Tuesday Stuff

Looks like Willard Mitt conquered the Land of Duh tonight, where they vote for Allen West, Daniel Webster (over Alan Grayson), Cliff Stearns (one of the fools responsible for this nonsense) and Lex Luthor Scott, which makes me recall the following recent “New Rule” from Bill Maher…



Update 2/3/12: Oh, and when it comes to Florida and stupid politicians, I forgot about this rocket scientist.

…and gosh darn it, I’m just a great big silly head for forgetting PA’s former senator from Northern Virginia, so please allow me to try and make amends here; I hope his daughter is doing better, but where is Smerky’s column calling for Little Ricky to drop out using the same rationale the intrepid Inky columnist once used arguing for John Edwards to give up because Elizabeth was sick…



…and for those who argue that I have a cartoonish point of view, I submit the following :-)…



…and on this day in 1967, while taking a break from the filming of the Strawberry Fields Forever promotional video at Knole Park, Sevenoaks, Kent, John Lennon buys an 1843 poster from an antiques shop in Surrey which will provide him with many of the lyrics for "Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite."

And by the way, this Wikipedia article tells us the following about how the tune was recorded, including the following…

The Beatles first used samples of other music on "Yellow Submarine", the samples being added on 1 June 1966. The brass band solo was constructed from a Sousa march by George Martin and Geoff Emerick, the original solo was in the same key and was transferred to tape, cut into small segments and re-arranged to form a brief solo which was added to the song.[35]

A similar technique was used for "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" on 20 February 1967. To try to create the atmosphere of a circus, Martin first proposed the use of a calliope (a steam-driven organ). Such was the power of the Beatles within EMI that phone calls were made to see if a calliope could be hired and brought into the studio. However, only automatic calliopes, controlled by punched cards, were available, so other techniques had to be used. Martin came up with taking taped samples from several steam organ pieces, cutting them into short lengths, "throwing them in the air" and splicing them together. It took two trials; in the first attempt, the pieces coincidentally came back in more or less original order.

If you ever get a chance to watch “The Compleat Beatles” (and yes, I know it has been out for awhile now), Martin describes this process pretty well, for what it’s worth.