cartoon network on nickelodeon in 1999. an off-channel promo for cartoon cartoon fridays snuck onto nick’s airwaves via unmonitored local ad buys.

An unbelievable power play

Nickelodeon execs watching their own channel:

how i feel when i get 4 notes on a post

There are so many different shades of white light bulbs, I am so overwhelmed walking down the light bulb aisle, and then I'm never happy with the one I choose, no matter which one I choose, I get it home and I put it in and I'm like, ugh, I don't like THAT white

Color temperature range charts may be useful when going to try the next option (i kept a list of "nopes" in my wallet until i discovered I want shaded reading lamps, bathroom and kitchen lights all between 3800-4200 and everywhere else not above 3200 nor below 2800. YMMV, I enjoy warmer tone colors but not too warm or I'll get sleepy/depressed).

Different temp-colors for different areas/tasks.

Omg but this is so helpful, I am so glad I am not the only person just completely bewildered by how many different tones are being labeled with a single word! This will help me so much!!!! Thank you!!!!

A very useful thread on Bluesky:

(There is a lot more. Rather than give you all the images, I've copied the full text below.)

nimoy: amok time was super cool coz spock was in HEAT and he had to go back to vulcan to SPAWN

interviewer: 😀

trotskyist slenderman has sent us some silly little newspapers, we shall neither collect them nor read them

If you’re having a bad day, here’s a parakeet in a teacup hat.

stephen king writing young girl characters: she’s in a terrible situation everything sucks she’s at the worst age of her life she’s angry she’s just a child she’s forced into maturity she’s ready to fight for her life and she’s got a weird to awful relationship with her parents. and she’s going to kill people about it

NIGHT LIGHTS

aurora 💞 buy a wallpaper or leave a tip / twitter / instagram / shop 

everything makes me feel like this recently

Who up gobbling they fucking wawa i guess

Ranting and Raving: "Free as a Bird" by The Beatles

When I was a little boy, the first CD I was ever handed from my father was The Beatles 1967-1970, the blue compilation album that contained all the most important stuff from their later years. The Beatles were the first band I ever fell in love with and the first band my father and I ever bonded over. His favorite album was The White Album, his favorite song was “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” (he was a big Eric Clapton fan unfortunately, and always a sucker for a good lead from him) and I genuinely believe he had a rule that if that 2004 Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame performance of the song came up on his Facebook timeline, he had to stop whatever he was doing and watch it. You know the one. The one where it’s Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, Steve Winwood, playing together and Prince absolutely tears that song a new asshole by playing one of the most rippin’ solos ever. That one.

Anyway, My classic rock and entire musical education began with Beatles albums. They were also the stars of the first musical disagreement I ever had with my father. His favorite Beatle was George, mine has always been Paul. We always agreed on one thing though: we both preferred the later years of the Fab Four to their earlier years. We loved when the Beatles would get weird and play with wackier ideas. The early hits did nothing for my old man. That’s why I always gravitate more to that 1967-1970 time when I go back to them. He instilled a love for the strange and adventurous in music. He also loved every song George Harrison got to have on albums since everybody wanted to talk about Lennon/McCartney so much. He loved music history and always looked for the songs people didn’t talk about much. In a way, he’s been a big inspiration on this series, where I talk about songs I don’t think people talk about much.

There’s been a lot of talk about the Beatles lately, mainly because there was a lot of hype around the recently released “Now and Then,” the final unfinished John Lennon demo that the Beatles worked on when Paul, George, and Ringo reunited for the Anthology in the mid-nineties. If you want my honest opinion, “Now and Then” really isn’t that great. I can see why George wasn’t super into it back in the day and I get why it wasn’t finished back then. The finished production feels a little too artificial and cobbled together. It still feels unfinished and feels like it has no idea where it’s going or how it wants to end. It’s very clearly something Lennon only had a sketch of and clearly a song McCartney felt he had to finish in order for him to truly get closure on both the Beatles legacy and his songwriting partnership with John. I don’t begrudge anybody who loves it! If you do, that’s great! I just couldn’t connect with it. The song I’m going to talk about today isn’t a universally beloved Beatles song, so I get fighting for an underdog that people don’t fully vibe with.

My father didn’t live to hear “Now and Then.” In recent days, I’ve wondered what he would’ve thought about it if he had.

My father’s life ended on November 3rd, 2023, but he wouldn’t be taken off life support until the 11th. He never got to hear that final Beatles song. In the days that he’s been gone, I’ve found myself listening to all those old Beatles tunes I used to listen to with him and remember all the good times I had. The White Album has been on repeat a lot.

But most of all, I’ve listened to “Free as a Bird” on repeat. I’ve found a lot of comfort in it through these darker days.

I never asked my father what he thought of “Free as a Bird.” There’s a chance he probably never even heard it. He rarely listened to any music from the nineties so I’m not sure if he was aware the surviving Beatles even reunited for that. I choose to believe he liked it, if it was indeed a song he heard. I’ve connected with that song much more than I have with “Now and Then.” My father, who I’m named after, became a father when I was born on April 10th, 1995, thirty-five years to the day that the infamous headlines of “Paul quits the Beatles” appeared and signaled that the band had officially broken up. It would be a few more months before the world would get to hear a new Beatles song post-breakup. That was then, this is now. There’s a new Beatles song one more time. The saying is true: Everything old becomes new again. 

My father is dead. So it goes. John Lennon was also dead when the Beatles finished “Free as a Bird.” So it goes. But despite John’s vocals and piano only being available on a cassette tape, I really think Jeff Lynne’s production brings a warmth to the song and makes John sound as if he’s there in the room with them. If it was made under ordinary circumstances, you’d have every right to call his vocals here “low quality,” because they are. However, since a tape and 1994-95 production technology was all Lynne had to work with, what he pulled off is superb. There’s a haunting quality to John’s vocals that I’ve always loved with this song. It’s always felt like a final message from him. The melody of the song is one of John’s sweetest and the way he sings the chorus has this breathy, relaxed quality to it that makes it sound like you’re simply gliding through the air. The way he holds that first word (“Freeeeeeeeeeeee”) and lets it fly and maintain altitude is just beautiful. It’s the song where I think John sounds his most relaxed, which might be due to him just recording his part by himself, just him and his piano. The other three Beatles assist with adding warmth to John’s vocals by providing the same harmonies the Fab Four were loved for. 

The song itself doesn’t have a ton of tricks up its sleeve. The entire song really can’t have too many, considering it’s forced to be built around the bits and pieces that John provided. But man, what bits he did provide work really well. Paul’s added line of “Can we really live without each other?” hits different these days (my answer when it comes to my own grief: yes, we can, but it’s gonna be a tall order.) George’s slide guitar throughout the song and his solo near the second half are simply wonderful. A song like this doesn’t really need a lot of tricks, you mostly listen to it because the vocal melody is so sweet and because it’s all the Beatles together one more time. I always loved Paul’s idea of stitching in part of “Come Together” and strange recordings being played backwards. When the song came out, Paul joked that he did it “to give all those Beatles nuts something to do.” That’s a classic John “The Walrus was Paul” Lennon move right there and it’s a fitting tribute to his songwriting partner’s humor.

Even without the other three Beatles, the demo by itself is still a beautiful little piece. John sounds so calm and peaceful on it. It’s melancholy, but it’s hauntingly beautiful and reflective, just as all of John’s best songs were. He captures in one single verse how it feels to find peace with both yourself and the world around you. If you want to hear somebody besides Lennon take a crack at it, Adrian Belew and King Crimson performed it during their THRAK tour in November, 1995. The recording I have linked was done five days after Anthology 1 came out. It was a song that was fitting considering they were playing in New York City, John Lennon’s home for the last years of his life. I imagine members of that audience were hearing the song for the very first time. Interestingly, Belew doesn’t play the finished one on Anthology 1, he’s doing the demo version. He omits the lyrics McCartney added and sings the ad-libs John sang on the demo. You can hear the audience laugh, which is kinda rude, but I think they only did that because they thought he genuinely forgot the words... except, he didn’t. 

It’s a fitting tribute song, whether you’re thinking of Lennon and the Beatles’ story or you’re thinking of somebody close to you. For me, I suppose the reason this song has stuck with me in recent days is because I imagine this is how my father feels, now that he’s no longer in pain. He gets to sleep for as long as he would like. You could say that he’s now...

Whenever I have to face the death of someone I love, I choose to think of death as a release, especially if the days leading up to it were filled with sickness, which was what my father faced. The last few years of his life had him deal with CoPD, diabetes, blood pressure issues, and whatever else decided to stop working one day. I suspect my father was in more pain than he let on, but he never let any of us worry for too long. If there’s any comfort to be found in a situation as hard as losing a parent unexpectedly (because he was never in such ill-health that we worried he was knockin’ on heaven’s door) it’s that you can rest knowing that your parent isn’t in pain anymore. They’re freed from it. When I see birds hanging around now, I like to imagine that one of them will always be my father, watching over me from up above. John Lennon was killed young. He was only forty years old. My father died young. He was only fifty-five. There was so much still left to do and so many things left to see and experience. Since I’m named after my father (He and I always felt the need to point out that I’m not a junior. I have a middle name, he didn’t) I suppose that means I’ll have to carry on his name and experience all the things he didn’t get time to get around to. I can only hope I succeed and make him proud.

I treat “Free as a Bird” as a eulogy song for him, because I think it reflects who my father was. He was a man who lived fifty-five wonderful years of life on his own terms. He lived the way he wanted, did the things he wanted to do, loved and laughed the way he wanted. He’s always been free as a bird and his death––in the most positive light I can find––is just another way to freedom.

My father could be a stubborn curmudgeon sometimes, but more than anything else, he was a man who loved with his whole heart and devoted himself to the people around him. He spent his entire life giving love to his wife, his children, and anybody else around him who called him “friend.” He made the days brighter, made the laughs louder, and devoted himself to making sure everyone in his life had what they needed, no matter what. He knew that one day he would leave this Earth for the next adventure and so he spent his days making sure everybody around him would be taken care of when it was time for him to go.

I love you, dad. I always will. May heaven’s light shine on you and let you soar the skies forever... free as a bird.

i just watched the lighthouse for the first time why did y'all lie to me he did NOT fuck that old man