Sound Cover Day

While 100.3 The Sound might be, most of the time, a slightly less boring version of KLOS, sometimes they have some cool special features.

Today is one of those days.  Every song is a cover song.  The link with Halloween is tenuous - the station is "under the covers" for Halloween (as in it's scared.)  And for some stations (like KRTH) these concepts are merely the same old songs as usual, just grouped by theme.

However today's little departure from the norm is bringing some cool tunes that normally do not get on the air, and some pretty weird stuff.  Examples:

Dave Mason doing Hendrix's All Along the Watchtower
Green Day doing Lennon's Working Man's Hero
William Shatner doing Elton John's Rocket Man (as awful as it sounds, but so bad it's good....sort of)
Cranberries doing Fleetwood Mac's Go Your Own Way
Jose Feliciano doing The Doors' Light My Fire

Would have been more interesting IMO if they played the original next to the cover - maybe next time.

Meanwhile in Florida...

It's always trunk season in Florida, and also always shark season, but it's almost never good wave season.  But the hurricane gave them some waves.  Of course good luck getting one with all those other guys.

Check out this cool moving map of the storm moving toward NY and NJ.  Click on link to see it moving:  http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/templates/loop_directory.asp?data_folder=dev%2Flindsey%2Floops%2Fgoes14&image_width=1020&image_height=720&number_of_images_to_display=50

And here is a cool moving link that shows all the wind in the U.S.  http://hint.fm/wind/

Who Turned Off the Heater?

Wednesday, the water was 70 degrees, which is about as warm as it gets around here. For late October, that is ridiculously warm.  Wetsuits not required!

I guess the wind churned up some cold water, because today, Friday, though the air was hot, the water was ICY!  61 is only 9 degrees colder than 70, but feels like swimming in ice cubes.

Perhaps we'll get last blast of warm water, but it seems doubtful.  Wetsuit season is sadly upon us.

Today's Theme Song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcH8F6Lxqa4

Brothers Comatose

This is a great bluegrass / folk band from San Francisco that occasionally makes their way down here.  They did a short set at the Troubadour last night that was outstanding.

Fab Faux

The Fab Faux are a Beatles tribute band, which sounds like something to avoid, and yes most tribute bands are in fact pretty corny.  (In case you don't know, a tribute band dresses up like the band in question and pretends to "be" the band.)

However this band is not so much a tribute band as a group of talented session musicians who love the Beatles, and play their music the way an orchestra might play Beethoven.

The band was formed by Will Lee, the bassist from David Letterman's band, and oddly includes the guitarist from Conan O Brien's band.  All five members are quite talented session musicians.

What makes the Fab Faux so strong is how accurately they recreate the music - right down to the specific tone on a guitar or tiniest sound effect, they make sure everything is exactly the way it sounds on record.  Well, mostly.  At other times, they will do some interpreting and expanding - always in a way that seems perfectly right.  For instance extending the end of Strawberry Fields Forever with a wild drum duet.

For this outing, the band did the entire Magical Mystery Tour album.  It wasn't quite as ambitious (and amazing) as The White Album, which they'd done in this same theater a few years back, but it was excellent nonetheless.

While discussing the Beatles, I must mention this cool story about a guy who stole the head of Paul McCartney off an Abbey Road Sunset Blvd. billboard way back in 1969.

http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2012/10/bring_me_the_head_of_paul.php

World's Cheapest Phone

Back when cellphones were really huge (physically), before there were even flip phones, I had a cell phone.

I really did not like it.  Having it ring, feeling obliged to answer it, having people call me to say "I'm on my way" when I kind of knew that already, or to say "I'm two blocks away," or "I'm 5 minutes late...." It's fine.  I can wait another five minutes....

One day it broke.  And it was $85 to fix it.

Instead of spending that money, I tossed it in a garbage can on Wilshire Blvd outside the Sprint store in Santa Monica.

I then went 10 years with no cell phone.  It was a glorious time.

However, about three years ago, after many complaints from people who could not call me, and a couple times needing to call AAA without a phone, I decided I needed a phone.

I had two thoughts:  One was to buy the coolest, newest, most gadgety phone I could. This would be because it is fun to have a new toy - the most modern one you can have.

The other was to buy the cheapest phone in the world.  This would be because the other phone was a waste of money.

After looking into the iPhone, I discovered it cost a fortune per month to have one, that they broke, that the camera was mediocre, and that it was basically an inferior version of your laptop.

So I googled "world's cheapest phone" and discovered the Virgin Mobile.

It cost $10.

Of course there were the per month charges.

They were $20.

Every three months.

(Granted you get very few calls for that, but I did not plan to make anything but emergency calls with it.)

This sounded super cheap.

So how is the world's cheapest phone?

It works perfectly fine.  It makes calls, it takes messages, it receives calls.  What more do you really need?

I like the little screen on the front for some reason.

This how it looks when you open it up.

Note it says "Web."  Yes, the world's cheapest phone can surf the web.  Have I ever tried?   No, and I imagine it would not be the greatest experience, but still.....

Of course, I know you want to now ditch your "smart" phone and get one of these.  Well too late.  They don't make them anymore.  Which is why I live in constant fear of losing it.

On a recent hike, one of the hikers noticed my phone.

He proudly pulled out his own phone.  The exact same one.  Of course, he loved it.

And he also gave me a tip.  If you call up, you can get a rate of $15 every three months, not $20.  That saves you $1.60 every month.

At the end of the hike, he reminded me: call them up and get that $5.  I haven't made that call yet, but if I'm ever trying to really save.....

Palms Art

I was thinking of taking a picture of these interesting electrical boxes that have been painted all over Palms, but somebody beat me to it and emailed me one.  So.....here it is!

Spaceship

Coliseum Clouds

Thomas Guides

Does anyone use these anymore besides me?  The litmus test of whether you were an Angeleno used to be if you had a dog-eared copy of one of these lying around in your car.

To those who moved here in the last 10 years, you may not even know what these are. They were (I guess still are) really thick, detailed maps that took up hundreds of pages. They took a little getting used to, but were really outstanding maps - so precise in their depiction of every minute detail.   Everyone had one sitting in the car, and many had certain page numbers memorized, for example page 634 was Downtown LA.

I am sure Thomas Bros. deeply laments the coming of the internet, on-board navigation, and Google Maps, which have essentially made these printed maps totally obsolete.  I wonder if they are even still in business.

Of course since I use a cheap cell phone that is an actual phone (or actually don't use it really) I do not have any "smart" navigation or whatever, so I still will sometimes dig this out just like the old days, and it still sits in the back seat of the car.

On a recent trip to San Diego, I still did what I always do: brought my old San Diego one with me:

One day in a used bookstore, I found an old one from 1982.  When you go back that far, you really see some changes.  Entire towns did not exist at that time, and many of the road names or freeway names have changed.  (The 110 for example was called the 11.)

Unfixable Watch Fixed

Before:










































After:

I Love This Sign

I saw this sign down in San Diego.  "Quit cigarettes in 60 Minutes."  I would think that if you quit them, it would just take that one instant where you decide that you have quit.

Or, another way to look at it is that it takes a lifetime - you quit, and it can't be deemed a successful quit until you die.

But obviously, they are going to give you some kind of treatment for 60 minutes and, upon completion, you will no longer want to smoke.  What could it be, though?