Happy Ludwig van Beethoven’s Birthday! For those keeping track, it’s his 253rd. A good way to celebrate is to listen to one or more of his symphonies, and I’ve chosen the Ninth to post here, as performed by the London Symphony Orchestra.
Charles Schulz’s Peanuts provided my earliest education regarding Beethoven. Here are some samples of this work.
Banks, the U.S. bond market, and the U.S. Post Office will all be closed on John Lennon’s birthday this year (Monday, October 9th).
So I just dreamed that Lou Reed was in our house, resting on the couch, having come to Arkansas to make preparations to play a concert in Fayetteville, the city where I was born. I went to the couch, saw Lou, and softly squealed, “Lou Reed!”
He woke up a bit, then grumbled, “I’m sleeping, man,” and so I turned down the TV, pulled down windowshades, and tiptoed out of the room.
I then woke up (in a nested dream, but I didn’t know that yet), and said, “Aw man, Lou Reed is dead!” I went and checked the couch, found the pillow and blanket Lou had been using in my dream, but the couch was otherwise empty. I then woke up for real, and wrote down what had just happpened. There was nothing left to do except listen to Lou’s music, which I’m doing now.
When Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon was released, in 1973, I was five years old. I saw the cover for a cassette tape of the album in a store, grabbed it, and wouldn’t let go. Apparently, I’ve always liked triangles.
My parents had to pay for the tape, just to get us out of there. My father tried to turn this into a little life lesson for me (“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” or some such crap). When we got home, we played it, and everyone involved had to admit that picking music based on cover art does, sometimes, actually work.
I did not draw this cartoon. The source for it is Wayne Coyne’s Instagram account (here), and my guess is that he is the cartoonist. If I’m wrong about that, though, please let me know in a comment.
I’m spending this odd, COVID-19-dominated Holy Saturday inside, watching Jesus Christ Superstar. This was actually one of my primary information-sources regarding Christianity before it occurred to me to read the New Testament for myself, in my early twenties. If you’d like to watch it with me, here’s a link to the 1973 film-version, as a YouTube playlist.
The Flaming Lips wrote and recorded this song, and Bill Watterson drew this cartoon of Calvin and his brain. All I did was put the two together.
I used to have serious ambitions to achieve immortality, first by having my brain transplanted into a cloned body, and then eventually having the information in my brain uploaded into a computer. Basically, I had a severe case of thanatophobia. The music of The Flaming Lips, and this song in particular, helped me to eventually accept the inevitability of my own death.
I made this with Stella 4d, which you can try for yourself at this website.
RobertLovesPi.net 