Way back in the mid-1970s, I'd walk over to the G.C. Murphy in the Bradlee Shopping Center in Alexandria, Virginia to check out the singles. (Don't bother to look for G.C. Murphy at Bradlee - it isn't there.) For those who are younger than MySpace's Tom claims to be, singles were circular pieces of black plastic with a big hole in the middle that had a diameter of seven inches (yes, we knew that the metric system would probably replace things after the Bicentennial, but we still used English measurement units back then). So anyways, G.C. Murphy would post a piece of paper every week that listed the chart positions of various singles, such as Olivia Newton-John's "Have You Never Been Mellow," Elton John's "Island Girl," and an Electric Light Orchestra song that the G.C. Murphy chart referred to as "Strange Music." (I got a laugh over that one.)

A few miles away from G.C. Murphy, there was a computer. This computer had nothing to do with music - at that time, almost everyone knew that Apple Computer and Apple Corps were in two very different lines of business. The computer which I accessed was used for exciting programming, in which we'd write BASIC programs, making sure to include the line numbers:

10 GOTO 20
20 GOTO 10
30 END

This was our hilarity, way back in the 1970s. But times have changed.

Fast forward to the morning of December 11, 2008. I was driving through La Verne, California, listening to a song. More accurately, I was driving through La Verne, San Dimas, Pomona, Diamond Bar, and Brea, listening to the song. (It wasn't a long song - I just used the "RPT" capability.) The song, by the way, was the Junior Boys mix of "Fumbling Towards Ecstasy." It was contained on a disk that was smaller than a single, but that had a whole bunch of music on it.

Why did I buy the disk that included this song? Because I had been listening to it a lot on my computers. Perhaps I couldn't write endlessly looping BASIC programs on these computers, but I could surf to last.fm and listen to stuff.

And how had I heard of the song in the first place? Because some cranky old fart way up in Canada happened to like the song, and I noticed.

Everything changes.

(The title, by the way, is an inside joke known only to three - or perhaps four - people. So I apologize if it's obscure to you, but at least the three - or perhaps four - people will enjoy it.)

First update to my MySpace blog since August. But I've been busy blogging elsewhere. For example, I've written a ton of posts in my personal Blogger blog about Theatre Experience of Southern California's recent production of "High School Musical." (If you want to see my previous Blogger posts about "High School Musical" and other stage-related topics, go to http://mrontemp.blogspot.com/search/label/stage)

It's ironic that I haven't been blogging about that performance here, since a lot of my MySpace friends are, or have been, connected to Theatre Experience of Southern California in some way. For example, one of my MySpace friends is the mother of the guy who played "Ryan" in the production. (More about Ryan in a minute.)

I thought I was done with my "High School Musical" posts, but this morning I got dressed for work and put on a white shirt with blue stripes. Therein lies a story.

You see, the stage production of "High School Musical" is supposed to take place within a single week at the high school. So, theoretically, on Monday morning one of the stars is immersed in basketball preparation while the other star is arriving at a new school. By Friday afternoon, the two stars have won the basketball game, won the science decathlon, won the leading roles in "Juliet and Romeo," and won each others' hearts. All in the course of one week. But that's Disney.

Why does the timeline of the musical matter? Because of costuming.

Normally for theatrical productions, our producer provides us with costumes, since most of us don't happen to have 1900 Iowan or Russian clothes lying around. But in this case, since the musical has a contemporary setting, the producer had the wild idea that we just might be able to dress ourselves.

However, if the play takes place over five days, then it would not be appropriate for us to wear the same clothes throughout the course of the play. If we did, then we'd have to change some of the lines.

TROY: Gabriella, I've decided to audition.
GABRIELLA: That's fine, but I don't want to audition with you.
TROY: Why not?
GABRIELLA: You haven't changed your clothes all week. You smell like a locker room.
TROY: Well, you smell like a dissected frog!
SHARPAY: This is delightful!
RYAN: Shut up. Your armpits smell like cake.

Because I only appeared in a few scenes, I was able to get away with three (rather than five) outfits. The second outfit was worn toward the end of Act One, and it included...a white shirt with blue stripes.

I wore this twice during Act One. The first time that I wore it was during the initial auditions for the musical. From a structural standpoint, I needed to get on stage to help sing a song - although from a character standpoint, I was looking for the site of the upcoming science decathlon. Instead of finding the decathlon, I find "performers" who baa like sheep and do other weird stuff (although my character thought the Ethel Merman sound-alike was a real toe-tapper). 

So now I have a Pavlovian association of this shirt with a guy named Matt singing off-key, the aforementioned Ethel Merman, and the aforementioned baa.

Oh, and one other thing.

I only had to wear three costumes during the performances. The characters playing Ryan and Sharpay had to wear about seven costumes, if not more. In this particular scene, Sharpay makes her entrance in an entirely pink costume, while Ryan makes his entrance...in an entirely pink costume. (At this stage of the play, you can see who wore the pants in this sister-brother relationship.)

So now, whenever I put this shirt on, I'm afraid that I'll end up watching out of the corner of my eye, making sure that my MySpace friend's son doesn't suddenly walk into the room in a pink outfit, holding a pink Hello Kitty-like mini boombox. Because if he shows up like that, I'm running.

(Incidentally, if you know Andrew, I can assure you that he does NOT dress like this in normal life. And I'll refrain from sharing the stories that his mother told about his toddler-hood...)

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids....

Found this via Pastoral Ponderings.

Yes, MySpacers, I am still alive. I'll use this space to mention a couple of things that happened today.

The day did not start off well. As I went to get dressed and grab my phone holster, wallet, and all of that good stuff, I was unable to locate my wedding ring. Despite nearly two hours of searching, I could not find my wedding ring. Normally I put it on my dresser, and having not found it there (nor in several other parts of the house), I was completely mystified. Did I accidentally wear it to the gym and leave it there? Did it come off when I washed my hands before serving Communion on Sunday?

So I went to work, ringless and looking eligible (well, theoretically looking eligible; I wasn't mobbed by single women when I walked in the door). A coworker was visiting from the East Coast, and when I mentioned my missing ring to him, he kinda sorta said "Uh oh!"

Later that morning I got a text from my wife. My ring was found on the floor next to my dresser. I thought I had searched the floor, but I guess I didn't search well enough. So I'll be visibly married when I return home this evening.

The other big event of the day has to do with my work at MegaCorp. I've been working on a cost-savings project at MegaCorp for some time. A couple of years, actually. The fact that said project should usually take about six months should be taken into consideration.

So anyways (as a CTE'er would say), I attended a review meeting for this project at which it was noted that this cost-savings project wasn't anticipated to save a lot of costs, so why don't we terminate it?

Rather than plunging me into disappointed despair, this actually gave me a feeling of relief.

Now if I can just resolve a teeny little health insurance issue, things will be going well...

A quick mobile post to note that my niece (Sandi's ketchup cohort) will play a prophet of Baal in an elementary school play about Elijah on Friday night. Due to the grade level, it has been somewhat sanitized, I think; she does not cut herself up, and she is not killed in the end. And I do not think the kid playing Elijah has to run that far...

I just watched the Armi & Danny video (see previous blog post) again, and was struck by something new this time around.

You'll recall that the dancers in that video were stunning in their very own away.

Well, I just realized that some of the moves of the dancers duplicated the moves of the Wa Tan Ye girls (of the local wigwam of Heeeeeeeeawatha) in our recent CTE performance of "The Music Man" (Bridges Auditorium about a week ago). Of course, our Wa Tan Ye girls didn't get to dance to a Suomi pop music background.

P.S. I tagged this as "Movies, TV, Celebrities" because I didn't see a "Plays" category; I guess MySpace doesn't care for thespians. For the record, I have still not watched the "Music Man" video, even though I've now been in the play twice. I should probably watch it some time.

I am on a variety of social media sites, and I use the sites differently. In my case, I use MySpace for much more personal contacts than my other sites (I have actually physically met many of my MySpace friends). If I'm going to talk about business, then I would probably go to Blogger - or, more appropriately, LinkedIn.

But other people don't see it that way. While on LinkedIn, I ran across the following question in LinkedIn Answers:

A friend and I are in the beginning stages of launching a not-for-profit venture aimed toward encouraging young people to consider the skilled trades as a possible career path. We're considering setting up an online blog or social network to reach that audience. We're both fairly comfortable with the Internet, so setting up the blog or network itself shouldn't be an issue.

However, my friend suggested that in order to publicize our blog or social network we might have to establish pages on Facebook and (eek!) MySpace. I have some familiarity with Facebook, but NONE with MySpace. Can you help?

In this case, it's obvious that MySpace is an ideal part of the venture's business strategy, since many of the people they want to reach are on here.

My one suggestion to the writer was to take advantage of everything that MySpace has to offer, including blogs (duh) and groups. I am a member of a few MySpace groups myself, although I haven't visited them all that much lately. An active group would certainly complement the venture's strategy.

No, I don't often update my MySpace blog these days...in part because I'm too busy updating everything else.

I've mentioned my main blog, mrontemp, here in my MySpace blog before, but that's just one of several places where I output my unsurpassed wisdom.

If you want a quick view of everything that I'm doing online, there are two places to get it.

The first is http://friendfeed.com/ontarioemperor. If you haven't heard of it, FriendFeed is an aggregation service that has taken off, especially over the past few months.

Much of my material is also available on another aggregator, MyBlogLog. The URL there is http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/members/ontarioemperor/ - be sure to click on the "New With Me" radio button.

Some of the things that you can see via one of both of these services include the following:

Posts to both of my current Blogger blogs, mrontemp and mrontario
Posts to this MySpace blog
A list of all of the songs that I play on one of my computers via last.fm
Pictures that I upload to Flickr
All of my output on Twitter
My Yelp business reviews (restaurants, grocery stores, etc.)
and many more...

In the course of writing a blog post in my mrontemp blog, I began a search for the worst music of all time. During that search, I ran across a video which several sources characterized as the worst video of all time. Sadly, it's from Finland. It's from Armi (who has since passed away) & Danny, and it's their big hit "I Wanna Love You Tender." Armi & Danny aren't too bad, but their dancers are...well, they just are.

 

MySpace isn't letting me embed a YouTube video, but I strongly encourage you to go here and view this. It uses the same song (Bluemenwise Neben Autobahn) that was used in the GMC Yukon Hybrid video that I just posted.