YouTube and the Country Club Sub, among other wrandom topics
By Chuck Wiser, I write the words to share what my eyes see and my heart feels
Last week’s Wrambling had a couple of main topics but today is clean-up day so the title Bit’s and Pieces should be appropriate. Somewhere along the line my wife’s “doo dad” purchases got us on an advertising campaign periodical by the same name, pushing the types of “doo dads” that were being purchased. Puzzles were a main focus and so the magazine/flyer does feature those.
Last week I received another “Thank You for writing…” compliment and it verified my belief that many of us ponder things we have heard or seen but would like to enhance our understanding of.
And so, here we are. Many of my topics come to mind as I drive my frequent trips to Olean, and subsequently to Walmart. I keep a small note pad under the visor for jotting reminder notes, usually after I have pulled over or come to a stop.
English teachers and grammar gurus would note my ending that penultimate paragraph with a preposition.
I wonder if they still teach such things anymore. Certainly not any more. (Autodefect does not like me separating those two words and suggests that I should keep it as one word and not two.
YouTube has become a favorite of mine both in writing and in researching “how to do” topics. One such of those came up yesterday when finally heeding my truck’s reminder signal to add window washer fluid by flashing a message in the display area of my instrument panel. Deciding to heed the messages I began the process of “answering the bell…” or light. Not readily being able to interpret the panel buttons hieroglyphics, I resorted to consulting the User’s Manual. It helped me find the lever that releases the hood latch but to no avail, as pulling it didn’t do anything when I did so. My intuition as to “Google Search” terms has gotten pretty accurate so my search for “Nissan Frontier hood release methods” gave me a list of YouTube videos covering that topic. The one that I found addressed the problem. Now mind you, this is pretty much a two person operation as you need one person pulling on the lever under the dash and another being able to see what is or isn’t happening under the hood, if you can get it open. I ran out of daylight as darkness overfell the earth and so, as we speak, the hood is propped open until I can get out there to complet the job of freeing and oiling the hood latch mechanism.
First things first…so I decided to write my Wrambling, and then, most likely spending the rest of the day monkeying with the truck.
So back to YouTube…where did it come from? Google Search says: “YouTube was created on February 14, 2005, by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, three former PayPal employees. The idea for the platform came about after the founders struggled to share videos from a social gathering, realizing a need for a simple online video-sharing platform. They initially envisioned a dating site where users could upload videos but ultimately pivoted to a general video-sharing platform. The first video, “Me at the zoo,” was uploaded on April 23, 2005, by Jawed Karim.”
Now, as Paul Harvey would say; “And now the rest of the story.”
I use YouTube extensively in my search for music videos to serve as “Learning Tracks” for the learning and practicing songs for the various venues wherein I am allowed to sing. Previously in my “singing career” I was singing in Barbershop Society groups in both Olean and Hornell. In that setting we performed to songs singing “Off Book” as the phrase meant; “From memory and not from the book in our performance.” Learning Tracks were available if you were a group member that had an account from which you could download the songs.
As a side note to that, the Hornell group was singing the song; Let There Be Peace on Earth, but there was no learning track available. Julien Neel, singing as Trudbol was the performer of many Barbershop songs and so I reached out to him asking if he could possibly record that song, so our group had access to it. Sure, he said, but for a small fee. His quoted fee, as a favor to us, was quite reasonable, so Peter Gradoni, President of the Hornell group, and I, split the cost and had the learning track produced.
By way of apology, the Hornell area Barbershop chorus is the “Maple City Barbershop Chorus,” https://www.facebook.com/people/Maple-City-Barbershop-Chorus/61556608445047/. There is some resistance to being cited as a “Group” so this link should clear up that problem.
Julien Neel records barbershop songs, typically sung in “quartets,” and so he records tracks for each of the four parts, namely “Lead,” “Tenor,” “Baritone,” and “Bass.” Each voicing part can be accessed separately or as the full group, for learning, and/or just listening experiences.
BTW…I will share the link to this Wellsville Sun Wrambling to Julien for any additional comments or corrections that he would like me to make. He is a very talented and “reachable” performer despite his popularity in that particular venue of music.
Music performance by groups has the different voice parts separated to fulfill the needs of a “musical chord,” or combination of musical “pitch,” or sound parts. Different singing groups, such as “Mixed Choruses,” which typically are noted with SATB parts (Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass), and “Close Harmony” Barbershop singing where the note separations are based on separation by “thirds,” or a different pitch every “third pitch” apart are unique in their own regard.
On that note I’d better quit explaining before my true musical ignorance rears its ugly head. I think I most likely have mentioned my high school naivety (or stupidity) of passing on “formal” singing or music learning in band, as I was already playing drums in a Country Western band as noted earlier in this Wrambling. Fortunately, I am blessed with, or have accumulated, an innate feel for the various “parts” that harmony singing consists of.
Getting back to the Bits and Pieces theme I’d better speed up my Wrambilng.
- I wonder where the term “Country Club Sub” came from. When I order a “sub” sandwich from the Wellsville Giant Food Mart deli, The term used to describe my sub is Country Club. It consists of any number of various components from which you select your preference. This typically includes a combination of meat types of which you add the remaining components.
- The Robins are gluttons on the Jelly dish feeders that we provide to the aviary visitors. They are almost as bad, maybe worse, than the intrusive Blue Jays. Who have learned to stay away.
- For some reason the oranges that are usually a favored flavored item on the feeders are not so popular and are pretty much just ignored.
- My new rifle (A “Rifleman” looking gun) is getting quite the work out given the preponderance of chipmunks and red squirrels that also like to visit our feeders. As I write this motion detected out of the corner of my eye reveals a chipmunk scurrying across the deck rail.
- I have come up with a couple of variations on the term “You took the words right out of my mouth.” They now include: “Took the words right off my tongue,” and “Took the words right off my fingertips,” to accommodate overlapping comments shared by various “messaging devices.” I am somewhat handicapped in that regard in that I do not use my handheld phone as my “weapon of choice” in the war of words. My laptop, where 90% of my messaging takes place, does not play well with apps that say they have downloaded the code to my device. I must leave the “app” I am in, then open my email connection to get the code and then switch back to enter the code provided.
- My “Scanner” from which I access public service announcements, emergency services calls, and all other manner of air wave communication, can be a nuisance with the loud, and sometimes long, continuous, BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP. Each entity has their own frequency sound of contact, and I remember a few revealing who or what organization is sending or receiving a message. On occasion, based on the severity, or sadness, of the call being transmitted, I have my regrets for having heard them. Occasionally, the message is amusing, as I have reported previously. Some of the more interesting come from people who have remotely located cameras mounted on their properties or camps, and from which they receive videos or pictures at their handheld device. Emergency services are then contacted and dispatched to investigate these uninvited visits at these remote locations. At this time of year especially there is a lot of activity doing just as I describe.
- I often wish that I had a camera that could take a picture of the entire range of my vision, especially as I sit here in my Sun-Bird Room. I guess perhaps a “Fish Eye” lens does that. My range of vision is nearly 180°. And my camera only picks up about a third of that.
As I close this week’s Wrambling I recall a poem and picture from a few years ago. For some reason the picture “attributes” were not included, and I would like to share that with the readers. I do know that it was one of three people so I will list all three and ask that the guilty party raise their hand. Choices are: Dan Jordan, John Kucko and The Bicycle Man.
