Grrr...someone is wrong on the internet...again!

George Barnett reached two million plays on youtube yesterday with his cover of Get Lucky.  I'm really glad that he is getting some recognition for his wonderful work, and hoping that people explore further and find his original work too.

I've been keeping an unofficial eye on the things posted about him.  Partly because I considered it likely that people might confuse him with another George Barnett, who is also a drummer and musician but mainly a model.  I set up a wikipedia page for him, to try to disambiguate (I do like that word) the two George Barnetts, although it was difficult to find good original sources for a lot of the facts, and the person at wikipedia who allowed the posting said that my write up read like an advertisement, although I tried very hard not to make it read like that.

I was proved right about potential confusion when Wall Street Journal mixed up George Barnett, model, with George Barnett, amazing singer songwriter and cover artist.  Several people, including me, commented about their mistake, which they don't seem to have fixed.  Well, I suppose I didn't expect them to, really.  Papers hardly ever fix the mistakes in their outpourings unless forced to by a lawyer.

Then George was featured in a blog on My Frisky which said his videos on YouTube were all covers.  Of course they aren't.  As far as I know, only three are covers, and the other 19 are his very original work.  I posted a comment which has been in a moderation queue since yesterday... and no correction has been made to the story - or the title.

So.  You read it here first.  The George Barnett who made the splendiferous cover of Daft Punk's Get Lucky was born in 1993.  He is the George Barnett listed here.  This is his official website.

He isn't a model, he doesn't just do covers, and his Facebook fan page for liking is here.

His original work is on his youtube channel and available on spotify,  Check it out.  I think it's better than any of his covers - and they are exceptionally good.

Technological Wonder

I was born in 1958.  Yeah, I'm that old.  I can remember watching television as a child on a very small black and white television... and that television was only broadcast for a few hours a day.  I can remember the excitement of watching it in colour for the first time.

I remember being given a cassette tape recorder for Christmas and waiting with it beside my radio in order to record the Persuaders theme on it... which I then played endlessly.  I didn't mind that the radio DJ spoke over the first part and the end of it.  Well maybe I did, but I ignored it.

Those were days in which I would hear a glimpse of a new track and then listen avidly to the radio to see if I could catch it again.  Even if I knew a portion of the words I couldn't find any information about it until I caught a DJ - probably on Radio 1 - playing it again, to tell me the band name...and even then the best I could do was to watch out for an article in a magazine, or an appearance on Top of the Pops.

The telephone in those days was in the main living room attached by cords to the wall and itself.  If I wanted to make a phone call, or receive one, I had to go to the telephone and do it in front of my family.  The television in those days was in the main living room and belonged to everyone.  If I wanted to watch a particular television programme, I had to either establish my right to the television or negotiate with everyone else.

I had cameras... but the film was expensive and required more money to develop the film.  At the end of the processing, sometimes weeks or months later, I would find out what was on the film.  Sometimes that was a wondrous thing... more often than not it was a disappointment to find that I had set the aperture or exposure wrong, had camera shake or not enough light and had fuzzy or underexposed pictures.

So... I am grateful for so many things that my children, brought up in a digital age, don't even think about.  When I got up this morning, the sunrise was not big but amazing, slashes of orange across a soft white sky.  Being on the 27th floor at the moment, you're separated from nature and the people moving like toys beneath you, but hyper-aware of the changing sky laid out before you.

I grabbed my camera and took a series of shots, able to see with each one the differences between what I could see before me and what I was capturing, and then could could upload it to my computer.  And marvel, not at the photographs, which disappointingly seem to shrink sky phenomena to an unexciting, even trivial, size... but at the ability to simply move from taking an image, to seeing it, to uploading it, in a few minutes.  It still excites and stuns me.

Similarly, when I hear a snatch of a song, can remember a few words and can look it up on Google... finding not just the lyrics, but the band website, the biographies of the band... on to Spotify to listen to the greatest hits, add them to a playlist, etc, I am entranced...grateful...astonished.  I appreciate it, the wonder of it, the amazing facility with which we can gain access to information.  I am constantly amazed that many of my contemporaries (even some related to me) are unable to see what they have with a computer and a broadband connection - a link to the best library, encyclopedia, network that has ever existed. 

So on the one hand I have children who take it all for granted, who do not remember a time when they couldn't take a phone-camera-mp3 player with them whenever they go out, and on the other, people who seem slightly hostile towards the technology, as though it may raid their bank account or suck up all the spare time that they need for watching television or gardening (or whatever they're into). 

And I... I am just transfixed by the possibilities that we have now that our grandparents could only have dreamed of... the ability to speak to people across the world and see them at the same time.  The ability to watch videos of friends and family or strangers and even strangerers on youtube.  The ability to share what we are thinking and feeling with anyone who cares to pass by.  I love it all.

My pictures are disappointing... the slashed fire in the sky when I turned the corner this morning and saw it on the horizon was far more striking in the real world than I captured in the photographs... but my wonder and amazement at being able to take photographs, upload them to my computer, upload one to this website and write a blog post and publish it... that's not disappointing at all. 

Fat Lady moaning

Definitely not Evans:  Tropical Sale on Ebay, beautiful Caftans at affordable prices

Although I have lost over two stone with the 5:2 diet I am still a big woman and have plenty more to go.  So I am still in the realm

of plus size clothing.  Today I received a link the new Evans catalogue... and my God, it's horrible stuff.  I feel hot just looking at it... and not in the sexy way... in the sweaty and uncomfortable way.

Time was when Evans was synonymous with crimpelene clothing... for those too young to remember crimpelene it was a man made, thick fabric which didn't crease, and which was especially used for fat lady clothes.  Don't ask me why.  It just was.  Perhaps they thought it was more durable or something, no idea.

The Evans went through a resurgence... better clothing, made for a range of ages, with a lot of natural fabrics in place of the man made. 

But now they seem to have reverted and have taken some very stupid decisions about the clothing they make.  Their dresses have no sleeves or are made of polyester...sometimes both.  They have only a few skirts... I don't know what has happened to the skirts, but they look dull as ditchwater.

Add to that the fact that most of their lingerie and nearly all their boots don't fit most of the people who are supposedly catered for by their shop, and I think you will understand why I find it very frustrating that a shop that has a virtually captive audience in a lot of towns (it being the only shop which offers plus sizes) are still not providing plus size women with what they want.

They are managing to make failure out of something that ought to be easy as pie.  If they were offering me long tops with half sleeves, dresses with half sleeves, nice natural fabrics and affordable prices, I'd be biting their hands off. 

If they added suitable lingerie in sizes and styles that suit the people who are the alleged target audience for the clothes, and shoes too... well all my spare money would be going their way.  As it is, ebay gets it, specifically Tropical Sale.  They have wonderful short and long Caftans in natural fabrics, and I love them. They have sleeves.