Let’s try this again. For some reason (Watergirl?) FYWP thought this was an “On The Road” post, which it isn’t.
It’s been a big news day – I haven’t posted everything I’m following – and tomorrow will bring two big Supreme Court decisions and a lawsuit against the Trump Corporation.
I’ve been working through my naturecam pics and thought I’d share some of my faves. What are your oldies but goodies? Music? Film?






Gin & Tonic
Taking the train home today I listened to Orff’s Carmina Burana, which always does it for me.
dopey-o
“Into The West” a small film set in the Dublin projects mostly.
Two boys meet horse, two boys lose horse, two boys get horse back.
Simple but elegant.
Wag
Rereading Catch 22 forty years after I first read it. It is an amazing book. I didn’t recognize it at the time, but it is a brilliant description of PTSD before PTSD was named. I guess at the time they would’ve called it “shell shock“
Wag
… and Bobcats are the coolest.
ruemara
Fat, since i am ballooning. *sigh* the new meds means new diet.
frosty
@Wag:
I need to do the same. I read it multiple times in my teens, then saw the movie. The flashbacks didn’t translate well, but it was cool seeing all the B-25s in the air.
CaseyL
Cheryl, where do you live that you get so many amazing wild animals dropping by? Bobcats and lions and coyotes and bear, oh my!
My oldies – I have so many, so I’ll focus on one genre.
The original Murder on the Orient Express is a movie I can, and have, watched over and over again.
During the earliest, and most stringent, lockdown, I binge-watched Columbo.
Now that I think about it, my “comfort” go-tos all seem to be murder mysteries: Thomas Perry books, early Martha Grimes, vintage TV cop shows (Columbo, as noted; also L&O, and L&O:Criminal Intent). Why I consider those to be comfort reads is a puzzle: maybe because Justice (usually) prevails in them…?
Benw
@Wag: that’s a great observation.
@ruemara: ugh. Be kind to yourself. Hugs.
ruemara
@Benw: I’m going to kindly scream.
Cheryl Rofer
@CaseyL: No lions yet on the naturecam, although a neighbor says she’s seen one. I’m in Santa Fe, a twenty-minute walk from the plaza.
Lyrebird
How glorious!
Not sure if I should listen to that on public transit though, since I always want to do air percussion along with O Fortuna.
From the sublime to the ridiculous, I got a good laugh out of teh replies to this.:
Wyatt Salamanca
@CaseyL:
I second the Columbo pick. This show is timeless for me. So many great guest stars as murderers. Among my favorites were Patrick McGoohan, Ricardo Montalban, Hector Elizondo, Dick Van Dyke, and Johnny Cash.
Benw
@ruemara: I hear you. I wish my meds didn’t have “puffy face” as a fucking side effect
Major Major Major Major
@Wag: world war 2 PTSD gave rise to some amazing advancements in the world of literature. Catch-22, Slaughterhouse Five…
Citizen Alan
@Wyatt Salamanca: My favorite was Ruth Gordon, because the “victim” totally deserved it, and I kinda suspect Columbo agreed with that and wished he could let Gordon off.
CaseyL
@Cheryl Rofer: A friend of mine is headed for a long weekend in Santa Fe in August (yes, August!). I’ll tell her there’s wildlife in them thar hills!
@Wyatt Salamanca: It’s fun seeing the casting-against-type, like Nimoy, Landau and Joyce Van Patten. I like the actors who kept coming back to play villains – Jack Cassidy guest starred five times!
mrmoshpotato
@Lyrebird:
LOL!
Yutsano
@Gin & Tonic: All 25 movements? That must be quite the commute!
The Princess Bride. It’s amazing how I have almost the entire movie committed to memory and to this day I still find it both delightful and amusing.
Wyatt Salamanca
@CaseyL:
@Citizen Alan:
Interesting anecdote from Suzanne Pleshette about Peter Falk being a problem on the set.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9qjn18ohR0
mrmoshpotato
Say it again! We have a T Rex!
Jay
In the wake of the heat wave, in BC, with records deaths, we now have forest fires everywhere.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Yutsano: The Princess Bride? You and me both :-) it never gets old. “Have fun storming the castle”!
Wag
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
One of my all time favorites, as well.
frosty
@Wyatt Salamanca: Wow that’s a great lineup of murderers! I watched it when it was new but I don’t remember Johnny Cash or Dick Van Dyke.
piratedan
for me, one of the small things that I still treasure is the awesome amount of cool TV show themes that we had in the 60’s. It was like 75 seconds of bliss and awesomeness… who knew that Jazz was so functional in this format?
I’ll post some here to start and will let others add on if they see fit to do so…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIhEpjnaNlo – Jonny Quest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10QW3Az1FTw – The Avengers 1966 version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tM5gbwUrIgw – The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
yes, I know I’m missing Mission Impossible, but that’s for someone else to post…
frosty
I watched Notting Hill so many times I memorized the dialogue from the whole movie. One other one I won’t turn off if it comes on is League of Their Own. My toddler watched it every day and I would always sit down and watch it with him. I was sure he would grow up thinking baseball was played by girls.
Madonna watching Tom Hanks: “Wow, that’s some peeing.”
James E Powell
@Wag:
I’m pretty sure you are the one who mentioned that when I made a Lt Scheisskopf reference the other day. It’s my favorite novel by an American and I’m pretty sure I’ve read it at least ten times. I’m going to put it in the queue – aka the pile next to my bed – and re-read with your thoughts in mind.
James E Powell
@piratedan:
Not jazz, but a cool song
Secret Agent Man
Achrachno
Even if I had a proper wildlife camera I’m sure I couldn’t compete with your image diversity. Here in my part of suburban southern CA I only see 2 of the mammals you have in your yard, but some others you didn’t photograph are common: notably striped skunks and raccoons. I bet you have those too.
Coyotes move through my neighborhood nightly catching or scrounging what they can. They saunter right down the middle of the street with no apparent fear. Them I could do without, but I don’t really mind them much. If I had an outdoor cat perhaps I’d feel a bit differently. I often see signs on lamp posts looking for missing cats and fear that I know what happened.
Gray foxes are around here permanently but I see them infrequently on my nightly walks: always a pleasure when I do. They’re spectacularly quick, agile and cat-like. I suspect they live mostly on black rats (aka fruit rats, roof rats) which are awfully common in landscaping & seem to particularly attack citrus & pomegranate fruit. I’m sure the foxes are quick enough to catch them. The foxes can easily climb trees and bound onto the roofs of houses from nearby walls and fences, though what they find there I don’t know since they’d need to get into attics to find rats. Anyway, foxes are most welcome to me, along with the other rodent munchers like owls. One year a female fox made a den under my tool shed and raised 2 kits in my yard. That was good, for sure.
There is one big mammal I have that you didn’t report in your neighborhood — feral burros. There’s a herd of c. 15 that appear in various combinations. Last year they ate all the lettuce that I was trying to grow in my front planter bed. Like the coyotes they’re pretty fearless and brazenly walk down streets and sidewalks. I wish they’d leave but know they won’t. Lawns are more attractive than dry hills.
piratedan
@James E Powell: true! It is a cool song! Does have the secret agent tie in tho!
NotMax
List of items can contentedly consume repeatedly, subject to revision as interior Rolodex gets up to speed. Some overlap but not necessarily the same as would be a list of all time favorites. In no particular order:
Music:
Shostakovich 9th
Beethoven 3rd
Lt. Kije Suite
It’s a Beautiful Day (eponymous album)
McDonald & Giles (eponymous album)
On the Twentieth Century (soundtrack)
Something Rotten (soundtrack)
Akhnaten (soundtrack)
Anything Goes (soundtrack)
Excitable Boy (album, Warren Zevon)
Nilsson Schmilsson (album, Harry Nilsson)
Knnillssonn (album, Harry Nilsson)
Verities & Balderdash (album, Harry Chapin)
Court and Spark (album, Joni Mitchell)
Emerson, Lake & Palmer (eponymous album)
The World of Louis Moreau Gottschalk (album)
Something/Anything? (album, Todd Rundgren)
Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus (album, Spirit)
Satisfied (album, Mother Earth)
.
Movies/TV/Radio
Citizen Kane
The Stunt Man
Wonderfalls
The Jack Benny Program
The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis
Car 54, Where Are You?
Vic and Sade
The Palm Beach Story
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek
The Prisoner
The Twilight Zone
Misfits
Rumpole of the Bailey
Wild Boys
ReBoot
Charlie Jade
Four Star Theater
Keeping Up Appearances
I, Claudius
Patriot (Amazon original series)
The General (Keaton)
Being Human (British)
Real Humans (Swedish)
.
Amir Khalid
@frosty:
I remember that one of the players in A League of Their Own had difficulty reading,and Madonna’s character gave her porn to use for reading practice.
Martin
Nature, but not something good – fires in NorCal and Canada are really getting out of hand. Lytton, the town in Canada that hit the record high of 121 yesterday, is now evacuated and on fire. A fire to the west grew large enough to generate pyrocumulus clouds which generated thousands of lightning strikes, some of which are believed to have caused the fire in Lytton.
I’ve driven through Lytton twice – it’s right on the transcanada highway. I have no recollection of the town though. Reports on the ground is that the town is a complete loss. Residents had little warning either. Small town, only a few hundred people.
Jay
Lytton, the town which set Canadian heat records during The Bubble, is gone.
https://vimeo.com/569655524#at=7
https://vimeo.com/569678188
Video from an Indigenous band member,
frosty
Deleted a non-respite comment. Another time, another thread.
Steeplejack
@piratedan:
Dreadful show, but Barnaby Jones had a pretty good theme song.
Peter Gunn had great jazz—not just the theme but incidentail music and occasional songs by Edie (Lola Albright). “How High the Moon.”
Wyatt Salamanca
@frosty:
If you’re a Columbo fan, you have to check out those episodes with Johnny Cash and Dick Van Dyke.
Jay
@Martin:
Lytton is famous for the mixing of the two waters, the clear Thompson, and the muddy Fraser. It’s also where you choose to turn east, and go inland, or north. It’s seen hard economic times, the Highway of Death killed their road traffic, and the pine beetle and the mill closures hurt hard. It was a great place on the road to top up the ice, top up the tank, get some good food and coffee, stage up for a whitewater rafting trip on the Thompson, or head east or west on the FSR’s into the back country.
Martin
@frosty: Yeah. Siberia has been burning pretty badly the last 2 years. Guessing the condo collapse in FL is also partially attributable to climate change – rising water table.
I don’t think the southeast knows what’s coming at them. 120 degree temps out here in the west with relatively low humidity is dangerous, but at least your body can cool itself because the air is dry enough to let you sweat and have that cool you. But if this stuff hits Florida and comes with the usual humidity – everyone is going to fucking die. ACs won’t be able to keep up.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
A few more obscure catchy TV theme tunes:
T.H.E. Cat
Cannon
Journey to the Unknown
.
Jay
@Martin:
and the actual town, with many historic buildings, and cool shops, neat art, was down below the highway, which few leave.
the Dairy Queen in town, had the best fast food french fries in the whole world.
Wyatt Salamanca
Oldies but goodies? Music? Film?
Music
Carnival of Animals – Camille Saint-Saëns
Gnossiennes – Erik Satie
I Talk to the Wind – King Crimson
The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys – Traffic
In a Sentimental Mood – Duke Ellington, John Coltrane
Stolen Moments – Oliver Nelson
So What – Miles Davis
Welcome – The Who
Jigsaw Puzzle – The Rolling Stones
Two of Us – The Beatles
French Connection score
Z Score
A Man for All Seasons score
Movies
A Face in the Crowd
Paths of Glory
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
Sammy and Rosie Get Laid
The Conversation
The Parallax View
A Man for All Seasons
Any Film by Frederick Wiseman
Television
The Sopranos
Breaking Bad
Better Call Saul
Columbo
House
The West Wing
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
Fawlty Towers
The Burns and Allen Show
The Jack Benny Program
Star Trek Next Generation
The Prisoner
NotMax
@NotMax
One more:
Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased)
prostratedragon
Terrible news about Lytton. Apologies for tying in my personal silliness, but one of my favorite touchstones is the Twin Peaks saga. One reason for this is that it touches on a great many other subjects in a way that rewards attention to details.
One thread of details is the wider Northwest, from about Montana to the Pacific coast, and extending into the Canadian Rockies. Following some of the story details, one can learn a little about the Revelstoke to Eagle Pass area, and the nearby site of Craigellachie, where the Last Spike of the Canadian Pacific Railway was driven. Lytton is, or was, not terribly far from these sites.
The Wikipedia article on Lytton has an interesting note about the origin of the name:
Yes, that Bulwer-Lytton.
Martin
@prostratedragon: It was a dark and stormy night indeed.
Steeplejack (phone)
@NotMax:
Noted. Got me to look up The Saint and the original Danger Man theme.
prostratedragon
@Martin: Alas. Pyrocumulus is a new word I’m not sure I wanted to learn.
prostratedragon
A respite from the Peter Gunn soundtrack:
Steeplejack (phone)
@Wyatt Salamanca:
“Stolen Moments” is my favorite jazz song. I love Oliver Nelson’s original, but I also love Ahmad Jamal’s version.
JWR
@Wyatt Salamanca:
Ah, two of my favorite episodes! I also like the one with, I think, Robert Culp, the one where he plays some sort of motivational speaker who uses a tape recorder to accomplish his dirty deed.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Mention of The Saint led to seeking out the theme for Ellery Queen.
Tehanu
Blazing Saddles. We’ve probably seen it 60 or 70 times. I remember we went to the 25th anniversary screening at a large theater and there were only about 30 people there — but after about 3 minutes I realized that everyone there, including me, was reciting the dialogue along with the actors.
Lord of the Rings, all 3 volumes.
Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony.
Steeplejack (phone)
@prostratedragon:
“Lujon.” Should have been used at Jackie Treehorn’s party in The Big Lebowski. Hell, it might have been.
Steeplejack (phone)
@NotMax:
You’ll remember this one: Checkmate.
And I’m out with Route 66.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Was an avid viewer of Checkmate. Sebastian Cabot, sporting one of the few and far between beards seen on the tube.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Bonus boogie.
;)
Steeplejack (phone)
@NotMax:
I would love to see reruns of that. I always thought the footage was lost (like Wally Cox’s Mr. Peepers), but they got the credits footage from somewhere. ?
Steeplejack (phone)
@NotMax:
77 Sunset Strip was a good show for its time. I watched it on MeTV a year or two ago. And Edd Byrnes was a better actor than his “Kookie” image. He got a raw deal from the studio that pretty much crippled his career.
MisterForkbeard
I don’t know if anyone’s still around, but I’m about to attend a remote wedding in the Philippines for a friend. This covid thing is interesting – they set up a google meetup for locals who weren’t vaccinated and for guests who couldn’t make it. Welcome to the future, I suppose.
Should be fun, though I don’t think I’ll stay up for more than the first 30 minutes or so. :)
Mary G
ACAB
NotMax
BTW, Columbo trivia.
The show’s creators’ first choice to play the part?
Bing Crosby.
opiejeanne
@NotMax: That’s hard to believe.
Peter Falk was the perfect choice. I remember the fuss that we never got to see his wife that he mentioned all the time.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Mary G:
Comments are ?.
“Well, at least now we know the gender of the new police station.”
“Tired: defund the police. Wired: defuse the police.”
NotMax
@opiejeanne
Straight from the horse’s mouth, as it were.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@James E Powell: In the Johnny Rivers version, it always sounds to me as if he is singing “secret Asian man”. One of my favorite monegreens.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@MisterForkbeard: My wife has been “in Italy” this week attending an academic conference via Zoom. She “flew” over Sunday night by moving her watch ahead 6 hours and then making a fairly successful attempt to live the week on European time.
Listening to today’s session 2 rooms away, heard people introducing themselves from Australia, South Africa, Europe and the US.
Amir Khalid
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
Secret Asian Man, did you say?
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): Reportedly Patrick McGoohan hated that song. Fortunately for us, he didn’t get a vote.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Best Colombo was episode S5E3 were he ingeniously outwits the CIA to nab a double agent/murderer
Most charming episode S10E7 were he has a romance with Faye Dunaway (at her best) in a twist of “Chinatown” (forget it Lieutenant, it’s Chinatown)
mrmoshpotato
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
Hehe
Steeplejack (phone)
This news is so quiet I almost missed it: “Ivanka quietly helped out after Surfside tower collapse.”
Brachiator
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Is she ordering Italian takeout?
mrmoshpotato
RudePundit’s tweet is Something Good.
Now we can only drop W, Dick, Condi, Colin and every other “Why do you hate the troops?!” bastard into Iraq for the WMD hunt.
Fuck Rummy!
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
Whoa, talk about dropping a skunk into the pea patch. So much for the balm of respite.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: I thought MaryG broke the barrier with her ACAB post.
Anyways, I’m sure I’ll curse more about war criminals tomorrow.
Good night.
Gvg
@Martin: Florida is a peninsula. That means large water bodies on both sides. Oceans moderate nearby land temperatures. We won’t get it as bad as the rest of the southeast. That isn’t fair, but it is reality. We have long hot summers but we don’t get as hot as say inland Georgia or even some days in the 90’s are unusual.
We are actually in danger of more winter freezes. If the Gulf Stream stops, which they say is possible, it could mess up a lot. And of course hurricanes will get worse.
WaterGirl
@mrmoshpotato: It was comment #73, after all!
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
The primary difference being hers was an of the moment breaking story.
opiejeanne
@NotMax: Oh, I believe you. There are other unimaginable first choices for iconic roles in lots of movies.
I should have said “it’s hard to imagine him in that role. “
Miss Bianca
@Amir Khalid: Late to this thread, but now I think I’ve got to see A League of Their Own – sounds like it might be the only Madonna performance I’d really get into besides Desperately Seeking Susan (one of *my* “oldie but goodie comfort views”).
@Tehanu: And I’m with you on Blazing Saddles. It may have replaced Monty Python and the Holy Grail in my personal pantheon of “movie I’ve seen so many times I can chant the dialogue along with the actors.”
J R in WV
@CaseyL:
Pretty sure those are pics of a red fox, which I caught with my handheld Lumix in our little piece of desert as we departed the building site years back in the dusk on evening.
If it’s a Sonoran Red Fox, a pack of them can carry and lift a small desert deer up into a tree for safe-keeping and private dinner. Huge tail, not coyote-like at all. That’s my $0.02 on wildlife ID.
The bobcats are also swell. Don’t think this set includes a lion, could be wrong, lions don’t have spots, do have a huge long tail.