Brian Jay Jones's Blog, page 34

Making Magic: Hey Bulldog

As you know, I love looking behind the scenes at how people work.  What you'll see below isn't quite a making of video, nor is it a music video per se — but it's one of the few existing bits of color film showing the Beatles at work.  In this case, they're recording "Hey Bulldog," a  1968 song that was scotched as a potential single then shelved for The Beatles before finally appearing on the Yellow Submarine soundtrack in 1969. 

There's a strong group dynamic at play here– John Lennon and...

Institutional Memories: Robert C. Byrd

Earlier this week, Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia became the all-time longest serving member of Congress, racking up 20,774 days —  that's 56 years, 320 days — that Byrd has been either a Congressman or Senator.  That makes him the Cal Ripken of Congress, and it's an impressive record, a testament not only to the 92-year-old Byrd's stamina and health, but to his unswerving commitment to the people of West Virginia, who thanked him by returning him to the Congress and the Senate...

Washington Irving, C Blocker?

Rebecca Gratz

Claire Salisbury — who's doing terrific work bringing to light the life and letters of the 19th century philanthropist Rebecca Gratz over on her blog,  Rebecca Gratz and 19th Century America — has two fun entries this week on a a good friend of Rebecca's . . . an aspiring young writer named Washington Irving.

Irving and Gratz had an interesting and decidedly non-romantic relationship — one based on mutual respect, good conversation, and similar senses of humor.  In fact, there...

Quiet As A What?

So, we've discovered we have a mouse living on the second floor of our house.

Our first hint was odd sounds in the middle of the night.  The first time we heard the noise–a very faint pit-pat-pit-pat–I made a 3 a.m. tour of the house with a baseball bat in hand, and when I saw the dog was sound asleep on the first floor (since developing hip dysplasia, Abbey has rightly determined, to her disappointment, that she can't make it up the stairs), I decided that we had likely opened up our house...

Where The Air Is Sweet…

Happy 40th Anniversary, Sesame Street! And if there's one important lesson I learned from the show, it's this: be careful when you sneeze that you don't blow your nose off.

Reviews in Brief: The Lennon Prophecy (Joseph Niezgoda)

One of the more fun and fascinating bits of Beatles lore has always been the whole "Paul Is Dead" hoax.  The story spun by that particular hoax is that Paul McCartney allegedly died in an automobile accident in 1966 – a "stupid bloody Tuesday" – and the heartbroken Beatles decided to soldier on without him, replacing McCartney with a lookalike, but planting clues of Paul's demise in Beatles songs and on album covers. Books could be written about the hoax – and, in fact, a few have – but now...

Hello, Goodbye…

Once again, my apologies for neglecting the ol' blog — it's been a busy week of editing, express mailing, and phone calls.  None of which means I have any news to report, but things have kicked up a bit on the excitement meter.  Over the falls! as Barb and I often say.

The mercury in central Maryland is beginning to hover in the mid-30s in the mornings now, and the trees have shed most of their leaves, moving from the showy to the mostly skeletal in a matter of days.  I'll likely make a quick...

This Is Halloween….

I love Halloween — though as I mentioned in my interview with Historic Hudson Valley, I'm more of a Christmas person than a Halloween person, mainly because I'm one of the world's great chickens. 

Don't get me wrong — I love horror movies and horror novels.  But I was one of those kids — and I'm now one of those adults — who can't get my mind to shut off once I go to bed.  I watch a scary movie, or read a scary book, then go to bed and lie there in the dark, the covers pulled up around my...

Slow Ride

Does anyone besides me think that Amazon's free shipping is taking significantly longer than it used to?

I'm one of those dopes who usually loads up my cart every time I go onto Amazon because I want to hit the 25 dollar floor needed to trigger free shipping.  And yes, I know it alerts you that free shipping usually takes something like 7 to 9 days — as opposed to, say, 3 to 5 for paid shipping — but in the past, packages delivered using free shipping have usually arrived within five days. ...

Trip Report: Blaze, Legends, and Sleepy Hollow

We had a great weekend up in Sleepy Hollow and the surrounding area — and the snow that was in the forecast never materialized.  Instead, we had a bit of rain, a bit of chill, but an otherwise perfect weekend for enjoying all that the area has to offer.  As Sunnyside curator Dina Friedman put it, "We like to think that we own the Halloween season here in Sleepy Hollow." And they do.

On Friday night, we attended the Great Jack O'Lantern Blaze at Van Cortlandt Manor, an old Dutch estate up at...