There is gold in them there books! I stumbled upon a clip of Desi Arnaz on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson while surfing the internet. I didn’t catch the year, but a couple of things stood out. First, Johnny wore a hip white coat with a sparkly embroidered design on either side of […]
When my folks finally moved from their last home at the age 93 and 89, they had owned three different homes in Marquette over a fifty year span. They had toyed with the idea of downsizing to an apartment when both were in their late seventies, but we pointed out, a) they were doing fine […]
After a couple of months with no evening planets gracing our skies, both Mercury and Saturn will make their appearance late in the month. It will be a bit of a viewing challenge, but on July 29, Mercury will appear just below the very young Crescent Moon in the WNW 20 minutes after sunset. […]
Who doesn’t like stories about people being inspired to do great things? We all have moments in our lives when something adjusts our path in one direction or another. Not all are life changing moments like Jake and Elwood (The Blues Brothers) bathed in a ray of heavenly light watching Brother James Brown bring the […]
We last visited Levon Helm in a two part FTV back in April of 2020 (FTV: Mark L. Helm – Part 1 (4-15-20) and Part 2 (4-22-20)). Based on his autobiography This Wheel’s on Fire – Levon Helm and the Story of the Band (Levon Helm with Stephen Davis, updated 2013 for A Cappella […]
We have discussed some of the Saturday Night Live crew previously so it seemed high time to shine the light on some of the others players who revolutionized comedy in the 1980s. We have already covered Dan Aykroyd (FTV: Dan Aykroyd 4-1-20) and Steve Martin (FTV: Wild & Crazy Guy Part 1 & 2; […]
By now, readers of these FTV ramblings are well aware that ‘drummer’ is my main musical gig. I was inspired early on by the likes of Dave Clark (of the Dave Clark Five) to be a singing drummer and as such acted as the lead or co-lead singer in every band I was in. I […]
At the end of my first year working in the Huron Mountain Club kitchen as a busboy turned dishwasher, my stress level was reduced for several reasons. We had survived the busiest part of the summer season short-handed with only two busboys and me pushing the dishes coming out of two dining rooms three meals […]
On those occasions when my students would complain the work I had assigned was boring, I would play the ‘Helen Toivonen Card’. As an educational mentor, they didn’t come much better than Helen. If her students complained, she would agree with them and say, “You are right. This is soooo boring, why don’t you […]
Okay fans of The Doors, complete the lyric begun in the title: Weird scenes . . . inside the gold mine (which comes from The End, the final track of their eponymous debut album). I purposely made this a little too easy so it would serve as a red herring. With my apologies to Jim […]