The doodle for this hurricany Saturday is from The Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra Conducted By Carmen Dragon-The Music Of Christmas (Capitol SP8393, 1958). We've got a detail of the faces of the three wise men above, and the same three guys on their camels travelling towards the star hanging over Bethlehem below. There's a small scrawled signature on the lower left corner of the three wise men, but I can't make it out at all.
Today's doodle is from the reverse of Gisele MacKenzie-Christmas With Gisele (RCA Victor LPM-2006, 1959). Mrs. MacKenzie was a Canadian songbird who has sort of faded into the obscurity of history today. This release features a side of traditional carols and a side of more modern, popular tracks, including the recent favorite of mine, Too Fat For The Chimney.
Wow! This is our 35th doodle! It seems like only yesterday we were at 34. Anyhow, this ornamental doodle is from Andy Williams And The Williams Brothers-Christmas With Andy Williams And The Williams Brothers (Columbia Special Products C 10105). You probably already know more than you want to about Andy, and who really cares about his brothers. What you should really know about is Andy's ex-wife, Claudine Longet!
Here's a Classic Ernie picture for you. I shot this racoon over on the north jetty at Ponce Inlet, Florida. That's just south of Daytona Beach. I was up there visiting the lighthouse, but the weather was overcast and grey, so I had to find other things to shoot. This furry fellow and his mate lived among the rocks on the jetty and made a decent living by begging fishermen for scraps. There were also a number of feral cats living in the same area. I hoped I'd get to see an argument or an altercation between the two competing species, but nothing happened while I was there.
Today is day two without my camera, and I'm having withdrawal symptoms. Everywhere I look, I see a picture I want to take. Last night I saw the sandhill crane family again, but I had no camera! (I also only saw one baby, which worried me a little bit. The other one may just have been out of sight when I drove by, but you never know...)
For those of you who are still with us on day 6 of Christmas in July, here's yet another Christmas doodle. This LP may win the award for largest mouthful of a title: James Blackwood And The Blackwood Brothers Combine With Hovie Lister And The Statesmen To Wish You A Musical Merry Christmas (RCA Victor LPM-2606, 1962). Whew, what a name! These two gospel groups each sing 5 tracks, and then they combine their talents on two additional tracks. This is one of the few Christmas LPs I remember my parents playing when I was growing up. When I found a copy of it a few years ago, I was surprised to find that I could still sing along to all of the songs. The two angels you see are actually separated by some text on the LP back, but I put them together for you here.
I don't know how exciting this is going to be to most of you, but here goes. The red flower above is pretty common around here this time of year. So I thought it odd when I spotted the pink one below. I'd never seen a pink variety. I just thought I'd mention that. I should also mention that the flowers you are looking at are only about a 1/4" to 3/8" across. I love the macro setting on my camera. And speaking of my camera, it's in the shop and I'm going into withdrawal without it.
All that talk about Dean Martin yesterday got us to thinking about the Chairman of the Board, Frank Sinatra, so we dug up his A Jolly Christmas From Frank Sinatra (Capitol W894, 1957). Only Frank would be giving away some swell swank such as this to his friends.
Here are a couple of shots from a short trip to South Lido Beach this weekend. Part of the beach on the bay side was covered in these little fiddler crabs. When I approached them, they scurried off en masse into the tall grass and weeds, making an odd rustling noise. If I hurried along and cut them off, they'd run the other way into the water, but they prefered the grass. I suppose it offers more protection against predators. If you aren't familiar with fiddler crabs, the males feature one large claw, which you can clearly see above, and one smaller claw, which is visible in the photo, but just barely. Most of these crabs were about an inch long, but the one above was a giant among crabs at almost an inch and a half.
I haven't posted a bird picture in a while, so here's an odd fellow I spotted Sunday night. I'm not sure what kind he is, but he's got his dinner firmly trapped in his beak if you look closely. I'll go do a little research on this fellow. I suspect he may be in the midst of an adolescent plumage change, but whether it's dark to white or white to dark I can't say. The dark tip on his bill may be a giveaway though.
Update-Juvenile Little Blue Heron, I believe! Which means it's white to dark blue.
No, I don't speak Spanish. I just saw a sign on my way to the fireworks that was in Spanish and thought it was interesting. Anyhow, here's another fireworks picture for you, this time it's actually from the Fourth of July, this time from the city of Palmetto, Florida, fireworks show. I always try to scout out a good location before hand, and this time I scouted poorly. To the right of all my shots was a streetlight, and I had to shoot around it the whole time. (See that little bit of orange light in the lower right corner? That's from the offending streetlight.) I even tried moving, but to no avail. I suppose a little cropping and you'd never notice, but it's almost midnight and I have to go to work in the morning, so no cropping for me!
And the Christmas doodles just keep coming! I mentioned him earlier in a posting a about Jimmy Roselli, but here's the real thing. Here's Dean Martin-A Winter Romance (Capitol ST1285, 1959). Dean is everyone's favorite rat packer, right below Frank, and a little bit above Sammy, at least in my book. And you can't go wrong with this collection of Dean's Christmas crooning. You can't see the front cover of this one, but it's classic Dean. He's squeezing one girl while giving the eye to another. What a guy!
Here's a nice little shot of the fireworks from Bradenton Beach, Florida, this evening. The Beach House restaurant always shoots off their fireworks on the day before July 4th, I guess so they can get a bigger crowd. It's always a nice little practice shoot for me before the real thing. I'm not too good at shooting the fireworks, mostly because I do a poor job of anticipating where exactly they are going to explode, and how bright they are going to be. So my photos are sort of hit and miss. For every good one, I get a completely black frame. The shot below is of a vendor selling those little glow stick necklaces, and other flashy lights. It's an 8 second exposure, which is why everything sort of trails around, and the boats on the water look blurry. I thought it was neat, and it helped kill the hour and a half I stood there in one place waiting for the real show to start.
Today's Doodle is a very special three-fer, even though it features an artist we've already spotlighted. The three doodles you see here are all from Jackie Gleason-Merry Christmas (Capitol DW 758, 1956). There's not much left to say about Jackie Gleason, except maybe that our favorite starring role of his was as Sheriff Buford T. Justice in Smokey & The Bandit.
The calendar picture for this week is a rather obvious picture of an American flag. It's harder to get a good picture of a fluttering flag than you might imagine. I took this one in a stiff Gulf breeze on Sand Key near Clearwater, Florida.
