The middle section of Rush’s “La Villa Strangiato” incorporates “Powerhouse”, which is kind of cool once you recognize it.
If you’re over 50 years old and grew up in the U.S. or Canada, you’ll instantly recognize these song lyrics:
Boy, the way Glenn Miller played
Songs that made the hit parade
Guys like us we had it made
Those were the days
It’s the opening song for All in the Family, of course. I discovered a couple interesting things about this song:
-
The lyrics were written by Lee Adams and Charles Strouse. Both are still alive: Adams is 100 and Strouse is 96.
-
Despite how well-known this song is, there’s no Wikipedia page for it.
I’m getting training in AI, and then I stumbled on this.
Alan Turing, in his famous paper describing his test to check for machine intelligence in 1950: Computing Machinery and Intelligence, wrote about the imitation game and countered many possible objections to his proposal.
What I did not know, is that besides being prophetic, Turing also wrote about Telepathy/ESP as being one possible item to counter his test!
He was annoyed that he could not then dismiss ESP, he thought that it could be a factor, but Turing also mentioned that one could ESP proof the test location! (AFAIK, there were tests done in those days that reported evidence for ESP; but later checks showed that the tests for ESP back then where flawed, no need to ESP proof the testing room.)
This morning’s earworm was Bing Crosby crooning “Going Hollywood,” which necessitated researching the same-named film it was from:
The writer praised co-star Marion Davies thusly: “She had a real hoydenish, don’t-give-a-damn feeling about her, and it came across on the screen.”
Word for the day: hoyden - a girl or woman of saucy, boisterous, or carefree behavior
Co-star Fifi D’Orsay’s historical footnote was earned by popularizing the phrase “oo-la-la”. Maybe not a towering achievement, but perhaps somewhere between Ann Sheridan’s “oomph girl” and Clara Bow’s “it girl”
Beavers also have a flat, paddle-like tail. They often carry mud to patch up their dams and to make a scent mound on the edge of their territory. When they carry the mud, they walk on two feet, using their tail to help them balance.
I don’t know how they use the tail when swimming.
I fell down a rabbit hole and ended up learning about the WW2 German radio counterintelligence organization known as the Funkabwehr, mainly because of the name.
That is considered fish by the Roman Catholic Church for the purposes of fasting days.
As was the barnacle goose up to 1215, when it was prohibited by the pope.
Note that the song was written sometime between 1968 and 1971 for All in the Family. It was not a old song that the people who created All in the Family decided to choose as the theme song. Adams and Strouse wrote a lot of songs, many of them together, in the late 1950’s and early 1960s. Despite the mention of Glenn Miller, who died in 1944, they were not particularly reminiscing about the 1930s and 1940s. I presume that the people who created All in the Family told them to mention things about the 1930s and 1940s to make the song sound like it was written then. It was written for an audience that knew the songs of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, the Bee Gees, the Supremes, and such. The younger people who watched All in the Family thought of it as being about a couple who didn’t like the current music. The older people could sometimes remember the music of the 1930s and 1940s.
Today I learned, from Kristen Richardson’s The Season, about “kettedrums.” They were a more raucous form of afternoon tea parties for the debutante set in late 19th century America.
[P]arents put a large silver bowl or “kettle” in the middle of a large room, usually the parlor. Unattached young men crowded around the bowl and used spoons to make a din that would cover any flirtatious conversation. If someone who was drumming wanted to speak to a debutante at the party, he would leave the kettle and offer the woman a cup of tea. The young lady accepted with a spoon, signaling that the young man could court her. …
The kettledrum reached a farcical point when a Mrs. Clark of Fifth Avenue held one for her pugs and invited all the elite dogs in the neighborhood.
The point was to get around the social convention that the men and women could not talk lest they get ideas that would interfere with the arranged marriage a debutante was expected to make. As long as they were holding tea cups, conversation was permitted and saucy talk could pass by. The rich have always been crazy.
Charles Strouse Who also wrote the musical Annie had an appreciation for the 1970s nostalgia for the 30s-40s.
Puffins were also classed as fish because they spent so much of their time in the water.
So were swans, right? 
But they can only be eaten by royalty. Who are not allowed to be Catholic. So it’s moot. (Unlike the swans, who are mute.)
So there are no days when Catholics are not allowed to eat beaver?
I gather you’ve never met a pissed off swan. They can hiss! (they’ll fight you, too, if you’re not heeding their hisses)
As my username would suggest, I’ve met many swans!
I was referring to these though:
There are and were countries with Catholic royalty.
It seems to me you must be English.
Looks even more so.
So you think.
Never! They are black! Partially, anyway.
Ah, got it now, never heard of that variety. I thought that you must be a swan expert by your username. 