Monday, March 10, 2008
WELL. THIS IS A REAL EYE-OPENER...
If you've ever been to our house, you know we have pets.
Four of them.
Dweezil the dog. Lives in the house. Has a general idea that he actually runs things.
Gremmie the 5.5-foot iguana. Has never -- and will never -- understand the concept of glass.
Trey and Claude. Conures. Noisy. We moved them in together about 10 years ago so that they would stop yelling at each other every morning at sunrise.
The two settled into a nice, quiet relationship as two confirmed bachelors. Trey, the neat, quiet Felix Unger. Claude, the loud, messy Oscar Madison. Two guys, living together in a penthouse cage.
Or so we thought.
Yesterday, we discovered that Claude is...well...Claudette.
Sometime Sunday morning she laid an egg.
Then on Sunday afternoon she laid another one.
Currently she's protecting them like we're gonna have baby birds, but only time will tell.
Anybody out there ever had this predicament? I mean, Claude is easily over 20 years old because I bought him (her) used when Adam was a toddler. And Adam hasn't toddled in months. HUNDREDS of months. And Trey? He's about 11 so I guess he had it in him, but I didn't think he had it in him.
Of course, everybody told us that they were CERTAIN both birds were boys. But that's odd because conures are almost impossible to sex unless you get one with a yellow beak. Which I only found out yesterday. All yellow beaks: Female. (That's Claude.) Yellow beak with color stripe: Male. (Neither bird.) Black Beak: Good luck! Anybody's guess.
So now we sit and wait. If they did take and there's birds on the way, these should be some pretty colorful birds, given the genetics involved.
I'll keep you posted.
------
This years induction ceremonies for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame happen tonight. Honorees are:
Madonna, John Mellencamp, the Dave Clark Five, the Ventures and Leonard Cohen.
Okay, you can argue that Madonna is not rock and roll. But "pop" music is in its own way a form of rock, so shut up.
(Besides, she's a self-made billionaire, like her or not. Which I don't. But that deserves some respect.)
John Mellencamp: Damn straight. You hear his songs on the radio and you know you've heard them a billion times but I know I always listen anyway. And a guy who writes a song called "R-O-C-K in the USA" knows he's headed for the hall.
Dave Clark Five: It's about freakin' time. It's only sad that due to the recent deaths of two members (see my previous post), it's only gonna be the Dave Clark Three at the show tonight.
Funny how you don't hear too much about the Dave Clark Five anymore. They were once the only real threat to the Beatles in this country for popularity. When they hung it up, they REALLY hung it up. Dave Clark owned all the songs and took them off the market for almost 25 years. In the meantime, he bought up a pile of classic English TV shows and became extremely rich licensing pieces of them to shows and selling tapes of them back in the VHS days. (Oddly enough, he ended up owning a piece of the Beatles legacy because he owned the rights to "Ready Steady Go," an "American Bandstand"-style show that ran in England in the Early 60s. A huge-selling tape, "The Beatles on Ready Steady Go," made Clark a multi-millionaire several times over.
You knew it was Dave Clark's band, too. He was the only drummer (in memory) to insist that his drum kit be placed IN FRONT of the rest of the band! I have a friend who saw the DC5 in Detroit around 1965, and Clark's Drum Kit was literally lifted on hydraulics through a hole in the stage, with Clark banging away. He may not have been the lead singer in his own band but he certainly let you know who's name was on the marquee!
The Ventures: Again, WHAT TOOK 'EM SO LONG???
Of COURSE the Ventures belong in the R&R HOF. Name a SINGLE guitar player who hasn't tried to play either the chords or melody (or both) to "Walk, Don't Run." You can't, because such a person does NOT EXIST.
Leonard Cohen: The finest poetic songwriter of all time. His song "Who By Fire" sends chills down my spine even thinking about it and if you were lucky enough to see the night Cohen performed that song with Sonny Rollins on the old show "Night Music," you know you've witnessed one of the most literally show-stopping, time-freezing moments in TV history. You can see it if you go to Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2T274bXIxU
Suffice to say that "Who By Fire" is probably not the song you want to listen to on Yom Kippur...
(IF you're not familiar with "Who By Fire," then perhaps you know some of Cohen's other tunes: "Suzanne," "Bird on a Wire," "Famous Blue Raincoat," etc. etc. etc.)
Congrats, all!
TT
If you've ever been to our house, you know we have pets.
Four of them.
Dweezil the dog. Lives in the house. Has a general idea that he actually runs things.
Gremmie the 5.5-foot iguana. Has never -- and will never -- understand the concept of glass.
Trey and Claude. Conures. Noisy. We moved them in together about 10 years ago so that they would stop yelling at each other every morning at sunrise.
The two settled into a nice, quiet relationship as two confirmed bachelors. Trey, the neat, quiet Felix Unger. Claude, the loud, messy Oscar Madison. Two guys, living together in a penthouse cage.
Or so we thought.
Yesterday, we discovered that Claude is...well...Claudette.
Sometime Sunday morning she laid an egg.
Then on Sunday afternoon she laid another one.
Currently she's protecting them like we're gonna have baby birds, but only time will tell.
Anybody out there ever had this predicament? I mean, Claude is easily over 20 years old because I bought him (her) used when Adam was a toddler. And Adam hasn't toddled in months. HUNDREDS of months. And Trey? He's about 11 so I guess he had it in him, but I didn't think he had it in him.
Of course, everybody told us that they were CERTAIN both birds were boys. But that's odd because conures are almost impossible to sex unless you get one with a yellow beak. Which I only found out yesterday. All yellow beaks: Female. (That's Claude.) Yellow beak with color stripe: Male. (Neither bird.) Black Beak: Good luck! Anybody's guess.
So now we sit and wait. If they did take and there's birds on the way, these should be some pretty colorful birds, given the genetics involved.
I'll keep you posted.
------
This years induction ceremonies for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame happen tonight. Honorees are:
Madonna, John Mellencamp, the Dave Clark Five, the Ventures and Leonard Cohen.
Okay, you can argue that Madonna is not rock and roll. But "pop" music is in its own way a form of rock, so shut up.
(Besides, she's a self-made billionaire, like her or not. Which I don't. But that deserves some respect.)
John Mellencamp: Damn straight. You hear his songs on the radio and you know you've heard them a billion times but I know I always listen anyway. And a guy who writes a song called "R-O-C-K in the USA" knows he's headed for the hall.
Dave Clark Five: It's about freakin' time. It's only sad that due to the recent deaths of two members (see my previous post), it's only gonna be the Dave Clark Three at the show tonight.
Funny how you don't hear too much about the Dave Clark Five anymore. They were once the only real threat to the Beatles in this country for popularity. When they hung it up, they REALLY hung it up. Dave Clark owned all the songs and took them off the market for almost 25 years. In the meantime, he bought up a pile of classic English TV shows and became extremely rich licensing pieces of them to shows and selling tapes of them back in the VHS days. (Oddly enough, he ended up owning a piece of the Beatles legacy because he owned the rights to "Ready Steady Go," an "American Bandstand"-style show that ran in England in the Early 60s. A huge-selling tape, "The Beatles on Ready Steady Go," made Clark a multi-millionaire several times over.
You knew it was Dave Clark's band, too. He was the only drummer (in memory) to insist that his drum kit be placed IN FRONT of the rest of the band! I have a friend who saw the DC5 in Detroit around 1965, and Clark's Drum Kit was literally lifted on hydraulics through a hole in the stage, with Clark banging away. He may not have been the lead singer in his own band but he certainly let you know who's name was on the marquee!
The Ventures: Again, WHAT TOOK 'EM SO LONG???
Of COURSE the Ventures belong in the R&R HOF. Name a SINGLE guitar player who hasn't tried to play either the chords or melody (or both) to "Walk, Don't Run." You can't, because such a person does NOT EXIST.
Leonard Cohen: The finest poetic songwriter of all time. His song "Who By Fire" sends chills down my spine even thinking about it and if you were lucky enough to see the night Cohen performed that song with Sonny Rollins on the old show "Night Music," you know you've witnessed one of the most literally show-stopping, time-freezing moments in TV history. You can see it if you go to Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2T274bXIxU
Suffice to say that "Who By Fire" is probably not the song you want to listen to on Yom Kippur...
(IF you're not familiar with "Who By Fire," then perhaps you know some of Cohen's other tunes: "Suzanne," "Bird on a Wire," "Famous Blue Raincoat," etc. etc. etc.)
Congrats, all!
TT
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