I waited a long time for The Ministry of Time to come out as an audiobook. On a recent trip to Barnes and Nobel, I found it and bought it. Shortly after I bought it and began to read it, the audiobook was released.
I read the first 3/4 of it, and listened to the end of it. Before I go further, here is the Goodreads Synopsis:
A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all: Welcome to The Ministry of Time, the exhilarating debut novel by Kaliane Bradley.
In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats” from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.
She is tasked with working as a “bridge”: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as “1847” or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,” “Spotify,” and “the collapse of the British Empire.” But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.
Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.
An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time asks: What does it mean to defy history, when history is living in your house? Kaliane Bradley’s answer is a blazing, unforgettable testament to what we owe each other in a changing world.
This was unlike any other time travel book I have read in that the time travel has already happened when you begin the book. The main character is one of the chosen agents to watch these “expats.” They are people from the past who have been brought to present. They must learn how to live in this new environment.
The story was actually pretty good. There was a section of the story that went into a bit too much detail about a sexual encounter. I could have done with out that, and I’m not sure it was important to the story.
The way it is described above is fairly accurate. It is like a spy thriller that has some romance to it. There were twists that I didn’t see coming and the story wraps up in a way that there could be a sequel if the author is inclined to write one.
I found some more Moose pictures that made me laugh this week. I am not sure if this was for a charity event or if it was a St. Jude Fundraiser. Our staff was asked to play in a basketball game. They got us uniforms with the station logo on the front and each of us had part of “94.5” on the back.
I’m not sure what $24 dollars was going to do for us, but I did try to bribe the official to make things go in our favor.
There is no doubt that we were all pooped after the game. We’re all red faced and gasping for air. The next picture was one that made me laugh out loud. Morning guy Jim Biggins is holding his knee in pain, intern Crack of Dawn Shawn is flat on his back, morning gal Jodi K is the only one who doesn’t look like she’s exhausted, and I look like I am dying!
I don’t remember much about this game. If I were to guess, we lost. Events like this were one of the reasons I loved working in radio!
This past Sunday was interesting. My wife had to work that night so she was asleep. The kids were playing in the living room, so I decided it was a good time to shower. I told the kids I would be jumping in the shower and I’d be out as quick as I can.
Now, when I’m the only adult awake, my showers are super fast. I’m in and out in 5 minutes because you never know what toddlers can accomplish in a short amount of time. Well, I found out the hard way.
I got out of the shower and was drying off when my daughter came in and said, “Daddy, Andrew is trying to give chocolate milk to my baby doll and she doesn’t want it.” So I wrap myself in a towel and go to the front room. There I see Andrew with a huge grin on his face. I look down to see an empty gallon of chocolate milk next to a HUGE puddle of chocolate milk.
His spill was much bigger than the spill above. I freak out and grab the towel from around me and throw it down on the milk. It wasn’t enough, so I had to run and get another one. I am now on all fours wiping up this chocolate milk. I asked him why he poured it on the floor, which led to him crying.
His crying is not really crying as much as screaming. I told him he needed to stop crying before he woke up his mom. This led to more screaming and crying. So I’m wiping up this milk and my wife finally comes out. “What is the world is going on?!” I turn to her and say, “Andrew dumped an entire gallon of chocolate milk everywhere.”
She then says, “How in the world did the milk get on the ceiling?!” I looked up and couldn’t even believe that it was all over it! I asked how that happened. Ella said that they were using a toy syringe from their doctor kit to suck the milk up into it. Once it was in the syringe, Andrew was shooting it onto the ceiling.
I’m sure it was a sight watching me in nothing but underwear on a step ladder wiping milk of the ceiling. I guess I need to take shorter showers!
This is sort of a continuation of the Music of My Life feature. It focused on music from 1970-2025. It featured tunes that have special meaning to me, brought back a certain memory or a tune that I just really like. I found that with the first three decades, there were songs that I didn’t feature. So I sat down with my original lists and selected some songs that “bubbled under,” so to speak.
I figured a good way to present them was to focus on a decade. 10 years = 1 song per year = 10 songs. Last week finished up the 70’s, and this week we’ll move on to the 80’s. So, let’s check out a few “Decade Extras.”
1980
Let’s kick off the decade with a country/pop crossover. Back when we first got cable TV, the movie channels would run movies a lot. They would schedule it in the morning, afternoon, evening, and overnight kind of rotating them so people had options on what time worked best. I remember 9 to 5 being on all the time. My mom always seemed to be watching it if it was on. I’m pretty sure she had them theme song memorized.
Dolly Parton wrote (and sang) this for the 1980 film of the same name. The film, which was her acting debut, stars Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Parton, and Dabney Coleman. It dealt with life in an American office, where the workday was 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. She wrote the song while the movie was filming.
This song won the 1981 Grammys for Best Country Song and Best Country Vocal Performance, Female; it also received a Grammy nomination for Best Album Of Original Score Written For A Motion Picture Or Television Special and received Oscar and Golden Globe nominations. It also won the People’s Choice Award for Favorite Motion Picture Song.
Mojo magazine asked her what lyric she’s most proud of, Dolly Parton said: “One that I remember the very moment I wrote when I was working on ‘9 to 5,’ was ‘Pour myself a cup of ambition.’ I went, ‘Yeah that’s so good.’ That has really followed me oh through the years.”
She wrote the lyric in LA. “I would watch things going on, on the set,” she recalled to Mojo. “At night, I would go back to the hotel Bel-Air. I would get my guitar, and I would start putting pieces together. I would work on songs, clicking my nails on a typewriter.”
“I had just made myself some coffee, because I was going to spend two or three hours working on the song,” Parton continued. “I always drink coffee when I write. And I just remember saying, ‘Tumble out of bed, and stumble to the kitchen.’ What else you doing? I looked at my coffee cup and thought, ‘I pour myself a cup of ambition.'”
“Sometimes when those lines come, you just think, ‘Oh my goodness that is so good. I’m so proud of myself,” she concluded. “And then of course, many things spiritual based, I always look up and say, ‘Hey, thank you, Lord. I like that one.'”
As old as the song is, it still sounds good today.
9 to 5
1981
There are a handful of songs that “define” the 80’s for me. Your handful may or may not be different from mine. One of the greats that always seems to pop up on 80’s collections and as a “favorite” 80’s song was a phone number that everyone knows!
The opening guitar lick grabs your attention and that drum kick into the full band hooks you. This ode to a gal who doesn’t even know the singer soared up the charts to become a Top 5 single.
For years, Tommy Tutone (who isn’t the name of a person, just the name of the group) has used a story that there was a Jenny and she ran a recording studio. They have also said it was inspired by a real girl who band member Tommy Heath met in a nightclub and 867-5309 was the phone number of her parents. None of this is true, but it got them a lot more media attention, since it made a better story.
Alex Call, the songwriter, came up with it while sitting under a plum tree. He told Songfacts the story: “Despite all the mythology to the contrary, I actually just came up with the ‘Jenny,’ and the telephone number and the music and all that just sitting in my backyard. There was no Jenny. I don’t know where the number came from, I was just trying to write a 4-chord rock song and it just kind of came out.
This was back in 1981 when I wrote it, and I had at the time a little squirrel-powered 4-track in this industrial yard in California, and I went up there and made a tape of it. I had the guitar lick, I had the name and number, but I didn’t know what the song was about. This buddy of mine, Jim Keller, who’s the co-writer, was the lead guitar player in Tommy Tutone. He stopped by that afternoon and he said, ‘Al, it’s a girl’s number on a bathroom wall,’ and we had a good laugh. I said, ‘That’s exactly right, that’s exactly what it is.’
The rest is history.
867-5309
1982
I heard Foreigner for the first time while listening to Casey Kasem on American Top 40. I really liked their sound. Lou Gramm’s voice really stood out for me.
Juke Box Hero was a song that was in a good rotation when I was at the classic rock station. It has become a staple on classic rock playlists. The story behind the song is one that I love:
This song was written by Foreigner guitarist Mick Jones and lead singer Lou Gramm. In a Songfacts interview, Jones said: “That stemmed from an experience that we had, I think it was in Cincinnati. We’d gone to the arena for a sound check, and it was pouring down rain, and there were a bunch of fans waiting at the door when we went in. When we came back for the show later on, all that was left was one lonely fan, a young guy waiting out there in the rain, soaked to the skin. I thought, well, he’s waiting like five hours here, maybe we’ll take him in and give him a glimpse of what happens backstage at a show. And this kid was just mesmerized with everything. I saw this look in his eyes, and I thought, he’s seeing this for the first time, he’s having this experience. And I just imagined what was going through his mind. And I’d been toying with this title, ‘Juke Box Hero,’ I thought it was almost a satire on what we did and how it was perceived from an audience level, and public. That’s how it originated.”
How cool was that kid’s experience?! Kudos to the band for making this happen. As a bonus, they got a hit song out of it!
Jukebox Hero
1983
I was late to the Stevie Ray Vaughn party. Very late. I didn’t hear one of his songs until after his death. I had gotten together with a buddy I hadn’t seen in a while. He popped in a cassette of Stevie. I was blown away on so many levels. His voice, his playing … I’d never heard anything like it.
After a 1982 performance, Stevie and the Double Trouble band got the attention of Jackson Brown. He told the guys that they could use his personal studio to record a demo. They did just that over Thanksgiving weekend 1982. That demo was heard by a talent scout, who presented it to Epic Records, who signed Vaughn to a record deal. Epic remixed the demo, which would become his first album, Texas Flood.
While the song received heavy airplay, it didn’t get any love from the charts. The music video, the only one from this album, got heavy rotation on MTV in 1983. What he could have done if he was still around, one can only guess.
Love Struck Baby
1984
Marching band was one of my favorite things about high school. At football games and pep assemblies, we’d often play songs that were familiar to us. We Got The Beat was one they were still playing long after I graduated. Neutron Dance from the Pointer Sisters was one of those “pep songs.”
Allee Willis (who wrote Earth, Wind & Fire’s hits “September” and “Boogie Wonderland,” wrote the lyrics for this song. She sums up the song, saying: “That’s basically: if your life isn’t working, get up off your ass and change it. Because it’s really up to you.”
Fun Fact: This song was released at the high of the Cold War when there was a great deal of tension between the United States and Russia, as both had nuclear missiles aimed at each other. Willis Says: “The Russian government named me as one of the most dangerous people living in the United States, because they mis-translated it as ‘Neutron Bomb.’ The first verse they translated as ‘A powerful nuclear explosion is approaching, it will annihilate everyone; who cares if you have no car, no job, no money, just dance, dance, dance.’ And this was a huge article in Pravda, and I was supposed to be going to Russia with BMI, and I wasn’t let in the country. I mean, it was nuts.”
The song was featured in the film Beverly Hills Cop and the video includes scenes from the movie.
Neutron Dance
1985
Next is a song that I almost always played at weddings. If it wasn’t the bride and groom’s wedding song, it was one of the slow songs that packed the dance floor. The Search is Over by Survivor started as a title that was scribbled in Jim Peterik’s notebook.
He said, “It wasn’t about my life as much as a friend of mine who had a girlfriend – really a play pal throughout their growing up years – and never thought it could be anything more than that. It was looking him straight in the face that this was the girl of his destiny, and he looked everywhere to find that dream girl only to come back to the sandbox. This couple is still married and going strong. It became kind of an allegory to looking for what is obvious; having it in your hand and you being too close to even realize it.”
He told Songfacts, “Mechanically, the whole thing kind of started in my head driving down the street. I turned on my tape recorder and I sang the whole melody top to bottom into my tape recorder. The way it modulated into the chorus was very unique. When I got to the piano a few hours later, I had to find out where it was going and what it was. I brought it to rehearsal, showed it to the guys and worked with Frank (Sullivan) one on one on the song – he loved it. It was called The Search Is Over, but I still didn’t know exactly what the hook of the song was going to be. I thought of this couple, and when we came up with the line, ‘Then I touched your hand, I could hear you whisper, the search is over, love was right before my eyes,’ we looked at each other’s arms and we both had goose bumps. It was the magical turn of that phrase and realizing what this song was about. I think we discovered the song as we were writing it.”
It’s a beautiful song.
The Search Is Over
1986
I had heard Land of Confusion by Genesis on the radio long before I saw the video. It was odd to hear a “political” song from them. When I saw the video, I remember thinking that those puppets were a bit scary, not to mention ugly.
Songfacts says, “The very popular video was made using puppets created by Peter Fluck and Roger Law, who had a British TV series called The Spitting Image. The show would often make fun of Genesis, and by hiring their tormentors, the band proved that they could take a joke.
Genesis puppets had been used on the show before, but they made new ones for the video – not very flattering ones either. It was a way for the band to lighten their image from their days as earnest prog rockers. The video could go in the Cold War cultural time capsule: at the end, the Ronald Reagan puppet accidentally launches a nuclear missile.”
I guess the puppets didn’t freak everyone out, though. The video won the 1987 Grammy for Best Concept Music Video – it was the only Grammy Genesis ever won, and they weren’t even in the clip. At the MTV Video Music Awards, the video was nominated in six categories, but lost them all to Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer.”
Land of Confusion
1987
The song Hot Hot Hot was first released by the group Arrow in 1982. Many cover songs followed, but the most recognizable was done by Buster Poindexter (aka David Johansen). It garnered extensive airplay through radio, MTV, and other television appearances.
For many years, people would request this at weddings and parties so they could do a conga line. It was a pretty popular tune . One venue would bring out their roast beef, which they would light on fire, and wanted us to play the song when they did it.
Over time, I was easily burned out on the song.
Hot Hot Hot
1988
I think every friend of mine had a copy of the Cocktail soundtrack in 1988. The Tom Cruise movie was what all the girls seemed to be talking about. I had been getting requests for Kokomo by the Beach Boys and it was the only place I could find it.
Mike Love of the Beach boys explained to Ssongfacts how it came together: “Terry (Melcher) was in the studio doing a track with a demo, because we were asked to do the song for the soundtrack of the movie Cocktail, featuring Tom Cruise. So we were asked by the director to come up with a song for this part of the movie where Tom Cruise goes from a bartender in New York to Jamaica. So that’s where I came up with the ‘Aruba, Jamaica’ idea, that part.
So Terry was in the studio doing the track and they didn’t have the chorus yet. They just had a certain amount of bars, but there was nothing going on there. I said, ‘Well, here’s what I want to do.’ And I remember I had told them about the part before. But he said, ‘Uh huh. How does it go again?’ So I literally, over the phone – he was in the studio and I was on the phone – sang [deadpan slow recitation]: ‘Aruba, Jamaica, ooo, I want to take you.’ So he’s writing that down, and I’m singing it in the scene, the notes, and the timing of it in tempo to the track.”
Regarding the composition of the song, Mike said: “The verses and the verse lyric was written by John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas. He wrote ‘Off the Florida keys, there’s a place called Kokomo, that’s where we used to go to get away from it all.’ I said, ‘Hold on. We used to go sounds like an old guy lamenting his misspent youth.’ So I just changed the tense there. ‘That’s where you want to go to get away from it all.’ So that was the verse. And it was very lovely. But it didn’t have such a groove, I didn’t feel.
So I came up with the chorus part: ‘Aruba, Jamaica, ooo, I want to take you to Bermuda, Bahama, come on, pretty mama. Key Largo, Montego…’ That’s me, the chorus and the words to the chorus was Mike Love. The verse was John Phillips. The bridge, where it goes, ‘Ooo, I want to take you down to Kokomo, we’ll get there fast and we can take it slow. That’s where you want to go, down to Kokomo,’ that’s Terry Melcher. Terry Melcher produced the Byrds and Paul Revere & the Raiders, very successful producer. But he actually produced that song and he wrote that bridge part, which Carl Wilson sang beautifully. And I sang the rest of it. I sang the chorus and the verses on that particular song.
Before “Kokomo,” the last US #1 for The Beach Boys was “Good Vibrations in 1966. At 22 years, it was the longest any act had gone between US #1 hits until Cher topped the charts with “Believe” in 1999. Her previous #1 hit was “Dark Lady” in 1974, setting the new record at 25 years.
Kokomo
1989
When you think about “Super Groups,” a few come to mind: The Traveling Wilburys, Audioslave, Cream, Blind Faith, and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young for example. In 1989, there was another super group who had a monster hit.
Songfacts explains: Bad English was a supergroup comprised of lead singer John Waite, keyboard player Jonathan Cain, bass player Ricky Phillips, guitarist Neal Schon and drummer Deen Castronovo. Waite, Cain and Phillips had been in a popular British band called the Babys, while Schon, Castronovo and Cain were in Journey (Cain was in both groups). It was quite an assemblage of musical talent, and between them they wrote 11 of the 13 songs on their self-titled debut album. “When I See You Smile” wasn’t one of them.
The song was written by Diane Warren, who had a knack for supplying popular rock musicians with pop hits: she wrote “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” for Starship, “Who Will You Run To” for Heart, and “I Don’t Want To Miss a Thing” for Aerosmith. She had also written the song “Don’t Lose Any Sleep,” which appeared on Waite’s 1987 solo album Rover’s Return.
The band was signed to Epic Records, whose A&R man Don Grierson implored them to record a hit. They liked him, so when he suggested “When I See You Smile,” the band agreed to record it, since they knew it would supply Grierson with his hit.
This is by far the biggest hit for Bad English, but it’s not their only one. Their first single was “Forget Me Not,” which made #45 in the US. “When I See You Smile” was their next release, and “Price of Love” came next, charting at #5. They released one more album (Backlash, 1991) before terminating the project.
John Waite told Songfacts, “It was fun for a year. And then people reverted to type. I think the Journey guys wanted to be back in Journey and I wanted to be back solo. We had a very valiant attempt at making a (third) record, but we weren’t given enough time to write it. We tried, and we almost made it.”
It was (and still is) a great slow dance song!
When I See You Smile
So there you have it, a peak into some tunes that did not make my original list. If you’re an 80’s fan, we’ll visit the decade one more time next week before moving on to the 1990’s.
My home state has produced some of the most amazing artists and music of the past 75 years. As a Michigander (Michiganian?), I consider Bob Seger to be Rock and Roll Royalty. In all the years I listened to his music and played his music on the radio, I had never seen him in concert.
A few years back, when he did his farewell tour, a radio pal asked if I wanted to go see his show in Saginaw. I jumped at the chance and was NOT disappointed. Despite his age, he still sounded amazing. It was a show I will never forget.
A song I have not featured by Bob is a great one called Beautiful Loser. It was the title track to his 1975 album.
Bob says, “A lot of people think I wrote ‘Beautiful Loser’ about myself. I got the idea for that song from a book of Leonard Cohen poetry by the same name. The song was about underachievers in general. I very rarely write about myself that much. I draw on my own experiences like anyone else, but I’m not what you’d call auteuristic. I’m not like my songs at all. I’m a lot more up person than what I write.”
Songfacts says: Seger took almost a year to write this. He played around with many different arrangements of the song until he got it right. In a 1994 interview with Music Connection, he explained:
“I’ve never written the lyrics and tried to build the music around that. It’s usually a feel or a verse or a chorus, and the lyrics will come after I’ve decided that a certain pattern or groove or rhythm is cool. Then I’ll start singing gibberish over that and just find a lyrical idea that fits the ideas that I started out with.
Other times I’ll just sit down and say, ‘I wanna write a song called this.’ That’s how ‘Beautiful Loser’ happened. I just loved the title, which I got from a book of poetry from Leonard Cohen called Beautiful Losers, with an ‘s,’ and I thought it was a really cool title. Actually, I wrote three or four songs called ‘Beautiful Loser’ until I came up with the one that worked. But that’s a pretty rare thing.”
Happy 80th birthday to a Michigan Legend – Bob Seger!
The last James Bond movie I saw starred Timothy Dalton. I think it was The Living Daylights, I might be wrong. I’ve honestly never seen a Bond film with Daniel Craig as 007. That being said, the music today comes from his movie Skyfall. The reason? Adele was born on this day in 1988.
Bond films are known for their amazing title songs. Live and Let Die from McCartney, Goldfinger from Shirley Bassey, and A View To a Kill from Duran Duran for example. So how did Adele get involved in the title song? Thanks to songfacts.com – here’s what happened.
Director Sam Mendes told Yahoo that at first, Adele wasn’t quite sure how to go about composing the movie theme. He explained: “She came in very early before we started shooting and her main concern was, ‘I write songs about myself, how can I make a ‘Bond’ song?’ My answer was, ‘Just write a personal song!'”
Adele teamed up with Paul Epworth to pen the sultry ballad. Said the singer: “I was a little hesitant at first to be involved with the theme song for Skyfall. There’s a lot of instant spotlight and pressure when it comes to a Bond song. But I fell in love with the script and Paul had some great ideas for the track and it ended up being a bit of a no-brainer to do it in the end. When we recorded the strings it was one of the proudest moments of my life.“
Paul Epworth said that finding the right sound for “Skyfall” was a particular challenge. “[The producers] said they wanted a dramatic ballad basically,” he explained. “With having read the script and trying to set the whole thing up in that context, where it happens in the film, there was really only one thing it could be. It was interesting to want to do something that was simultaneously dark and final, like a funeral, and to try and turn it into something that was not final. A sense of death and rebirth.”
After writing the piece of music that Epworth believed could be the tune for the Bond theme, the producer thought, “This could be the song.” Epworth told Hollywood.com that he then rang up Adele, “and said, ‘It might be too dark.’ And she said she loved it.” The pair immediately went into the studio and within 10 minutes she’d put down the first draft of the verse and chorus. “She had the lyrics ready in her head when she drove over. It was the most absurd thing. She’s fast, but it was really quite phenomenal,” he said.
Daniel Craig admitted to Yahoo that he found himself coming over a bit emotional when the song was first played to him: “I cried. From the opening bars I knew immediately, then the voice kicked in and it was exactly what I’d wanted from the beginning. It just got better and better because it fitted the movie. In fact the more of the movie we made, the more it fitted it.”
It was a top ten song in the US and it won Best Original Song at the 85th Academy Awards. It was the first Bond theme to win an Oscar.
I was in between books, knowing that one I had on hold would arrive in a day or two. I normally would wait to start a book in that situation, but the title of this one caught my eye. When I read the synopsis and saw it involved time travel, I picked it up. The book is “Before the Coffee Gets Cold.”
This was no ordinary time travel book. This was time travel with a set of rigid rules. In most stories, a character goes back (or forward) in time and stays awhile. There is usually some thing they are trying to change (like in 11.22.63) or someone they want to see (like in Bid Time Return – aka Somewhere in Time). In this book, the travelers are well aware that whether in the past or future, they can’t change the present. That is just one of the rules.
Before I go further, take a look at the Goodreads synopsis:
What would you change if you could go back in time?
In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.
In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer’s, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.
But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . .
Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?
As a coffee drinker, my first thought was, “Just how long does it take the coffee to get cold?” I tried with a cup this morning and it was about 20 minutes. I Googled it and the response was:
“A freshly brewed cup of coffee will take roughly 30-60 minutes to cool to room temperature. This time can vary based on the coffee’s initial temperature, the size of the cup, and the room temperature.“
I think it is difficult to do anything when you are under a time constraint. If I had to go back and time for whatever reason, 20-60 minutes would be gone in a blink of an eye. Would it even be worth it? I’m not sure, I guess it would depend on what I was going back for or who I wanted to see. This is difficult with the set of rules, however.
You wouldn’t be able to go to and watch the Gettysburg address or any other historical event because you can’t leave the cafe. If I wanted to go back to see my mom, the only way that could happen is if she’d ever been to the cafe. Even if things fell into place for you to go back, there is still the time factor. I’m not sure I could focus on anything except that time was ticking away.
With all that being said, it seems like I am really dissing this book. I’m really not, because really, the people who do time travel in the book all get something out of their visit. Maybe it is closure, a last wish, a resolution, or just an answer to a question. They all get something out of it, and it is not a bad book.
The book is apparently the first in a series of five. Will I read the others? Perhaps.
3 stars out of 5 (because I didn’t care for the rules!)
This was first posted on the A Sound Day blog hosted by Dave Ruch:
Once again, Dave from A Sound Day has invited me to participate in his month Turntable Talk feature. I truly appreciate the fact that he always comes up with great topics. Some of those topics are a bit more difficult to write (like last month), and some are quite easy. This month’s topic falls into the latter category.
Dave is calling this month’s round –Turn it on Again! His instructions are very easy: “tell us about your favorite music video, or the one which impresses you most, and why you love it.” As a child who grew up with MTV, I had many that came to mind.
At this writing, I don’t know what the other contributors have chosen to write about. Has someone picked Michael Jackson’s Thriller? What about Take on Me from A-Ha or Buddy Holly by Weezer? I also wonder about Fatboy Slim’s Weapon of Choice, Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer and Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit. Each and every one of them stands out and have appeared on many “Best Music Video” lists.
I’m not sure that my pick would be considered my “favorite.” I also wouldn’t say it “impresses” me most, but I do enjoy watching the craziness of it. I suppose readers may be surprised at my choice, as I don’t really write about many “rock” songs. I suppose that this song wouldn’t fit into that category, but the singer qualifies as a rocker (at least most people think so).
“The band as you know it is over!” That is what Eddie Van Halen told Rolling Stone in mid-August 1985. This confirmed the rumors of division in the band with David Lee Roth. Eddie also made sure to add that “Dave left to be a movie star.” With that, Dave went on to explore a solo career. In late 1984, Dave released a cover of the Beach Boy’s California Girls. He followed that with another cover song (medley actually) from the great Louis Prima.
In 1956, Prima took the song Just a Gigolo and paired it up with I Ain’t Got Nobody. He used the song in his 1950’s Las Vegas act with Sam Butera and Keely Smith. The success of that act gained Prima a recording deal with Capitol Record, which hoped to capture on record the atmosphere of his shows. The first album, titled The Wildest! was released in November 1956, and opened with “Just a Gigolo”/”I Ain’t Got Nobody.” It became Prima’s signature number and helped relaunch his career.
Roth’s version is really almost a note for not copy of Prima’s record. By itself, it’s just an ok cover song. However, with an entertaining video that features celebrity look-alikes, beautiful women, and Dave being … Dave, it becomes something much much more.
The video for the song begins with Dave asleep at a news desk as his video for “California Girls” plays behind him on the monitor. The crew calls his name and he wakes up. After his talk, the freaky crew members begin to speak to him. They are right in the camera, so the viewer sees this from Dave’s perspective in this sequence. It’s actually kind of disturbing. The intro to the video is almost two minutes long before the song actually begins.
When it does, Dave is off dancing through the studio. We see him showing up at a talk show, walking through the backstage area among Vegas showgirls, astronauts, pimps, pirates, monsters, cheerleaders, hula dancers, and the police. All of this happens before you really get to the “meat and potatoes” of the video.
It is there that Dave begins parodying videos from Michael Jackson, Cyndi Lauper, Billy Idol, Richard Simmons’s “Sweatin’ to the Oldies” videos (Davercize!), Willie Nelson, and Boy George. As he appears in each of the videos, he winds up wrecking them. It is almost like watching a cartoon. It’s utter chaos, but a fun chaos (unless you count the priest who has a heart attack because of Dave’s dancing.)
The video is like a snapshot of the 80’s. It’s funny to imagine Dave crashing into a Willie Nelson or Cyndi Lauper video. As the “Nostalgic Italian,” I appreciate the nostalgia that the video presents. It is more powerful now than it was in 1985.
Eventually, MTV edited the 2 minute intro out, and just played the song portion of the video in rotation. I think that is how I first saw the video. When I searched for it to post in this blog, I found the full video. I honestly had forgotten all about the intro, but seeing it again was a hoot. Watching Dave do his “over the top” announcer made me think of so many of those DJ’s on the radio who literally puke every thing they say.
Back in one of our first rounds of Turntable Talk, we discussed music videos and whether they hurt radio. To me, I love the fact that a music video can convey the story of a sad song or add a whole lot of fun to another. With this video, Dave pokes fun at other videos, which only makes his more enjoyable to see.
I could be wrong, but it is possible that Weird Al Yankovic looked back to this video as inspiration for his UFH video. In Al’s Video, (in between clips from the movie) he pokes fun at Guns and Roses, Prince, George Michael, Peter Gabriel, ZZ Top, Billy Idol, The Beatles, INXS and the Talking Heads!
Thanks again, Dave for asking me to take part in this feature. I know that I really look forward to your topics and enjoy writing my response to them. I am already looking forward to next month.
414 years ago today, the King James Bible was published for the first time in London, England. It was translated from the Majority Text (or Received Text), which was the text used by Bible believers for thousands of years.
The King James Version of 1611, also known as the Authorized Version of the Bible, “has been proven throughout history to be the greatest of all English translations.” The beautiful English prose contained in the King James Bible has had supreme influence in society, and is widely considered to be the greatest literary masterpiece known to man.
When King James the Sixth of Scotland succeeded Queen Elizabeth the First of England after her death, many different translations of the Bible were in existence, including the Bishop’s Bible, the Great Bible, and the Geneva Bible. To settle various religious grievances, King James called the Hampton Court Conference in January of 1604. During the Conference, Dr. John Reynolds, a Puritan leader and Oxford scholar, “moved his Majesty, that there might be a new translation of the Bible, because those which were allowed in the reigns of Henry the Eighth and Edward the Sixth were corrupt and not answerable to the truth of the Original.” King James then replied, “I wish some special pains were taken for an uniform translation, which should be done by the best learned men in both Universities, then reviewed by the Bishops, presented to the Privy Council, lastly ratified by the Royal authority, to be read in the whole Church, and none other.”
King James I of England
The king commissioned a new English translation to be made by 54 revisers representing the Puritans and Traditionalists. Due to death and other circumstances, 47 scholars and theologians wound up working on it. They took into consideration: the Tyndale New Testament, the Matthews Bible, the Great Bible and the Geneva Bible. The great revision of the Bible had begun.
From 1605 to 1606 the scholars engaged in private research. From 1607 to 1609 the work was assembled. In 1610 the work went to press, and in 1611 the first of the huge (16 inch tall) pulpit folios known today as “The 1611 King James Bible” came off the printing press.
The process was a thorough one. These 47 men were organized into six Companies, two Companies at Cambridge, two Companies at Oxford and two Companies at Westminster. Each Company was given a portion of the scripture to translate. (Westminster was given Genesis – II Kings and Romans – Jude. Oxford was given Isaiah – Malachi, Matthew – Acts, and Revelation. Cambridge was given I Chronicles – Song of Solomon and the Apocrypha.)
Richard Bancroft
Richard Bancroft came up with a set of rules that the translators were to follow. The process was guided by these rules. Rule #8 stated:
Every particular Man of each Company, to take the same Chapter or Chapters, and having translated or amended them severally by himself, where he thinketh good, all to meet together, confer what they have done, and agree for their Parts what shall stand.
First, each one of the men from the company took a certain part. Then, privately, each individual member would go home and study and develop a proposed translation. Then they would get together as a Company and would review each copy. I’d give you my copy, and you’d give me yours, and we’d review and compare them until that Company of men came to the conclusion that “here is what we want to do.“
Bancroft’s Rule #9:
If any one Company hath dispatched any one book in this Manner [in other words, when they get through], they shall send it to the rest, to be considered seriously and judiciously, for His Majesty is very careful in this Point.
Next, each of the Companies (two at Oxford, two at Cambridge and two at Westminster) would all go home and study. They would take the portion assigned to them and study it. Each man would take all these different versions, the Greek and the Hebrew, and then they would come together. For example, each man would say, “Here’s what I think Romans through Jude ought to look like.” Then they would all come together as a committee and compare what each one has done individually. In doing that they arrived at what the committee thought the translation ought to look like.
When these people finished with their section, they sent it to every other committee. Each of the committees reviewed what each of the other committees have done.
There are revisions, revisions, revisions, reviews, reviews, reviews. Everybody works independently and then everybody gets together, and they work together and hash out their differences. It is checked and checked again. The work isn’t done by just one or two guys. You’ve got a bunch of guys sitting there working – one looks at it, another looks at it, everybody looks at it until they feel they have it right.
Bancroft Rule #10:
If any Company, upon Review of the Book so sent, doubt or differ upon any Place, to send them Word thereof; note the Place and withal send the Reasons, to which if they Consent not, the Difference, then to be compounded at a General Meeting, which is to be of the chief Persons of each Company, at the end of the work.
The process is still not finished. Finally, from each company/committee two men were selected to represent their group. Two men from all 6 companies (12 men total) and form a General Revision Committee.
Basically what they are saying is, “Before we get through, we’re going to have one big meeting. Two men from each of these committees are going to bring their committee’s work to this General Revision Board. That General Revision Board is going to review and issue the final version.
In early 1610, the twelve-member critical Board of Review met at Stationer’s Hall in London. The work of this Committee of twelve men was the only time that anybody in this whole process ever got paid anything. None of these other men got paid for what they were doing. They only had the privilege of being involved in a tremendous undertaking. The men on the Revision Committee were paid for their work by those that published the translation.
Here is a poor drawing of the process:
The entire process was done openly and not in secret, as some want to say. The public even had a chance to be a part of the process if they were qualified. According to Bancroft’s rules:
Rule #11
When any Place of Special Obscurity is doubted of, Letters are to be directed, by Authority, to send to any Learned Man in the Land for his Judgment of such a Place.
In other words, when they had something they were arguing about, and they couldn’t figure it out, but there was somebody over on the other side of the country who might have the answer, they were to go ask that guy to give them the answer and get his input. What Rule Number 11 did was to provide that specific help was to be sought for. “If you guys have an argument about a difficult passage, you should go find out if anybody who is not on the Committee knows.” This thing is not a closed group. Anybody in England can help, and you guys are supposed to go out and get them.
Rule #12 states:
Letters are to be sent from every Bishop to the rest of his Clergy, admonishing them to this Translation in hand; and to move and charge as many as being skillful in the Tongues; and having taken Pains in that kind to send this particular Observation to the Company, either at Westminster, Cambridge or Oxford.
If you knew something about these things, you weren’t supposed to keep it to yourself. The King put out a proclamation to be read in all the churches. He sent a letter to every preacher in England, and he saidbasically, “If you have anybody in your church who’s a good Bible translator, send him our way if he’s got some information and send it down here! “ In essence, the whole country was getting involved.
Published in 1611, the King James Bible spread quickly throughout Europe. Because of the wealth of resources devoted to the project, it was the most faithful and scholarly translation to date—not to mention the most accessible.
“Printing had already been invented, and made copies relatively cheap compared to hand-done copies,” says Carol Meyers, a professor of religious studies at Duke University. “The translation into English, the language of the land, made it accessible to all those people who could read English, and who could afford a printed Bible.”
Whereas before, the Bible had been the sole property of the Church, now more and more people could read it themselves. Not only that, but the language they read in the King James Bible was English, unlike anything they had read before. 400+ years later, and it is still in the hands of believers.
Sources: Textus Receptus Bibles (website), Britannica (website), Grace School of the Bible (Personal notes)
Back when I worked at B-95 in Flint, for whatever reason, my boss and I always greeted each other the same way. Oddly enough, when we call each other on the phone, we still do it. I’ll say, “Brian Cleary, ladies and gentlemen!” and he says, “Keith Allen Everybody!” (or vice versa)
Our morning guy from B-95, JB, wound up doing mornings at the Moose shortly after I started working there. He was aware of this exchange and used it on occasion, so I’m thinking he was responsible for one of today’s photos.
The first few years we did our St. Jude radiothon, we broadcast from center court of the local mall. One year, they rented a sign to show the running tally of the money we raised. Sometime shortly after I started my show, I looked over and noticed the sign.
I couldn’t help but laugh out loud.
Eventually, they moved the radiothon back to the on air studio. All the stats showed that stations raised more money this way. Less distractions, I suppose. I truly missed those mall broadcasts, though.
I loved the interaction with listeners. I loved seeing all the silent auction items that people could bid on. I loved being out in public doing the show. It gave me an energy that I didn’t get while in the studio. You get to watch people watch you and react to what you are doing on the air. It was unique and I loved every second of it.
Various Ramblings of a Nostalgic Italian 