Happy Accidents Do Happen...!

Ever since I read this story over at History.com, the song has been running around in my head!

I'm sure you know what I mean! We all have had one or more songs like that from time to time! Anyway, I hope you find this interesting.

Jul 7, 1962:

"The Stripper," by David Rose, becomes the #1 pop hit in America

As points of shared cultural reference, certain pieces of movie and television soundtrack music have become nearly indispensable to our modern existence. The theme from The Twilight Zone, for instance, is used to indicate the occurrence of a spooky coincidence. Or the theme from Jaws is hummed just as one person sneaks up behind another in a pool. When people sing the familiar themes from famous movies like Psycho or Deliverance, they make an instantly understandable shorthand reference to a specific idea or emotion, without having to speak a single word. The same is true for a snippet of soundtrack from a very obscure 1950s television program called Burlesque. That piece of music by David Rose is to acts of old-fashioned striptease roughly what the theme from Rocky is to early-morning winter jogs. Composed in 1958 and released as a single four years later, the hammy tune called "The Stripper" became a #1 pop hit in the United States on July 7, 1962.

David Rose was a composer and arranger who had a huge hit record back in 1944 with "Holiday For Strings," but who is better known as a prolific composer for television from the 1950s to the 1980s. While working on the short-lived television show Burlesque in 1958, Rose decided to score a dressing-room scene with music playing softly in the background as if barely audible from backstage. "So I wrote eight measures of strip music and forgot about it," Rose later told Billboard magazine.

Purely as a joke, Rose used a few spare minutes of studio time shortly thereafter to have the brass, the clarinets and the percussion section of his orchestra record a slightly extended version of what he still regarded as a silly throwaway. Rose had a handful of copies of the untitled number pressed on vinyl and handed out to orchestra members as novelty gifts, and that was the end of that. Until four years later, that is, when someone at his label, MGM Records, pulled the one-minute-and-55-second master recording out of the archives and had it put on the "B" side of Rose's string-orchestra version of "Ebb Tide." When a Los Angeles disc jockey flipped "Ebb Tide" and heard the piece now entitled "The Stripper," he thought it was so funny that he played it almost continuously during his program one day. Soon "The Stripper" was a regional, then a national #1 hit, and well on its way to becoming a permanent piece of American pop culture.

The first thing I did after posting this was to go to YouTube and find the song! I don't know if it helped or made it worse! I have to admit, this song still rocks!

Coffee on the patio this morning. I'll turn on the oldies station on the radio!

Let's Go Tripping This Friday...!

Have you ever noticed that Mother Nature comes up with many, many beautiful places for us to wonder at?

Way too often, though, these places are not close enough for most of us to visit! Here is one that is fairly close, considering. Man, from the pictures I've seen this place is pretty amazing!

Fly Geyser Reno

Nevada

Fly Geyser was accidentally created in 1916 while drilling a well for water, though they didn’t start forming until 1960. The spot picked had an unknown geothermal area. The heated water eventually found a weak spot in the well and pushed itself to the surface. The minerals started building up to create a mini volcano of about 5 ft. tall, with layers of terraces. The terraces have different colors from the minerals in the water and the geothermal water has found more weak spots to create two more geysers nearby. The water spouts continuously and fills holes and hollows in the terraces, to give the area a surreal look. Water where there isn’t much water to begin with has attracted swans, ducks, and other animals to the area. Fish also swim through the ponds, introduced by an unknown human dropping the eggs in the water.

Let's have our coffee out on the patio this morning! We have a couple of new folks joining us and that's always a nice thing! Welcome to all our new friends!

What Were They Thinking...?

If you want to see some folks get really upset, start placing bans on displaying the American flag on the graves of veterans!

To some it may sound like it is just a minor thing, but I don't think I would want to be on the city council after this!

Texas Town Bans Flags on Veterans’ Graves

A Texas town is reconsidering a controversial ordinance that it approved earlier this month that would ban the displaying of flags at gravesites.

The ordinance, approved by the City Council of Mineral Wells, states that flags would be allowed on graves at the town’s Woodland Park Cemetery only one week before and after Memorial Day and Veterans’ Day. July 4 and Labor Day, other popular flag holidays, were not part of the approved time frame.

After citizens expressed outrage, flooding the city council office with calls Monday, the council scheduled a public meeting for July 10 to reconsider the new flag policy.

Veteran Robert Veach, whose father is buried at Woodland Park, was one of the first to speak out against the ordinance, telling the Mineral Wells Index that he believed he should be allowed to put a flag at his father’s grave 365 days a year.

The ordinance was adopted by the Woodland Park Cemetery Board, said Peggy Gustin, the administrative clerk for Mineral Wells, because the number of items placed at gravesites, which included teddy bears, statues, bird baths and squirrel feeders, were becoming a few too many.

“Excessive adornment at the cemetery was causing it to be unsightly, so the cemetery board came up with a solution that they thought would work for all,” Gustin told ABCNews.com.

After several public meetings were held over several months, the ordinance passed. The last two meetings were held specifically for the public to voice opinions, according to a news release from the City Council. The final meeting was publicized on the front page of the local newspaper. No one one showed up to voice objections, according to the news release.

But within days of the ordinance passing, the city received complaints from angry citizens, including Veach.

“The city of Mineral Wells would like to clarify its position in that this action was not in any way taken with the intention of bringing any dishonor or disrespect to any of our Veterans, past or present,” a news release on the City Council’s website said.

The ordinance also stated that flowers and decorations were allowed for only 21 days after a funeral, and that the flowers must be in a nonglass vase and would be removed once they became “unsightly.” But only the flag provsion of the ordinance is under reconsideration.

As for the July 4th holiday, flags will be allowed in the cemetery, Gustin said.

“People are welcome to do their flags on July 4,” Gustin said. “Nothing is going to be done considering the flags until after the meeting on July 10. They won’t be removed. People can place them.”

Sometimes you have to wonder just what kind of idiots we have in office. It's like the inmates are running the asylum, ya know?

I think we should have our coffee and tea in the kitchen this morning. I have some fresh apple pie...if Mom hasn't eaten it all, that is!

Celebrating With Lewis And Clark...!

Even the early explorers couldn't help but enjoy a good celebration on the 4TH of July!

It's good to know that these two took the time to appreciate the founding of such a great country, and to share the holiday for the first time west of the Mississippi!

Jul 4, 1804:

Lewis and Clark celebrate July 4

Staging the first-ever Fourth of July celebration west of the Mississippi River, Lewis and Clark fire the expedition cannon and order an extra ration of whiskey for the men.

Six weeks earlier, Lewis and Clark left American civilization to depart on their famous journey. Since their departure, the party of 29 men--called the Corps of Discovery--had made good progress, traveling up the Missouri River in a 55-foot keelboat and two dugout canoes. When the wind was behind them, Lewis and Clark raised the keelboat sail, and on a few occasions, managed to travel 20 miles in a single day.

By early July, the expedition had reached the northeastern corner of the present-day state of Kansas. The fertility of the land astonished the two leaders of the expedition. Clark wrote of the many deer, "as plenty as Hogs about a farm," and with his usual creative spelling, praised the tasty "rasberreis perple, ripe and abundant."

On this day in 1804, the expedition stopped near the mouth of a creek flowing out of the western prairie. The men asked the captains if they knew if the creek had a name. Knowing none, they decided to call it Independence Creek in honor of the day.

The expedition continued upstream, making camp that evening at an abandoned Indian village. To celebrate the Fourth of July, Lewis and Clark commanded that the keelboat cannon be fired at sunset. They distributed an extra ration of whiskey to the men, and the explorers settled back to enjoy the peaceful Kansas night. In his final journal entry of the day, Clark wondered at the existence of, "So magnificent a Senerey in a Contry thus Situated far removed from the Sivilised world to be enjoyed by nothing but the Buffalo Elk Deer & Bear in which it abounds & Savage Indians."

The next day, the travelers resumed their journey up the Missouri River toward the distant Pacific Coast. They would not pass by their pleasant camping spot in Kansas again until their return journey, two years and many adventures later.

Guess this was the start of many such celebrations all across this wonderful place we call home! I would say that from long ago, up to the present day, even with all our faults, we have plenty to celebrate!

I hope we never lose track of our history and the efforts of so many to bring us to where we are today!

Fresh coffee on the patio this morning. Happy Independence Day to one and all!

A Great Fish Story...!

You know how many fishermen are always getting blamed for telling tall tales about fishing? Well, this one had pictures!

Makes a big difference when you can back up your best fishing tale with not only witnesses, but with pictures! How good is that?

Eagle snatches Lake Padden fisherman's catch right off his line

Credit: Rick Warren
by KING 5 News
Posted on July 1, 2012 at 11:53 AM

A Ferndale fisherman had a close encounter with a bald eagle a few weeks ago.

Bruce Huntley was fishing on Lake Padden near Bellingham with buddy Rick Warren when the eagle swooped down and snatched the fish on his line just 10 feet in front of his boat.

Huntley told the Bellingham Herald that the bird "scared the holy bejesus" out of him.

Warren had his camera with him and got a couple great shots of the eagle. He told the Herald that getting the shots was a lot better than catching a fish.

I'll bet that this ol' boy's fishing tales will carry a lot more weight now! He might be able to get a job as a fishing guide for those that only want to fish with a camera!

What a great shot! Wanna bet he has 'em framed?

Coffee outside this morning, but we might have to head to the kitchen when the rain starts!

Another Mysterious Monday...!

Nothing like a good mystery to start off the week!

This is especially true about mysteries that, as of yet, don't have a good explanation, ya know? If we could explain it, the mystery wouldn't be fun anymore! Know what I mean?

Grooved Spheres

Over the last few decades, miners in South Africa have been digging up mysterious metal spheres. Origin unknown, these spheres measure approximately an inch or so in diameter, and some are etched with three parallel grooves running around the equator. Two types of spheres have been found: one is composed of a solid bluish metal with flecks of white; the other is hollowed out and filled with a spongy white substance. The kicker is that the rock in which they where found is Precambrian – and dated to 2.8 billion years old! Who made them and for what purpose is unknown.

Well, that certainly gives me something to think about this morning. How about you?

Coffee in the kitchen this morning, with some Raspberry Crumb Cake on the side, OK?

Sunday Again...!

Sunday around the Hermit's place usually means cartoons!

I see no reason to change that, do you? After all, if the truth be known, most of us enjoy a little silliness now and then. You are never too old to enjoy a good laugh, right?



You just gotta love the voice of this next character...at least, I do!



OK, that's all from me this morning! I hope everyone has a great day!

Coffee on the patio this morning. I'm thinking the rain may have stopped for a while.