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What: Finland stands up to the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and Nazi Germany in World War II, and comes out battered but still standing. Below is the precarious situation at one part of the war, in 1941. The Germans are in grey and black, the Russians are in red, and the Finns are in blue.


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What: "1952 Vincent Black Lightning," Richard Thompson's 1991 tale of young hoodlums in love. As it's so hard to play, the studio version trumps any of his live versions, but you have to see him play it live to get just how intricate it is.

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Why: The '52 Vincent Black Lightning was the last of the greatest breed of British motorcycle. Faster than ( Read more... )

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What: Ann Peebles' delicate 1973 chartbuster "I Can't Stand the Rain," performed by many artists, but none as delightfully as Eruption in their awesome 1978 bug suits:

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Why: This is the third of my couldn't-miss-if-you-tried trio of song subjects, the first being the moon and the second being trains. Songwriters daily thank the gods for Seasonal ( Read more... )

Who: Actor and director Dennis Hopper, who passed away today at age 74. Here he is in an immortal confluence of cool on The Johnny Cash Show, loopily reciting Rudyard Kipling's poem "If," which as he notes, is the middle word in "life."

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Why: Dennis Hopper never let you forget he was onscreen. Maybe he picked this up from James Dean, alongside ( Read more... )

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What: The duck joke. Here it is told, sort of, by James Ernest, while I try to ruin it, at yesterday's w00tstock in Seattle.

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Since that probably didn't help much, here it is in its entirety:
A duck walks into a bar, and asks the bartender, "Do you have any grapes ( Read more... )

What: The clockwork return of mated pairs of ospreys to the Pacific Northwest in early spring, to raise a family before returning south to California in the fall.


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