Foods throughout the decades

Sitting here at Sonitrol at nights, I have time to stop and check out some of the funniest things on the internets. One of my favorite spots is Lileks.com, where James Lileks has done an awesome job reprinting old Knudsens recipe's and cook books from the 1950's and 60's. His website also boasts some other hilarious pages of clothing and decor of the era and many others.

For me, the food section of the website really makes me cringe and laugh.



Then dry heave.

The picture above is that of two separate types of gelatin, one being a somewhat disturbed vegetable cocktail of leftover opened cans of items leftover in the fridge and pink food dye for good measure, and the bottom is labeled as a corned beef gelatin loaf.

That's right kids, cold meat cake.



First thing is first. I am 27 years old. My concept of gelatin based foods is the Jell-o brand type where it is offered as a dessert, created with artificial fruit flavorings and is served at the end of a meal and is by no means gross. Some of the pictures and recipe's described as far back as the 1920's tout gelatin as a staple of food dishes served on the American table as early as the first commercially produced refridgerators came to market.




GELATIN SHOULDN'T BE USED AS A MEDIUM TO FLOAT VEGETABLES!

That image is just wrong on so many levels. I understand that at the heart of gelatin lies a morbid sinister secret. I accept it. Matter of fact, IM ok with that. I guess it was a generation thing.

Thanks to Bill Cosby's efforts to put a box of pudding in your cupboards, today's youth & generation aren't familiar with the use of gelatin as (barf) an actual ingredient/ preparatory method. We have pull tabs on our Jell-o brand pudding, we do Jell-o brand shots, but we do not under any circumstances put meat, vegetables or anything that isn't sugar laced in our gelatin!

Ah Cosby, you have probably freed us from the shackles of fucked up foods forever. With that, we owe you a heap of thanks.

Music

So IM sitting in the studios of the KTSM AM control room listening to some music we have in inventory when my boss walks in with a brand new CD. It's the sampler CD that record companies issue to radio stations that let them know which songs are scheduled for release from the album. The cover shows a person who I hadn't seen as a solo artist in a really, really long time.

Lindsey Buckingham gained his fame and notoriety back in the 70's as the guitarist for, and one of the contributing song writers of the super group Fleetwood Mac. He also played as back up for many other 70's and 80's bands & artists throughout the years and has been known for both his unique arrangements and ear catching songs. Most notably, National Lampoon's classic Vacation wouldn't be the same without Lindsey's "Holiday Road" as the opening credits theme.

So, my boss drops the CD on the table and shares the same shocked expression I do upon seeing it.

"A new one from the Buckster?"

"Sure looks like it. Figured you'd want it."

"Yeah, thanks (this should go good between my Say You Will radio CD sampler handed to me years ago)."

I got up from the studio and decided to take a listen to his latest creation. Walking to the production room, I reminded myself how I got started listening to the likes of Lindsey & Fleetwood Mac. I had just started working the afternoon shift at the radio station. At that time, we were known as Newstalk 1380 AM and our station couldn't be better (HA!). The afternoon show I was producing at the time was a huge hit and efforts were made to keep the listeners happy with it. Some of those efforts involved a music machine.

A forerunner to today's modern music libraries featured in radio stations, the music machine (which was a hastily botched together HP desktop computer and several small hard drives (being 1998, we didn't have your fancy-schmancy 40 gig HDD's)) featured a wide variety of artists and songs that were available to play at the click of a button. I was amazed, sitting right behind me was this library of music just waiting to be perused and played! I thumbed thro each song on a daily basis and would sit back and listen to my favorites.

One song was Fleetwood Mac's Rhiannon. I was captivated by it. The song moved me like no other song did before, and subsequently since. I had to hear more. I found the CD at the local music store and took it home. I remember tearing open the CD and playing it in my convertible and was blown away by what I was hearing. The composition, arrangement and lyrics just blew my mind. Hearing the pain and anger in each note made each song even that much more incredible to listen to.

Then, I wanted more. I bought each one of their albums and listened to them from front to back (old LP saying) and back again. Each album was a chapter in each of their lives. Each song was what they were feeling and going through and each note was exactly how they felt. I wore out CDs that summer. I probably wore out my parents patience listening to them at full bore in the house, but they agreed that they also loved some of their songs.

My greatest moment was seeing them in concert back in 2003. Its a shame I wasn't around to have seen them in concert back in the 1970's cause I've seen video of Stevie [Nicks] belting out the songs like a mad woman.

Somehow, I also think that no one showered in the 1970's, everyone looked all sweaty and unclean.

I digress.

I sat down in the production room and started to listen to the music coming from Lindsey's website. It was at least two of the same songs offered on the radio sampler CD I had in hand. I listened to it, and thought to myself that this doesn't sound like typical Lindsey Buckingham, it sounded more like an effort made by him writing for Fleetwood Mac. I really like what I hear!

If you want to sample some of Lindsey's new album, go to http://www.lindseybuckingham.com

*The laptop is still down, pending repairs and XP updates*

Completely random thought from left field

This thought came to myself and Amber while really, really bored.

What if you took a turkey to Carlsbad Caverns and tossed it into the bottomless pit? My question of that scenario would be: Would the turkey fall asleep because its so dark, or would it continue to flap thinking it would land?

Optional equipment for the turkey would be the addition of glow sticks to the turkeys feet.

Once Amber and I thought of this scenario, we started to logistically think out what this would entail.

• Catching a turkey and concealing it in a backpack
• Sneaking said turkey into the middle of the caves without drawing suspicion in backpack
• Attatching glow sticks to a rather (rightfully so) uncooperative turkey
• Avoiding the backlash of people (and eventually P.E.T.A.) after the experiment has begun

We get bored. Our minds wander and think of random, crazy shit. I blame society and the tuba.

PS - Hello to my good friend Mark Ross of Newschannel 9 fame. I saw him and the lovely Mrs. Ross at the bank today.

Hmmm...

I've been a little preoccupied with some things around the house and around town lately, so if I haven't been updating I don't apologize.

One of the things I can't figure out is my laptop. It's throwing a slight attitude and I can't figure it out. The DVD player refuses to work. Main problem is it happened less than a day after I reinstalled Windows XP. I loaded the drivers and software for the program and tried it with a valid DVD. It worked. So I continued to load more programs and when I tried to watch the same DVD, the computer started to hang and refused to read the DVD.

So.

I start asking friends to see if they have experienced the same thing. No one has. I go online and check forums and no one has heard of that happening to my model of laptop. Someone had suggested looking at the last few programs installed after checking that the DVD player last worked. Looking back, I loaded iTunes & my iPod, Windows Media Player 10 and Mozilla Firefox.

At first, I started to curse out iTunes. I've got something close to 1600 songs already loaded to the iPod and saved to the hard drive. They're backed up on a separate drive, but it takes a long time to reload them. Then I started to think that the problem isn't caused by the iPod. I downgraded the player back to factory settings and its working fine. Also, instead of using the CD to load, I downloaded the software for iTunes fresh from the Apple website. Its the latest and up to date software. So I know that's not the problem.

I also downloaded Mozilla Firefox. Each time I reloaded XP, I loaded a new version of Firefox. This can't be either.

So, the culprit has to be Media Player 10. There have been no updates and each time I've reloaded XP, I've tried the DVD player before downloading this. Problem is, when I uninstalled it, it didn't solve my problem. This means I will have to wipe again and start over.

Ralph was able to come thro for me and found original newspaper articles from Magic Landing's accident. They're at the house, I just need to scan them and post them on the site. Expect that soon.

IM considering taking vacation soon. Haven't decided where yet.

Chow time

Nikki and Xena chew on some beef ribs. Ralph and I went to a bbq place and I bought some ribs to take home. After eating most of what was on them, we gave them to the dogs. They wasted no time rendering every ounce of meat off them.

Xena, started to break the bone apart.

Time to take away the bones.