Brian Jay Jones's Blog, page 27

Southern Charm

I'm coming to you today from my hotel room in Greenville, Mississippi, where the view out my window — once you overlook the roof of the casino just below — is of the wonderfully swampy Mississippi delta region.  Over the tops of the cypress trees, I can just see the braces of a brand new bridge spanning the Mississippi River. And while it was a seasonably cool 65 degrees when I left Maryland on Monday, it's still hovering in the mid-90s, making me wish I'd packed something other than...

A Hint, and Scent, of Autumn

As I was driving along one of the rural, two-lane state highways that we use to get around in our corner of Maryland, I noticed a few trees starting to change color.  Nothing splashy or flashy yet — no explosive reds or oranges — but some yellowing at the corners, and a bit of browning.  It doesn't seem like it's time to make the turn into fall, and yet it really is mid-September.

Apart from the leaves, though, there are several sure signs it's really autumn — and depending on where you live, ...

The Circle of Life

Back in March, when we made the correct but heart-wrenching decision to have our dog Abbey put down, we swore with Scarlett O'Hara-like determination that we would never own another dog again.  Abbey had been too good a dog, and losing her had been so heartbreaking, we felt quite sure we would never be ready to have another canine presence in the house.  Abbey was, we were convinced, the toughest act for any dog to follow, and we thought it would be unfair to any dog to bring him or her into ...

Rolling Stone Picks The Top 100 Beatles Songs

Rolling Stone magazine is at it again.  Last time, it was the Top 500 Rock and Roll Songs of all time; now it's the Top 100 Beatles songs.   As a fan of All Things Fab, it's a given that I'll be picking this issue up and griping about whether a particular song should be higher or lower, or complaining about what's included and what's not. Oddly, while RS's Top 500 list contained 23 Beatles songs, the highest-rated Beatles tune on the All-Time list — "Hey Jude" — comes in only at number seven ...

Sam Comes Home

I was hoping to put this up yesterday, but didn't get the chance — on Wednesday, I had the pleasure of attending the signing ceremony in which Jane Henson formally presented a wonderful gift to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History:  the entire Muppet cast of Sam and Friends. 

Sam and Friends went on the air in the Washington, DC area — on WRC, our local NBC station — in May 1955.  It was initially a five-minute performance that aired after the local news, and...

Under Construction, Sort Of. I Guess.

Hunh. Without my prior knowledge or any sort of heads up, WordPress decommissioned the template I use for my website and substituted it with a different one.  Hence the slightly different look you're seeing here.

Don't get me wrong, I like some of the changes — notice, for example, that you'll see drop down menus when you drag across the tabs above, instead of having the pages listed down the right hand side.  And behind the scenes, they're allowing a lot more flexibility in formatting that I ...

Almost Like Being There

As you can imagine, the last week has been fairly crazy — crazy in a good way, natch — and I apologize for not checking in here a bit more quickly.  I appreciate all the kind e-mails and notes — you're all Good People.  Thanks for all the nice words.  I mean it.

BIO guru Jamie Morris sent out a heads up the other day to note that many of the remarks and sessions from the Compleat Biographers Conference in May have been made available by the University of Massachusetts — our hosts that day —...

In Which All Is Revealed…

At last, here's the answer to the question "Who are you writing about now?"

It's this wonderful fellow right here.

Here's the way it was reported on Galleycat:

Jim Henson Biography Acquired By Ballantine

Biographer Brian Jay Jones has sold a biography of the late Jim Henson–the genius behind the The Muppet Show and Fraggle Rock. The project is currently untitled.

Jonathan Lyons of Lyons Literary negotiated the deal with senior editor Jill Schwartzman. Jones is the author of Washington Irving: An...

Home Improvements

Here's an interesting piece of news: Abbotsford — the home of the Scottish novelist, poet and Washington Irving mentor Sir Walter Scott — is receiving a nearly ten million pound makeover, courtesy of Scotland's Heritage Lottery Fund, to turn it into a major cultural center.

I'm all for it, though I have an admittedly biased angle:  Abbotsford was an important place to Washington Irving.  In the summer of 1817, Irving — one of  American literature's great gatecrashers and an enormous fan of...

Project Blue Harvest Revealed

…well, not quite.  But for those of you who keep kindly asking me, "What are you doing next?"  . . . you'll have your answer shortly. In the meantime, I'll take a moment to address the next most popular question, which is: "What's the first Beatles song to feature an Epiphone Casino guitar?"*

Ha ha! No, actually, it's "What is this 'Project Blue Harvest' reference anyway?"

(My fellow Star Wars nerds can stop reading and come back tomorrow.)

Back in the early 1980s, when George Lucas was hard at ...