The weekly collection of interesting reads from around the blogosphere.
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This is going to be a short one. I’m tired.

First up, Daveman had a really spooky ghost story.

Andy wrote this terrific post that turned me on to a song I’d never heard, but also gives some background about the British government at the time.

Diesel made me an Adjutant Inspector.

And finally, Mateo had a hilarious post on The Monkey Blog which explains a LOT of celebrity meltdowns.

One of the great things about “Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?” was the chase sequences in the first two seasons. They always had some rockin’ ’60’s-type jam written by Danny Janssen which completely fed my love of bubblegum pop. (I still need to tell you the “Sugar, Sugar” story.) When Hanna-Barbera decided it was time for them to cash in on the sweet, sweet sugar “The Archies” was harvesting, they decided to buy another Archies property called “Josie And The Pussycats”.

Lap up the theme song:

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The first thing H-B decided to do was put together a girl group to be the live-action counterparts of their animated characters. If you didn’t know, the woman behind the singing of the ditsy Melody was none other than Cheryl Ladd. When Danny Janssen presented the singers he had chosen to H-B, they had some bad news. Valerie had been retooled as a white chick. Janssen was livid and refused to recast Patrice Holloway.

Thankfully, H-B backed down and kept the characters as they appear in the comic book. This gave “Josie And The Pussycats” one definite distinction. It became the first Saturday morning cartoon series to have a major black character — by 30 minutes. “The Harlem Globetrotters” debuted right after “Josie”, which was good for me. I’ve never like basketball, but the Globetrotters are freakin’ awesome!

I loved “Josie”, too. It was the music. That toe-tapping bubble-gum pop that was pure earworm syndrome Janssen wrote so well. The plot? Eh, watch an episode of “Scooby” and it’s the same thing except for guys in masks, it was megalomaniacs trying to take over the world only to be thwarted with the power of ROCK. {This is where I’ve fallen to my knees playing air guitar like a rock god.}

This September I finally get to relive being 4-years-old. The first (and only good) season of “Josie” is released on DVD. SQUEAL! Sixteen episodes of stupidity and great music. Can’t wait! I did a little research into the Josie And The Pussycats album Capitol released in 1970 and found that Rhino re-released it in limited edition in 2001. You can get it for only the small pittance of $200. Ugh. Maybe the DVD release will — in turn — get a music collection release. {Crossing fingers while playing air guitar. Oy, the F chord is hard that way.}

As an extra bonus, here is a video that Cartoon Network had made a few years ago when they were doing their Groovies bumpers. I can’t tell you how excellent I think this is. It’s the Josie theme done in six different music styles including disco, punk and trance all crammed in a minute and a half. Righteous!

Andy at The Spicy Cauldron has turned me on recently.

…to several new features and plug-ins. The first major one is PostReach which is supposedly a way to get your blog and posts in front of more people. I’ll be trying it out for the next couple of weeks and see. You can have fun, too. There are symbols under each post now which you can click if you feel inspired to “comment” on what you’ve read.

The other cool thing which I’m going to try and install tonight is a plug-in that will allow the sight impaired to listen to the posts here. I like to think of it as a lazy podcaster’s wet dream.

Here is Rufus Wainwright’s new song, “Rules And Regulations” from his newest album Release The Stars. Why should you care? Well, besides the man being very talented and the song being very catchy, the video is hilarious. Or if 1920’s bodybuilders are your trigger, it’s hot! Rufus walks into a gentlemen’s club — which I think is British for bathhouse — strips down to some very A Clockwork Orange long johns while the other gentlemen who have walked in before him strip to their exercise togs and start to work-out around him — in sync, of course.

Scandalous! This is NSFW if your boss curses with “Ah, applesauce!”, your co-workers talk about going out to do the Charleston while trying to pick up a “Sheik” or if your CEO says he’s going to get the competition and “take them for a ride, see.”