Tag: video

By Jimmy Van Heusen: 1

YouTube has been feeding me scratchy videos of Jay Ward’s Fractured Fairy Tales, and I’ve been eating them up. In “The Ugly Almond Duckling,” Edward Everett Horton’s narration opens with a joke that, in the hands of lesser makers, would be the punch line to a shaggy dog story involving Chinese hydrology. It’s a riff on a page from the Great American Songbook that hardly anyone sings any more, “Nancy (with the Laughing Face)”.

Peculiar Muzak: 8

Not, strictly speaking, Muzak, because it was clearly an album/CD that I was listening to in my urologist’s office (while the receptionist was doing a great job of Fully Committed with a difficult patient): arranged for breathy girls’ choir and piano, pop hits from the 80s and 90s. I could make out through the pillowy arrangements and crappy speakers

  • “Follow You Follow Me”
  • “Boys Don’t Cry” (with particularly obfuscatory dynamics)
  • “Barbie Girl”
  • “In the Air Tonight” (with no drum drop—what’s up with that?)

    • And the mystery as a bonus, because I cannot make out who committed such an enormity. Spotify is fine for finding one song, but not an entire track list. But wait—the Googles came through. The CD (Solstice by Scala & Kolacny Brothers) was on shuffle!

    I don’t think you’ve lived until you’ve experienced this version of “Creep”:

    As Martin Vanderhof said,

    GRANDPA [surveying the group]: Well, sir, you should have been there. That’s all I can say—you should have been there.

At the park: 97

From my first report for the season from the nest box monitoring team at Huntley Meadows Park:

The birds are still too early for us! Kat reports 8 Hooded Merganser eggs in box #7. This is one of the boxes that needs some repairs; I will bring some tools and materials next week so that we can attempt a field repair while the box is in use.

Other than that, Sunday’s activity was the usual first-of-the-season chips and removal of wasp nests. You may have already noted this: the fence at the end of the berm, meant to discourage pedestrian traffic, has a significant breach (caused by four- and/or two-footed animals).

At the edge between forest and stream, I spotted a Golden-crowned Kinglet foraging quite close to the ground.

Water levels were VERY high. At the old beaver dam at the entrance to the main pond, water was cascading over it.

My materials and tools checklist for next week: drill and bits, pliers, screwdriver, filler foam, staple gun, duct tape.

high water