama. You're supposed to grab the one for the candidate you support, then they post which cups they sell more of on their website, http://www.7-election.com/. Simple enough, I suppose. I'd been meaning to take a look at that website for a while, and I finally remembered to do it today. I saw the map above, where the grey states don't have 7-Elevens, the blue states are states that sell more Obama cups, and the lone red state, North Carolina, is where they sell more McCain cups. OK, that's a pretty fair representation of the way the polls are running. If you hover over each state, it gives you the actual fraction of Obama and McCain cups being sold in that state.

I sent the link to a friend in NC, giving her a hard time about her state's McCain support. Then I noticed some odd math when you hover over North Carolina. If you look close, they show North Carolina as being 59% John McCain to 51% Barack Obama. Hmmmm, so 110% of the people in North Carolina have cast their vote via cups at 7-Eleven. And they say we're bad here in Florida when it comes to voting. Now, I've seen some stores in Palm Beach County selling purple cups, so I suspect there's going to be a recount in our future...

And That Makes 100

Those of you who have been paying attention will notice that my Christmas record counter hit the 100 records mark today. That means I've recorded 100 records, many of which I hope to share with you this Christmas season. 100 was my goal, but I think I've still got a few that I want to record, and I'm sure things will come up during the season that I rush to record and share with you. Some of those are things that I wanted to listen to, and recorded them, only to find out later they are on CD, so I can't share out everything. Some of them are re-recordings of things I've shared previously, either because I found a better copy of the record or because I thought I could do a better job than I did some years ago. I've tried to be much more quality oriented this year than I have in the past, at least on certain things. I'm sure my selection of records isn't the best, but it's all at least mildly interesting. I've used a lot less noise reduction this time around, and I've been very happy with the sound I'm getting. I'm recording lots more stereo records than in past years, and I'm making sure to record mono records in mono this time, too. So I hope you're all as excited as I am about the Christmas season this year. Oh, the total number of tracks I've recorded for the season is 1336, for a total of 2.5 days of music. :)

FYI, it took me over four hours to record the one hundredth record. Five of the eighteen tracks skipped on me, but I had a spare that I was able to get four of those tracks off of. That fifth track skipped on both records, but it was in different places. I was able to splice the two of them together and get a good take for you. I can't hear the splice, and there are clicks in other places that you might think are splices, but aren't. So if I didn't tell you what I'd done, you'd never know. I was also shocked to find that noise I thought came from scratches in the record were actually in the master recording (or maybe in the stamper), since they showed up in identical waveforms on both recordings. Weird, huh?

Now if I only had all these LP covers scanned and Photoshopped...

Couple More Calendars

Here are a couple more calendar possibilities for you to ponder. The folks at our Cleveland plant wanted a calendar that showed the Cleveland skyline, and I dug way back in the archives and found these unused (well, not entirely unused, but not previously published...) shots from a couple of years ago. I think they're going to go with the night shot above, but nothing is set in stone yet. Feel free to leave your opinion down in the comments. One of these shots will be used in addition to one of the Statue of Liberty shots I showed you early, not in place of those. I don't know if I'll have copies of both calendars or not, but maybe...