A Day Early

Well, here it is, the day before Thanksgiving, and I'm itching to get started with the Christmas sharity. But I've got a few albums that really aren't Christmas that I want to get out there, so I've decided to get them out of the way today. This first one is a rerun from a while back that I haven't re-highlighted in a while, and like the other records you'll get today, it deals with skiing. Now, being from Florida, skiing to me has always been something you do on liquid water, not the frozen kind. And it involves a boat, not a lift. But I guess there are some people out there who think it's fun to strap some sticks to their feet and throw themselves over the side of a snow-covered precipice. More power to them. I wish them the best of luck. I tried it once, but it didn't work out so well. Anyhow, this is a rerun from two years ago, but if you missed it then, here it is again. This is Six Family Mountain-Takin' A Ride With The Wind (National Ski Patrol NSP-1001, Stereo).

1. Takin' A Ride With The Wind
2. Snowbird
3. A Reason For Winter
4. Wrong Mountain Blues
5. Let It Shine
6. A Nice Place To Live
7. Chumley's Bus
8. Nobody In The Canyon
9. Country Mountain Shakedown
10. Vanishing Skyline

(Yes, I'm going to try to give you track-listings this year. I figure it will help the folks out there who are in search of a particular song. I don't know if that will last the whole season or not, since it adds significantly to the amount time it takes to throw up a post, but we'll see.)

Oodles Of Doodles CCCXLIV

I found this great set of four color doodles on the inner sleeve of a record I was scanning the cover of for the upcoming Christmas sharity marathon here at Ernie (Not Bert). The record was on Columbia, but the inner sleeve was from RCA Victor. All of the records advertised were in mono, and the highest catalog number was for a record released in 1958, so that's the date I'm gonna give you for this great doodle. The text across the top of the sleeve said POPULAR-JAZZ-ORIGINAL CAST SHOWS-MOVIE SOUND TRACKS, so you can figure out which doodle stands for what as an exercise. I've seen this artist before, but I can't find any of the other doodles I've shared to link to right this second. I think it's the pointy feet that gives it away.

Sunrise At Night

I got the opportunity to go see the space shuttle Endeavor launch last night, and what a light show that was! I was worried that I wouldn't get any pictures of it, because of the wind and the 14 mile distance. That, combined with the general difficulties of shooting at night had me worried, but I wound up getting a decent shot or two. Could have been better, but I was happy to get anything. This shot is just a few seconds after launch, so you can actually see the shuttle thanks to all the reflected light coming off of the steam clouds rolling out from under the gantry. Most of the other shots once it got in the air only show flame shooting out for hundreds of feet behind the shuttle, which isn't itself visible. Biggest drawback of the trip was the ride home, and the three hour traffic jam on a section of the ride that should have only taken about 30 minutes. And that was after we waited an hour for the traffic to clear. Oh, well, that's the price you pay, I guess.

Back For More

Some little rabbit told me this sculpture was back in town, but this weekend was the first chance I'd had to get down there and see for myself. Sure enough, they've brought back Unconditional Surrender by Seward Johnson to the Sarasota Bayfront. Technically, this isn't the same sculpture that was here before. The earlier one was a styrofoam model, and this one is a finished aluminum piece. It also looks a little smaller to me, but that may just be my eyes and my memory letting me down.

Kiss Me, I Voted!

Get Out The Vote

Don't forget to go vote today! Back in 2000, the election here in Florida was decided by less than 600 people. That's all my friends, plus all your friends, plus all the people at my cousin's wedding last month. And this election promises to be even tighter. So no excuses, just go vote!

Oh, and don't forget to buy my calendar...

Get 'Em While They're Hot

Well, here they are, the next-to-final proofs of the 2009 calendars I told you about. They're going to make about three minor changes to some of the text on these, and then they're being released to print. They get printed at 24" high x 36" wide on fancy coated glossy stock that you can write on with a dry-erase marker. For those of you who didn't read my earlier post, I took the pictures on both of these, and the company I work for decided to use my shots. The photo of Liberty Enlightening the World above was taken when I was in New York for 9/11 this year, and the photo below of Cleveland after dark was from a trip up I made a couple of years ago.



I went ahead and ordered a few of these calendars for myself, and I would love to give them all away. But they weren't cheap, so if you want one, I'd be happy to sell them to you at $20 each, shipping to the US included. Just drop me a line if you're interested, and we can work something out. My email is ernie.not.bert (at) gmail.com. Supplies are limited, act now! Well, don't act right now, I haven't got any copies yet. But soon... Oh, the dry-erase pen is included! Bonus!

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...

One More Thing

Go RAYS!!!

A Flash Of Red

I found the picture above in amongst all of the stuff I shot during my last trip to Ohio in June. I remember chasing this red-winged blackbird up and down the side of a canal near downtown Cleveland, but I didn't think I'd gotten any decent pictures. I must have missed this one when I was reviewing my shots for the day. As you can see, he's got his lunch, or at least a juicy appetizer, held firmly in his beak as he flies back to the nest.

Popular Vote Or Electoral College

Here's your chance to participate in the great democracy that is Ernie (Not Bert). Sort of. I've got the opportunity to get my pictures on a spiffy new calendar this year, and we've narrowed it down to a photo of the statue of Liberty Enlightening The World. But which shot should it be? I've picked out four of the best from my trip to NYC last month, and here they are. Which one do you like the best? My first choice was the one above, and it's the one I've done the most work on. I had to play with the sky a little to get it to the shade of blue that I like, but I wouldn't admit to that in court.

Shot two is another good one, you can see her left hand holding the tablet that's engraved with the date July 4, 1776. (Some people think that's where Emma Lazarus' poem is, but it's not.)

Picture number three is probably the odds-on favorite here in the little contest. That's probably because it squeezes in all of the important elements of the statue. You get the face, the crown, the tablet and the torch. I've also done some touch-up work on the sky in this one. I don't think it came out as blue as I wanted, but it's sufficient.

Number four is a detail of the face, with a little tiny bit of fake blue sky to the right. I like this one, but those streaks across her face (from water leaching some rust out of the joint to the left of her eye) detract from it too much. I like it, but I don't think it's the best.

While I was playing with the sky in the picture up top, I threw this one together in a hurry just to see what it looked like. There's a little tiny sliver of sky still edging the sculpture, and it shows when you look close, so this one won't fly, but I just wanted to see how it would look.

There you have it. Four choices. Which one is your favorite? And would you be interested in buying one of the calendars this picture will appear on? The calendars are about 2' x 3', with the picture printed at about 9" high and 27" wide. It's got the whole year on the face of it, and is printed on glossy paper that allows you to use it as a dry erase board. They'll sell for about $20. I figured I'd ask and see if there's any interest. I'll have to piggy-back my order onto the company's order, so I need to know about how many to get. If you're interested, leave a comment or drop me a line.

PS-Your votes don't really count. It's like the electoral college around here. You can vote all you want, but they tell you who wins. :)

Why I'm Not A Wedding Photographer

Plenty of people have asked me to shoot weddings and other events for them, and I've always politely declined. Part of the reason is that I think I don't take good people pictures. I don't have any real experience with using the flash and getting good flesh tones and all that jazz. The other reason is my lack of concentration on the task at hand. As I mentioned a second ago, I shot pictures at a wedding this evening, and right about the part where they read their hand-written vows, I spot this osprey flying along the water's edge looking for dinner. So what did I get a picture of? The vows? No. The osprey? Yes. Of course. Why ask a silly question?

Congrats Kayla & Ash!

My cousin got married tonight. I shot a thousand or so pictures of the festivities, trying to capture all of the stuff that the professional photographers might miss. That was hard to do as they seemed to be pretty on-the-ball. But as far as I could tell, they didn't get any silhouettes! I tried to watch what they were doing to learn a little something (while staying out of their shots), but all I really got was a bad case of lens envy. Hopefully the shots I got will add something to the memories of the event.

One Week's Notice

Just a quick update on the stolen car business that some of you may remember from a couple of weeks ago. I got served today with a summons to appear before a State's Attorney next week. I guess they want to get an official statement from me or something. We'll have to wait and see how that goes. In the meantime, I'm keeping my eye on my car just about every waking moment...

Not Exactly Wall Street

What the devil is this all about?

Out On Bond

Uh-oh, looks like the accused is out on bond! I'm going to go move my car to right outside my window so I can keep an eye on it. I wonder if they'll let me bring it in the shop? That would put my mind at ease a little more. The adjusters are supposed to come look at it today to see if there is any damage to the front end or the underside from the towing. I think it needs an alignment, and maybe some new front tires. Tires don't respond so well to being drug across the asphalt when they can't roll.

Whodunit?

I can't seem to link to it, so here's a screen grab from the website of the Manatee County Sheriff's Office. Remember, all people are innocent until proven guilty, even if you did find your car in her back yard while she was at the tag agency with your license plate trying to trade it in on a new one.