It was 50 years ago today

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CYNTHIA!
You may be vintage, but you’re a classic and you’re still in mint condition!

Fun Facts For 1957

  • A postage stamp was 3 cents
  • The average cost of a new car in 1957 was $2,100
  • Gas cost only 28 cents a gallon
  • Average price of a new home was $19,000
  • A family’s average annual income was $5,000
  • The Wham-O Company produced the first Frisbee
  • American Bandstand began it’s 30 year syndicated run
  • Dwight D. Eisenhower was inaugurated for his second term as President of the United States
  • IBM sold the first compiler for the FORTRAN scientific programming language
  • Major John Glenn flew an F8U supersonic jet from California to New York in 3 hours, 23 minutes and 8 seconds setting a new transcontinental speed record.
  • The Soviet Union launched Sputnik I, the first artificial satellite to orbit the earth.
  • The laser was invented by Gordon Gould.
  • First flight of the Boeing 707 airliner

    • Zappa Plays Zappa – The Evidence


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    I caught the Zappa Plays Zappa show last night at the Verizon Wireless Theater. I had seen the Zappa Plays Zappa show last year featuring Terry Bozzio and Steve Vai and it was spectacular.

    This time around the special guest was Ray White who’s vocals and guitar work show up on such notable Zappa discs as Zappa In New York, You Are What You Is and Läther just to name a few.


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    The opening guitar duet with Frank was awesome, and maybe a little creepy. Father and son jamming together from beyond the grave.


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    And there were times during the show that Dweezil actually started to look a bit like his father….


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    It was a great concert and well worth staying up past my bedtime on a school night to go see.

    There’s a ton more pics in the gallery.

    [tags] Frank Zappa, Dweezil Zappa, Zappa Plays Zappa, Ray White, Houston [/tags]

    Scrapbook

    I’ve started the process of going through the 2500+ pictures I took during the trip. Right now I am just sorting pictures into folders for each major city visited. Then I will go through and break it down by site. After that I will need to go through and cull out the blurries and the duplicates.

    Cynthia has another 1500 or so on her camera that need to be downloaded and processed.

    Then comes deciding which ones to print for our “scrapbook.”

    And no, it’s not one of those cutesy-crafty “hey, pass me the Elmer’s Glue, construction paper and a pair of scissors” kind of scrapbooks that seems to be all the rage these days.

    It’s just something to put the pics in and all the paper we collected. Things like hotel receipts, metro and train ticket stubs, museum tickets and so forth.

    The one from our European vacation was 3 fat three-ringed binders full. I expect this one to be even larger.

    As I’m slowly going through my pictures I keep finding some cool ones I forgot about.

    Something about convex mirrors compels me.


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    That’s the Edificio Metropolis in the background so I know this was taken somewhere near The Gran Via and Calle de Alcala.


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    It’s going to be fun going through these…

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