"Newhart" - Best TV Series Finale of All-Time

Kind Couple Make Bench Out of Grieving Woman's Stillborn Baby's Crib

Nice article on Yahoo today about a woman who had bought a crib for her unborn baby. The baby, however, was stillborn. A man who makes benches was at this woman's garage sale along with his wife. They spotted the crib in the garage and asked if it was for sale, and after the mother told them about the stillbirth, they went home and made a bench from the crib and gave it to the woman as a gift. How's that for nice people!?

Yahoo Article

Making Flower and Water Gardens With Brass Instrument Bells

I stumbled upon this photo of an old broken saxophone hanging on a wall today, and I thought, Wouldn't that look great with some flowers sticking out of the horn?

Turns out I'm not the only one to have thought of it. Look at some of these neat creations people have come up with using old, broken musical instruments in gardens:

Yes, that's a piano below.

The saxophone waterfall below sells for $5,000! You could easily make one yourself for about $200.

This got me thinking about old phonograph bell horns. A lot of them were made to look like a flower and some had flowers painted on them as well:

I think some of the skinnier horns like those used on the early Edison cylinder phonographs almost look like a vase anyway. Doesn't this look like it's just begging to have a bouquet of flowers placed in there?

The Edison phonographs can be expensive though even if they aren't working. What you can sometimes find that's similar but cheaper is an old music box that's made to resemble a phonograph like this one:

Lastly, I got to thinking about the old RCA Victor phonographs that always had the picture of the dog looking at the phonograph horn as though he was wondering how sound was coming out of it. Wouldn't it be cool to have a phonograph machine like this with flowers coming out of the horn and a stuffed dog up close like he was sniffing the flowers?

File under "Random Thoughts"....

The Legend of 1900

This is a neat movie about a man who was born on a cruise ship in 1900, and he lived his entire life on that ship, never once having stepped onto dry ground. He became a piano prodigy as a young boy who just sat down at the piano one day and knew instinctively how to play. He soon became the focus of the ship's jazz band. He could play things no one had ever thought of and could write incredibly complex harmonies on the spot. People from all over the world took cruises just to hear him play. He was thought to be the best musician in the world. But he wanted no part of going on dry land and making a fortune. He refused to tour or make recordings. He did make a recording once but took the master disc after he heard it and smashed it saying he changed his mind because, "I don't want my music going anywhere without me." I thought that was very unique in storytelling. Most artists want the world to experience their artwork and want to be remembered after they're dead through their art. But if people wanted to hear this guy, they'd have to book passage and see him onboard the ship. And once he would be dead and gone his music would be completely forgotten because there were no recordings or sheet music of it. In fact, he often made up entire tunes on the spot, and they would never be played again. Only the audience that was there on that particular night would ever hear it. He probably spontaneously composed thousands of tunes throughout his life, many of them only heard one time. So his music truly never did go anywhere without him. I thought it was a very unusual kind of story. It's not very often I see such a unique approach. I don't think there are very many unique approaches left.

A Cuter Skooter

I caught this on Jay Leno's Garage yesterday. Randy Grubb styles car bodies to fit existing chassis but in this case he built six bodies to retrofit an existing line of 3-wheeled scooter. They look like the kind of toy race cars kids had back in the 1940s. They cost $25,000, but unfortunately he only made the six and will never make anymore because he likes his designs to be one of a kind and then moves on to something else. Even the six scooters are not exactly alike.

4th Grade Girl Playing Varisty Basketball

This is Jaden Newman. I guess this must be a private school she plays for because a public school wouldn't be allowed to play a 4th grader in high school. I'm impressed she can shoot as far out as she can at that age, let alone do it in a game against defenders (although the defenders aren't very good). Her dribbling is also very impressive. If she gets that first step around you, she gone. She averages 14.8 point, 7.5 assists, and 3 steals per game. Her shooting percentage is a whopping 58%!

The Other Elvis

One of Elvis' biggest songs was Polk Salad Annie, but do you remember who wrote the song and had the first hit recording of it? I didn't think so. It was Tony Joe White, who also could have passed for Elvis brother back in the day.



This made me think of a yet to be fully developed genre of music I like to call Swamp Rock. Other Swamp Rock songs would be Amos Moses by Jerry Reed:



And of course there's a couple of well known Swamp Rockers by Creedence Clearwater Revival (still one of my favorite names for a band) like Green River and Born On The Bayou:



And one of my favorite guitar pickers, Roy Buchanan, had a great Swampy version of Haunted House:



Can you hear the funky Cajun string that ties all these songs together? These songs were born of the Swamp I tell ya.