September 23, 2004

Perhaps I'm out of some loop, but I don't under stand this graphic on google.com Can someone explain?
  • Funny, I wrote "Curious George: " first. Wonder why it didn't show up.
  • That's Ray Charles, man. He died in June.
  • Hehe - if you don't know it's Ray, it kind of looks like a weird duck with sunglasses pushed up on his head.
  • Also, he would have been 74 today.
  • That is an awesome Google tribute. :-) He was a great musician. I have a video that I watch religiously: Ray Charles and Willie Nelson jamming one-on-one in some Montreal studio. Two masters of the American musical phrase. Here's the story of my Ray Charles encounter: He played Ottawa at the BlueFest and I had a pass to be in the back-stage area thanks to a friend of mine. Dumb and faithful friend, I suppose. I was drunk and beyond respect, staggering in fact. Ray Charles and his crew walked by on their way somewhere and I shouted out, "Hey, Ray, how you doin!?" and he slowed down a little and looked in my direction - I was truly drunk and loud - and I shouted, "Don't you recognize me, man?" and he stopped and laughed hard. Funny stuff. And then I got kicked out on my ass. I heard the show from outside the barriers, and he was a miracle. RIP Mr. Charles.
  • It's actually a tribute the the photography of Robert Capa
  • pyrrthon1, your 'Curious George' was in the title.
  • I have a hard-cover copy of that man's own autobiography, entitled "Brother Ray." There are a lot of very good stories in that book, such as: Ray got sick of the Florida music scene at one time - this was before he was famous or had any money or standing - and asked a seeing friend to look at a map. What was the furthest point from Florida? Friend said, "Uh, that'd be Seattle, Ray," and Ray said, yeah?, and went.
  • For future reference pyrrthon1: On those special google logos if you hover over them the tooltip popup tells you what the logo is for. In this case it says "Ray Charles's Birthday". Clicking on those special logos takes you to a search results page of the topic.
  • This is a non name-dropping thread for me.
  • Man, that's a great story, JG!
  • @cabingirl Hehe - if you don't know it's Ray, it kind of looks like a weird duck with sunglasses pushed up on his head. LMAO! THAT'S WHAT I THOUGHT IT WAS!
  • damn you Argh. now i want to go read more hemingway. now let's see... where's my copy of for whom the bell tolls again?