Horse Manure Park

A few photos of December 2010.  Staying home for New Year's Eve - having a little party with the kiddies.  Any excuse to wear a party hat is a good one! My little boy is getting big... I just wish he'd start speaking English, because I can't understand his Swahili. Ava putting the angel on top of the tree - with a little help. Christmas morning! A new Barbie car!  (Christmas morning) Oooooh..... toys! (Christmas morning) Who doesn't love to sled? More sledding and smiling...

This album came out in 1951.  A legitimate Capitol release.  For those who have heard everything! Perhaps the subtitle should be, "The Drunken Bastards!" Music for shemales! From the Vienna State Opera Orchestra.  I don't quite get it, but I guess it does catch the eye, doesn't it? Wow!  This chick had trout lips long before anyone ever heard of collagen injections!  A woman before her time, she was. I believe this is called "schizophrenia," right? Boy, I bet this is hours and hours of breath taking entertainment, eh? All we want is your cash and my God will love you just fine.  Now, cough it up. Maybe it's just me, but find this rather suggestive... ...and this is even MORE suggestive:

I'd like to wish all of my blog readers a very Merry Christmas!  I've had over 14,000 visitors since I started blogging in October 2008 and because you keep coming back, I keep writing. Stay tuned for more LP covers... coming soon!

Not that anyone really cares (but me!), but to follow up yesterday's Michael Jackson conspiracy post, I have at long last dug up video of Jason Malachi singing live in his living room (I guess?) acapella.  You have to admit it is a pretty good vocal impersonation although his dance moves at the end will never be confused with one Michael Jackson. By the way, I did download the new MJ album and I think it is very good.   I don't supposed it is quite as polished as it was meant to be, but the songs are typical Michael Jackson craftsmanship.  If the vocals are fake, they are remarkably well done.  And they certainly have me fooled! Jason Malachi's video @ Yahoo! Video

I am always up for a good conspiracy theory... and man, do those theories surround Michael Jackson's posthumous album, "Michael," release last Tuesday.  I was going to download it, having been a Jackson fan since I saw him live on the Bad tour in 1988, but I started reading reviews from fans saying that some of the vocals are not his - that they are fake, sung by an impersonator.  The song "Breaking News" was especially pointed out. To me, this was undoubtedly Michael Jackson. But then I started hearing more and more about Jason Malachi. Malachi, who hails from the Washington DC area, is a Jackson vocal impersonator who also has his own singing career.  I just about fell over when I heard how incredibly similar this guy sounds to Michael Jackson.  Here is a link to one of his (Malachi's) songs .  The guy you see on the link is evidently Malachi himself.  I have to admit my jaw dropped when I heard this.  (Unfortunately, I cannot embed the vide...

As we near the Christmas holiday, it is time to visit some holiday LP covers from the past that just aren't quite right... Something tells me this would never make it past the "idea" stage these days. Apparently Santa's middle name is "pedophile." Hmmm.... do you suppose parents had to explain this one to the children? Skinny Santa = Creepy Santa Speaking of a Creepy Claus... this looks like a mug shot for a serial killer. I Rove Chlistmas! In the days long before the internet, Norad tracked Santa with nuclear warheads at the ready (in case he was a racist commie rat bastard, ya know) and you got to hear the same "Santa news reports and holiday music selections" year after year after year! Look at the pure, wholesome names on this album: Pat Boone; Lawrence Welk; The Lennon Sisters.  I guess EVERYONE has a wild side!   'Tis the season, indeed... "Hello, Johnny.  Is that a pair of jingle bells you've got there...

Time for more of those great LP covers to get your Saturday off on the right foot... But his friends call him "Dick."  Read closely.  And yes, that's funny. I'm not sure if I wanna hear this, but it looks like he's got spunk. Maybe it's just my corrupted mind, but I think maybe they could have found a better title for this LP.  Maybe? I have a feeling these folks don't play Zeppelin.  Probably not even Skynyrd.  Well, except for maybe the dude lady dude on the accordion. They never quite made it big time, did they? If this is true, the Heavenly Father doesn't have a whole lot of fashion sense. Surely hours and hours of listening entertainment... Woo-hoo!  Nothin' like subtractin' to get me in the partyin' mood!

This morning at around 6:45 AM I woke up to a strange sound... kind of a swish, scratch.  This was rather loud and it woke me out of a deep sleep. Swish, scratch. I listened for a couple of seconds... nothing. I closed my eyes again and nearly drifted back to sleep when there is was again: swish, scratch. This time I was able to tell it was coming from outside.  It sounded like it was something brushing against our bedroom window (we sleep on the lower level and the ground level window is less than four feet away from our bed).  Ah, the wind.  Obviously the wind is blowing snow against the window.  But it didn't sound windy outside. Swish, scratch. Then faithful ol' Grace stopped snoring, perked up her ears and started to growl.  Something wasn't right. So I crawled out of bed, leaned over and pulled up the blind. And there I found myself, quite literally eye-to-eye with a deer.  Less than a foot in front of me.  Pawing at the ...

If you've been reading my blog for any time, you know that I have a passion for great music and an equally sick obsession with horrible music.  The worse, the better. I've posted some bad stuff here - my favorite horrible artist of all time was Wing: But today I have found perhaps the all-time champion of horribleness: Florence Foster Jenkins.  Believe it or not, Ms. Jenkins makes Wing sound in tune. The story goes like this: In 1909, at the age of 39, Jenkins inherited a large sum of money from her father and embarked on her passion in life: music; namely opera.  Unfortunately, she had absolutely no talent whatsoever (that's putting it very nicely), but that didn't stop her from paying RCA to distribute her albums (they certainly never signed her to a contract) and she even rented out Carnegie Hall and the Ritz-Carlton Ballroom for her recitals. Yes, this is all true. Just goes to show, if you have money and passion, you can do anything you want to do - eve...

I stumbled upon a few wonderful web sites celebrating the days of LP albums and their fantastic covers.  As we progress more and more to digital music, the LP album cover is becoming very much a lost and forgotten art, but there are some good people out there determined to keep the memory alive. Here are some good ones I found.  I've got a feeling I'll be posting many more in the future. The Yiddish Version of Buddy Holly?  I think so. Nancy Sit.  Nancy beg.  Nancy roll over. (Good, girl Nancy.)  From Singapore... This is especially cool to me, because my dad once told me I was named after Sammy Kaye, the big band leader.  I don't know if he meant that as a joke or if he was serious.  I guess I'll never know, but here is Sammy Kaye and his Orchestra anyway!  Kickin' it with Franck.  But Sinatra he is not. Yvonne sings "Let's Go Gay".  Lost in translation, perhaps? In that deep, dark place in the pit of my soul, ...

Last night I finished a surprisingly excellent autobiography, Life by Keith Richards - the lead guitarist, principal songwriter and co-founder of the Rolling Stones. I say "surprisingly excellent," because let's face it... when you hear the guy talk you can barely understand a frickin' word he says (as evidenced by the "interview" below).  Heck, Johnny Depp based his character Jack Sparrow of Pirates of the Caribbean off a character study of Richards - and Richards was such a good sport about it that he even made a cameo appearance in one of the movies.  Yes, years of drug abuse have seemingly taken their toll, but he can still think clearly and he can write very well - and yes, Richards wrote this book.  The "voice" is unmistakably Keith Richards. Funny, because I knew this memoir would be full of crazy stories of 40+ years of excess on the road with the original "bad boys" of rock and roll, and that was my main reason for buyin...