Penny4NASA

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Myles Patrick

Neil deGrasse Tyson speaks above about the importance of a well funded space program and has helped start a petition, called Penny4NASA, which

was created for the express purpose of organizing peoples around the nation to call for the increase of NASA’s annual budget to a vast, yet comparably minuscule, penny on the taxpayer dollar. Or in other words 1% of the total.

As someone who grew up with the Space Shuttle and Hubble Telescope programs and voraciously consumed any and all astronomy and science fiction information I could get my hands or eyes on, I can’t applaud Mr. Tyson’s effort enough. Not to mention as a kid I fully expected to be able to take a trip to Mars or at least the Moon by the time I was an adult. I’ll forgive the no flying cars or teleportation devices yet, but dammit, I WANT MY TRIP TO THE MOON. So please, sign the petition and if you are so inclined, send a quick email to your Congressperson.

Meet Chewie

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Myles Patrick

Say hello to our newest family member and our second german shepherd, Chewbacca (that’s him in the forefront). We recently rescued Chewie with the help of the Serendipity German Shepherd Dog Rescue the same as we did last spring with his older sister, Ellie (darker one in the background). I can’t recommend using a rescue service enough for whatever breed you favor. Working with Rachel at Serendipity we were able to find two perfect dogs for each other and our family – happily ever after unless you’re an inanimate object within the reach of Chewie.

Chewie will be two years old in December and lives up to the name my two daughters picked out for him. He’s big (80lbs so far) and he loves to come up to you and lean in for a pet and hopefully a snuggle and may start talking to you if you don’t (he actually sounds remarkably close to the real Chewbacca sometimes). During the day he prefers to chill in our backyard with a shoe or slipper, but really anything within reach that has our smell on it will do – a dustpan, yard clippers, tarps, old christmas lights left on a bush.

We’ll be enrolling in some training classes soon, but for now a friend of ours has let us borrow Training Your German Shepherd by Dan Rice, DVM. There is a newer edition available than the one we have, it can be found at Amazon.

The Internet Archive

Posted on March 23, 2012 by Myles Patrick

Presenting the Internet Archive, hands down the best resource on the internet for public domain audio recordings of live music, books, old time radio shows, and more plus a huge library of public domain books, often in a variety of formats. Whatever your poison, be prepared to spend your next several hours, if not days, browsing, searching, and playing files you find in this incredible archive.

With a few vacations still upcoming this year that involve a lot of driving, I thought I’d stock up on some audio books for the car which the whole family can listen to and maybe a few concerts I can listen to while the wife snoozes and the kids fire up their portable dvd players. So far I’ve only been roaming the archive of old time radio shows and have found more than a few gems worth checking out:

Dimension X – (From the description) “Dimension X was first heard on NBC April 8, 1950, and ran until September 29, 1951.Strange that so little good science fiction came out of radio; they seem ideally compatible, both relying heavily on imagination. Some fine isolated science fiction stories were developed on the great anthology shows, Suspense and Escape. But until the premiere of Dimension X — a full two decades after network radio was established — there were no major science fiction series of broad appeal to adults. This show dramatized the work of such young writers as Ray Bradbury, Robert (Psycho) Bloch, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Kurt Vonnegut. In-house script writer was Ernest Kinoy, who adapted the master works and contributed occasional storied of his own.”

X Minus One – (From the description) “X Minus One aired on NBC from 24 April 55 until 9 January 58 for a total of 124 episodes with one pilot or audition story. There was a revival of the series in 1973 when radio was attempting to bring back radio drama and it lasted until 1975. The show occupied numerous time slots through out its run in the 50’s and thus was never able to generate a large following. X Minus One was an extension of Dimension X which aired on NBC from 1950-51. The first fifteen scripts used for X Minus One were scripts used in the airing of Dimension X; however, it soon found its own little niche. The stories for the show came from two of the most popular science fiction magazines at the time; Astounding and Galaxy. Adaptations of these stories were performed by Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts. They even wrote a few original stories of their own. The writers of the magazine stories were not well known then but now are the giants of today. These stories came from the minds of Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, and Poul Anderson to name a few.”

Here’s Episode 32 of X Minus One featuring The Roads Must Roll:

Biographies in Sound – This one is a can’t miss if you’re into biographies. Check out the link for the full listing of guests but it mainly features giants of literature and music, plus other leaders and scientists, all discussed by the people who knew them.

Next time I’ll take a look at the Live Music avialable; here’s a teaser, the first track from The New Orleans Suspects Live at Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park on 2011-10-22:

Edit 2: Audio fixed.

Edit: Sorry, the audio files may take a minute or two to buffer!

The Official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Coloring Album

Posted on October 20, 2011 by Myles Patrick

Monster Brains has released a full scan of The Official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Coloring Album. Illustrated by Greg Irons (deceased, 1984) it was originally published in 1979 and is currently out of print. From the Monster Brains blog:

I’ve chosen to share the entire coloring book for anyone interested in printing it out and coloring it themselves. Every page is included in order. I don’t normally share copyrighted material in its entirety, however considering this “coloring book” has been out of print for over 30 years, I feel this thing deserves to be shared. If copyright holders of this book are opposed to my sharing it, feel free to contact me and I’ll remove it by request.

Concert Review: Bugs Bunny at the Symphony

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Myles Patrick

For each of our daughter’s birthdays, my wife and I started the tradition a few years ago of allowing each of them to pick where they want to go out to eat for dinner. In the past, there choices have not been restaurants, but places like Monkey Joe’s where they can jump around on various blow up contraptions and slides while parents must sit on a bench waiting for them to tire out while other screaming kids whiz by, stopping by to check on their parents to refill on cheap pizza and sugar drinks. The kids absolutely love it, but it’s a less than ideal way to share the joy of your child’s birth.

Enter karma and a conveniently scheduled concert by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra at Powell Hall, Bugs Bunny at the Symphony.

It’s created and produced by many of the same people who created Bugs Bunny Does Broadway almost twenty years ago. You know you’re getting old when a retrospective concert on long cherished media is now also old in itself. Bugs Bunny at the Symphony is wonderfully created and conducted by George Daugherty who serves up a great commentary on each piece and the history behind the creation of all the music performed.

Of particular interest to St. Louis is the history of Carl W. Stalling, born and raised in Lexington, MO, who arranged and produced the music on nearly every Looney Tunes cartoon. Stalling started at his local theatre at 12, playing the pipe organ, and before too long was working at the Powell Symphony Hall in St. Louis (called St. Louis Theatre back then). He was soon wooed away from St. Louis to play the organ for the Newman Theatre in Kansas City where he came to the attention of Walt Disney. Disney took him to Los Angeles where Stalling created the music for some early Disney cartoons. Stalling left Disney to join Warner Brothers where he showcased some of the days contemporary music in short cartoons people viewed before movies. Daugherty, the conductor, described it best as the “MTV of it’s day.” Through his work at Warner Brothers Stalling met the conductor/violinist Felix Slatkin and cellist Eleanor Aller, the parents of Leonard Slatkin, famous conductor of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.

I go on about the history only because if you are a fan of Looney Tunes at all, you will absolutely love this show. Our kids were visibly nervous when they played the first song without any video playing but after that when the cartoons started rolling with the orchestra providing the full score they were totally enthralled. And since the original Bugs Bunny on Broadway, Warner Brothers has acquired Hanna Barbara, thus allowing Daugherty to showcase popular cartoons like Scooby Doo, the Flintstones, and Tom and Jerry. The last song before the encore is the best by far and one of my favorite Bugs cartoons of all time, ‘What’s Opera, Doc?’ (a close second is ‘The Rabbit of Seville’ which is done in the first act).

Bugs Bunny at the Symphony was a joy to attend, and, oh yeah, your kids will love it too.