The Daily News

1  Last night they had a Clint Eastwood Marathon playing. Not sure of the channel because I was busy cleaning and walking around aimlessly.

2  The two that aired were Hang 'Em High and High Plains Drifter.

3  To be honest, I didn't pay too much attention to either, but it made for a great lava lamp while I did some in-house walking exercises.

4  The hanging scene from the Hang 'Em High was done pretty well, from what I could see, complete with a guy selling ice cold beer featured in the background. Imagine being the only vendor at a hanging. I'll bet that guy made a bundle. 

5  Anybody lookin'?

6  I sold beer years ago at major sporting events in the Bay Area, so I know what the ratio of one vendor to an enormous crowd meant to the bottom line at an event like that. My recollection is vague, but I remember selling beer at Willie McCovey's last game as a Giant. I think we had just one beer station open in the upper deck that day. Could be wrong. I also vaguely remember there being just three of us up there. I just set up a stand outside the station, and the crew worked as bar backs, bringing me three cases at a time. I spent the afternoon popping and pouring, with all due respect to Willie Mac. Needless to say I made a few bucks. Shameless, yes, but I liked it too. 

7  In the movie, the guy selling beer at the hanging had a coin changer and everything. He even tried selling to a "youngster."  I laughed, because I was walking around the house, half-watching the film,  straightening things up inside, and trying to log indoor walking miles. The film did a decent job of making the hanging look real. There was a sense of an event, with some people in a party mood, while others stared up in disbelief. They were going to hang six guys at the same time, one sweeping blow. 

8  The party atmosphere mixed well with the seriousness of what was about to happen. It reminded me a lot of Shirley Jackson's classic short story The Lottery. 

9  It ran from roughly 10 to 11:30 last night. I had to go out to the back yard for something or other at one point, and stopped and gave a look around. The night became eerily silent. 

10  Sacramento has history, and a lot of the town has areas with an Old-West feel to them. I imagine a lot of places in Cali do, but gold country in particular brings with it lots of that dust. 

11  I couldn't help but think of Placerville, a town I absolutely love, but with a macabre history. The fact that it was once called Hangtown always intrigued me as a kid. To its credit, it had been known as Dry Diggin's, and Old Dry Diggings because the gold the miners would move their dry diggings to running water in order to separate the gold from the dirt. A Wiki piece on Placerville has this to say about the town's name:

After the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in nearby Coloma, California, by James W. Marshall in 1848 sparked the California Gold Rush, the small town now known as Placerville was know as Dry Diggin's after the manner in which the miners moved carloads of dry soil to running water to separate the gold from the soil. Later in 1841, the town earned its most common historical name, "Hangtown" because of the numerous hangings that occurred there. 

According to the museum guide at the Fountain & Tallman Museum, there were only three hangings that occurred after three men on horseback came into town with guns ablaze. The name stuck after that. By about 1850, the temperance league and a few local churches had begun to request that a more friendly name be bestowed upon the town. The name was not changed until 1854 when the City of Placerville was incorporated. At its incorporation Placerville was the third largest town in California. In 1857 the county seat was then moved from Coloma to Placerville, where it remains today.


Retrieved from  Placerville Wiki Link ; )

12  All that stuff entered my mind while standing in the back yard wondering why I went out there to begin with.  

13  I'm pretty sure that the film wanted to show the rougher parts of the West. It did that pretty well.

14  I sat down to write this, and High Plains Drifter played in the background as I tacked away. Lotta shootings and fires. We have a pretty lofty concept of the Wild West. I'm pretty sure it was far from glorious. 

15  When I was younger I was not a huge fan of Eastwood films. I've a better appreciation for them now.

16  Especially going into the one a.m. We'll leave it all out on the dusty road. I'm hanging on a dusty slope, and I think I'll change channels. Yup. 

17  Moving On, Part One: Had a ball yesterday with the babies. 

18  I awakened early  yesterday morning and found a video of a Moody Blues concert. It absolutely rocked, and I instantly shared it on all two of my Facebooks, right around 5 a.m.

19  I then did something I never do: I went right back to sleep!

20  The music was familiar and amazing.

21  I slept WAY in, took a look at the video to make sure all the connections worked an everything, and then realized it was completely out of sync with the voices. 

22  It was like watching an old Japanese movie where the dialogue is around two seconds ahead (or behind) the action.

23  It killed me to do it, but I had to delete the thing, even though the sound worked nicely. Some people had already liked my post. 

24 

28  I am happy to say I have decided to post the link. Click the link, not the pic, and you will get the concert. It's amazing, but out of sync, AND it gets interrupted by annoying ads. Otherwise, the music is fun. Here it is, in all its glory!

MOODY BLUES at the Royal Albert Hall

29  It should perhaps be a lesson in how to drag out an encore, but I STILL love the music, and was sorry I pulled the link from FB in the first place. 

30  So I'm gonna just leave this, a nice cue for me to make another early escape. 

31  The DN will cease on May 27, by the way. I wanna have lots of fun in the meantime. 

32  Enjoy the Moody Blues. Some nostalgia coming at you from an old coot. 

33  The thing runs for only an hour and twenty minutes, if I did my math right. THEN it repeats again, but with no sound. 

34  Despite all, it's a helluva concert. 

35  And I don't have time to go in and cut it all up and edit and all that. 

36  So you get it a tad raw. 

37  That happened to me with a lamb chop last night, and it turned out fine. The ends were crisp, but it all worked. 

38  How's that for a cue to get on with other things?

39  Have a GREAT day.

40  Hope you enjoyed this.

41  See you again.

42  Peace.

~H~

fin.