Blog.gregmoore.me
Blog.gregmoore.me
Greg Moore
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Like many people my age, I came to know George Lowe through his voicing of the character, Space Ghost, on Space Ghost Coast to Coast. Whether he was eradicating fire ants during an interview or dealing with his grandad, Macho Man Randy Savage, my middle-school mind was a sponge for his absurdest humor and bassy “puking DJ” voice.
Fast forward to 2008 and I’m working as a Starbucks barista in Lakeland, Florida where I frequently worked drive-through with one of my favorite coworkers. This guy liked to challenge himself to put on different voices for several drive-through orders and remember each of them in turn when the customers arrived at the pay window. He was really good at it and, even though I didn’t have the memory to track multiple voices like him, we quickly bonded over pushing ourselves to come up with silly voices we could perform while still sounding believably professional.
One afternoon, he was deep into his schtick when he turned to me white.
“Do you know who I just gave coffee to?!” He asked.
That was Space Ghost!"
Apparently, George had driven up and paid using his Space Ghost voice to let my coworker know he was onto him and gave an encouraging wink before driving off. We both kind of freaked out, starstruck.
George Lowe was far more than the role that made him famous. Around town, we knew him as a local artist who painted and had a massive, 700+ piece collection of folk art. The Polk Museum of Art even did an exhibit of his collection back in 2016.
I did get to serve him coffee (sans silly voices) a few times more and it was always a special treat.
I was saddened to hear that George Lowe passed away in his Lakeland, Florida home on March 2, 2025, at the too-young age of 67. He was recovering from a heart surgery procedure he underwent in November.
10.3.2025 15:57Serving Coffee to Space GhostGreatly enjoyed seeing the Detroit Opera Youth Chorus perform Gilbert & Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore. The talent and hard work they put into the performance made it a joy to see.
I’ve become fascinated with the textures of snow this year. Looking closer, the same substance creating totally different worlds.
The massive snow pile that the plows and vehicles can’t reach has been melting and then refreezing into a beautiful crystal mountain that sparkles in the sun.
Tonight, all seven planets will align and be visible at the same time.
I’d like to say a word of thanks to the inevitable adventuring party who are, as I’m typing this, thwarting some sort of evil plan having to do with this.
28.2.2025 23:14Tonight, all seven planets will align and be visible at the same time. I’d like to say a word of thanks to the inevitable adventuring...When I lived in Florida, there were many gated communities that didn’t allow visitors just like this. I wonder what Foto’s feature is the equivelant of, “and our grocery stores have golf cart parking!”
I was tagged by @Annie (read hers next)to answer this musical blog challenge.
Piano and guitar - Nearly all music can be created with these two pivotal instruments and they are intimitely woven into my family tree.
I started my music blog to document the answer to this question.
I abandoned US commercial radio back in 1997 when I got my first car CD player and never looked back. The closest I ever came to returning was the year a local pirate radio station illegally broadcast from a house near my neighborhood and in my first job where I streamed late night dance shows from BBC Radio One off of the internet.
Daily. There’s rarely a time when I don’t have music on.
I flow between old favorites and new music as the mood strikes me during the day. There’s no rhyme or reason other than how I’m feeling in the moment. Life events and things like the temperature of the season often influences what I put on. For example, I play the Fleet Foxes warm me up during winter while the heat of the summer makes me listen to a lot of The B-52’s. Recommendations from my family and friends frequently keep me busy exploring new stuff. There’s so much amazing music out there to discover!
The Squirrel Nut Zippers first three albums are so incredibly important to me. They often get incorrectly lumped into the “swing revival” trend by people who either never actually listened to them or don’t understand musical genres. It’s a shame because all three albums are chock full of lively and inventive explorations through the diverse jazz sounds that immigrated into America from other places and cultures. Dixie, klezmer, Django, southern roots, blues, etc. If the 1930’s were ever punk, these albums would be that sound.
Back in the summer of 1992, my middle school friends and I were inexplicably into Ralph Bakshi’s terrible Cool World movie. I somehow saved up enough money to buy the soundtrack on tape and spent the bulk of my alone time that summer listening to it. Much like the film, the soundtrack was very flawed but one track in particular captured me so much that I used my dual tape deck to laboriously fill one side of a blank tape with the song so I could listen to it over and over without having to rewind every time. The song was Papua New Guinea by the boundary-pushing British band Future Sound of London. That song changed my musical life by being the very first track to open my ears to the then-new scene of electronic music that was blowing up outside of America.
Definitely. Like nearly everyone, I started with whatever my parents were listening to. However, my mother was a music professor so she instilled me with a bottomless appetite for experiencing new sounds and taught me to take my pop music as seriously as the classical masters.
I wasted far too much of my youth attempting to weave my self-identity into whatever musical genre I was into at the moment. (I feel like young boys are particularly succeptible to this trap and sadly, many never escape it.) Thankfully, I was saved by almost none of my friends sharing my musical tastes so I never got deep enough into any particular “scene” for one genre to dominate my musical life.
My current north star is that there’s no such thing as a guilty pleasure when it comes to music so keep listening to both the old and the new, forging your own path with whatever connects with you.
24.2.2025 20:43Blog Challenge - Music EditionThe frozen lands.
Today I am appreciating the beautiful slopes and shapes of the lunar landscape snow makes.
21.2.2025 15:03 Today I am appreciating the beautiful slopes and shapes of the lunar landscape snow makes.21.2.2025 13:49 When nations grow old, the Arts grow cold, And Commerce settles on every tree: And the poor and the old Can live upon gold, For all are...When nations grow old,
the Arts grow cold,
And Commerce settles on every tree:
And the poor and the old
Can live upon gold,
For all are born poor.
Aged sixty-three.
Morning lights reflecting across the snow.
Dear future me,
Today you hit 160 days in your movement streak. Since the summer of 2024 you managed to run about 23.8 miles a week, removed 20 lbs that your body no longer has to carry, and hopefully pushed back a bit of bodily entropy. I hope you kept up this good work.
The things that I have made over the years of my life have taught me so much, and in so many different ways. They have different lessons depending on the period of my life that I’m engaging with them and they change over time to me. There are many pieces in this building that have also changed over time so, to me, that is a bit of a kind of a life. There is a bit of something alive in that intersection.
It’s so cold today that it looks like somebody spilled glitter all over the snow.
The whole family came along for a hike through the newly fallen snow today.
Yesterday I waxed poetic about walking in the snow but today it is 8° and I’m not doing that to myself.
I don’t often take walks in the morning but, when I do, it’s because of snow. Today was a real treat as I lucked into making the first tracks in last night’s snowfall ahead of the plow man.
I wish I had enough of a writers brain to properly express the profound feelings that cross me when I stand alone in the muffled quiet of a thick snowfall. We were formed to appreciate such things and it feels right when I connect with a wonder of life such as this.
There is some kind of horrible irony in receiving biodegradable trash bags in an unbiodegradable plastic bag. 🤦🏼♂️
Browsing one day in a library, I opened a book in the stacks and found a passage on 1830s France by Charles Fourier, the utopian French philosopher, in which he talks about the dishonesty of business transactions, the tedium and deceit of family life, the hardship of small farmers, the miseries of the poor and near-destitute in great cities, the evils of naked greed, the neglect of genius, the sufferings of children and old people, the stupidity of war, the coercive mechanisms of society disguised as law, morality and the benefits of civilization. Can you believe this? I thought to myself. Everything this man said one-hundred-and-eighty years ago is true about us today. I had no choice but to write it down, so I could prove to my friends that nothing ever changes.
Any jackass can kick a barn down. But it takes a carpenter to build one.
Finally, consider how lucky you are to have someone who still occasionally lets you perform a nearly useless act of love that you always try really hard to do well.
Celebrating the snow at the downtown ice festival.
Keeping warm on a caturday afternoon.
The trees are inspiring as they stand sentinel through the cold winter winds. Sure, they look forward to spring’s blooming but this time is theirs too. Waving hello as I walk by and sheltering the smaller creatures as they can.
Firestone Farm Fields are looking beautiful in the snow today. (Photo curtesy of my wife.)