Hardcore Decorating

I got this video in an e-mail from Paul D. and don't know whose house it is or where it is but I DO know they had to start setting it up back in October sometime. Click the video.

Macy's Rick Rolls America!

I think Matt Lauer was clueless.

Happy Thanksgiving

Family and pie and parades and football. That weird little bottle of Gravy Master. A pile of coats on a bed upstairs. Parking the car around the corner so there's room in the driveway for our guests. The way the kitchen smells like it does on no other day of the year.

I stood out in the backyard with my dog at 6:30 this morning and thought it over. A lot to be thankful for. A lot.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Ralph

If you're a northeast PA native and closer to fifty than forty you most certainly remember a band called "Ralph". They were the band in the mid, late 70's. They did a lot of great originals but also a KILLER Beatles set in their show and usually concluded the evening with their rendition of "Mac Arthur Park". With the horn section I think there were nine of them altogether featuring Billy Lombardi on guitar and lead vocals, Buddy Mecca on drums, and "Tex" Horwitz on trombone and sly remarks.

"Ralph" was a great band who had a brush with the big time but it never really materialized for them in the way their talent deserved.

I can still remember my parents asking, "Where'd ya go tonight?"

"Oh we went to see Ralph."

"Oh, Ralph? How was he?"

"Ralph" recorded at least one album that I'm aware of. I don't know that it was ever even released but they cut it in the Abbey Road studios in London somewhere during early to mid 70's if my swiss cheese memory serves. I remember one particular evening when I went to see them at what was then Dunmore Central Catholic High School ("You goin' to DCC tonight?"), later Bishop O'Hara and now Holy Cross.

Billy Lombardi was talking about just returning from London and their album and how they'd made friends with "some big names who you might recognize" while they were there. When the band went on break the gym floor cleared as everyone went outside to smoke or take a pull on whatever whiskey they'd managed to sneak out of the house and I saw a tall guy in a leather hat standing at the stage and talking to Billy and I remember at the time thinking "That guy reminds me of George Harrison in the picture on the "All Things Must Pass" album cover."

He stood at the stage for a few minutes then finally turned and began toward the door, walking past the sound board, the only thing in the middle of an empty gym floor. And I watched him all the while. The place was dimly lit. I couldn't make out much about his face, just his hat and a fringed brown leather jacket and the weird feeling I had...and as he neared the exit I yelled in his direction, "Hey George!"

He stopped in his tracks, turned and looked, then turned back and continued out the door and I never saw him again.

I can't in my wildest dreams imagine that for any reason at all George Harrison was standing in the gym at Dunmore Central Catholic High School because he'd befriended the guys in "Ralph" but it was a moment that I'll always wonder about and probably never forget.

All that leads up to this clip which I had no idea existed but my good friend since the first day of 8th grade, Paul Dudrich, who I went all through high school with and we ended up as roommates in college sent me the link.

This clip isn't the greatest quality but if you're of age it brings back a lot of great memories. It was recorded in 1979 at WVIA studios.

...with the "other side of their 45", here's "Ralph"!

A Heads Up

Comin' up...a three day week that includes the second of five remote broadcasts with the Marine Corps and their annual "Toys for Tots" drive on Tuesday at the Viewmont Mall...then Thanksgiving break! We're off Turkey Day and Black Friday too.

I'm also in for a three day week the week after Thanksgiving. Having a little picnic known as eye surgery which is a helluva way to get two days off work but I'll take it.

Sprinkle in a few more "Toys for Tot's" remotes in the weeks ahead and we'll pick a winner in the Rock107 Loud and Rowdy Christmas Party which happens the evening of Friday, December 19th.

But the MORNING of Friday, December 19th, from 6AM to 10AM we're kicking off our Christmas vacation ("Vacation? Again?!?") with the D&W/Purv's Christmas Celebration! Telling you about it now should give you more than enough notice to get that Friday morning off so you can join us. Chip the Beer Guy will be there, so will the lovely Ruth Miller, Kristen Brooks, and more.

We're also expecting Guy Hagner from "One Guy Brewing" to join us with another of his outstanding hand-crafted brews, this one, a Christmas speciality! Mary from "Electric City Roasting Company" is bringing some fine coffees and if their lip warmers arrive in time we'll also have some German style Christmas music from northeast PA's premiere oompah band, "The Schutzengiggles!" This is an indoor/outdoor event but the hazards of warm lips pressed against a cold tuba mouthpiece won't be too much of a concern since Brian from Purv's says the tent will be heated!

So hey, it's a Friday and it's the week before Christmas, I'm sure you can finagle a way to call in "festive" that morning and join us for the D&W/Purv's Christmas Celebration at Purv's Beer & More at 954 Main Street in Peckville, Friday, December 19th from 6AM to 10AM!

Really?

The much delayed Tom Cruise movie "Valkyrie" is finally about to be released just in time for the holidays. What's the old joke about not so much released as escaped?

Based on a true story, Cruise plays Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, the leader of a plan to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944.

The plan didn't work and people who've previewed the movie say it doesn't either. Just going by the trailer I'd say Werner Klemperer played a more convincing Nazi officer than Cruise.

You tell me.

Four Score and Seven Years Ago

Actually it was seven score and five years ago or a hundred forty-five years ago today, November 19th, 1863, that Abraham Lincoln delivered his "Gettysburg Address" in dedication of Soldiers' National Cemetery. It was a two minute speech that many people in attendance didn't even realize had been delivered before it was over but the words are considered by many as "the best summation in the nation's history of the meaning and price of freedom."

In Gettysburg this Saturday the anniversary will be marked with a brief memorial service and wreath-laying ceremony at Soldiers' National Cemetery beginning at 10:15AM.

This year's keynote speaker is Ken Burns.

At 1PM the Remembrance Day Parade and Ceremonies take place featuring the annual parade of Civil War living history and reenactment groups.

There's plenty more going on through the weekend, click HERE and HERE for info. It's all free and Gettysburg is an easy three hour drive down I-81 South to Harrisburg then Rt. 581 East, at Rt. 15 go south, exit at Rt. 30 or Rt. 97 to get to the center of town.

Thanks to my pal Al Piela, who along with being the first D&W show producer back in the day is also a Washington. D.C. television personality, real estate mogul, and Civil War reenactor who attends the event every year, for the heads up and the info!

May 2009

Wanna See AC/DC?

Got an e-mail from a listener who bought four tickets for AC/DC at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, New Jersey for the show on Wednesday, 11/19/08 but now she can't use the tickets and wants to sell them.

Four tickets, section 240, row P. She paid $430, will sell 'em for an even $400. If you're interested shoot me an e-mail me at webster@rock107.com.

Lil Bill O'Reilly

Evidently there's a series of these on YouTube. Haven't researched who does them. I laughed.

Here Comes Santa Claus

Ready or otherwise, the holidays will be on us before you know it. Thanksgiving is what, two weeks away? Then the Christmas parties begin and of course we're doing our part at Rock107. We have a station Christmas party for employees of course. This year it's on a friggin' Tuesday. Nice. In years past I used to get to work the day after the Christmas party no matter what but the last couple of years, when our party was on a Thursday, they've given us Friday off. Haven't heard a word about getting Wednesday off after this year's soiree but I'm not really worried about it.

But the big news, the Rock107 Loud and Rowdy Christmas Party. That's a party for you if you win! More details in the next couple of days on the radio but in a nutshell, whoever wins gets to invite fifty friends for dinner and an open bar and a big pile of presents. (We'll mail you the 1099 but that won't be for a couple of weeks so enjoy the tax-free delusion while it lasts.) That party is on Friday, December 19th. But on that very Friday MORNING, we'll be back at Purv's Beer & More on Main Street in Peckville for the D&W/Purv's Christmas Blowout! 6 to 10AM, heated tent, musical entertainment, Guy Hagner from One Guy Brewing, and Santa Claus too. Plus beer. Mark your calendars.

If I Worked at the Bank I'd Be Off Today

I know, you can't get the flu from a flu shot. My friend and MySpace nurse Jeanine along with the CDC say so. Jeanine did say however, that with a flu shot you can get an inflammatory response "when your body is building up antibodies to fight the actual flu. An inflammatory response can make you feel like you have the flu. Sort of. Take Advil (for inflammation), drink fluids (no beer), and just rest." (This blog does not offer medical advice, see your doctor.)

I got my flu shot at a checkup at my doctor's office on Election Day and had felt oddly out of sorts since. Headache, achy, fever, etc. But feeling better this afternoon and I'll be back at work Wednesday. Thanks for the e-mails and messages!

I Am He As You Are He...

John Lennon claimed to have written the first two lines of "I Am the Walrus" over two separate acid-trip weekends so I don't know that he actually had "global consciousness" in mind at the time. But that every person on earth may be connected in some nebulous form of collective thought seems to be what's happening in the results of an experiment that began in the late 1990's and continues to this day at Princeton University.

Back then Dr. Roger Nelson had a simple electronic palm-sized device in his lab called a random event generator. It's a little box that spews out an endless and random stream of 1's and 0's, the electronic version of flipping a coin in terms of probability in that over any given period of time the 1's and 0's generated are of approximately the same amount. If you were to count them over say a day or a week you'd find the device had generated X amount of 1's and also X amount of 0's. And if you took those numbers and plotted them on a graph you would essentially get a more or less straight, flat line.

But Dr. Nelson soon discovered that whenever either a man-made or natural event of significant size or import occurred, the randomness of the numbers was affected. When a billion people watched the funeral of Princess Diana on television, the graph generated was so far from the usual flat line result that he began to wonder if there might be something to the idea of a global consciousness, that somehow every living person is tapped into an energy that is affected by the circumstances and surroundings of people experiencing a particular event. It might explain intuition, hunches, or deja vu.

And that's not even the interesting part. Dr. Nelson has since overseen the installation of a network of these generators referred to as "eggs". There are now 65 of them worldwide, all of them linked to a central database at Princeton. And it seems this worldwide "egg" network appears to have the ability to make predictions. They seem to be seeing into the future!

The eggs obviously aren't predicting anything specifically. That refinement, if possible, is years maybe centuries down the road. But the results show there was a deviation in the expected graph several hours before 9/11 and a similar aberration occurred a few hours before the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed nearly a quarter million people. The website lists a string of events and corresponding inordinate "egg" graphs including the latest, the results of the American Presidential election.

The experiment has come to be known as the Global Consciousness Project. Check out the website by clicking HERE.

I stumbled on all this after Googling "I predict the future" because you can find anything on the internet and I was hoping to get next week's Powerball numbers.

Obama

The people have spoken. Barack Obama will become the 44th President of the United States.

If this is not your first time here you probably know I voted for John McCain. Neither of the candidates thrilled me on any front but I felt that, at least in matters of national defense, it was an easy decision.

Congratulations to all who supported President-elect Obama. This is how our democracy is supposed to work. I hope the confidence the Obama faithful have placed in their candidate is borne out.

Do It

It's finally here, Election Day 2008 and remember, if you don't get off your derriere and get out there and vote today you really don't have much right to complain after the fact. So do your part. I know lots of people say, "Ah, what's one vote going to matter?" But if you and a hundred thousand other people felt that way about their individual vote I think you can see how the numbers add up. Every vote does count, it's not an inconvenience it's a right but more, it's a responsibility. Vote!

And a Free Coffee Too!

John McCain appeared on Saturday Night Live last night. He sat in on Weekend Update but he also opened the show alongside Tina Fey. Both, funny bits. Here's the open.

(There's a Starbucks ad at the end so I'll save you the time, if you go to Starbuck's on Election Day and tell them you voted they'll give you a cup of coffee.)