Watch "Testing the new Echo Spot with Strauss and Elvis" on YouTube

Watch on YouTube

Until today, I had no idea that Elvis had been using "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (a.k.a. the opening theme from "2001: A Space Odyssey") at his concerts in the 1970s. Nor that asking an Amazon Echo Spot device to play "Also Sprach Zarathustra" would invoke the Elvis version. But of course it does.

Welcome to the 21st century, folks!

Heroes of the Shutdown (1995 Edition)

With the 2018 Federal government shutdown careering along, I thought I’d share a treasured old, but true, story.

Carole and I were on our first date on Saturday, December 16, 1995 in downtown Washington, DC — during the 1995 Clinton/Dole/Gingrich shutdown of fond memory. There was nothing else open in DC thanks to the shutdown so we went for a walk around the Mall and Washington Monument and environs.

An ABC TV news crew was there at the Washington Monument interviewing tourists, and since we were just about the only tourists there (except one cranky old guy and a bunch of homeless people) we of course got interviewed. Didn’t know until later that we’d actually been aired as part of that evening’s ABC World News Tonight, but Carole’s dad had set the VCR to record just in case, so that’s why we’ve got the video to share (see below).

I suspect we’re just about the only married couple who can truthfully say that their first date was aired on national television as part of the evening news. We got married in September of 1997 and are still married twenty years (and two more shutdowns) later.

Watch on YouTube