"We’re pretty surprised, that’s for sure. She wasn’t even just like a dog; she was an absolute princess as well. She had a car seat, and she slept in our bed."

Said Georgia Gardner, 24, about her 1-year-old, 8-pound dachshund Valerie.

Gardner is quoted in "Tiny dachshund survives 16 months on remote island but eludes rescuers/Her owners call her a 'princess.' But little Valerie has likely toughened up, says the wildlife group looking for her, living off roadkill and evading poisonous snakes" (WaPo)(free-access link, so you can see the pictures and read the thrilling details).

A song for Valerie:

And:

Bill Flanagan interviews Bob Dylan. Read the whole thing — it's nice and long...

... here. Bob is pushing his new album, "Triplicate," which is 3 discs of him singing standards like "That Old Feeling" (my favorite song when I was about 4 and had no old feelings) and "Sentimental Journey" (the song my parents considered their song for reasons I only came to understand, suddenly, 4 years ago).

Bob gives an explanation for why he put the 30 songs on 3 CDs when they would have fit on 2 CDs:  

Is there something about the 10 song, 32 minute length that appeals to you?

Sure, it’s the number of completion. It’s a lucky number, and it’s symbolic of light. As far as the 32 minutes, that’s about the limit to the number of minutes on a long playing record where the sound is most powerful, 15 minutes to a side. My records were always overloaded on both sides. Too many minutes to be recorded or mastered properly. My songs were too long and didn’t fit the audio format of an LP. The sound was thin and you would have to turn your record player up to nine or ten to hear it well. So these CDs to me represent the LPs that I should have been making.

That's either mystical, metaphorical, or bullshit.

Are you concerned about what Bob Dylan fans think about these standards?

These songs are meant for the man on the street, the common man, the everyday person. Maybe that is a Bob Dylan fan, maybe not, I don’t know....

Will you still love Trump tomorrow?

I listened to the big speech last night and some of the CNN commentary that followed it — including the strangely ecstatic Van Jones...



And I listened to that crabby former governor grousing from a diner in the hinterlands. I was listening from further into the hinterlands than he was talking from, but I — like my fellow hinterlanders as I imagine them — was yelling "Who the hell are you?" at the TV screen.

And I'm scanning the headlines this morning. Here's how the NYT — of late so hostile to Trump — presents it:



Hopeful? Vision? He didn't just get hopeful or vision. He got hopeful and vision. Well, maybe this is a setup for a later takedown: 

He was so good that one time. All that promise. Crushed. What happened to the man who stirred our hearts? I thought it might be love. I thought we could be so happy together. But it was just a one night stand. He lied to me.

Maybe Van Jones got the same memo. If this is political theater, let's be sharp figuring out who's faking it. I think they're all faking it, and everybody wants something.

As for Carryn Owens, I don't think anyone short of Renee Maria Falconetti in "The Passion of Joan of Arc" can fake emotion like that. But she participated in theater and chose to do it. She put herself in a position where millions would look at her face as the President of the United States bathed her in words about her dead beloved. Real emotion poured forth with melodrama beyond anything I have ever seen on television. It was real emotion appropriated for a political purpose, but there is no necessary connection between the meaning of that emotion for her and the political meaning that found its way into the mind of the people.

Ah, but the ecstasy! It penetrated deep. Grabbed our pussy. What a night! Many words were spoken. Was this a lasting treasure or just a moment's pleasure?



Will you still love Trump tomorrow?

New "Gatsby" trailer.

Now, with even more anachronistic pop music, including Beyonce singing Amy Winehouse.

"What songs other than 'Leader of the Pack' have the sound of a motor revving?"

A question I asked Google this morning a propos of List-a-Beefy's "I don't get Leader of the Pack. I just don't." Not get "Leader of the Pack"? This immense aficionado of pop songs doesn't get "Leader of the Pack"? I don't get it. Maybe it's the motor revving:

According to legend, to add the authentic sound of a motorcycle engine, one was driven through the lobby of the hotel and up to the floor of the recording studio. No one was arrested, but a ticket was issued. However, in an interview four decades later, Shangri-Las lead singer Mary Weiss said the motorcycle sound was taken from an effects record. The Zombies' drummer Hugh Grundy recalls revving up a motorcycle backstage when the Shangri-Las performed on a U.S. tour.

By the way, if you combine their hairstyles into one hairstyle, you get Amy Winehouse.

Anyway, I'm looking for more songs with motor revving. Google didn't really help. Poking around in YouTube for car songs was a better method. I tried "Dead Man's Curve" and "Little Cobra," then got successful with "409."

Help me generate the definitive list of songs with motor revving sound effects. And express whatever opinions you have about sound effects in songs. It's a tradition that presumably predates recorded music... and perhaps even musical instruments. A classic early example — the not that early — is "The Typewriter":



I'd like to see a video synthesizing "Leader of the Pack" and "The Typewriter." I'd call it "Leader of the Nerds." You have the girl singing about falling in love, the parents breaking up the relationship, and the kiss before dying routine, but the boyfriend is a nerd, not a Brandoesque rebel, and the sound effect is a typewriter.

"You're so far away. Doesn't anybody stay in one place anymore?"

This is the song chosen to end the funeral for Amy Winehouse.

"Singer Amy Winehouse was found dead at her apartment in London on Saturday..."

"She was 27."

ADDED: "Last month, the north Londoner pulled out of her European tour after she was jeered at her comeback gig in Serbia for appearing too drunk to perform."

Extremely sad.

AND: Another member of the "27 Club":

The 27 Club, also occasionally known as the Forever 27 Club or Club 27, is a name for a group of influential rock music artists who died at the age of 27. The 27s: The Greatest Myth of Rock & Roll details the history of the phenomenon.

The big ones from circa 1970 were Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison. More recently, Kurt Cobain. Amy Winehouse's name has already been added to the list at the link.

ALSO: My son Chris IM's: "this is the video i always thought would be referenced if she died young."

My odds are stacked
I'll go back to black...
We only said good-bye with words
I died a hundred times
You go back to her
And I go back to black

Chris says: "and if you wanna see something really sad, here's her trying to perform the same song about a month ago"



AND: Last dance.

AND: From the WSJ article:

"Her music was extraordinary," said local resident Tessa Crockett, 58, who bundled a bouquet of arum lillies to place outside a police cordon around Ms. Winehouse's flat. "She wasn't able to handle anything like the fame that she had. I feel very much for her parents."...

"She kind of started the whole 60s-style singer songwriting," said 23-year-old Natasha Wynarczyk, a Londoner who described the singer's style as "fierce" and sometimes copied Ms. Winehouse's beehive hairstyle on nights out. "She definitely spearheaded the movement for new female artists. At the time it was male dominated music or male-fronted bands."...

"She didn't want to be controlled," said 30-year-old Andrew Tunesi, an administrator from South London, who brought roses along with a friend to Ms. Winehouse's home. "She had a mind of her own and wanted to do her own thing."

Grande Conservative Blogresss Diva 2009.

GayPatriot emails:

[W]e define a conservative blogress as a smart blogress who has earned the respect of gay men by expressing herself with eloquence and without kowtowing to the politically correct mavens of popular cultural and politics.

I don't think you have to be a gay man to vote, though. I'm one of the nominees along with 14 others, so choose wisely. This year, I'm not going to try to get a lot of people to vote for me. In fact, I think what I'll do is go to each blog and pick one representative sentence from the top few posts and quote it here. You could read these sentences, click to see who wrote it, and then go to the Gaypatriot poll and vote for that blogress -- that is don't vote for me.

"Yeah, those of us who call ourselves Christians say 'we believe.' But it’s one thing to 'believe' and quite another to 'surrender.' Believing is the easier of the two. But surrender is what makes us holy."

"I, of course, like to keep both sides equally pissed off, so I may ... eat a ham and cheese sandwich to warn the Islamo-Fascists not to mess with me. I may also, however, burn an American flag at the same time."

"Young people, immigrant, youth ......... by G-d these dhimmis turn themselves inside out to rephrase, retool, and obfuscate the truth. Muslims riot. Not immigrants, yoots, or 'young people.' Oh, the idiocy."

"The trash collectors serving my area sent a notice of the pickup schedule for 'holiday trees', so I mailed them a nasty letter. When did we become a nation of Grinches?"

"Just as is the Law of Gravity immutable, so is the Law of Giving. Of course, what we get back in return for our gift doesn’t always come in the form we expect, but this just proves that the Cosmos, in addition to having a set of Laws, also has a Sense of Humor. This can be quite hard on the humorless."

"What's actually romantic isn't committing to somebody because you see how lovable, sexy, and charming they can be, but because you find out how annoying, insufferable, and lacking in some basic table manner they are, and it's still not enough to chase you away."

"As we Jews face a bleak future with Islamic extremism and violence on the rise, we also face an enemy within, just as the Jews and their Maccabees fought in their own community back in the day. The Hellenists were Jews who wanted to forsake Judaism for the secularism of the Greeks. Today, those same Jews are the ones who've forsaken Judaism for liberalism. They're the ones who voted for Barack Obama, the ones who continue to pander and 'outreach' to our avowed enemies in the Islamic community. I've written about so many of them on this site over the years, and their names need not be mentioned on this holiday. We know who they are. And their views must be crushed, just as the Maccabees crushed Jewish Hellenism."

"No matter what anyone’s feelings are right now for Bush after the auto bailout he announced Friday, there’s no denying that this is as shoddy a piece of 'journalism' as can be found on the pages of the NYT, as they ignore the significant contributions of Christopher Dodd, Barney Frank, PEBO (President-elect Barack Obama), Franklin Raines, and other prominent Democrats/Democrat-friendly industry fat cats to the mortgage/lending industry collapse."

"Amy Winehouse appears to be winning her battle against drugs as she looked the picture of health during a winter break in the sun."

"I can't think of another evangelical leader who would have the gumption to call attacks upon him 'incendiary hate speech.' White evangelicals are by definition incapable of being oppressed, according to the liberal definition. They are the haters; hatred is justified. They are not inclusive; exclusion is justified. [Rick] Warren challenges that idea. After years of acquaintance with his liberal critics, Warren is not afraid to shame them with their own language."

"If your primal instinct isn’t to scoop up that puppy, cuddle him, and whisper to him don’t be angry, puppy, and then swallow him whole, then I don’t think we have much to talk about anymore. We’ve grown apart."

"As another GSA official who facilitated the convenient change in policy regarding change.gov exulted to the Obama campaign after the domain was granted, 'Rock and roll!'"

"I've been around a long time. I've been incarnating in this realm for so many aeons I call both gods and demons 'Sonny.' Yet even I don't know the answer to such questions. And I can't ever know, for to know while incarnate would mean I'm not subject to any human limitations."

"Oh, and A Christmas Story? One of the few things Arnie and I disagree on. I simply cannot bear it: all those bratty, bullying, yelling little boys running around getting in trouble instead of just behaving (just like that Hope and Glory movie about the English boy during the Blitz: son, there's a war on -- can't you be quiet instead of playing in other people's rubble? There is nothing fun about this situation. God.); that wimpy whiny mother, and that horrible horrible father with the goddamn lamp who I spend the running time daydreaming about murdering in his sleep. Would the lamp fit down his throat? Just the foot, maybe? Hard to say..."

IN THE COMMENTS: Meade proposes a new contest:

"Mocha Grande Bitchin' Hot Rightwing Liberated Blogress Goddess Babe Who Will Cruelly Kick Your Ass To The Curb And Leave You Hooked Down On Your Knees Begging For Just One More Hit Of Blog Oh Please Oh Please Oh Please 2009 To Infinity"
	Althouse
	Anyone else
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