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I’ve been totally slacking lately in the blog duties. I haven’t been inspired to write much for various different reasons, be it lack of inspiration, lack of time or just plain lack of giving a damn. I stopped paying much attention to the news a few months ago, when CNN started becoming less of a news network and more like a hokey medicine show. Not that I’m not aware of what’s been going on in the world, I am, but mostly by nothing more than a headline.

I’ve avoided blogging about financial related matters as it’s just become trite at this point. My daily gig is in the financial industry, where every day I see the fallout from the economy, bankruptcy, foreclosures, deaths of borrowers who leave no will or had any estate planning. And then the morons who file bankruptcy and think the slate is wiped clean a month later and they can go right back out and get more credit. (Wrong!)

I’ve avoided the rant because nobody’s paying any attention. This is evident in the government’s overhaul of lending regulations that cover home buying. This is evident also in the President’s Home Affordable Modification Program, aka HARP, which, surprise, has not helped hardly anyone out there that it was intended to help.

The reason why is easy. The program sucks. The qualifications and requirements are too complex, the required slashing of interest rates on these loans no bank or investor wants to swallow and it’s probably safe to assume that even once all is said and done, the loan would end up in foreclosure anyway because the borrower was in over their head from day one.

Which brings me to the changes to lending regulations. This is even worse. Although the intent of the new reg is noble, to provide the consumer with information so they can shop around for the best loan for them, unfortunately does not work in practical application. What was once known as the “Good Faith Estimate” is now essentially a document the lending institution is bound by. The government has taken “good faith” and “estimate” right out of it. The bank is bound by the fees and costs it discloses in that Estimate or else it could end up paying a penalty, (if certain fees/costs exceed a certain tolerance in certain circumstances).

In fact, if the bank does a “no cost” loan, in which it absorbs the costs/fees of the loan and the customer doesn’t pay a dime in closing costs, if any cost or fee disclosed on the Good Faith Estimate should exceed one of those tolerances, the bank has to pay the customer the difference.

Hell of a deal eh? You don’t pay a cent in fees, but if the bank screws up you get a check! Woo! Bank Error in Your Favor. Pass Go and Collect $200!

Ah, but I’m rambling in a half rant here. Thus, this is why I haven’t blogged much because I don’t want this to be one rant after another. I realize, however, that I gotta get back into the swing of things with the blog here and find topics BESIDES the stuff that pisses me off to blog about. Even if it’s just sharing YouTube gems or more screen caps from DVDs or whatever nonsense I can come up with.

So here’s to renewed chaos!

After my previous devastating post about the loss of the Starbuck’s mocha truffles, I got confirmation from various sources that the candies are, in fact, truly discontinued and had been sometime earlier this summer.

As a result, my cousin Brian set out on a quest, to find if there were any remaining boxes left anywhere of these now rare chocolates.

Well, he struck pay dirt. Yes, folks, Brian’s quest was successful, so much so I now have enough Starbucks chocolates to last me…well, for a good long while. Khee!

I also received a batch of a different flavor of Starbucks chocolates, from another friend, ones I never tried but they look good too. So I’m happy in chocolate again!

Now when Brian talks about some short cut over a strip of ice through a cornfield, I believe it. I Googled the location of this store he risked all to venture to. It’s in the middle of nowhere surrounded by cornfields. Literally!

Thank ya, cousin.  I saa-lute you!

I think I’m gonna cry.

Seriously.

I love these chocolates…

I’ve searched everywhere lately for them and I can’t find them in any store anymore.

Not Target. Not Walgreens. Not my local grocery store. Not Rite Aid.

Not even the local Starbucks coffee shop sells them.

So I searched online tonight to find out what the deal is.  Walmart apparently is no longer selling them based on this recent review on their website for the product.

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=10535632

I can’t even find them online hardly at all to purchase. eBay has a listing for used truffles which I’ll pass. But another listing says the item is being discontinued.

Discontinued?

I have one chocolate left.

I think I’m gonna cry…

About six months ago, I was introduced to an interesting saying: “Every generation thinks it invented sex, music and the stock market.” I can’t recall who said the quote, but I thought of it recently when I learned something about the history of music videos.

Back when MTV first came into existence in 1981, everyone marveled at the idea of the music video. It was new, different, dare I say, revolutionary. The first video played was a song called “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggles. Music videos, it seemed, were the wave of the future.

As I got older, I learned that the idea of music videos was really not as brand spanking new in 1981 when MTV debuted as one would think. In fact, I eventually learned that the Beatles and other artists dabbled in music “videos” back in the ’60s and these “videos” were broadcast on television. I seem to recall reading that at least one of the vids the Beatles did, if not all of them, aired on the Ed Sullivan show.

Of course, the Beatles also did a few full length movies in which, if you take the musical numbers from the films, you have several more music videos.

However, the Beatles were not the first music group to be featured in movies. Neither was Elvis. Back in the 1930’s and 40’s, any Big Band that was worth anything was put into a movie and again, taking just the musical performances from the films, you’d have some music videos.

Well then I learned something a couple days ago. Music videos existed in probably their earliest form, way back in the ’40s. Back then they were called Soundiesand you could view them in a special film jukebox for about a nickel. Many of these Soundies survived and have been collected together and released on DVD sets.

I didn’t discover this until I was perusing through YouTube searching for any new Glenn Miller related stuff. It would’ve been neat if Glenn Miller had done a couple of these (he did do two films but still). However, I did find this clip featuring the Modernaires, the back up singers Miller had with his civilian band, from 1944.

Goodman and Kyser and Miller
Help to make things bright.
Mixin’ hot licks with vanilla
Jukebox Saturday Night!

Jukebox Saturday Night

Unfortunately, it seems like MTV doesn’t play much music videos anymore. Despite the Buggles proclamation, I guess video didn’t quite kill the radio star.

Three years ago this month, I wrote a blog entry about my discontent with the Official Website of Glenn Miller. The site formerly was hosted at glennmillerstore.com and sometime after 2006 went off the web for good. Well, I did a Google search today and found it’s now hosted at glennmiller.com. For the longest time, glennmiller.com never came up as even being a website and I would guess was being squatted on by somebody else.  Great to see the domain name part of the official stable and see the site back but they still haven’t updated it.

Okay, folks in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. I haven’t updated Serenade in Blue since 2008. But at least it’s 2008! The last news item on the OFFICIAL GM site is from 2004.

And guess what? They still have Tommy Dorsey in the desktop wallpaper section. But there’s good news! Their feedback/comment page is back so I left a note about the faux pas. I will probably continue to complain about this site until they at least fix that.

About the only thing they did update was they did add a nice lil’ iTunes button to the front page. Click on it and you’ll be taken to the iTunes Store where you can purchase tons of GM tunes.