TiVo and Amazon.com Announce New Service Enabling Amazon Unbox Video Downloads to TiVo

TiVo Subscribers Will Soon Be Able To Watch Amazon Unbox Movies and TV Shows On Their TVs

ALVISO, Calif. and SEATTLE— February 7, 2007 — TiVo Inc. (NASDAQ: TIVO), the creator of and a leader in television services for digital video recorders (DVRs), and Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN), today announced "Amazon Unbox on TiVo," a soon-to-be-launched service feature that will provide TiVo subscribers with the ability to rent and purchase movies and television shows from leading studios and networks including CBS, Fox Entertainment Group, Lionsgate, Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Warner Bros. Entertainment. Amazon Unbox on TiVo is currently in beta testing among a select group of TiVo subscribers and will be available soon to more than 1.5 million broadband-ready TiVo boxes.

The Amazon Unbox video download service, which launched in September 2006, offers thousands of movies, television shows and other videos for download to PCs and any Windows Media Video-compatible portable device. Now, in addition to PCs and portable devices, movies and television shows will be available to download directly to a customer's TiVo box for playback on their television set. This is the first service that uniquely allows for downloadable broadband video to be integrated with programming recorded from TV so the consumer can easily navigate all viewing options.

"TiVo is taking the best way to watch TV and making it the best way to get popular movies and television shows from major Hollywood studios," said TiVo's CEO, Tom Rogers. "Now, TiVo subscribers can rent and purchase movies and TV shows and download them to their television set — all without leaving their homes."

"By teaming up with TiVo, we are offering our customers another great way to watch their Unbox videos," said Bill Carr, vice president of digital media at Amazon. "Amazon Unbox offers customers the flexibility to watch their favorite videos where and when they want to whether that is on their PC, portable device or TV set through their TiVo box."

To activate the service, subscribers will simply log on to Amazon.com and follow a few simple steps to establish a link between their broadband connected TiVo Series2™ or Series3™ box and their Amazon account. Once the initial set up is complete, eligible movies or television shows from Amazon Unbox can be downloaded directly to the customer's TiVo box. After the movie has been downloaded, the title will automatically appear in the subscriber's TiVo "Now Playing" list with all of their other recorded shows, easily viewed with just a click of the TiVo remote.

Customers can purchase television episodes for $1.99, purchase most movies for between $9.99 and $14.99, or rent movies starting at $1.99. As an added bonus, all purchased videos are automatically stored in each customer's "Your Media Library" at Amazon.com for future access and download.

"The television is and will continue to be the preferred platform for watching video content, and TiVo is leading the charge in offering broadband-delivered content to the living room," said Tara Maitra, TiVo's vice president and general manager, programming. "By adding Amazon Unbox on TiVo, we are expanding the TiVoCast service to include movies, television shows and other premium content, giving TiVo subscribers access to the full range of video programming a consumer may want."

For more information on Amazon Unbox on TiVo visit www.tivo.com/amazon or www.amazon.com/unbox. TiVo is available for as low as $69.99, after mail-in rebate and service commitment at leading consumer electronics stores.

Top 10 Signs an Astronaut is Trying to Kill You

via David Letterman (natch):

Top Ten

10. Says, "This is a giant leap for mankind" as she tosses you off a bridge
9. You turn on CNN and see the Hubble Telescope focusing on your house
8. She promises to "Take you out like Pluto"
7. It sounds crazy, but you could swear Mars is following you
6. You were on the "Maury" episode: "I Had A Booty Call And Now An Astronaut Is Trying To Kill Me"
5. Her previous attempts to kill you have been postponed due to high winds
4. She poisons your Tang
3. Says she looks forward to being the first to walk on your lifeless corpse
2. Been getting threatening emails from Connie@International Space Station.com
1. She keeps stabbing you with a pen that writes upside down

Yes, but does she wears panties?

via Thomas Hawk:

A few hundred people packed Justin Herman Plaza today in downtown San Francisco to watch the latest incarnation of Jefferson Starship perform a public concert. Microsoft sponsored the noon-time event as part of their $500 million mega marketing push for Vista. In addition to a giant Vista logo and a huge blow up Microsoft astronaut, Jefferson Starship were joined on stage by go-go dancing orange Vista astronauts and schwag was shot from cannons on the stage into the crowd.

The aging rockers played mostly a mix of contemporary and classic tunes including "White Rabbit" and "The Time Has Come Today," and sported Zunes while performing (just kidding about that Zune part).

Grace Slick wasn't in the line up, but they did have a younger, hotter, version who at one point flipped the audience the bird when someone said that Steve Jobs was in the crowd (again, just kidding about that last part of course).

There are so0000 many ways to rant about this that it virtually makes me speechless. I don't want a "younger, hotter version of Grace Slick." My headline, btw, for my younger readers, is a reference to the fact that Gracie in her heyday was notorious for flipping her dress/skirt up in performance, revealing that she was ah, sans culottes.

The younger, hotter thing up there, doing her best "Grace Slick flipping the bird" is probably Diana Mangano, who is the lead singer of one of the competing Starship corpses - I mean bands - with Kantner and Balin, who should be ashamed of themselves, and should go start other, new bands if they want to play music, rather than being damnable blood-sucking zombies feeding off the dead.

The Airplane was such a good band. Even the first incarnation of the Starship wasn't bad, but jesus, jesus, look what we've become. It makes you just want to scream out the Who line, "hope I die before I get old."

Why I don't play live poker - Part the 1st (an ongoing series)

Today is 2/7/07

which means it's Hammer Day (courtesy Maudie).

I still don't have any money in FullTilt, and have other obligations tonight, but soon, soon.

Be Disney and be proud of it

My pull-down blogroll to your right links to the sites I read most regularly, although I periodically give a rest to even the favorites.

One of those links is Re-Imagineering, an ongoing anonymous discussion among Disney and Pixar employees about what's wrong, and what isn't working, and occasionally what is working with the modern Disney Theme parks. If you're a fan of those parks, especially of Disneyland in its heyday of the `60s, it's fascinating, if often sad, reading.

One regular stop on my family's periodic trips to Disneyland was The Enchanted Tiki Room, a corny but fun animatronic show where "the birdies sing and the drums go boom" as the song went. While Tiki culture was still popular, and the Tiki Room's animatronics were then state-of-the-art, in the `60s, time passes as it does, and the show eventually became one of Disneyland's (and its equivalent, Disneyworld) least popular attractions - to the point where audiences were regularly walking out before the show finished. It closed for a revamp in the late `90s, and reopened with

[t]he premise that Aladdin’s Iago and Lion King’s Zazu have taken over the show because Jose, Michael, Pierre and Fritz can’t keep butts in the seats. Talk about literal storytelling.

It was a catastrophe, with the show being called, “Abrasive,” “Rude,” “Disrespectful,” “Disgraceful,” and “Obnoxious,” by offended Disney customers. The full story, which is well worth a read, is here.

The sad thing about the story - as most of the stories at Re-Imagineering are, is the writer's conclusion that the people responsible still didn't - and don't - "get" it. It's not about "being careful when updating classic attractions which visitors may have an emotional investment in." It's about thinking about what Disney was, what made Disney successful, and doing what needs to be done o ensure you're sticking to those precepts.

It's about being yourself. About being Disney, in this case. The writer concludes that in some ways Disney is like the classic nerdy kid who we all know and love, even if he is a bit of a dork. Yeah, the kid will grow up and change, but we want - from the "know and love" perspective - for that kid to become an adult version of himself, with the same qualities. We don't want him to shave his head, get a tat, and pierce his tongue.

Good advice for us all. Simple, and Disneyesque. Just be yourself.

Mrs. Nowak (heart) Mr. Oefelein

via Peggy and the Noir Dame Blog (no relation):

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) -- An astronaut drove 900 miles and donned a disguise to confront a woman she believed was her rival for the affections of a space shuttle pilot, police said. She was arrested Monday and charged with attempted kidnapping and other counts.

"If you were just going to talk to someone, I don't know that you would need a wig, a trench coat, an air cartridge BB gun and pepper spray," said Sgt. Barbara Jones, a spokeswoman for the Orlando Police Department. "It's just really a very sad case. ... Now she ends up finding herself on the other side of the law with some very serious charges."

Full AP story here.

WMPS Good Guys Welcome the Rolling Stones

one long strange trip for a striped shirt

Take a look at the far right corner of the iconic Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band cover and you'll find a Shirley Temple doll wearing a shirt reading, "Welcome the Rolling Stones."

The obscured full inscription actually reads, "WMPS Good Guys Welcome the Rolling Stones."
WMPS was a Memphis, Tennessee AM radio station and in 1965 held a contest where one lucky fan would get to meet the Stones. Mary Anne May, a senior at Immaculate Conception High School, "bought a kids striped shirt at the dollar store, because Mick Jagger was wearing striped shirts a lot onstage then." She stitched the inscription on the shirt, sent if off the station.

And won.

During intermission, Mary Ann went backstage. Jagger spotted the shirt, asked. "Is this for me?" and that's the last Mary Ann ever saw of it until it appeared on Sgt. Peppers. The Shirley Temple, doll, incidentally, belonged to the art director's son. The Stones would later return the plug by having the Beatles images hidden on the cover of Their Satanic Majesties Request.

Rumors are flying that Apple's "special announcement" during today's Super Bowl will be the release of the Beatles entire catalog on iTunes, which will please more than one fan, including this one.

Source: Memphis Commercial Appeal

Eric Von Schmidt 1931-2007

via AP - Guitarist and painter Eric von Schmidt, a player in the Northeast's blues and folk scene in the 1950s and 1960s who influenced Bob Dylan, has died. He was 75. Guitarist and painter Eric von Schmidt, a player in the Northeast's blues and folk scene in the 1950s and 1960s who influenced Bob Dylan, has died. He was 75.

Von Schmidt began playing guitar when he was 17, and said he was inspired when he heard bluesman Leadbelly on the radio. He said he listened to many folk and blues recordings at the Library of Congress, where his father — Harold von Schmidt, who was noted for his illustrations for the Saturday Evening Post — would drop him off during trips to Washington.

He went to Italy in 1955 to study art on a Fulbright scholarship before landing in Cambridge. His first album, The Folk Blues of Eric von Schmidt, was released in 1963.

One of his better known songs was Joshua Gone Barbados, which has been performed by several other artists. The ASCAP Foundation, which promotes music education, gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. He also painted album covers for Baez and other folk musicians.

You can see some of Von Schmidt's art at his official site.

American Life in Poetry: Column 097

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Though parents know that their children will grow up and away from them, will love and be loved by others, it's a difficult thing to accept. Massachusetts poet Mary Jo Salter emphasizes the poignancy of the parent/child relationship in this perceptive and compelling poem.


Somebody Else's Baby

From now on they always are, for years now
they always have been, but from now on you know
they are, they always will be,

from now on when they cry and you say
wryly to their mother, better you than me,
you'd better mean it, you'd better

hand over what you can't have, and gracefully.


Reprinted from "New Letters," vol. 72, no. 3-4, 2006, by permission of the poet. Copyright (c) 2006 by Mary Jo Salter, whose most recent book of poetry is "Open Shutters," Knopf, 2003. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. For information on permissions and usage, or to download a PDF version of the column, visit www.americanlifeinpoetry.org.

American Life in Poetry: Column 096

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Grief can endure a long, long time. A deep loss is very reluctant to let us set it aside, to push it into a corner of memory. Here the Arkansas poet, Andrea Hollander Budy, gives us a look at one family's adjustment to a death.


For Weeks After the Funeral

The house felt like the opera,
the audience in their seats, hushed, ready,
but the cast not yet arrived.

And if I said anything
to try to appease the anxious air, my words
would hang alone like the single chandelier

waiting to dim the auditorium, but still
too huge, too prominent, too bright, its light
announcing only itself, bringing more

emptiness into the emptiness.


Copyright (c) 2006 by Andrea Hollander Budy. First published in "Five Points" and included in her book, "Woman in the Painting." Reprinted by permission of the author and Autumn House Press. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. For information on permissions and usage, or to download a PDF version of the column, visit www.americanlifeinpoetry.org.

That Big Announcement Time

Thanks to Dreamtime I've signed a deal and will be writing a weekly music column for "Gather," a social networking site, that's sometimes been described as "the MySpace for the NPR set." You can see the site here...

http://www.gather.com/

... and you can track my writing at Gather here.

The column's name is currently "Under the Radar," although that will be changing to avoid confusion with a music mag of the same name.

Whatever I end up naming the column, it will have the same general theme as Dreamtime; stuff you wouldn't hear on the radio; trivia, stories about music and musicians. Sometimes the content will be the same thing as I'm posting over at the Dreamtime blog - edited to make sense for non-Theme Time listeners - sometimes it will diverge. I have a couple of things in mind that wouldn't fit in Dreamtime that I've been hankering to write.

Gather has been around for about a year. It's Boston-based, partially funded by NPR, the Hearst Corporation, several others. It don't think it's been as successful as anyone would like.

When I joined last year Gather reminded me of an out-of-control writing workshop, with everyone clamoring for attention for their own writing and no one willing to read anything else. Most people who I sent to Gather found the interface very confusing, too, as I did. I cross-posted a few articles from fhb and Dreamtime at Gather with little reaction over the past year, and eventually decided it was too much of a hassle for the 'lil Gather dollars that the articles earned.

But I think they're making a good move, I'm one of what will eventually be 70-80 "Gather Correspondents," for various groups such as politics; music; writing; movies; cooking; and so on - and whose agenda - outside of writing - will be to put some order and consistency around the chaos.

Gather has changed their user interface too. It now seems to be simpler and easier to find things you're interested in reading. But we'll see how it works out. The gig doesn't pay much - few freelance writing gigs do - but it does pay real moola now as opposed to their "Gather dollars", and the exposure may be good, especially since I can cross-advertise Dreamtime, fhb, and my Amazon Dreamtime store. And heck, I even get free CDs.

And that's the Big Announcement. I was touched that several family members and friends contacted me in the hopes that XM, or NPR, or Mr. D., or somebody was tossing bags of gold my way. But Dreamtime is the best sort of writing. No pressure, no censors, no editors. Of course no money and a small audience too. :-) But I still find it fun, and at this point, having fun writing is a very important thing to me. I'm hoping the Gather gig will be fun too, but whatever happens, you'll hear about it. Promise.

We now return you to the regular blog, already in progress.

Time to air out the ol' ape pelt tomorrow

Well, indeed. And why is it important, you ask? Read all about it here. You'll be proud of yourself for helping promote such a worthy cause.

Oh, and for those Constant Readers emailing me about the Big Announcement (and one so curious he even had his wife call), I'm under embargo until February 1st and - since I'm travelling that day - I probably won't make the Big Announcement until the 2nd.

So hang in there.

The State of Online Poker...

... is disquieting, to say the least. "Disheartening" might be a better term.

Last week, after having the screws put to it by the U.S. gummit, NETeller, which was the money transfer service I - along with thousands of others - used to get money in/out of my poker accounts, closed to U.S. citizens. On the heels of the announcement I received an email from UltimateBet, noting several alternatives, one of which actually cut off its service to U.S. citizens a few hours later. PokerStars seems to be trying to keep a low profile. No email, just a notice on their site advising the unavailability of NETteller to U.S. citizens.

There are still alternatives, which I can try when I need to fund one of my two - possibly soon to be three accounts, as I'm thinking of dropping a (very) small bankroll into FullTilt, as many of my imaginary friends are migrating there. But, I'm expecting at some point in the future my bank will be sending me a notice, advising me that they're refusing the transfer, or one or more of the sites I play on will just decide that it's too much hassle to face the possible of their executives if they set foot on U.S. soil and say "sorry, Rico."

Of course, playing online poker isn't illegal. By God, I have two different emails from New Hamster's finest pols telling me that.

Yep.

Of course, it's getting more and more difficult for me to fund my playing, but at least I have the assurance that everything is just jake between me and my government.

I know just how a regular joe must have felt during prohibition, when all he wanted was a beer at day's end, and ended up having to go places he normally wouldn't go, meet people he didn't want to meet, and feel like a criminal in the process. All for a lousy beer.

The Poker Players' Alliance, which personally I feel has been about as useful as tits on a boar to date, sent out an email recently noting,

"...The PPA is not standing idly by. Poker should be exempt under the new law and that exemption is our primary goal. I have spent a good portion of January in Washington, D.C., meeting with lawmakers and others to get support for legislation that would provide a “skill game” exemption for poker. We hope to have a bill introduced very soon and then bring to bear the voice of more than 135,000 members of the PPA to push Congress to do the right thing. This would be a very positive development for the game. For the past year, we have been on the defensive, but now is the time to go on the offensive and get a bill introduced.

This year we will also be taking the issue directly to Members of Congress in their home districts, to truly nationalize the debate. We had a tremendous response from our members about becoming PPA grassroots representatives on the state and regional levels. Soon we will be announcing our positions across the country and engaging U.S. Representatives and Senators where they used to feel safe from facts and spirited debate.

While we are working toward the short-term goal of a poker exemption, the PPA will also be laying the foundation for the eventual U.S. regulation of online poker. This is the only proven public policy for online gaming. Licensing, regulating, and taxing online poker is technically feasible and the sensible and fiscally responsible thing to do. We will be working with others in Washington to move Congress in this direction.

Finally, we not only rely on your active participation but also on your active support to achieve our goals. Our new site now offers no cost introductory annual memberships. Please help us build our membership to enable us to deliver a full house to Congress and stop further threats to our game. Tell your friends, family, and fellow players to become members of the PPA. We also offer an ability to upgrade your membership from introductory to full membership and beyond. Our new and improved Web site, www.pokerplayersalliance.org, gives you tools and information to help our cause, as well as make it easier for you to donate to the PPA. I hope you will make a contribution at http://www.pokerplayersalliance.org/donatenow.php."

Well, we'll see. I'm not making any more contributions until I see the PPA do something past press releases. As to the "regulation of online poker," I'm still personally convinced that much of this has come about because the traditional bricks-and-mortar U.S. casinos saw billions of dollars flowing right out of their greedy lil hands to Gibraltar and Israel and god-knows-where and started getting their tame Congress-critters on the case. And, once it's impossible for U.S. players to get money in/out of the international betting sites, somehow, miraculously, legislation will be passed that will allow regulated U.S casinos to offer online poker, blackjack, et al. As I tell Peggy, I'm fully expecting not to be able to play online poker by the end of the year, but bet I'll be playing online poker at a Caesars or Harrah's-branded site within the next three years.

Hey, Hey, I'm a Monkee

Come watch Dreamtime sing and play. I'm the young generation and I got something to say.

Well, at least 10 minutes worth. Episode 27 of the Dreamtime podcast features Mike "Wool Hat" Nesmith, Liquid Paper, Tiger Beat, Charlie Manson, Jimi Hendrix, and the Mike Nesmith/Bob Dylan non-collaboration, "Rio."

As I mentioned earlier, one of the things I miss from the closed White Man Stew Theme Time Forums was someone posting "Theme Time" artist videos found on YouTube. I've added a new segment to Dreamtime that I plan on offering on an "off-week" (that is, when I don't have the next podcast in the works) basis... always keeping in mind that consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds and sometimes I'll be posting a podcast that week, sometimes a YouTube video, maybe sometimes I'll post both, like this week.

The first of the two videos currently on the site feature the female Elvis, Wanda Jackson, ripping through the rockabilly number, "Rock Your Baby" from 1958. The other is one of my favorites, from 1989, with Van Morrison reading the Slim Gaillard passage from "On the Road," as Gaillard himself recreates the scene as described by Kerouac.

Both - and more as I post them - can always be found through the Dreamtime video label...

http://fhb-dreamtime.blogspot.com/search/label/Video

If you come across a Theme Time-related video that you'd like to see up on Dreamtime, feel free to email me.

American Life in Poetry: Column 095

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Literature, and in this instance, poetry, holds a mirror to life; thus the great themes of life become the great themes of poems. Here the distinguished American poet, John Haines, addresses--and celebrates through the affirmation of poetry--our preoccupation with aging and mortality.


Young Man

I seemed always standing
before a door
to which I had no key,
although I knew it hid behind it
a gift for me.

Until one day I closed
my eyes a moment, stretched
then looked once more.
And not surprised, I did not mind it
when the hinges creaked
and, smiling, Death
held out his hands to me.


Reprinted from "ABZ: A Poetry Magazine," No. 1, 2006, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2006, by John Haines, whose most recent book of poetry is "Of Your Passage, O Summer," Limberlost Press, 2004. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

American Life in Poetry: Column 094

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

While many of the poems we feature in this column are written in open forms, that's not to say I don't respect good writing done in traditional meter and rhyme. But a number of contemporary poets, knowing how a rigid attachment to form can take charge of the writing and drag the poet along behind, will choose, say, the traditional villanelle form, then relax its restraints through the use of broken rhythm and inexact rhymes. I'd guess that if I weren't talking about it, you might not notice, reading this poem by Floyd Skloot, that you were reading a sonnet.


Silent Music

My wife wears headphones as she plays
Chopin etudes in the winter light.
Singing random notes, she sways
in and out of shadow while night
settles. The keys she presses make a soft
clack, the bench creaks when her weight shifts,
golden cotton fabric ripples across
her shoulders, and the sustain pedal clicks.
This is the hidden melody I know
so well, her body finding harmony in
the give and take of motion, her lyric
grace of gesture measured against a slow
fall of darkness. Now stillness descends
to signal the end of her silent music.


Reprinted from "Prairie Schooner," Volume 80, Number 2 (Summer, 2006) by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. Copyright (c) 2006 by the University of Nebraska Press. Floyd Skloot's most recent book is "The End of Dreams," 2006, Louisiana State University Press. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Autopsy of 'Big Bopper' to Address Rumors About 1959 Plane Crash

via The Washington Post:

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- The son of "the Big Bopper" has hired a forensic anthropologist to try to answer questions about how his father died in the 1959 plane crash that also took the lives of famous rock-and-rollers Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens.

Jay Richardson, who performs tribute shows as "the Big Bopper Jr.," hopes an examination of his father's remains will settle rumors that a gun was fired aboard the plane, and tell whether the Big Bopper might have survived the crash impact and died trying to go for help.

"I'm not looking for any great bombshell, but then again you never know," Richardson said in a phone interview from his home outside Houston.

J.P. "Big Bopper" Richardson is buried in Beaumont, Tex. After his remains are studied, they will be reburied and a life-size statue will be put up next to the grave.

Jay Richardson never knew his father, who soared to rock fame with his late-'50s hit "Chantilly Lace." His mother was pregnant with him when his father died.

The music stars were killed on Feb. 3, 1959, when their four-passenger plane crashed after taking off from the Mason City, Iowa, airport -- a tragedy memorialized as "the day the music died" in Don McLean's song "American Pie."

The group had been traveling by bus on their "Winter Dance Party" tour of the Midwest, but Holly chartered the plane because the bus was cold and prone to breaking down.

Following a concert in Clear Lake, Iowa, Waylon Jennings, then a member of Holly's band, gave up his seat on the plane to Richardson, who was feeling ill and seeking a shorter trip to the next stop.

An autopsy was performed on the pilot's body, but not on the others.

Bill Bass, founder of the research facility at the University of Tennessee nicknamed the Body Farm, plans to study the remains in March. Bass is an expert in determining identities and causes of death.

In this case, Bass said, his goal is to "document all the fractures and get an idea of how many broken bones and which ones are critical and give . . . as much information as I can about the crash and how it affected his father."

In its accident report, the Civil Aeronautics Board said pilot error was the cause of the crash. The report didn't mention a gun belonging to Holly that was found by a farmer two months after the crash.

Newspaper accounts of the gun discovery fueled rumors among fans that the pilot was somehow shot, causing the crash. The owner of the flying service added to the conspiracy theory by insisting his pilot was not at fault, saying the pilot must have been "incapacitated."

X-rays of the bones should be able to show whether the Bopper was hit by a bullet, because the lead in the bullet would leave debris.

"I don't expect to find that," Richardson said. "If these rumors persist, I can tell you Dad wasn't [shot]. That's what I hope it comes to."

Another curious finding at the crash was that Richardson's body was discovered nearly 40 feet from the wreckage, while the others were found in or near the plane.

Bass said examining the bones could determine whether Richardson could have moved himself from the wreckage or if he was thrown by the force of the crash.

"I don't know how I would feel to know that my father died some other way than what I believed most of my life," his son said.

Dreamtime, Nancy Sinatra, Theme Time Videos and Big Announcement pending.

Did you know that Phil Silvers - Sgt. Bilko - wrote the lyrics to Nancy with the Laughing Face? I didn't until Bob Dylan informed me, and that's one of the reasons I love Theme Time Radio Hour. Read all about it here.

I'm also adding a new segment to Dreamtime that I plan on offering on an "off-week" (that is, when I don't have the next podcast in the works) basis... always keeping in mind that consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds and sometimes I'll be posting a podcast that week, sometimes a YouTube video, maybe sometimes I'll post both.

One of the things I miss from the closed White Man Stew Theme Time Forums was someone posting "Theme Time" artist videos found on YouTube. Here's one of my favorites, from 1989 Van Morrison reading the Slim Gaillard passage from "On the Road," as Gaillard himself recreates the scene as described by Kerouac. Dylan read the same passage in the "Moon" episode of Theme Time.

And finally, in the spirit of Big Announcements, I hope to have a Big Announcement made public Real Soon Now. And no, neither Dylan nor XM has offered me a job. It's not that Big.

Tough week...

... and it's only Thursday. On Monday, we got whacked by the ubiquitous ice storm that's been plaguing the U.S. from Texas to up here. Power first shut down around 11:30 a.m. (shortly after I posted Monday's post, in fact), came back on around 1:00, and shut down again at around 1:30.

And stayed off.

And stayed off.

Finally coming back on late Tuesday around 4 p.m. as PSNH crews and crews from as far away as Connecticut worked to get the lights back on. We had a scare Wednesday morning circa 6 a.m. as the power went off again, but it was apparently planned, as it came back on around a half-hour later and (cross fingers, knock wood) so far has stayed on.

So, you go find the flashlights, and finally find one that has charged batteries, and you find the oil lamps, and go get the various ornamental candles given as gifts, and you light the fireplace and hunker down with the cats. And you go out to get a new portable (battery-driven) radio so you have some sounds. And you move the Old School phone from the bedroom downstairs because none of the wireless phones work.

Monday wasn't too bad. The temperature hunkered right around freezing, with the rain coming down and icing everything it touched. We lost a big branch on the old crab apple out front, and the work crews took out a bent birch that was blocking the road.

With the fireplace cranking since 11:30, the living room stayed around the high 60s. Rest of the house dropped down to mid 50s. We went to bed early, cranked up the bedroom fireplace, put on our woollies, and had a relatively easy night of it.

Tuesday was worse as the temperature outside and in plummeted, and we were making plans to take cats and ourselves over to Peggy's brother for the evening when, as I said, the power came back. And now we're back to normalcy, such as it is. According to reports, at the storm's height, over 50,000 NH customers had power out. That quickly dropped to around 30k, and stayed at that level through much of Tuesday. They're now saying "thousands," and report that all customers should have power on by end of day.

The thing you're not expecting when you lose power is how quiet everything gets. No furnace clicking. No compressors. No electrical hum which is the constant background of these Modern Times. I sat next to the fireplace, reading by kerosene light, and thought about what the noises must have been pre-electricity. Crackle of the fire. Creaking of the bones of the house. Wind rattling a window.