F.Y.I. Most singers lip-synch the national anthem to a pre-recorded track. Joel refused to do that. He had to time it so that the ending co-incided precisely with a jet flyover in the pouring rain. The morons hired by the NFL who were supposed to take care of the monitor system forgot to turn on his monitors so he couldn’t even hear himself. Try singing a song as difficult as the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ in a football stadium in a rainstorm while you’re trying to follow a stopwatch when you can’t hear anything. He had to wait until the sound from the P.A. system bounced off the stands before he even knew what key he was in.And the press crucified him for what they called a lousy performance. Nobody knows that all this happened, and yet the guy still went on with the show. He’s a true professional. My hat’s off to him.
In December 2009, the first high-resolution global map of Mercury was made publicly available. These images are from MESSENGER, a NASA Discovery mission to conduct the first orbital study of the innermost planet, Mercury. Members of the MESSENGER team and experts from the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS) used images from MESSENGER's three Mercury flybys and from the Mariner 10 mission in 1974-75 to create a global mosaic that covers 97.7% of Mercury's surface at a resolution of 500 meters/pixel (0.31 miles/pixel). Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington/U. S. Geological Survey/Arizona State University Read More
July 4th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
F.Y.I. Most singers lip-synch the national anthem to a pre-recorded track. Joel refused to do that. He had to time it so that the ending co-incided precisely with a jet flyover in the pouring rain. The morons hired by the NFL who were supposed to take care of the monitor system forgot to turn on his monitors so he couldn’t even hear himself. Try singing a song as difficult as the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ in a football stadium in a rainstorm while you’re trying to follow a stopwatch when you can’t hear anything. He had to wait until the sound from the P.A. system bounced off the stands before he even knew what key he was in.And the press crucified him for what they called a lousy performance. Nobody knows that all this happened, and yet the guy still went on with the show. He’s a true professional. My hat’s off to him.