"Thinking is the best way to travel..."

Classic hippie advice from the Moody Blues. That's from 1968, which we're reminiscing about this morning a propos of "Of course, I'm reading 'If Seeing the World Helps Ruin It, Should We Stay Home?/In the age of global warming, traveling — by plane, boat or car — is a fraught choice.'"

Of course, the hippie way of life is also a fraught choice.

Speaking of travel that occurs entirely within the mind... there's "The Wizard of Oz." And that Moody Blues video — if you can stick with it long enough — looks a bit like Glinda the Good Witch is about to arrive...

Eligible for almost 30 years, The Moody Blues finally make it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

I never liked that overblown, lavish style of rock music, and I don't really care who gets into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (a place I like enough to have visited twice), but I just want to say that I remember when the first Moody Blues song came out, and it was simple and charming in that 60s pop-song way I'll always like:



Here's the news, from the L.A. Times:

The induction of veteran English art-rock band the Moody Blues will quell a raft of fans who have consistently, and loudly, made their voices heard each year when the group was overlooked previously. Although the Moodys became eligible in 1989 under the hall's requirement that 25 years elapse after an act's first recording, the group perhaps best known for its 1967 ambitious and heavily orchestrated concept album "Days of Future Passed," and the single it yielded, "Nights in White Satin," appeared on the nominees list for the first time this year....

On the ballot for the first time, they're coming in along with 3 groups that I always think of in terms of MTV videos in the 1980s: Bon Jovi, Dire Straits, and The Cars. (Those 3 links go to videos I watched about a million times in the 80s.)

Paraprosdokian.

"I haven't slept for ten days, because that would be too long."

That's a Mitch Hedburg joke, and an example of paraprosdokian, "a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part." It's usually done for comic effect, but not always and not in the example that got me reading about paraprosdokian, "He ain't heavy, he's my brother."

"He Ain't Heavy... He's My Brother," is the title of a song, which you probably know from the Hollies' 1969 recording. (The phrase itself seems to go back much further, perhaps to 1884.) I looked up "He Ain't Heavy... He's My Brother" because I couldn't remember who recorded it. (I was thinking The Moody Blues, for some reason.) And the subject came up because, over at the Isthmus forum, they're talking about what's happened to the notorious Wisconsin protester Segway Jeremy. There were reports that he was on his deathbed, and then some confusing contradictions, and somebody linked to this inane montage — "nice tribute" — which uses "He Ain't Heavy... He's My Brother" as the audio track.

It's mostly lefties over there in The Forum, though Meade likes to prod them with questions and jokes (which they either don't get or pretend not to get). Meade is skeptical of the beatification of Jeremy.

Trying to figure out what Moody Blues song I had confused with "He Ain't Heavy... He's My Brother," Meade came up with "Legend of a Mind" — which most people probably think is titled "Timothy Leary's Dead," that being the familiar lyric. Timothy Leary was not dead at the time, but there seems to be some LSD-influenced connection between getting high and being dead, as noted in this morning's post about The Beatles' "She Said She Said."

And now Meade's done a "Legend of a Mind" parody about the mystery of Segway Jeremy.