Happy Birthday Dad!

This Monday was my Dad's 54th birthday. We went out and had a birthday lunch, with Sam T. Dog. My Mom and Dad had Publix sub sandwiches, and I had some chicken strips with Cool Ranch Doritos. We also had some really good barbeque sandwiches for dinner. Then we had some Pecan Pie for the birthday cake, and watched The Hunt For Red October, which is about submarines being very quiet on the sonars when they activate their Caterpillar Drive, a mechanism that is very effective under water.

My Mom and I are going to go see the Hunger Games: Mocking-jay Part 1. I have seen the trailer for it and I think that it is going to be awesome. In Catching Fire, Katniss Everdeen, the main heroine of the story, shot an arrow at the top of the arena that houses the Hunger Games, a fight to the death, just when a stroke of lightning the tree that had a piece of string that was attached to the arrow. The arena blew up, and her friends came down and picked her up, but left Peeta Malark, Katniss's love, behind and now the Capitol, the makers of the Hunger Games, have him as prisoner. Will Peeta still be alive in this movie. Who knows?

I am working on a song called The Mad Man With A Box from Doctor Who on my piano. So far, I have little pieces of it right, but I'm still working on getting the whole thing. It is a great song about a lonely Time Lord, traveling through time and space on his own. The rest of the Time Lords are dead, and he has lost his friends. Then, he finds Amelia Pond, and soon after Clara Oswald, a.k.a The Impossible Girl.

History Of The Eagles

 

Last night we watched History of the Eagles on Netflix. The Eagles is one of my favorite bands of all time. They are known for songs like Take It Easy, Desperado, and Take It To The Limit.

The Eagles was originally made up of four guys: Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Bernie Leadon, and Randy Meisner. Glenn Frey lived in Detroit, MI. He started playing piano when he was five years old. At twelve, he quit playing piano, went to a Beatles concert, and said "I need to be a guitar player." Don Henley grew up in Linden, TX, and started playing drums by banging his fingers and pencils on books. Then, his parents got him a red drum set.

Glenn was a lead singer in the Mushrooms, and later he met Bob Seger. He was going to make a band with Seger, but it didn't work out. Don's first band was called Shiloh. He was able to get Kenny Rogers to be their manager. Glenn went to J.D. Souther and played with him a bit. He also met Jackson Browne. They lived in the same apartment building and through that, he learned how to write songs. Jackson Browne was working on Take It Easy, but he was stuck on the second verse with "I'm standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona." Glenn put in "It's a girl, my lord, in a flatbed Ford, slowing down to take a look at me." Glenn and Don were both signed by Amos records with their separate bands. That is how they met each other. They went to see Linda Ronstadt one day, and her manager said "We need some singers and guitar players. Come with us." They auditioned, and they started working with Linda. Glenn and Don wanted their own band, so they found Bernie Leadon and Randy Meisner. That was the creation of the Eagles.

They were first signed by David Geffen's new record label, Asylum records. Then they also found Glyn Johns, a record producer. They found a manager named Irving Azoff, who helped them on several occasions. Soon after that, they didn't want Glyn to be the record producer, so they went for Bill Szymczyk,(pronounced Simsick). The Eagles decided that they needed a third guitar player, so in came Don Felder. Randy made Take It To The Limit, and everyone loved it when he sang those high parts in the end. Unfortunately, a while later Randy decided he didn't want to do that song anymore. So he left, and was replaced by Timothy B. Schmit. They also found Joe Walsh and replaced Bernie with Joe. After the Long Run album, the Eagles did a benefit concert for Senator Allan Cranston. The Senator's wife came around and thanked Don Felder, and he says "Your welcome,... I guess." Glenn got really mad about that and said "I'm going to kill you." Felder replied "I can't wait." The Eagles split up in 1980.

In the fourteen years that followed, the fans still really enjoyed the music. Don, Glenn, Timothy, Joe, and Felder all had solo careers. In 1994, they all got back together and played at a benefit concert in Aspen. Three years after that, they did the Hell Freezes Over tour. The name was inspired by something that Henley said. "The Eagles will get back together when hell freezes over." Then after that tour, there was tension between Felder and the rest of the band again.  So they replaced him one more time with Steuart Smith and they continue to tour and make new music. Hopefully they will keep on going for the rest of their lives.  Here's a video of me playing one of my favorite Eagles tunes.

Wizards and Witches of Halloween

A few weeks ago I saw Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. It was good for an adaptation, but not as good as the books. The cast was great, though. There was John Cleese from Monty Python, the Dowager Countess from Downton Abbey, and Alan Rickman from Galaxy Quest and Quigley Down Under. Harry Potter is a boy who lived with his step parents which are mugles ,(Mugles: Non-magic folk, humans), and then found out, well as Hagrid put it, "You're a wizard, Harry." Soon, he is off to Hogwarts School of Magic and Wizardry, where he meets Hermiony and Ron, his two best friends. But his real parents weren't mugles, they were wizards. A bad wizard named Voldimort, (sorry, I meant He Who Must Not Be Named) killed his parents and left him with a lightning scar on his forehead. There are four houses at Hogwarts, Gryphindor, Slitherin, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw. Harry meets a kid called Drako Malfoy. He is the bully of the school. They also play a game called Quiditch. It's kind of like basketball, but with three balls, broom sticks and baseball bats.You put two of the three balls in a hoop. If you are from Gryphindor, you go to Slytherin's hoops, and vice versa. The third ball is caught by the seeker, who looks for the speedy flying ball and catches it. When the third ball is caught, the game ends. He has an owl named Hedwig that sends and receives letters and presents. Harry finds out that Voldimort is coming back to life to kill him, and with the help of Ron and Hermiony, stops him. There's more but it doesn't apply to the plot. So, see you later in another blog. Bye.  

OK Buckaroos

My performance at Archie's a few weeks ago went really well. Hopefully, next month's performance will be even better. Last week I watched a documentary/biography about Jerry Jeff Walker called OK Buckaroos. It was really great. I really liked the part where he asked someone in his hometown that traveled a lot how he gets out of there, and Jerry Jeff Walker went to Florida. When my dad was working at the Stuart airport he met Jerry Jeff Walker. He was going to go fishing with his buddies but didn't bring a swimsuit. So, my dad took Jerry Jeff Walker swimsuit shopping at West Marine. Thanks, Papa for the DVD. I really appreciate it. I now have 'Faithfully' by Journey in my piano song list. It is my second favorite Journey song. Number 1 is 'Separate Ways', a.k.a 'Worlds Apart'. I also have 'Piano Man' by Billy Joel, which is really good if you can split piano and harmonica on your keyboard.  

Aviation 101

As part of my homeschool curriculum, I am studying how to be a pilot and how airplanes work. One of the sites that I use for that is Aviation 101, a site made by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. If you want to be a pilot, go to this site. It teaches you things like what the basic components of a plane are, what the different controls do, and more, and the best part is, it's free. All you have to do is sign up. I took my first test, which wasn't big, and I got an 84%. I am so excited about tonight, because tonight on Doctor Who is The Night Of The New Doctor, as I call it. I hope he is as good as his predecessor, Matt Smith. You can check him out on BBC One at 8:00 PM Eastern Time. I am working on a new song on my piano called Come Sail Away by Styx. It is going very well, in fact, I almost have it complete. The first Harry Potter book is very good so far. It has lots of wizards, spells, and Monsters. One of my favorite people from the book is Hagrid. He's a softy but he's also hard and mean when he needs to be. If I were a wizard, no offense to my dog because in Harry Potter I am pretty sure wizards can't have dogs as pets, I would have an owl. One of my documentaries I watched with lunch this week was about London, England. If you want to explore Hyde Park in London, you can take a tour on horseback.

Witchy Woman

This weekend, Mom and I are going to see a movie called Maleficent. I am excited about it. To me it seems like Maleficent’s side of Sleeping Beauty, but they might change the sides a bit and make Maleficent the good girl, and the princess’s kingdom and family the bad guys. A-ha! You thought she was bad and they were good. See what I mean? Anyway, I hope it is really awesome. Oh, I forgot to mention that Angelina Jolie is Maleficent!  Thanks for reading The Barnacle Chronicle. Tune in next time for more adventures with Fletcher. Bye, Mateys!