SOUNDTRACK: BEAM-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #40 (June 26, 2020).
BEAM is a Jamaica-born, Miami-raised reggae artist, whose
father, Papa San, was a dancehall superstar during the late 1980s and early ’90s before becoming a preacher.
BEAM performs four songs, and
the 23-year-old singer and his co-producer and keyboardist, Al Cres, brought a new flair to the Tiny Desk (home) concert series with some unorthodox visual effects.
A guy rapping quickly with a pretty heavy Jamaican accent is pretty hard for me to understand, so I tend to hear phrases like “makes sure you know how to [garbled]” and I think he’s saying NPR a lot.
“SOLDIER” starts the set.
“MAD GAAL,” featured on his 2019 major-label debut, 95, is sure to keep living room dancefloors bumping during the pandemic.
“STRANDED” is a slower, ballad-style song with gentle keys from Al Cres.
He concluded the set with an exclusive: “KUMBAYA”, a fitting song for this moment in history.
It is nice that he included a green screen for visuals.
[READ: July 1, 2020] Bird Trivia
I was looking up books about birds and this book popped up. It seemed like a fun book to check out. The original subtitle (the one still visible on Goodreads) is “Amazing Facts to Wow Any Bird-Lover.” This original subtitle REALLY overstates the quality of this book. The final subtitle is a bit more realistic.
Because this book is okay. It’s quite short and feels a lot like the forty some pages of information that Tekiela finds interesting. It feels like a very personal book (which is good and bad).
I don’t really know what one might expect from a book of bird trivia. Most bird lovers know a lot of trivia already about their birds (really, isn’t any information about birds trivia?).
Sections are titled: Funny Bird Behaviors, Record Holders, Amazing Anatomy, Migration Hall of Fame, Rearing the Chicks, etc.
Funny Bird Behaviors is certainly a fun section. The Killdeer feigns a broken wink to lure predators away. That was a great start! But following it up with birds that fight their own reflection…well, I think we all know that happens.
But it gets better again with why birds stand on one leg (warming that leg up) and birds who sunbathe or rub ants on themselves (that was pretty interesting).
I also enjoyed learning that the male Ruffed Grouse flaps its wings to make drum sounds and how various Woodpeckers don’t give themselves concussions.
The section on record holders was fun, of course, except that hummingbirds do tend to make up most of the records (shortest-lived, fastest flapping wings, can fly backwards, tiniest nest). But I did like reading about the Elf Owl who is only five inches tall (aw).
It’s fun to learn of bird nicknames, (Hell-diver) but telling us that Crane chicks, which are called “colts” are the only birds that share the same name as young horses is a lot more about naming conventions than birds.
The most interesting thing I learned is that birds can sing with their mouths full. Their voice comes from the syrinx (Did Neil Peart know that when he wrote “2112”?) which created sounds before the sounds get to the mouth.
I also enjoyed learning that birds see in UV light–so things that we can’t see are quiet visible to them–lines on flowers that point to nectar and fresh urine are both visible in UV light,.
It was also fascinating to learn that hummingbirds don’t suck the nectar from a feeder or plant, they use their tongues–flicking at ten times per second.
The most useful thing I learned was that babies of some species don’t really poop, they release a fecal sac which the parents grab and fly away with. We actually just saw a bluebird do this in our backyard the other day–that was pretty awesome. Some adults will consume the sac because of the extra nutrients within.
So, yes overall this book was pretty good. I learned a lot but Ii wasn’t wowed by it.
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