https://spoti.fi/3BPZrCf

As the email stated, the topic this week was YOUR Song of the Summer, and it was of all-time, and…

It’s easy to list songs with “summer” in the title, or summer in the song’s lyrics/story. But in truth, a good number of summer songs were actually released in the winter.

But what you’ve got below is the songs that remind ME of summer. I can see exactly where I was when I heard them, they make my life come alive. And just about all of them were hits over the summer. Ergo, MY Songs of the Summer.

The list is not comprehensive. I mean how many songs can you play in a one hour radio show, even thirty second snippets, which is what I do, not many. But these are the ones that came to my mind first.

I won’t exactly say your mileage might vary, I KNOW your mileage will vary. You’ve got your own memories. And in truth, I’ve got no specific memories of listening to “Summer in the City,” even though I’ve heard it a zillion times, but I can still see standing by the pool in Lancaster, PA, hearing “Doo Wah Diddy” come out of the radio. Likewise, “The Little Old Lady From Pasadena” at Jennings Beach, coming out of the transistor in the “pavilion.” And riding my Raleigh with the transistor slung over the handlebars waiting for and then exulting in hearing “California Girls.” And sitting in my sister’s apartment in Brentwood looking out towards the ocean listening to “One of These Nights.” And finally liking a Carpenters song when I heard it on the AM-only radio in my ’63 Chevy convertible, sans A/C, driving for the City Directory and…

You get the point.

_________

Summer Rain – Johnny Rivers

Hot Fun in the Summertime – Sly & the Family Stone

A Hard Day’s Night – Beatles

Help! – Beatles

I Get Around – Beach Boys

The Little Old Lady (From Pasadena) – Jan & Dean

See You in September – the Happenings

Satisfaction – the Rolling Stones

Hello, I Love You – the Doors

Doo Wah Diddy – Manfred Mann

Closer to Home (I’m Your Captain) – Grand Funk Railroad

Hold Your Head Up – Argent

The Bitch Is Back – Elton John

Thick as a Brick – Jethro Tull

Love Is Alive – Gary Wright

What Do You Want From Life – the Tubes

A World Without Love – Peter and Gordon

Do You Love Me – Dave Clark 5

Little Children – Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas

House of the Rising Sun – the Animals

I Can’t Help Myself – Four Tops

I Got You Babe – Sonny & Cher

For Your Love – the Yardbirds

Eve of Destruction – Barry McGuire

California Girls – Beach Boys

Paperback Writer/Rain – Beatles

Along Comes Mary – the Association

Wild Thing – Troggs

Sweet Pea – Tommy Roe

Sunshine Superman – Donovan

Yellow Submarine – Beatles

Somebody to Love – Jefferson Airplane

Light My Fire – the Doors

All You Need Is Love – Beatles

Carrie-Anne – the Hollies

Little Bit O’ Soul – Music Explosion

Stoned Soul Picnic – 5th Dimension

Pictures of Matchstick Men – Status Quo

Hush – Deep Purple

Grazing in the Grass – Friends of Distinction

Honky Tonk Women – Rolling Stones

Sweet Caroline – Neil Diamond

Mama Told Me Not to Come – Three Dog Night

Make It With You – Bread

Yesterday Once More – Carpenters

Signs – Five Man Electrical Band

Rocket Man – Elton John

Long Cool Woman (In a Black Dress) – the Hollies

School’s Out – Alice Cooper

Sealed With a Kiss – Brian Hyland

Kodachrome – Paul Simon

Frankenstein – Edgar Winter Group

Long Train Runnin’ – the Doobie Brothers

Live and Let Die – Wings

Rock the Boat – Hues Corporation

Sundown – Gordon Lightfoot

Rock Your Baby – George McCrae

Jive Talkin’- Bee Gees

One of These Nights – Eagles

Take it Easy – Eagles

Baker Street – Gerry Rafferty

Miss You – Rolling Stones

Funkytown – Lipps Inc.

Emotional Rescue – Rolling Stones

Every Picture Tells a Story – Rod Stewart

Piece of My Heart-Big Brother & the Holding Company

https://www.netflix.com/title/81076756

It’s not as good as the first, but still a cut above most TV series (and movies too!)

Chalk it up to Shefali Shah, “Madam Sir.” If you can’t get over Sidse Babett Knudsen in “Borgen,” you should check out Shefali Shah. They’re completely different, Knudsen is selling sensuality and softness that Shah does not evidence. However, they’re both strong characters, strong women in a man’s world.

Shah plays Vartika Chaturvedi, Deputy Commissioner of the police. And Delhi…is essentially unpoliceable, according to this show. I love the establishing shots, of an almost endless low-rise landscape. Makes me want to go there, but Felice says I say this about all the foreign shows we watch.

I’ve been to Mumbai, and there are a lot of similarities. Most especially the traffic and the motorized rickshaws. They’re like ants in Mumbai. Swarms of them, going in and out of traffic. And with three wheels you know they’re inherently compromised safety-wise. But it’s every person for themselves in India. Actually, the same is true in America, but we didn’t know that until Covid.

So Vartika, i.e. Madam Sir, is in charge of an investigation of brutal break-ins at the residences of wealthy people. They can’t figure out who did it, never mind the motivation. And I could tell you about the twists and turns, but I don’t want to give anything away.

But, Shah plays Vartika seriously. She’s competent, and self-directed, and admits what she doesn’t know, and is loath to play the games of her male superiors who are concerned first and foremost with optics.

Vartika is the voice of reason in an unreasonable world.

Can’t say that I’ve seen an equivalent portrayal in American productions. Because even if the woman has the lead role, she’s glamorous. Whereas Vartika is just a person in the world doing a job. Like most people. Sure, it’s an elevated job, but in Hollywood productions you can see the divide between those on screen and the rest of us. Or else you’ve got a beautiful actress slumming, like Charlize Theron in “Monster.” The Oscars eat this stuff up, but I can’t say I watched the film and didn’t see Theron playing the role, the same way I always see Meryl Streep in her roles, too often the acting is too studied.

But Shefali Shah is more natural, living in her skin.

So I live for these TV series. Movies won’t do it for me, they’re too quick, too much is left out. I love to turn out the lights and get involved. Commit. But too often what you see is just not good enough, you’re watching it but not involved in it. Whereas the shows I like feel almost real.

Everything about “Delhi Crime” is a cut above. Not just the acting. It was not made on the cheap, but unlike in Hollywood the cinematography does not eclipse the story.

And India is the land where the rich and poor live right alongside. And how do you move up the ladder? In America, we’ve been sold the fiction that there’s upward mobility, if you just work hard enough, but that’s statistically untrue, compared to the European countries. Oh, for the first time in my life some of these other countries appear equal to the U.S. We can’t get anything done and the dog is wagged by the tail of the minority and there’s no free health care. HOW CAN THIS BE?

So if you watched the first season of “Delhi Crime,” you should watch the second. And you can watch the second without watching the first, but there’s no reason to do that.

And being a streaming show, not all episodes are cut to length, to fit time constraints. Some are thirty-odd minutes long, and others nearly an hour. And there are only five episodes. Which is a disappointment, because they go so much deeper in the first season. But you can blow through “Delhi Crime 2” in a day or two, it’s not a huge commitment.

You can watch it in English, the default, but I’d say to switch to Hindi with English subtitles, so much of the show is in English anyway.

Once again, you know who you are, you know if this appeals to you. It’s a self-selecting group. There are two camps. Those who turn on the flat screen to find something to watch and those who turn it on because they plan to watch something, those who are looking for entertainment, and those who are looking for more than empty calories, who want to bite into the steak, chew a bit, have their food marinate in their mouths.

Forget that it’s an Indian production, it’s not very foreign, because people around the world are now more similar than different, and the characters ring true more than they do on most TV.

And, once again, as a result of the binge model, you can see it all at once. I’m sad it’s over.

That’s what they call concert tickets. You put up a show, and the tickets are inventory. And all summer the talk has been about Springsteen tickets, flex-priced, going for four figures, but the rest of the shows?

Live Nation, a public company, has produced fantastic figures. Business has been beyond healthy, but going forward?

My eye caught this article on the front page of today’s “Wall Street Journal”: 

“From Shortage to Glut: Scotts Miracle-Gro Is Buried in Fertilizer – Scotts ramped up production during the pandemic, then consumers shifted and retailers slashed orders, leaving a pile of inventory. It’s now trying to dig its way out.”: https://on.wsj.com/3RRr3fI

This story has been in the business press for a couple of months now. How these companies produced so much product and the public didn’t want to buy it.

There are various factors. People were stuck at home during the pandemic and now they’re not. I’m sure you’ve read about the disaster Peleton has become. Not that it wasn’t predictable. If you don’t have an idle exercise machine in your house you’ve never bought one, and many haven’t! People are excited at first, then their interest wanes, and then they don’t even realize they’ve stopped. They take a day off, and then two, and then they’re out of the routine and they’ve got a new clothes rack. I mean how big a market was there for Peleton to begin with? Look at all the publicity about GoPro. Like everybody needed one. Now the stock is off 90%. Give the company credit, it’s moving into services, but…it’ll never reach the heights of the dreams of investors. Then again, professional investors get in on the ground floor and can make a profit on the spread long before the hoi polloi realize their mistake.

So, there’s too much clothing, there seems to be too much of everything but cars. The companies couldn’t meet demand, they ramped up production and then found out people were no longer interested. Is the same thing going to happen in the concert business?

Here’s the relevant passage from the WSJ article:

“Versions of this story are playing out across business sectors, where makers of everything from clothing to kitchen appliances have gone from trying to catch up to demand to buckling under the weight of their own inventory, in a matter of weeks. Now many companies are cutting jobs, idling plants and working to undo many of the other steps they took to ensure they would have enough products to sell.”

In a matter of weeks!

If you’re an insider, you know that the past year has been an up and down one in terms of ticket sales. What I mean is they’re moving, then they’re not, then they are again… Are we ready for a slowdown?

There’s another article I read today:

“Is there room for yet another major music festival in SoCal? Primavera Sound is about to find out”: https://lat.ms/3qH8aQK

The “Los Angeles Times” is famous for switching headlines, if you Google, the headline is: “Primavera Sound debuts in L.A. amid shaky festival market – Launching any music festival is risky, but between inflation and an oversaturated market, the upcoming L.A. edition of Primavera Sound faces…”

Headwinds, because I wasn’t even aware of it! And awareness is the first hurdle.

Then there’s the bill, the price and the location.

If you read this story, you’ll find the true story insiders also know, that a lot of festivals canceled for stated reasons were really pulled down because they couldn’t move tickets. A festival is an investment, for both the promoter and the attendee. Not only is the question how many we need, but the price. Festival costs are high for the public, even ones that don’t require lodging and long distance transportation, I mean how much are you going to pay to stand with the unwashed for days?

Historically, certain acts are recession-proof. Most definitely the ones who have hot records right now. Then you’ve got the superstars… But the superstars have been around, many people have seen them already. As for the smaller acts, moving up to larger buildings, who are not guaranteed sellouts…their hard core fans need to see them, but everybody else can pass when it’s deemed too expensive.

And like with the products the WSJ is talking about, there was an absence, now there’s a glut. There were no shows, now there are too many. And many of the tickets were sold before the pandemic, those shows are playing now, so the future?

Does not look so bright, you do not have to wear shades.

As for prices… In the LAT article it references that people are waiting for costs to come down! Below face value, when scalpers, whether they’re professional or amateur, need to get rid of THEIR inventory!

Concerts are all about disposable income. Concert prices keep going up, if for no other reason than costs are going up. Is there a point at which people stay home? I think there is. I’m not saying the business becomes a dumpster fire, I’m just saying some people will be hurt.

And the concert business is opaque, almost all show business is. They don’t want you to know, because it’s all about image with talent.

And there are no guarantees, concert promoters don’t know, they’re always taking risk. And they certainly don’t know what is going to happen after the first of the year.

And the response to the LAT writer is L.A. is a walkup town. No, historically that is not true. However, urban acts historically do more walkup business. In truth, the public is guarded. The mania is gone. People have blown their wad, they’ve got no idea what’s down the pike for them either. Inflation bounced back, mortgages went to 6%. If you have any money, you’re scared, if you’ve got none…

I’m so proud of myself.

I bought a new printer. I didn’t want to, but the old one no longer printed in color. And then it printed blurry black and I put two new cartridges in and it didn’t fix the problem, after cleaning the heads and doing the rest of the procedures in the app, and I decided to buy a new one.

I haven’t bought a new printer in over a decade. I’ve GOTTEN a new printer since then, a couple, in fact I’ve got at least one in the garage. But there’s an issue of them working with the latest operating system.

I’m on a Mac. There, I said it. Hate me if you want, I can handle it. I’ve also got a Windows machine, but like they say, it’s unintuitive. You can learn the procedures over time, but it’s just not natural.

As for Macs… If you’ve got one, you’ve got an iPhone. I don’t think I’ve ever met a Mac user with an Android, but now I’ll get e-mail testifying to the fact. Bob, you ignorant slut… But, you might have read, actually, probably not, with so much info in the pipeline these days, that the iPhone population in the U.S. now exceeds the Android population. iPhone penetration is going up in the U.S. Which is not what prognosticators predicted. Word was it was only a matter of time until Android killed iOS, just like VHS killed Beta. But that’s why you live, for the surprises. That’s what I’ve been thinking about the war in Ukraine, the election in the U.S., you never really know what’s gonna happen. It’s kind of like baseball, long and drawn out but no matter what happened in the previous eight innings, a team can come from behind and win in the ninth, there is no garbage time like in the NBA or NFL, a comeback is always possible, I’ve seen it. As for the rules changes… I’m down with the pitch clock, I’m even okay with the bigger bases, but the ban on shifts… God, I remember shifting back in Little League, it’s part of the game, is baseball turning into football, where the rules constantly change and the rules supersede the play at times? I don’t know, but you don’t go to war on statistics by eliminating them, you adjust accordingly.

ANYWAY, when it comes to printers, there’s always an issue of drivers. And Apple releases a new OS every year. And too many printer companies don’t update accordingly. Which is why I go with the biggest, i.e. HP, because having the most market share they must put out new drivers at the same time the OS is released. Whereas if you have a Canon or Brother or Sony or Epson this may not be the case, usually isn’t the case, Apple is a sliver of their business.

Oh, I left a loose end. I’ve been foggy for weeks. Did you see that article in the “New York Times” about the end of fog in San Francisco: https://nyti.ms/3UgIBU9 I don’t know, I’ve been overwhelmed. It was hot and now it’s fall. Politics swings from side to side. It’s hard to keep one’s mind straight. But the reason I haven’t bought printers is they come for free with a new computer! That used to be the promotion. After all, the money is in the ink. But the printer companies are doing their best to change that paradigm, with different approaches, more expensive printers and cheaper ink and…

Oh, that’s another thing. Inkjet won. I started off with a laser, with Postscript, remember that, and Aldus Pagemaker? That machine cost thousands, today you can get a laser for hundreds, ah, the march of progress, but not one in color.

And word used to be that inkjet wasn’t sharp enough. And then we all decided it was. But parents bitched about the cost of ink. I didn’t, I mean how often do you even print anymore?

Well, during the pandemic I printed cards for Felice, there are some good ones online. But like I said, my printer stopped printing color, so some cards were unusable and…

I decided to bite the bullet. I bought the HP Envy 6455e. Why they call them Envys, I’ve got no idea. No one has ever envied an inkjet printer, except maybe for those large format ones in print shops, which are not called Envys anyway.

As for which model HP… You don’t want the base model, it’s too slow. And you don’t need the best model. I ended up spending close to $200. I could look it up, but that’s not the point of this screed, the point is all about scanning.

So Macs no longer come with printers. And I’m wondering about buying a new Mac. I need two. A laptop, to go on the road with… And a desktop. Believe me, it’s hard to use a 15″ screen when you’re used to 27″. But now Apple has gone to new chips, and I’ve got one in my iPad Pro, it’s spectacular, but my iMac5k works just fine, I mean I always max out my machines. But they’re pushing it into the sunset. Yup, can’t use the latest OS. I’m still getting security updates, but… And I don’t want to buy one of those new Mac Studios until they fix the display, it’s a rip-off. And believe me, you’re always best using the Apple product, interoperability is built-in. Which is now the game, the ecosystem. I mean come on, when you see someone with a green bubble in iMessage? Oh, that’s another thing people don’t know, because there’s so much to know. iMessages are blue because they go over the internet, they don’t use your cell service, but when they do, when you’re out of internet range but still have cell service, they appear green, yes, even on an iPhone.

So…

The machine arrived.

Used to be you judged a product by its weight, its heft. That old LaserWriter of mine was in the neighborhood of fifty pounds. Today’s printers? Better hold on to them before they fly into the sky. They’re light, Rube Goldberg contraptions, you’re stunned that they work at all. You can see the gears, everything is so flimsy, then again, you didn’t pay much.

And… Setting up an HP on a Mac? Wow, they’ve taken all the guesswork out of it. You don’t even have to read the manual, you just follow the prompts and then…

And then you must decide whether you want Instant Ink. That’s why there’s an “e” at the end of the name. You see if you agree, you can’t ever use another type of cartridge other than brand new, original HP ones. But if you agree, HP will send you some free ink and monitor your machine to see when it needs ink and…

PRIVACY!

Do I really care that my printer company monitors the number of pages I print?

Oh, I’m trying to fight back. You estimate how many pages you’re gonna print, because at first the cartridges are free. So I estimated a ton, so I got the extra large cartridge, which may last me years. I think I’m beating HP. As long as I remember to unsubscribe after six months, and I’ve got it in my calendar.

As for using bogus cartridges… That’s not my style, I’m into the genuine article. As for being able to repair my products… This is a ridiculous construct. Because for almost all of these products, it’s cheaper and easier to replace than to repair. Even your flat screen TV. Breaks, and you toss it. Just about everything. The repair costs almost as much as a new one, and then it breaks again, it’s happened to me, with a copier, I no longer fix anything, I don’t trust the repair people! As far as fixing it yourself… Nobody wants to do that.

But there are people on Android because they believe in extreme customization, despite having a hard time getting updates to the operating system and dealing with security issues. And there are those who will buy remanufactured ink cartridges. As for repair… You bring it to a shop anyway, no one does it themselves.

But truth is irrelevant, people have decided everything must be repairable at a cheap cost. If this were ever come to be, and it won’t, everybody will end up paying, the products will become more expensive! Screws instead of glue and…

The printer works. There was huge gratification in that. Although the paper tray is quite small. And the buttons, well they’re lights, have no words on them and I’m still not sure what all of them mean.

And I’ve had to print some important stuff, even in color, that the old machine wouldn’t have, so I’m feeling good about my purchase until today…

Today a doctor sent me forms. Why can’t we move to computer forms, where I can type in the values on my screen? Why do we still have to print, fill in with pen and scan. I mean it’s amazing how far we’ve come, the internet is de rigueur, but we’ve still got miles to go.

Like I figured they wanted me to mail the forms back, but they wanted me to E-MAIL THEM!

All good, but that meant scanning almost twenty sheets!

Ah, the HP scanner software…

First and foremost, why is there always that horizontal line in the middle, huh? What does that represent? You know, in the picture of your document.

So, you launch the HP software, pick the picture of a scanner and then…

You’re confronted with a whole bunch of choices. You think the defaults are cool, but you’d be WRONG!

First and foremost, dpi is 75, which is positively eighties, you want 300, it’s been the standard for decades.

And why is the default the Downloads folder? There’s no downloading involved! I change that to Desktop.

Oh, and you can name the document right in the app! Took me years to realize that, I always renamed them in the Finder.

So, it’s always a learning curve when I go to scan, but today… Was I really going to hand scan twenty pages? There must be a better way.

I mean the Envy came with a document feeder. But does it work for scans?

That’s where Google comes in. I started to do research. To see if it was POSSIBLE!

Turns out it was! But the instructions were worthless, I was wasting time.

So I went to the app, examined the choices.

Turns out you can change the Scan Mode from Flatbed to Document Feeder! Who knew!

Man, I’m starting to get excited.

So, I put my paper in the document feeder, which it took me a moment to find, turns out you’ve got to pull back a cover which I thought was permanent to access it. The cover is the feeder when it’s opened. Believe me, they’ve thought a lot about this, after all, they’ve had years to work on the design.

And I’m smart enough to know that the paper’s going to flip over, I think I’m feeding it right, and then…

It all starts to work. God, I can do something else while it’s scanning! No time wasted, isn’t technology great!

But, I decide to check the scans along the way. Which I’m always anxious about. If you started computing in the eighties you know anything can go wrong. That was the big breakthrough of OS X. You couldn’t break it! I’m still uptight when I update anything, I remember when the odds of success were way less than 100%.

And I check the first scan and…

It’s blank.

Well, maybe that was a test scan. I was futzing around trying to make it work at first.

But then I checked the later scans…THEY WERE ALL BLANK!

I hit cancel. And it stopped scanning but kept feeding, and I was too uptight to pull the pages for fear of getting them out of order, they were not numbered, and…

I align the pages correctly and start again.

It works beautifully! But when I check the results, they’re upside down. Not the worst result, but still… I opened them all in Preview and reoriented and saved them.

And then I had about five more pages to do and I got it right.

IT WAS A TRIUMPH! I FELT SO GOOD ABOUT MYSELF!

It would have been easier to do it just one by one. Because there was research involved, trial and error, time wasted, whereas I knew how to do it manually.

And document feeders are notoriously wonky. I mean is it worth the bother?

But I did the research, analyzed the app, experimented and got it right. VICTORY!

And I know you don’t care, but I know you understand. We live for these moments. Where we make personal progress, where we figure things out, where we’re set for the future.

That’s another thing about people… They get old and they don’t want to learn new tricks. I know so many people who won’t use their banking app. For fear of… I’m not exactly sure what. I mean not only do you have a name and a password, they send you a text to authenticate and…

I mean there’s nothing worse than going to the bank. Talk about wasting time… It’s people who are afraid of technology and merchants with a zillion checks, makes me want to kill myself.

The app will even send physical checks for you! But why bother, when you can send the money electronically, even use Zelle for instantaneous transfer to your friends.

And you can check your balance if you’re into that kind of thing.

And I do my best not to write a check, not after my IRS payment was stolen out of the mailbox right in front of the post office, some guy changed it to his name. Believe me, the internet is here, it’s no longer newfangled. It works.

But help is almost nonexistent. You can’t even pay for it with most sites and products. First they rationalized it by saying they were giving you the product for free, and why should they, like with social media. Then the philosophy spread to physical products too. You want ’em cheap, this is what you get! NOTHING!

And people are unbelievably cheap. They’ll change airlines for a buck. And then they’ll get on last and ask you to switch from the aisle seat up front you paid for to a middle seat in the back so they can sit with their kids. PAY FOR IT!

Anyway, I paid for my HP Envy 6455e. And now I’m using it to the fullest. Feels so good!

But your mileage may vary.