Showing posts with label Mannheim Steamroller. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mannheim Steamroller. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Just kill me now, HAL. . . .


The Russians won't take this kind of crap like the Iraqis did at Abu Ghraib.

Think of it. You're a cosmonaut stuck for months and months in a single-wide in low earth orbit. There is no escape, unless you want to risk re-entering the Earth's atmosphere in that Soyuz escape capsule.

LIKE, "Is that one of the ones they fixed?"

So, pretty much, you're stuck.

And then. . . . And then. . . .
When you're on the International Space Station, you can't sit back and wait for tiny ballerinas, Hannah Montanas and Jokers to ring your doorbell on Halloween.

So what's a lonely astronaut to do?

Here's the answer to the homesick boos, from NASA and Omaha musician Chip Davis.

Davis and his group, Mannheim Steamroller, will have the astronauts on the station doing the "Monster Mash," snapping their fingers to "The Addams Family" theme and grooving to "Black Magic Woman" on Friday.

Music from one of the group's Halloween-themed albums will be beamed to the station.

"They're just shooting it up for something fun," Davis said Thursday. "That's a kick, isn't it?"

Astronauts on the space station spend weeks or months more than 200 miles from Earth, so NASA encourages them to unwind. Every morning, songs are broadcast to the station as a wakeup call. In 2005, former Beatle Paul McCartney performed at a live concert that was broadcast to the space station.

For Halloween, NASA selected Mannheim Steamroller's "Halloween 2." The group uses the synthesizer sound that gained fans for its wildly popular Christmas albums on songs associated with the ghostly holiday.
IF WHAT THE Omaha World-Herald reports is true -- and pray for the sake of avoiding nuclear war it isn't -- you might have some space travelers willing to risk re-entry without benefit of a space capsule. At least the end would be quick.

And without synthesizers.