Throwback Thursday

Cleaning out my drawers, I found all kinds of stuff from the distant past .... an autographed Agent Mulder (David Duchovny) postcard, rubber fish, a crystal, my tarot cards ...



And a Star Wars photo, which will now be living on the refrigerator with my cat magnets :) ...

More music history

In my recent quest to experience more about music,I'm now stuck on Queen. I've come to the Live Aid concert that took place on Saturday, July 13, 1985, at Wembley Stadium in London. Lot's of bands performed to raise cash to help with the famine in Ethiopia. Some who were there were David Bowie, The Who, U2, Dire Straits, Led Zeppelin, and even Paul McCartney.

Queen was there too and created arguably the best performance of the concert (Rolling Stone: Flashback: Queen Steal the Show at Live Aid ). This was due to good sound in daunting circumstances, but also to Freddie Mercury's voice and force of personality :) In the time they had they squeezed in renditions of Bohemian Rhapsody, Radio Ga Ga, Hammer to Fall, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, We Will Rock You, and We Are the Champions ...



And here's an interview with them before the concert ...

Crazy Little Thing Called Love

More from Queen ...

Bohemian Rhapsody

Reading about the recently released film Bohemian Rhapsody ...

a 2018 biographical film about the British rock band Queen. It follows singer Freddie Mercury's life, leading to Queen's Live Aid performance at Wembley Stadium in 1985 ... Bohemian Rhapsody was announced in 2010, with Sacha Baron Cohen cast as Mercury. After Baron Cohen left the project in 2013 following creative differences with producers, the project languished for several years before Malek was cast in November 2016. Principal photography began in London in September 2017 with Singer as director. In December 2017, Singer was fired for absence and clashing with the cast and crew, and Dexter Fletcher was hired to complete the film. Singer retained sole director credit as per DGA guidelines, while Fletcher received an executive producer credit. Filming concluded in January 2018.

I really only noticed the movie when I read that the director had been Bryan Singer, also a director of an X-Men movie who has been multiply accused of sexual misconduct. The reviews of the film were not great (Freddie Mercury: Bohemian Rhapsody is no tribute. It’s full of unconscious homophobia), but I've signed up for it at Netflix and will give it a chance.

Here's a trailer ...



Here's a video of their song that I like best :) ...



Someday I must check out the past Doors movie too.

Happy Thanksgiving

I'm not very good at being grateful. Usually I notice what's going wrong more than what's going right, and most of the time, I experience life like this ....



But even I try to notice all the good stuff once a year on Thanksgiving :)

You Like Me Too Much

Another of my favorite Beatles songs, from their second movie album, by George - You Like Me Too Much ...



xx

Yard photos

It's cool but sunny here. Out in the yard with the cats ...

Here is Lucy ...



Here's a Thompson Seedless grape leaf, a bit beaten up ...



My step-father planted the grapes long ago and now they've gone wild ...



Here's Hansel, sitting on the stump of the deceased magnolia tree ...



Here are my little clones :) We need more plants because so many have died in the drought, so I'm trying to make cuttings to get more plants without having to buy them. These are from a Photinia bush ...



Here's Snowy, trying to nap ...



And her mom, Marie ...



Leaves. So many leaves. I see a lot of raking in my future ...

The fires

Very smoky here today because of the fires ...



It's really hard to think about all of the people and animals killed in the fires - burned alive. Things like this make me wonder what Christians believe about a God who lets such suffering happen. When I say my prayers at night and ask that all my loved ones be safe, I have to wonder what the point of doing that is. Does God care about us? Does he even exist?

RIP: Stan Lee

As someone who grew up reading Marvel comics,I was sad to see today that Stan Lee has died. From Wikipedia ...

Stan Lee (born Stanley Martin Lieber /ˈliːbər/, December 28, 1922 – November 12, 2018) was an American comic-book writer, editor, and publisher. He was the editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics, and later its publisher and chairman, leading its expansion from a small division of a publishing house to a large multimedia corporation.

In collaboration with several artists—particularly Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko—he co-created fictional characters including Spider-Man, the Hulk, Doctor Strange, the Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Black Panther, the X-Men, and—with his brother, co-writer Larry Lieber—the characters Ant-Man, Iron Man, and Thor. In doing so, he pioneered a more complex approach to writing superheroes in the 1960s, and in the 1970s challenged the standards of the Comics Code Authority, indirectly leading to it updating its policies ....

Stan often appeared in funny cameo roles in the Marvel movies. My favorite one is when he played a FedEx delivery guy who misreads the name on a package for Tony Stark (Iron Man) in Captain America: Civil War ...



A lot of people credit their family or their church with having raised them with a certain ethical foundation. I do credit my family, of course, but I also owe a lot to all those comics I read. The guys like Captain America and Thor and Spider-Man and Reed Richards and others taught me how important it is to be honest and kind and brave and persistent. I'm not always those things, but I learned that they are goals worth working toward because of Marvel comics :)

Veterans Day: WWI

My grandfather actually served in WWI (1914-18) in the Army Air Corps ... he was born in 1894, which seems impossibly long ago. Here's a pic of him when he was young (far left) and his father (who immigrated here from France) and his brothers ...



Here's a pic of him later when he was a bird colonel in the army ...



And here he is even later, with me and my sister :) ...

Kitty pic

Still looking at my pile of floppies. One disk I opened had a picture I made in an art program ... back in the olden days we were playing around a lot with different graphic programs. Here's a kitty I made :) ...

Floppy

Lately I've been trying to figure out how to get some extra money and the thought occurred that I could self-publish my ancient book-length story written many years ago. Amazon makes it easy to self-publish kindle books. It's free and you can keep 70% of the selling price. My brother-in-law does this: here's his vampire novel, The Shake ...



But anyway, I looked for my copy of my old story in the bottom drawer of my grandmother's dresser (on which the computer now sits) where I have all my ancient floppies ...



Then I realized my present computer couldn't read floppies and had to send away for a floppy disk drive. Then when I downloaded it to the desktop, I couldn't open it because the program I had been using, Claris, was so old. I was pretty depressed but my sister suggested I try to open it with BBEdit, which worked. Except then all the formatting was gone. I put it in Word for Mac but I'm having to go through it line by line, formatting.

It's been so long since I wrote it that I can't remember all that happens in it and I'm having to rewrite a lot of it, but it takes place in San Francisco, mostly at Golden Gate Park, and an anaconda snake is involved. It's going to take a long time - I'm only on chapter 1 of 30 chapters - but it's kind of fun to be taken back to when I wrote it in the late 90s :) Hope something comes of it.

Goodby, Goldy

This morning when I was outside feeding the cats, I saw that a small possum was dead in the back yard. Sad. I couldn't tell how he had died with my bad vision, but my sister was coming over today so I was going to wait for her to decide what to do.

But then later that morning, when going around to the other side of the yard, I found Goldy. I couldn't tell what had killed him either. It seems too much of a coincidence that they would both die at the same time, so I called the lady at Animal Control about it but she wasn't there and I had to leave a message. Meanwhile I wait for my sister to come and help me decide what to do.

As I wait, I've been thinking about Goldy. He first showed ho here a little over a year ago as a kitten ...



He was really afraid of me but he became one of the many cats here in the yard and eventually got used to me. We got him neutered this spring. He was a sweet cat, never aggressive, and I will miss him. It seems so sad that he got to live such a short life, that he didn't get to be someone's indoor pet, that I am the only one who will know of him and love him and cry at his passing. Goodby, Goldy.

Hey, Yoda ...

Wake up from your nap so I can take your picture ...



Ouch, let go of my knuckle ;) ...

All Saint's Day

A song for All Saint's Day: Brother Sun, Sister Moon by Donovan, from the movie about Francis of Assisi ...