Re: HYAMLC

1

Thank you for increasing the suckiness. Unfogged was like a useless broken down non-sucking vacuum cleaner today.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 7:52 PM
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2

A death metal version could work okay.


Posted by: Sifu Tweety | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 7:53 PM
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3

I do hate that so many covers make it a happy song. It is not a happy song.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 7:54 PM
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4

I was just saying, Garland was only 22 when she sang it and pretty jaded for barely legal. But that was prophetic, because Minelli directed the film and married her.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 8:02 PM
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5

You know what sucks?

Being a POW/MIA.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 8:10 PM
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5: Not if you're dead. Then you're just dead. Which is a thing that happens to people.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 8:12 PM
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1.2 made me laugh, since I have one of those: a useless broken down non-sucking vacuum cleaner. I don't really know what to do with it. Its hose-sucking function, with all the attachments, works, but its actual carpet-sucking cleaning function does not. Maybe I should freecycle it.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 8:19 PM
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8

I highly endorse the Dyson line of vacuum cleaners. I should get them to pay me for the endorsement.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 8:21 PM
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9

So how long until we just merge the blog entirely with Facebook?


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 8:24 PM
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10

I need a vacuum cleaner.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 8:28 PM
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11

I've had a replacement, functioning, vacuum cleaner for several years now. Just feel badly about the old one for some reason (okay, my mom got it for me, and seemed hurt and disappointed when I reported a year later that it was, erm, not working).

Vacuum cleaners are among those things one tends not to buy for oneself until one accepts full grownuphood. Pillows and sheets were similar, for me. Mom gets those for me! Along with, like, a new toothbrush every Xmas!


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 8:29 PM
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9: You are funny.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 8:31 PM
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13

10: So that's what the kids are calling it these days.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 8:34 PM
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10: I should hesitate to say that I wouldn't buy one myself but acquired it as a gift from my apparently newly wealthy mother. She most recently offered to buy me a piano, which is mind-blowing, because I want one, but feel guilty letting her spend the money (she said anything under a grand). Privileged, I am.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 8:37 PM
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15

Stanley! I have a piano, but it's up in Massachusetts. You can have it for under a grand if you're willing to provide transportation (and tuning, obvs.)


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 8:40 PM
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16

A less-than-grand piano. Thank you, Stanley. Unless someone else got there first.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 8:40 PM
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17

The spinet is the least grand piano.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 8:42 PM
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18

Drew fucking Brees. That is all.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 8:43 PM
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19

15: What kind? Tuning's not an issue. I've convinced a piano-tuning friend to teach me if I get him some new piano tools.

You can also email me at the Unfogged address with specifics.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 8:44 PM
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20

9: Two people like this.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 8:46 PM
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21

I'm actually doing a Christmas cover-song project with some friends on Facebook, which is why I shared it there, too.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 8:48 PM
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19: It's a spinet of some kind, vintage 1980 or so - I honestly don't remember much else, and it's been many years since I've played it. I was half-joking, since I assumed you'd never want to move a piano 500 miles or so. My brother would like to be relieved of it; but honestly, you can probably find something closer to home that you can actually give a test-drive first. It seems to me.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 8:49 PM
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23

I'm currently going to the Northeast several times a year with a van or a trailer. Retrieving a piano is not a problem. We just ran, as a favor to a friend, a heavy ass (it was the size of a large ottoman) reel-to-reel recorder down to Raleigh on our recent Raeigh-Boone-Greensboro run. It's the slowest moving service ever, but it's free to the customer.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 8:54 PM
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24

Would you consider a digital piano? I have one of these and am very happy with it. Really impressive piano sound and feel, and far easier to move than an upright.


Posted by: Mr. Blandings | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 8:57 PM
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25

24: I need something I can walk up to and play. I don't walk up to drums and play unless they're all ready to go.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 8:58 PM
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25: I mean, for doodling's sake. Like, I'll plop down on the drum kit while my housemate's brushing his teeth before we leave for dinner. That sort of thing.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 8:59 PM
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23: Well, alright. If you're conceivably interested in a 1980ish spinet, I'll ask my brother for the details, which completely escape me. I'll let you know.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 9:02 PM
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28

Well, you do have to push the On button, but I totally doodle with it. It has speakers.


Posted by: Mr. Blandings | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 9:04 PM
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29

28: Can you import midi sounds?


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 9:10 PM
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30

Why is Liam Neeson making such shitty movies these days? Surely they can't have exhausted all the good IRA stories yet. This Battleship one where he's supposed to be in the US Navy, but still has his brogue is particularly ridiculous. Is his agent being blackmailed by the-Hollywood-religion-that-must-not-be-named or what?


Posted by: Natilo Paennim | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 9:10 PM
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31

I can't really speak to it's MIDI capability (it does have a MIDI input and output). I basically use it as a piano substitute except for the odd bit of jazz organ noodling.


Posted by: Mr. Blandings | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 9:22 PM
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32

probably. you know how they are.
stanley: you're right, it's the saddest song ever, I forgot how sad because I haven't listened to it in a long time. maybe next year we'll die before xmas, hopefully!! yeah, and when were the olden, golden years; when she was 12? I say cover in good spirit, but only if you are wearing a jeweled snood and about to cry.


Posted by: alameida | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 9:22 PM
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31: If I can make it sound like a Hammond, I'm sold.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 9:27 PM
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34

I am taking 15 as an opportunity to tell an Algonquin Round Table story I love that there is never any real occasion to tell!

So it's one of those parties at Nyesa McMein's or something, and everyone is very drunk, and a very drunk Helen Hayes, afraid someone will notice she's drunk, suddenly says "If anyone wants my piano, they're willing to it." To which George Kaufman replies (presumably without missing a beat) "Why, Helen, that's very seldom of you."

This is maybe not as great a story as I think it is.


Posted by: Mister Smearcase | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 9:27 PM
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35

(Also I have a Casio thingy with weighted keys and touch-sensitive volume and love it.)


Posted by: Mister Smearcase | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 9:34 PM
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36

(Its only flaw is it doesn't play the little Casio keyboard song of yore. I'm just going to keep talking because I killed the thread.)


Posted by: Mister Smearcase | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 9:39 PM
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37

(Its name is Piano David Smearcase. Only my real last name instead. Pets are given the middle name "David" in the Smearcase family, regardless of gender. A piano is a pet of sorts.)


Posted by: Mister Smearcase | Link to this comment | 12-26-11 9:51 PM
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38

that is very charming, mr. smearcase. both the story and the naming convention.


Posted by: alameida | Link to this comment | 12-27-11 3:57 AM
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39

I found out my housemate's about to acquire a midi-control keyboard that we can plug right into the existing computer speakers, so problem solved, I guess.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 12-27-11 10:49 AM
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40

39 is making the baby Rick Wakeman cry.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 12-27-11 11:03 AM
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41

I mean, I do want the real thing, and I have the means and space for it.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 12-27-11 11:05 AM
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42

Tbh, most people I know who play keys, even those who are classical trained pianists, seem to use good quality midi keyboards with proper weighted keys, rather than actual acoustic pianos.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 12-27-11 11:14 AM
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43

A friend of mine has a baby grand which is also a player piano that he got off of craigslist. He lives on the third floor of a brownstone, so he had it hoisted up through the window.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 12-27-11 11:38 AM
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44

30: It might have something to do with not wanting to spend much time at home, alone, in an apartment full of reminders of his late wife, but I say that solely on the basis of how grey and tired he looked when I saw him on the street several months after the poor woman's death.


Posted by: Flippanter | Link to this comment | 12-27-11 11:43 AM
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45

If you are thinking at all seriously about getting a piano. it is definitely worth investing in The Piano Book and/or perusing Larry Fine's site at the link.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 12-27-11 11:45 AM
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9: Facebookization? Facebookification? Facebookizacation?


Posted by: urple | Link to this comment | 12-27-11 5:49 PM
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47

Friendulated.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 12-27-11 6:29 PM
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48

Facebookification. A terrible fate to befall any discussion group.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 12-27-11 6:32 PM
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49

Speaking of, um, something, today I was doing some research on Ancestry.com, inspired by a certain Stormcrow fellow, and I learned of a relative on my mother's side from Quebec named Theofile, which made me think of teo.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 12-27-11 6:32 PM
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44: Yes. Getting out of the place every day was an imperative for a while. I spent whole days just walking or driving rather aimlessly around for a few months.


Posted by: Biohazard | Link to this comment | 12-27-11 6:32 PM
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51

49: We were doing a bit of family research today, sorted out that one ancestor during the Revolutionary War spent the night at the home of this fine fellow when he was still a justice of the peace and not an infamous Cave-in-the-Rock river pirate.

Also, semi-genealogy-related, chances are there is a historical map of interest to you (you=everyone) in the fabulous David Rumsey Map Collection--most of the scans are very well done, for instance this fabulous turn-of-last-century composite of Germany (zoom it right up to individual streets and roads and farms).


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 12-27-11 7:24 PM
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51: The thing I wish the site were better at letting you add notes about things you learn about offsite, such as "at her funeral there was a large house fire," which was reported to me orally by my grandmother, who was there.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 12-27-11 7:44 PM
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51. Although Mason claimed he was simply a farmer who had been maligned by his enemies, the presence of $7,000 in currency and 20 human scalps in his baggage convinced the Spanish he indeed was a pirate.


Posted by: md 20/400 | Link to this comment | 12-27-11 7:45 PM
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54

Grandma always carried kerosene in her purse.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 12-27-11 7:47 PM
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52: You can add a fact (Funeral is a choice, for instance) for someone in your tree and there is an associated free-form description field.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 12-27-11 7:52 PM
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53: Maybe he was with Wigs for Kids.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 12-27-11 7:56 PM
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