Weird Al Yankovic - Another One Rides The Bus

This was performed live on the Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder
"We were pretty much scared out of our minds. I was straight out of college, and all of a sudden they were flying
me out to New York to perform live on national tv - The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder. And I was wearing these
horrible, crazy quilt velvet pants that a friend of mine had found at a thrift shop, and, you know, barefoot, frizzed-out hair. It was
quite a look. Jon Schwartz is a serious talented drummer, and I had him on his knees poundin' on my accordion case, blowing
into duck calls, siren whistles. I mean, if you're in my band you can't have too much of a sense of dignity. (laughs)"
- "Weird Al" Yankovic, Biography interview

Ridin' in a bus down the boulevard,
And the place was pretty packed.
Couldn't find a seat, so I had to stand,
With the perverts in the back.
It was smellin' like a locker room.
There was junk all over the floor.
We're already packed in like sardines,
But we're stoppin' to pick up more.
Look out!

chorus: Another one rides the bus-ah.
Another one rides the bus-ah.
And another comes on,
And another comes on.
Another one rides the bus-ah.
Hey!
He's gonna sit by you.
Another one rides the bus.

There's a suitcase pokin' me in the ribs.
There's an elbow in my ear.
There's a smelly old bum standin' next to me.
Hasn't showered in a year.
Well, I think I'm missin' a contact lens.
I think my wallet's gone.
And I think this bus is stoppin' again,
To let a couple more freaks get on.
Look out!

(chorus)

Another one rides the bus.
Another one rides the bus--ow!
Another one rides the bus--hey, hey!
Another one rides the bus--hey-y-y-y!

The window doesn't open, and the fan is broke,
And my face is turnin' blue.
I haven't been in a crowd like this
Since I went to see The Who.
Well, I should'a got off a couple miles ago,
But I couldn't get to the door.
There isn't any room for me to breathe.
Now we're gonna pick up more, yeah!

(chorus)

On My Reading List

The Following Books are on my "To Read" List, I already own some of them but a few of them I have to buy from our local Coles

The Chronicles Of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

The Book Of Awesome by Neil Pasricha

The Book Of "Even More" Awesome by Neil Pasricha

Trust Me, I'm Dr. Ozzy by Ozzy Osbourne

My Lucky Life In And Out Of Showbusiness by
Dick Van Dyke

Call Me Ted by Ted Turner

Freeware Graphics Programs

Calling All Wannabe Graphic Designers, There are a lot of excellent graphics programs on the market these days, but just because they come with a premium price tag doesn’t mean they are the only option. Take a look at this list of My favorite, and free, alternatives to some of those pricey programs.

Gimp – Very powerful image manipulation program, great for photo retouching and image creation. There are other downloads, GTK and runtime environment for this program to work properly. This program currently runs on Linux, Windows (XP and Vista), Mac OSX, and some Unix based systems.

Ultimate Paint– Image creation and manipulation program for Windows systems. This is a pretty compact and fast running graphics program with plenty of features.

Skencil – An interactive vector drawing program for Unix and Linux operating systems built on the Python language. This program has tons of features like gradient fills, bezier curves and you can bend text along paths to name a few.

Pixia – Originally a Japanese only edition, Pixia is a very nice paint tool with full layers support and many other features. The English version website does lack information and support so you will likely need to search the web for information on learning to use this tool. This is currently a Windows only program and does support some drawing tablets.

InkScape – If you have been looking the free answer to Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw, IncScape is a great alternative. This is a full featured vector graphics editor. The website has a tons of information, tutorials and galleries of work created with the program, to give you a good idea of what you are getting involved with.

Paint.net – A free image and photo editing software for Windows based PC’s. This program was voted #19 out of the top 100 programs of 2007 by PC World. It has full support for layers and special effects, the tools are top notch and highly recommended by many users. There is a strong online community for support and frequent updates to the software. Comparable to Adobe Photoshop.

SmoothDraw NX – A freehand drawing tool designed for use with tablets. Several choices of brushes and pencil strokes for creating realistic drawings. Also auto smoothes lines if you are using a mouse to draw with.

ImageForge – An image editing and creation program for Windows systems. Although this program is a little rougher than some of the others it still has some nice features like easily creating 3D text, red-eye removal and you can easily create your own Windows screen savers.

Brush Strokes – Free graphics editor, with support for many of the popular and common image formats. It isn’t as full featured as some of the other programs but it is a good choice for less technical or light users.

Project Dogwaffle – A painting and drawing program developed for the PC. Has a nice set of tools and very functional, although does lack features of some large programs.

Sodipodi – This is a vector based drawing program that operates on most Unix and Windows systems. It has a ton of features like out of center gradients, patterned lines, dynamic xml editor and you can easily create vertical text.

Karbon14 – Another nice, full featured vector based drawing program released under the GNU license. This program comes as part of the Koffice project which includes a whole suite of tools in KDE.

ArtWeaver – A freeware paint and drawing program for Windows designed to simulate natural brush tools and effects for artists used to working on canvas. It supports most common file formats, has the standard editing tools like found in many popular graphics programs and offers a few effects filters.

GimpShopdotnet – This is a modified version of Gimp, designed to work and feel more like Adobe Photoshop, allowing Photoshop users a comfortable free alternative.

ImageMagick – A nice command line program for editing and creating images. There are a whole bunch of useful features like shearing and transforming images, flip, mirror and rotate images and a whole lot more.

Fotosketcher - Turn your everyday photos into beautiful works of art with this freeware program. There are a whole bunch of useful filters and drawing tools, you can even add various picture frames to make your pictures stand out

The Art Of Noise - Dragnet '88

The Art of Noise were an avante garde synthpop group formed in 1983 until their disbanding in 1990. The band was noted for it's extensive use of computers and electronics in music particularly for innovative use of Sampling.

One of my favorite stories involving The Art Of Noise comes 1n 1987 when Tom Mankiewicz is directing a comedy starring Dan Aykroyd that pays homage to the classic police show Dragnet and he enlists the band to contribute a song to the soundtrack for the movie. The Fruits of their labors turned out to be one of the top songs of the year Dragnet '88. The song makes use of samples from the movie in the traditional avante garde style that made Art Of Noise So Well Known

It received heavy rotation on MTV in the late 80's early 90's as well as fair airplay on our own MuchMusic here in Canada.

Here is the song Courtesy of Youtube:




The Art Of Noise Online - Officially Authorized Web Site

Interesting Find Courtesy of John Tesh

I am a HUGE fan of the John Tesh Radio Show, I am also a Facebook fan
And When I Logged On This Morning I find that John and his team posted a
Top 5 List  which they have become so well known for

Five things to NEVER do on a job interview:
 
#5. Forget to thank the interviewer before leaving
#4. Ask about salary during the first interview……
#3. Fidget with your clothing……
#2. Forget to bring your resumé…… 
And the #1 thing to never do on a job interview: Complain that it was hard to find the office!

Just thought I would share this with you all

John Tesh - Official Web Site

Buried Treasure - Max Fleischer's Superman

Take one of the greatest heroes of all time who was co created by Canadian Joe Schuster.

Add the involvement of an up & coming animation studio owned by animation pioneer
Max Fleischer plus a HUGE development budget offered by Paramount and you've got
Superman. Now from what I have read Max and Dave Fleischer did not originally want to do
these cartoons due to the severe budget and technical constraints involved, so Dave Fleischer
tossed out a random number that he figured Paramount would never pay and the rest as they say is History. These cartoons were developed in the early 1940's the first one simply called "Superman" but attributed by fans as The Mad Scientist due to it's storyline cost $50,000 to make. two of the original stars of the Superman Radio show reprise their roles in this series Bud Collyer voices Clark Kent/Superman and Joan Crawford voices Lois Lane. One of the unsung heroes of this series has GOT to be Sammy Timberg. The talented composer served as musical director of Fleischer Studios and composed all the music including the famous theme song:

These were a product of the golden age of animation but like many kids of the 1980's I was reintroduced to them years later due to home video releases. The cartoons have since lapsed into the public domain and are now available to buy on DVD from Warner Bros. (Owner Of the Superman Character) or download on the Internet Archive.

Here in it's entirety is the first entry of the series "Superman" aka The Mad Scientist

Related Links:

Max Fleischer - Wikipedia

The Superman Cartoons - Wikipedia

Sammy Timberg - Wikipedia

Max Fleischer Cartoons - The Internet Archive

Buy The DVD - Chapters/Indigo

Timberg Alley - The Official Web Site of The Timberg Family

Movie Review - The Three Stooges (2012)

Boy, what can I say about this film. The Three Stooges is a truly hilarious mile a minute laugh riot.
The Farrelly Brothers have truly created a gem here and they spared no expense in making sure that
all the hand slaps and eye pokes that were trademarks of the Three Stooges humor remained intact.
I'm not going to be putting any spoilers here but I would highly recommend you go to your nearest Cinema and see this and do yourself a favor and buy it when it comes out on DVD because this is something any stooge fan should have in their collection, it was a very well thought out, carefully planned film that will have you laughing at every turn Nyuk, Nyuk!!!

For those of you who aren't familiar with the Three Stooges work, here is a little refresher course Courtesy Of Youtube:

#1 Horses Collars:


#2 Disorder In The Court


Official Site

The Farrelly Brothers on Facebook

Official Site Of The Classic Shorts