Funny Girl

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“People
People who
need people
Are the luckiest
people in the world.”
Bob Merrill 

 

funny-girl1

My favorite Barbra Streisand musical Funny Girl was on television the other night. I was just a kid when my parents brought this Broadway hit album home in 1964. It didn’t take me long before I had every lyric of every song memorized, belting out each song like any other normal 8-year old.

Funny Girl became a huge hit, not only as a Broadway Musical but also as a movie. I was too young to see the Broadway version, but I was the first in line at the movie matinee theater with my elementary school friends when it was released in 1968.

I can remember sitting in the movie theater quietly singing along with each and every song. My friends were surprised that I knew all the lyrics, especially since I hadn’t told them. I just thought every kid knew the lyrics. Guess I was wrong.

To my surprise, when I watched the movie the other day, all the lyrics came back to me. How is it I can’t remember what I made for dinner two days ago, but start playing the music from Funny Girl and I start singing along without forgetting a single note or lyric. Guess I’m just a funny girl.

Shine On

The Pandumbic

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“If you laugh with somebody,
then you share something.”
Trevor Noah

 

Trevor Noah

When the Coronavirus pandemic began, all the late-night shows such as The Tonight Show, The Late, Late Show and even Stephen Colbert began broadcasting their shows from home, usually their significant other filming their host husbands.

There was one show I had not watched before and that was  The Daily Show with host Trevor Noah. However, that changed when I began watching Trevor along with the other daily YouTube late night shows.

If you’re not familiar with Trevor Noah, he’s a 36-year old South African comedian, political commentator, writer and television host of The Daily Show. Born in Johannesburg, he began his career in 2002 as a comedian, presenter, and actor in South Africa. After coming to America in 2011, he became the first South African comedian to appear on The Tonight Show in the summer of 2013. As his popularity grew and Trevor became a recurring contributor on The Daily Show, he replaced Jon Stewart as host of The Daily Show September 28, 2015.

I was a fan of Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show but I must admit I stopped watching after he retired. I didn’t even give Trevor Noah a chance to show his talent. I now regret I did that, after becoming a diehard fan of Trevor.

After a few months of watching him on the Daily Show, I read his 2016 book, Born A Crime. He writes about growing up in South Africa, a child of interracial parents and apartheid South Africa. Trevor was kept mostly indoors in his youth by his mother, for fear that at any moment the government could take him away from her because of his interracial status. In South Africa before 1985, it was a crime to have interracial marriages as well as have an interracial child, hence the title of the book, Born a Crime. Against all odds, this smart, handsome, talented young comedian has made his way to the top. In my opinion, Born a Crime should be required reading for all young people.

If you don’t have cable, you can watch him on YouTube. Here’s a recent segment of  The Daily Social Distancing Show from July 22, 2020 he calls, The Pandumbic:

Shine On

Captivating Comet

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“Science is an ongoing process. It never ends.
There is no single ultimate truth to be achieved,
after which all the scientists can retire.”
Carl Sagan

 

NEOWISE Comet

NEOWISE Comet from Mt. Hood, Oregon by Daniel Springer –  July 2020

A few weeks back, a good friend asked if I had the opportunity to photograph the comet, NEOWISE in the skies over Redondo Beach. Unfortunately, because of overcast evening skies, I have not been able to get a good photo of the comet. However, I still have time since the comet will be visible through mid-August.

This fairly large, 3 mile across comet was first spotted by The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) on March 27th. NEOWISE is named after the JPL space telescope used to first discover the comet, the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer aka NEOWISE. To learn more about the NEOWISE JPL Mission visit, https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/neowise/

The newly discovered comet might become known as the Great Comet of 2020 because it won’t be returning to our neck of the world for another 6,800 years. Why? Because, that’s how many years it takes this comet to complete its journey around the sun. It’s also one of the few comets visible without the use of a telescope or even binoculars. According to JPL, NEOWISE is the brightest comet since Comet Hale-Bopp visited us in 1997.

Joseph Masiero, NEOWISE deputy principal investigator at JPL, said in a recent interview that, “. . . by combining the infrared data with visible-light images, we can tell that the comet’s nucleus is covered with sooty, dark particles left over from its formation near the birth of our solar system 4.6 billion years ago.”

If you’re interested in capturing a beautiful photograph like the one my friend’s son Daniel took at Mt. Hood in Oregon, start looking up at the sky about one hour after sunset. According to the Sky & Telescope magazine, you’ll find the comet just over the northwest horizon as the last of twilight fades into darkness. Look about three fists below the bowl of the Big Dipper. The comet has also been getting brighter and brighter in the early morning sky as well.

Good luck my fellow Blogaholics in photographing or just experiencing this captivating comet.

Shine On