I’ve got a list…  a list of legends that I want to see perform before they pass from this reality.  I’ve recently taken inventor of the electric guitar and modern recording techniques Les Paul — it was in a word, amazing.  I think I’m still grinning from that show.

In the summer of 2007 I saw Koko Taylor perform at the Lowell Summer Music Series.  Even at the ripe old age of 78 she could still belt out a tune.  Her band was tight and the lead guitar even managed to take the term ‘lick’ literally as he managed to ‘play’ his axe with his tongue!

I don’t think there is any doubt that Koko qualifies as a legend; her trademark song Wang Dang Doodle (written by Willie Dixion — yet another legend) has been covered by a diverse array of artists from Ted Nugent to Grateful Dead and PJ Harvey.

Her gravelly voice and powerful style were unmistakeable.  I’m very glad to have seen her before she shuffled off her mortal coil.

Time to update the list…

You can see my photos from this show on Flickr.

A California rep. who clearly spends way too much time watching TV has proposed a new federal law to limit, are you sitting down?…  the loudness of TV commercials.

The Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act (“CALM-A” — Are you fracking kidding me?  Who makes up this stuff?) proposes to require the FCC to “prescribe a standard to preclude commercials from being broadcast at louder volumes than the program they accompany.”.

Now before I launch into a three page discussion of how ‘loudness’ is a completely subjective concept and is dependent on the perception of the individual I’ll hold my breath, count to 10, and stifle the urge to throttle yet another well meaning but clueless legislator that is attempting to establish controls over something they are utterly unqualified to determine.

Ok, so I had to count to twenty.

I’m willing to let it pass that Rep. Eshoo feels that her having ‘grown tired of being blasted off my couch’ is a reasonable basis for new federal legistation.  I’m also willing to let it pass that she is obviously trying to make some political points by addressing a popular ‘complaint’ of her constituancy.

However, I’m not willing to let it pass that she feels it’s appropriate to spend Congress’ time considering this meaningless drivel when we are faced with two wars, a World economy in the worst shape in human history, collapsing real estate market, millions of people in the street due to home foreclosure, millions more forced to choose between food and healthcare, historically high unemployment and Earth’s climate on the verge of meltdown.

It not only defies explanation, is so obsurd to be insulting to those with even a hit of wits about them, it borders on a criminal disregard for the responsibility of her office.

http://adage.com/article?article_id=135244

Update: Thankfully this one lasted only a few hours. Long enough for me to head down to the library again.

Our power was finally restored last evening around 5PM — 37 hours total outage. We have neighbors that were still without power as of late last night. Our telephone service is delivered via the internet so without power we have no phone either. Cell coverage was knocked out a few hours after the power failed as the battery backups in the cell towers drained.

Other than a few large tree limbs and a few broken shrub branches we made it through unscathed. No damage to the house, cars or us. It made it down to 47F inside the house (without power we have no heat, water or telephone). Amazingly the fish (tropicals that prefer water temps in the high 70s/low 80s) survived without a single casualty! I’m not sure they would have survived another night with outside temps in the low teens.

I’ve seen trees down on sheds, large limbs on porches and huge landmark trees stripped of most of their limbs. We hovered right around 32 and accumulated about 3/8″ of ice on the plants. Apparently the ground temp was high enough that we did not get significant icing on the roads – a very thankful thing. We have a few large trees that may need some damaged limbs removed; they are no where near the house so we’ll wait till spring for that.

I spent most of the day Friday and Saturday in the Andover & Lowell libraries. They had the three basic necessities: heat, power and internet access (Hurray!). Neither downtown area (Andover or Lowell) seemed to be effected by the storm but some of the neighborhoods appeared as if some drunken tree-mower had come through. Many side streets were blocked and the main arteries were often down to one lane.

We did stay in the house Friday night but were prepared to camp out in my Boston office (which has showers, a kitchen, cable TV, etc) last night. Luckily our power was restored as we were packing to leave.

It goes without saying that I took the opportunity for some photos! http://flickr.com/photos/streamingmeemee/sets/72157611105834941/

My iPhone was my primary link to the ‘net and performed admirably (when cell coverage allowed). I was able to keep in touch via SMS and to feed the Twitter beast.

All-in-all things are returning to normal. We’ll prob. venture into the yard today and start the cleanup keeping one eye up for those limbs that are yet to fall.

Thanks to all for your concern.

Update [3:50PM]: One of my photos was picked up by a Dutch news site. I’m displayed alongside two Associated Press wire photos; I’m humbled and a bit giddy.

If you have been living under a digital rock the last year or so Twitter is the latest “I have such a short attention span I can describe my life in 140 characters” craze.

My Twitter posts will be cross-posted on this blog so don’t feel you are missing out if you don’t ‘follow’ me on Twitter.