Random News: January 12, 2023

DISCLAIMER: Zak's Random News is very random and doesn't cover many things, and not everything may be accurate, because I'm just some guy. Go find a real news source.

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Good morning. It’s January 12, 2023, and it’s a Thursday for some reason. Here’s a batch of things that I saw and now I’m showing them to you…

• As a guitarist, I’d be remiss to start this report with anything other than a Rest In Peace note to honor the great Jeff Beck, who passed away suddenly from bacterial meningitis. Beck was 78.
• I won’t spend all day on this, I promise, but if you trace back the foundations of innovative guitar playing of the past 60 years, the lines almost always lead back to Jeff Beck.
• He’s a double-inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was number 5 on Rolling Stone’s ‘100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time’. He won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance six times.
• In 1965, Beck replaced Eric Clapton in the Yardbirds. In 1967, he formed The Jeff Beck Group with Rod Stewart on vocals, Ronnie Wood on bass, Nicky Hopkins on piano, and Aynsley Dunbar on drums. In the late ‘60s, he was asked to join both Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones (neither were good fits).
• In the ‘70s, Beck expanded from blues rock into jazz fusion, and kept evolving and kept performing at a high level for decades. He was still rocking in recent years and did an album in 2022 with Johnny Depp.
• Something for my fellow Nerdocasters… Beck’s technique on the Strat had him picking with his thumb, his ring finger swelling the volume knob, and his pinkie on the tremolo bar. That’s one reason why you never sounded like Jeff and neither did anyone else. All that tone his in his hands. Extremely challenging to replicate.
• Moving on.
• Another batch of classified government records were found by President Joe Biden’s legal team. They were found in a second location during searches that took place after lawyers found the initial classified documents.
• They are searching other locations where documents from Biden’s time as vice president may have been stored.
• Is this a problem? Um, yeah, absolutely. I said it was a problem for Trump and I’ll say the same thing about Biden.
• What will happen? Who even knows? Does anything ever happen when powerful people break the law? Not often.
• Classified records are by law supposed to be stored in secure locations.The Presidential Records Act states that White House records are supposed to go to the National Archives when an administration ends.
• I will say that if Biden resigned over this or some other reason — and that would genuinely be a shame — I’d go on with my life under the first female POTUS, Kamala Harris.
• I doubt that will happen. I’m just saying.
• Fact check: yesterday’s grounding of all US flights (due to a computer glitch in the NOTAM system) was the first time this has happened since 9/11? True.
• Happy to say a deal is in place that allows striking nurses at two major New York hospitals to return to work today.
• And now, The Weather: “Balance” by Glom
• I mentioned yesterday that Illinois has passed a ban on assault weapons. Law enforcement officials in several counties have said that their departments will not enforce provisions of the bill that require existing weapons to be registered with the State Police.
• Sorry, but it’s not up to police and sheriff departments to pick and choose which laws will be enforced. If they want to fight it in the courts, that’s where to do it.
• If you’re visiting a Walgreens or CVS, maybe do it on a day that’s not Saturday February 4.
• Anti-abortion idiots are trying too organize a nationwide protest where they harass people going into these pharmacies because of the availability of the abortion drug mifepristone.
• Being who I am, I might visit my local CVS just to make life miserable for any protester who shows up that day.
• I don’t often cover state-level elections, but this is a good one…
• In Virginia, Democrats flipped a state senate seat in a Virginia special election Tuesday night. Virginia Beach Councilman Aaron Rouse declared victory over Navy veteran Kevin Adams, filling a seat vacated after Republican Jen Kiggans won her bid for the U.S. House in November.
• What’s the big deal? Well, the win gives Democrats a 22-18 edge in the chamber, decreasing the chances Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin will be able to pass his proposed 15-week abortion ban this year.
• Boom.
• For no reason: I’ve just passed 220,000 words in these bullets I began last May. ‘The Return of the King’ is 137,115 words. ‘Crime and Punishment’ is 211,591 words. ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’ is 190,858 words. ‘The Shining’ is 165,581 words. I mean, I have more words here than ‘Moby Dick’ at 206,052 words.
• Wow. Amazing what you can do in just a half hour a day of basically copying other people’s shit.
• Today in history… Bayinnaung, who would go on to assemble the largest empire in the history of Southeast Asia, is crowned King of Burma (1554). The Royal Aeronautical Society is formed in London (1866). The United States House of Representatives rejects a proposal to require states to give women the right to vote (1915). Hattie Caraway becomes the first woman elected to the United States Senate (1932). Operation Chopper, the first American combat mission in the Vietnam war, takes place (1962). The New York Jets of the American Football League defeat the Baltimore Colts of the National Football League to win Super Bowl III in what is considered to be one of the greatest upsets in sports history (1969). An act of the U.S. Congress authorizes the use of American military force to drive Iraq out of Kuwait (1991). Nineteen European nations agree to forbid human cloning (1998). Deep Impact launches from Cape Canaveral on a Delta II rocket (2005). 
• January 12 is the birthday of painter John Singer Sargent (1856), philosopher/politician Bhagwan Das (1869), novelist/journalist Jack London (1876), entertainer/bootlegger Texas Guinan (1884), convicted war criminal Hermann Göring (1893), singer-songwriter Mississippi Fred McDowell (1904), actor/singer Tex Ritter (1905), engineer Sergei Korolev (1907), singer-songwriter Ray Price (1926), NHL player/businessman Tim Horton (1930), singer Glenn Yarbrough (1930), my dad (1941), lawyer/politician Sheila Jackson Lee (1950), actress Kirstie Alley (1951), talk show host Rush Limbaugh (1951), radio host Howard Stern (1954), computer scientist/businessman Jeff Bezos (1964), singer-songwriter Rob Zombie (1965), singer-songwriter Zack de la Rocha (1970), singer-songwriter Melanie C (1974), and MLB player Dontrelle Willis (1982).

Well, I’ve got things to do and people to talk to (bleh!). I’ll be working out in a few minutes, and then getting to work. Doing some video editing today, which sounds fun but it’s absolutely not. Also doing some writing today which I greatly prefer. That’s about it. Enjoy your day.