It's bizarre. As the headlines are full of the supposed "wonders" technology is bringing - deadly-sounding self-driving cars, artificial intelligence (AI) software being used to fake interviews with tragically brain-injured sportsmen and to allow lazy-and-thick-as-shit students to have their theses written for them, "deepfake" videos and photography, and so on - the gnomes at Google can't even make Blogger run properly without breaking something-or-other!
Over the past few days, I have suddenly stopped receiving notifications via email that anyone has posted a new comment on either of my blogs. So apologies, dear reader, if there is an apparent time-lag in my replies; I have to manually go to the dashboard to find out of there's anything new to respond to... Sigh.
Onwards and upwards, eh?
In the optimistic hope that another icon doesn't pop their clogs today, it's time for a celebration of the living.
Yesterday [alongside fellow celebrants including Ella Fitzgerald, Björn Ulvaeus, Johan Cruyff, Oliver Cromwell, Renée Zellweger, Al Pacino, Walter de la Mare, Jerry Leiber and Andy Bell of Erasure], it was the 80th birthday of the simply faboo Tony Christie!
Despite having huge success with such classics as Avenues & Alleyways, I Did What I Did for Maria and (of course) Is This The Way to Amarillo, there is one song that to me surpasses them all! It remains an eternal favourite of mine, and the celebration of this milestone gives me another excuse to play it:
[Oh, how I sang that song at the top of my voice when I was being made redundant from my last job - "A halfwit in a leotard stands on my stage!", indeed.]
Today [together with the likes of the legendary Giorgio Moroder, Carol Burnett (who is 90), Ma Rainey, Duane Eddy, Roger Taylor of Duran Duran, Channing Tatum, Douglas Sirk, Susannah Harker, Jack Douglas and - erm - Melania Trump], it's the birthday of another house fave here at Dolores Delargo Towers - Miss Caro Emerald, who happens to have sung another of my personal anthems:
Felicitations!