I've adjusted the Shore Leave 31 schedule post slightly to add the live Chronic Rift podcast we'll be doing.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: "Amazing Grace" by Arlo Guthrie

I've mentioned this before, but thought I'd repeat it: six of the fifteen songs in the Boogie Knights' set at 11am Saturday morning at Shore Leave 31 this weekend will be audience requests. Friday night, and Saturday morning before the show, there'll be a fishbowl and a pad of paper outside the Valley ballroom, and people can write down songs they want to hear, and we will do our damndest to perform them. (We reserve the right to refuse to do a song for whatever reason.)

Here are the remaining nine songs (so don't bother requesting these, as we're already doin' 'em):

"Earth Magic Girls" (parody of Queen's "Fat-Bottomed Girls")
"Outlaw Band of Thieves" (Cher's "Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves")
"Wanted: Harem Guard" (Billy Ray Cyrus's "Achy-Breaky Heart" -- yes, really)
"Works Like a Charm" (Kansas's "Dust in the Wind")
"I'm Gonna Wreck the Shrine" ("This Little Light of Mine," trad.)
"Thank You, Scotland" (Mac Davis's "It's Hard to be Humble")
"I'll Rock Your World" (Modern English's "I Melt with You")
"Claxon Bells" ("Jingle Bells," trad.)
"Dragon's Lure" (Buster Poindexter's "Hot Hot Hot")

Several of these are songs that have debuted since the last Shore Leave, and one -- "I'm Gonna Wreck the Shrine," which is the first Boogie song written and performed by self -- that will have its debut this weekend. Edited to add: Make that two -- as boogiebabe_smap pointed out in comments, Shore Leave will also be the debut of "Claxon Bells."

So come check us out Saturday at 11am at Shore Leave!

Current Mood: awake
Current Music: "The Body of an American" by the Pogues

Two Michigan librarians have started a blog called "Awful Library Books."

According to the "about this site" section of the blog:

Awfullibrarybooks.wordpress.com is a collection of the worst library holdings. The items featured here are so old, obsolete, awful or just plain stupid that we are horrified that people might be actually checking these items out and depending on the information.

This blog contains actual library holdings. No specific libraries or librarians are named to protect the guilty. Check your shelves, it could be you.

Do check it out -- it's both amusing and appalling (my favorite are the pre-1969 books on space travel and the 1980s books on computers).

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: "One Brown Mouse" by Jethro Tull

For some inexplicable reason, the apartment has suddenly become a dead zone for my iPhone. No matter where I go, I get "No Service."

The hell????

So if you've wanted to call me and left voicemail that I haven't returned, or expected to hear from me, this is why......

Current Mood: aggravated
Current Music: "Standin' Tall" by the Subdudes

Italian-born Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini became the first American saint when she was canonized (1946)

PILATES

German-born Joseph Hubertus Pilates (1880-1967) pioneered a system of exercises, which he called "contrology," to develop and enhance strength, posture, and flexibility. Pilates was a sickly child who from an early age studied anatomy to build up his body. He traveled to England in 1912 (apparently to work as a circus performer), but two years later, at the start of World War I, was interned as an enemy alien. While in the camps, Pilates found work as a nurse and experimented with a range of techniques and makeshift equipment to rehabilitate the immobile. On his release, he used these skills to help train the German police force before emigrating to New York in 1925 and setting up a gym. Since then, the techniques of Pilates have been adopted across the world and are used by a host of athletes, dancers, actors, and sportsmen and -women, as well as the infirm.


War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading.
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: "Nil S'en La" by Clannad

The Chronic Rift has just released a quick promo of "HG World: Heroes of the Zombie War," the audio drama produced by Jay Smith (dr_p_venkman) that I provide one of the voices for. drewshi and popfiend interview Jay about the series, and then you can hear one of the promo pieces. So check it out -- and then go to the official HG World web site, www.GoodMorningSurvivors.com, for more stuff....

Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: the podcast in question