Jürgen, your mention of an Insektentankstelle brought back an old memory that you might appreciate. It’s a difficult story to condense, but I’ll do my best.

Each chapter of my German textbook in high school began with an introduction to an actual German teenager and his/her friends and family, as a way to motivate…

Read more

This is a favorite song of mine from early childhood that I had in my prehistoric collection of 45’s:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVzKAMrXvl0

Thanks, Howard. We actually never even got as high as 6000 feet, but that was enough that large parts of the trails were still snow-covered.

I’ve been back in North Carolina since Tuesday night. Daily highs are around 90 F, so it’s quite a contrast! And my neighborhood walk doesn’t seem nearly as hilly as it used to after…

Read more

Hey, Bud. We didn’t too anything too exhausting; just two one-hour hikes that both started from near the visitor center. We left home at 6:30 AM to avoid the long line of cars to get into the park.

Thanks, Bud. It was great meeting you too, and thanks again for the tour. Actually we decided to go to Rainier on Sunday rather than Monday, so our hikes may have been simultaneous.

I’m surprised it’s not called “lorrying” in the U.K., Paul!

Just to complete the travelogue, here are a couple of photos from my Mt. Rainier hike with my daughter and her husband, while Jung and Bud were hiking in a much warmer region. It was my first “real” hike!

Here are the milestone predictions for the next month or so:

This Boy (Cavern Club): 100,000 views on June 4th

She’s a Woman: 400,000 views on June 4th

Edelweiss: 200,000 vies on June 18th

I Want to Hold Your Hand: 600,000 views on June 18th

Friday on My Mind (Cavern Club): 300,000 views on June 26th

Here are the stats for May. All data cover the period from May 1st through June 3rd.

.

simultaneous views:

1) Please Mr. Postman / Wipe Out: C = 7.41 (-0.62)

2) The Boxer: C = 6.18 (-0.00)

3) Solsbury Hill: C = 4.06 (-5.90)

4) Wish You Were Here: C = 2.33 (+0.07)

5) Sound of Silence: C = 2.33 (-0.05)

6) While My Guitar Gently Weeps: C =…

Read more

Here’s a classic Sesame Street song featuring several modes of transportation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgM2yEzY-VU

I’m so glad I was able to be a part of this! My flight to Seattle was mainly to visit with my daughter for a few days, but Jung and Bud and I were able to arrange a day to hang out together.

Jung is right: MLT people are the best people! And it was so refreshing to be able to jump into a face-to-face conversation about…

Read more

My wife has recently become a fan of an indie group called Lord Huron. Looking over a playlist, I saw that they have a title in common with a big hit from the 70’s:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCVaJQ-pIeY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R878g-SppU

Bugler’s Holiday (both the title and the sound) reminds me of a song we played in my junior high band class called Trumpeter’s Lullaby, which I just discovered was also by Leroy Anderson:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4gGKVgUnJE

This isn’t a statue or a monument, but in the neighborhood in Providence, Rhode Island where I lived circa 1990 there was a stop sign on which someone had painted a Yellow Submarine cartoon John Lennon. Every time I came to that intersection I thought, “Well, John’s making me stop again.”

Aaargh, I was just in Wilmington yesterday! I wish I could have seen these.

Jürgen, maybe the connection there is that beetles are insects?

Averaged over the past week, Solsbury Hill is at V = 1280 and C = 3.64.

“Lies” by the Knickerbockers is famous for being a Beatles soundalike:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I_bG4VBHCU

Yeah, that Bee Gees song sounds a little like the Beatles’ “You Like Me Too Much” in some places.

Jürgen, this is the song played at almost every high school and college graduation in the U.S. as the students enter, and today was graduation day at my school. I don’t listen to it voluntarily!

Here’s one that all of us teachers know by heart. I’m gonna be hearing it a lot today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw-_Ew5bVxs

Averaged over the past week, Solsbury Hill is at V = 1601 and C = 4.56.

I’ve always loved this song!

And here’s another one. What happened near the end scared me to the extent that I vowed never to go kayaking!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Map_hclVLOo

Joe Raposo, the principal composer for Sesame Street, often scored orchestrations to accompany stock footage of various activities. This is one of my favorites:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjJn5RUBAOA

Jung, in the 80’s I bought a Fisher space pen, which works on the principle of pressurized ink delivery. I believe you can still get them.

One thing I’ve noticed in compiling the viewing stats here is that YouTube tends to update the numbers once every few minutes rather than continuously. And sometimes the number actually decreases a little!

Chris, I’m not a Facebook person, but yeah, those numbers are super impressive!

I remember a discussion of YouTube vs. Facebook a couple of years ago, and was surprised to learn that some MLT videos are much more popular (relatively speaking) on one site than on the other. I wonder why that is.

Jürgen, Jack Lemmon starred in my favorite disaster film, “Airport ’77”. He played the captain of an airplane that crashed into the ocean and ended up intact but submerged beneath about fifty meters of water. It was all about improvising a plan to save themselves before they ran out of oxygen, or water filled the cabin.

Averaged over the past week, Solsbury Hill is at V = 2435 and C = 6.93.

Yet another 1970’s TV show theme song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEjNdcPh3Z0

Here are a couple of songs that Judith Durham played on the piano in a concert to mark her 60th birthday in 2003:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUXWh-UDlZo

Here are the milestone predictions for the next month or so:

For No One: 200,000 views on May 3rd

Sugar Man: 100,000 views on May 8th

That’s Life: 600,000 views on May 10th

Solsbury Hill: 300,000 views on May 15th

We Can Work it Out: 300,000 views on May 15th

Samba Pa Ti: 300,000 views on May 16th

Till There Was You: 2,000,000 views on May 27th

This Boy…

Read more

Here are the viewing numbers for April. All data cover the entire month, except for Solsbury Hill, which is for just the last day.

.

simultaneous views:

1) Building our Dream Recording Studio: C = 13.19 (+7.46)

2) Solsbury Hill: C = 9.96 (new)

3) Please Mr. Postman / Wipe Out: C = 8.04 (-0.28)

4) The Boxer: C = 6.19 (+0.11)

5) While My…

Read more

I imagine most of us are familiar with this classic jazz piece written in 5/4 time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT9Eh8wNMkw

Believe me, Jürgen, you would not want to see a video of us doing that dance. We exerted the minimal amount of energy possible, and looked like a bunch of people half-heartedly trying to detach a piece of flypaper from our shoes without touching it.

Recent data for Solsbury Hill:

For April 25th, V = 18911 and C = 53.8. For April 26th, V = 11112 and C = 31.6. For April 27th, V = 6130 and C = 17.5. For April 28th, V = 3842 and C = 10.9. And for April 29th, V = 3449 and C = 9.82.

I’m pretty sure I mentioned this once before, but in my grade school music class we learned a dance to go with this song. Here’s a more advanced version of it than what we did. (We didn’t do anything with our arms other than clap.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI7LUfCKjYQ

Chris, for us the room was actually a root cellar lined with metal shelves that at the time were filled with hundreds of potatoes that my mom had grown in the garden the previous year. I still can’t think of tornadoes without seeing and smelling dirty potatoes with long white roots sticking out of them.

We didn’t get a vast number of tornadoes when I lived in Kentucky, but we were right in the middle of the “super outbreak” of 1974 which resulted in 319 fatalities, including 71 in Kentucky. I remember spending a couple of hours in a concrete-walled room in the basement with my family that evening. Our house was fine, but a barn…

Read more

I only watched Dallas twice in my life, and was disappointed both times. I watched the very first episode, and was disappointed because JR was nothing like Major Nelson. And I watched the episode that resolved “who shot JR”, and was disappointed because I didn’t know who the characters were anyway.