The Light goes out

Okay I’m working on getting myself back on track here. Last week I was trying to adjust to life without one of my all time favorite TV shows that I’ve been watching for hate to say it more than 30 years go off the air. Yes I have to admit I was almost in mourning when Guiding Light (GL) turned off the light on September 18th. I was one of those crazy people trying to save the show; I’ve never done that before in my life. What was the worst was the day they announced it publicly, yes it was April fool’s day. I was in panic mode thinking someone will say it is a just a joke, but no one was there to say it’s a joke, I was heartbroken. I have to say my friends have been good in dealing with me these last few months. I know they all probably think I’ve lost my mind but they just let me vent when I needed to, my poor sister has been the best through all this. I will miss my friends from Springfield coming into my house five days a week. I have to say thank goodness for YouTube where I can go to and see some episodes from the past of GL at anytime which I have. The show is the longest running drama in history with 72 years and more than 15,700 episodes under their belt. Actually the show started on radio as 15 minute episodes and moved over to television in the early 50’s. We will probably never see another show do this. In this day and age of media shows are lucky to last 3 episodes if their ratings aren’t good. I enjoy being able to get to know characters in books, movies and television. I don’t like to see characters end, and I know when I look for a book to read I try to find books that I know are in a series so I can get to know the person better. I do like dramas and it is my getaway for just a short time my way to escape. Well now I have an extra hour in my day to fill with something else. The lights may have gone off but the show will live in my heart and the history books for years to come.

Let the painting begin

This week is Paint Annapolis. Beginning on Thursday starts the painting in Annapolis. It goes from September 17-20. For more information you can go to Paint Annapolis official page for what is scheduled each day. I hope the weather holds out for the artists. This photo is my friend David Diaz which I took a few weeks back when he was painting at an other event in Annapolis. He is one of the competing artist this weekend. If you get a chance, go downtown and check it out this weekend if you are in the area.

Albums

Yes I’m talking about vinyl records. I was able to take a little bit of time to convert a few albums over to digital. I have a USB turntable and I think it is the best thing since sliced bread. I can’t tell you how many albums I have tried to look for in CDs. They are just out of print and so I use to have to tape to a cassette then hook that up to my computer, but the sound quality was not up to par. Now I can just record directly to the computer and I have a program that will slice the songs individually so I can burn to them to CD. I do miss the albums a lot; I have seen some artists are starting to put out albums again.

The artwork on albums is just a missing thing of the past now. Some good ones were The Rolling Stones, Rush, Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper and Stevie Vai to name a few. It seems for some artist all we are getting are downloads and can’t even get a CD with artwork. I use to love to look at the album cover the inside if it was a gatefold and the sleeve. I would just memorize everything on the album. Now a days the CD covers and insides are just not the same. Something I would like to see come back such as the albums I even like that sound of the needle on the vinyl. I’m glad that now I can take the music and convert it to digital to make it easier to carry around and put on an mp3 player. They have made it so much easier with the USB turntable and the plus with the turntable is that it can also be used on any stereo system also. So it is like having 2 in one.

One album that was very cleverly done is the Led Zeppelin In Through the Out Door Album came in a very plain brown cover which looked like a grocery bag. Once you took that off there was a scene which looked like it was a bar setting which is in sepia tones and one area color comes through. Also not too many people are aware the most inner sleeve which has a picture on both sides done in dots, if you get a damp cloth and go over the picture those dots are ink and you then have a colored picture. Very clever I had no idea about that for years. I was playing a music trivia game years back and learned about the inner sleeve changing color. I also learned later that they made about 5 or 6 versions of the album cover under the brown wrapper. Here is an example of the outside bag and one of the covers below.