Category: Music

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Saturday Morning Shenanigans

These are actually my ‘Friday Night Shenanigans’, but since I didn’t even get back home until about 12:40 AM this morning it’s all good. I actually slept in this morning until nearly 8:30 AM – about 4 hours later than normal. Patricia, Venus, and Carol kept me up and out and about until past MIDNIGHT !

I’m looking at my Shops At Sunset Place parking receipt that shows me arriving there at 4:17 PM on Friday afternoon and departing at 12:14 AM on Saturday morning (3 minutes shy of 8 hours). I only paid $6, but that included a MASSIVE discount courtesy of the AMC-24 Theatres. I saw “Adventureland” last night. Good flick about the life and times of various employees of a rundown low budget amusement park in the Pittsburgh suburbs of the Summer of 1987. It was light on comedy, as it played out more like a classic episode of “Dawson’s Creek“. I got what I expected out of it – a high-quality 4.0 star movie that was well worth my time watching it.

After the flick (and a bit of shopping) at my former playground (which is definitely showing its age after a decade) I met up with the fun girls of Patricia, Venus, and Carol at Splitsville. In a nutshell we ate ENORMOUS quantities of food and cracked each other up severely. Maybe Venus will post some of those pictures up on her long-neglected blog. If not then I may grab a few of them myself and post them up on here for all of you cats to see. After that we actually bowled 10 rounds. After Venus reminded me on the proper way to hold a bowling ball and then release it down the lane I proceeded to stage a come-from-behind victory over all three of the girls. My final score was a ’90’, and that was well enough for the victory. This just in – I’ve only bowled perhaps 5 times in my entire life. It’s just one of those things that comes naturally to me once I get going with it. I’m also pretty good at Wii Bowling. My brother showed me how to play that one day last year, and that same day I was suddenly better at it than him and his wife !

Well those are my ‘Shenanigans’ from last night. I had a fun Friday night out on the town at one of my all-time favourite shopping complexes here in America’s Riviera with a few of my favourite people on this journey. Here’s hoping that we can do it all over again real soon !

Later tonight I’ve got a totally rippin’ jam that absolutely defined the Miami urban music scene of 1988. It got everyone of all colors and creeds out together dancing in the streets in unison. Be sure to check it out on a hot new ‘Saturday Night Retro’. You won’t regret it dudes.

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God Music

Monday Night Countdown

For over 23 years now (since the end of 1985) I’ve been compiling my favourite hit songs of the week. At this hobby’s peak I was compiling two TOP 40 music charts every week. At one point it even became a TOP 50 music chart. For nearly a dozen years (1995 to 2007) these weekly hit music charts appeared on the web at MASSIVESMASH.COM (my former popular web site). Nowadays I simply compile a TOP 15 music chart every week (offline). The TOP 5 out of the TOP 15 is posted here on the blog at this location.

Here are my TOP 5 current favourite songs:

5.  The Unavoidable Battle Of Feeling On The Outside – FM Static

4.  Control – Clemency (former # 1)

3.  Back To The Five – Ruth (former # 1)

2.  The Difference – Philmont (former # 1)

1.  Set The Dial – Run Kid Run

I’m a big fan of Run Kid Run out of SE Illinois / NW Kentucky. I like their style. Every single song that they’ve released to the radio since I’ve been on this journey with them has been a great song – “I’ll Forever Sing”, “Sing To Me”, “Captives Come Home”, “Sure Shot”, and “Set The Dial”. This is a band that I would love to see LIVE in concert. I’m a fan. Oh yeah – this is the most important part of it all:  They love and follow Jesus Christ. That makes them rebels. I dig that.

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History Life Music Radio Television

Saturday Night Retro

In 1979 I was an 11-year-old that became a 12-year-old in June. I graduated from Magnolia Elementary School in Lanham Maryland (right in my own neighbourhood):

Magnolia Elementary School, Lanham Maryland
Magnolia Elementary School, Lanham Maryland

That was my school for Kindergarten from 1972 to 1973, and then again for 3RD, 4TH, 5TH, and 6TH grades from 1975 to 1979. The street that I lived on (Red Wing Lane) was located directly in front of the school by a couple hundred yards, but that was not the proper way to walk to and from school because you had to climb the fence and walk in other people’s yards to do so. The proper way to walk to and from school was up / down the hill and over to the left-side main entrance.

Incidentally the more things change the more things stay the same. That school looks exactly the way it used to look 30 to 35 years ago – right up to the facade of the building, the spray paint residue on the left-hand side, the breezeway out front, and the lightposts. A lot has changed since the mid-1970s. The outside of that school is not one of those changes.

If you walk through the front entrance, take an immediate right at the first hallway, and take that hallway down all the way to the very end you should come across a big painted map of the U.S.A. directly on the surface of the wall (if it’s still there). My class painted that as a special project way back then. I specifically painted Hawaii. It was a masterpiece !

It’s amazing the things that I remember from back in the day.

And now for your ultimate ‘Saturday Night Retro’ review I present to you this # 1 gold pop smash that everyone was singing and dancing to in their living rooms and in their cars just before 1979 morphed into 1980. This my friends is English musician Robin Scott – better known at the time as simply ‘M’. Here’s the official music video for “Pop Muzik” – one of the first videos ever made for television – more than two years before MTV even went on-the-air. This video was sleek, stylish, solid, and state-of-the-art for its time. Check it out:

Until next Saturday night my friends – keep on makin’ history !

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Blogging Career God Holidays Home Money Music Radio Weather

Thursday Night Mini Thoughts

It’s the fastest-growing weekly series in the entire history of this blog:

– You know how we do this.
– So let’s get this party started.
– Complete sentences not required here.
– It was another interesting and exciting day at work.
– I even got into heated discussions with one of my closest coworkers.
– It’s all good.
– My worst day on this journey – far greater than my best day beforehand.
– I love going to work in the morning.
– I’ve been able to state that for only the past 20½ months.
– My career renaissance began at the end of July 2007.
– That’s when I moved from my previous job to my current job.
– I physically moved one-tenth of one mile south to my current job.
– The difference is that of night and day – dark and light – evil and good.
– Dear Lord I pray to you that I don’t spend any money at all next Monday.
– I currently have one of the largest VI$A bills in modern recorded history.
– The cold air outside is almost gone, and my A.C. is back on again.
– We hit 52°F early this morning with an identical wind chill.
– It was 53°F early on Wednesday morning with a wind chill in the 40s.
– Get ready for the mid-80s to return this weekend and stay indefinitely.
– We’re gearing up for a busy Easter Sunday at Life Pointe Church.
– This is the Sunday that you need to wake up early and get to the theatre.
– Gather up the crew, stuff them into the soccer-mom minivan, and get there.
– I can’t wait to see Ela before the first service.
– Ela is one of God’s many miracles.
– Here’s a video for a song that I discovered quite early on during this journey.
– It’s from Watashi Wa.
– They were from Southern California.
– They were together as a band from 2000 to 2004.
– They were rather dysfunctional as a band.
– They loved Jesus.
– They managed to release this gem during the Summer Of 2003.
– I was far from God during that Summer.
– Watch this video and listen intently to what the’re singing.
– I’m not a lot, but you can have “All Of Me”.