Started to make a list, but then the list gave away everything. What I realized was that I just wanted to show the YouTube video to people who hadn't seen it yet. So, yes, here we are, listless but spoiler-free.
The Grishams invited me to join them at the Kennedy Center on Friday, seeing George Benson sing Nat King Cole. We lucked into an amazing day outside, part of a good run of amazing days. After an introductory NSO Pops set from the very enthusiastic Steven Reineke (less than a minute into his conducting, Lori leaned over and whispered "G.O.B."), Benson explored Cole's catalog and won the crowd easily for the next hour. I heard the two songs I really wanted to hear — Walkin' My Baby Back Home, my first introduction to Cole, via an Ed Sullivan compilation, and Mona Lisa – and others for which I was glad to receive reminders.
What Benson did better than I could have imagined was hit Cole's big opening notes. Cole did not enter songs cautiously. In the first word or first line, he delivered the tone of the song in his own style, and there was no looking back at the time before the song began. Covering him, Benson jumped in, seemingly unafraid, and reached the ends of those starters unscathed. "If I had to chooose… just onne dayyy" and so on.
We walked around the Kennedy Center's upper balcony after, and the day felt similar. Winter did a summer cover and sang that big first note.
I've seen and loved a lot of '70s disaster movies, and there are many more I plan to see and love. But out of what I've seen so far, the best line has to come from 1974's Earthquake. My brother and I may have laughed aloud together when we first saw it. It's perfectly ridiculous.
Lorne Greene, whom you may know best as Bonzana's Ben Cartwright, plays executive Sam Royce. When the big one strikes, Royce and right-hand man Charlton Heston have to help others escape their high-rise.
Running out of answers, they find a chair they can lower using the fire hose. But how will they secure the injured to the chair? Royce turns to his secretary and barks, "Barbara, take off your pantyhose, dammit!"
Overnight Saturday into Sunday, while I was asleep, my computer had a hard crash and couldn't open Microsoft Outlook upon reboot. No new email! Years of old email hanging in the balance! Working through the recovery steps tonight, ultimately successful, I felt like Royce, dammit.
Somehow I ended up on the catalog list for Viva Terra, "inspired green giving." Inside the mailing this season, I found the "Living Ecosphere."
Surrounded on the page by silver ornaments and gold bracelets on the page, the Living Ecosphere was a glass, water-filled egg. It cost $89.
An entire self-sustaining ecosystem thrives within this attractive hand-blown glass sphere: Plants, live shrimp, algae, and micro-organisms. It requires only indirect light and moderate temperatures, and offers hours of fascinating viewing. Each EcoSphere comes with a handbook that explains how it works and how to care for it.
That's right, wealthy green people. You've paid $89 for sea monkeys.
Biggest yet, I think. Starting with cider, beer and cheese in the kitchen.
Cousin Greg pries open oysters. Minutes later, I discover I like oysters.
Lego turkey!
It's Thanksgiving, the day of the year I google my family's ancestor on the Mayflower. Francis Cooke may not have been the romantic rebel I once thought he was, but part of his bio stood out for me this morning.
When Cooke was passing age 70, Plymouth Governor William Bradford penned: "Francis Cooke is still living, a very olde man, and hath seene his childrens children have children; after his wife [Hester] came over (with other of his children), he hath 3 still living by her, all maried, and have 5 children; so their encrease is 8. And his sone John, which came over with him [on the Mayflower], is maried, and hath 4 children living."
Cooke lived to around 80.
To start a settlement in a free land, to live well past the life expectancy of your time, to have a great family, to have the governor write about your life, those are good reasons to be thankful. My takeaway from all this is that Francis Cooke saw getting to Plymouth Rock and that initial Thanksgiving as just steps in a life. Thank you to him for aiming long.
One of the first things I did after moving into this neighborhood years ago was to check out if the Fort Myer bugle calls were live or recorded. The latter, turned out. With Army buglers running low, one understood.
But it was unexpected/fun recently to discover the U.S. Army Orchestra playing concerts at the fort and go to see one. I met up with Lori after work, and we hustled over the highway to join a decent neighborhood crowd, some old, some young, some very young. The orchestra played selections from Barber of Seville, Ralph Vaughan Williams' modern viola moods and Beethoven's Symphony No. 7. The symphony debuted at a concert to benefit soldiers in 1813; the setting was right. "Passionate aural representations of the heights and depths of human emotion can be found in this compact masterwork," the program said. I looked for other summaries afterward, but I liked that idea the best, of the piece addressing emotion without forcing context. What came across in the ensemble was conversation — interaction, collected voices, in joy and sometimes anger — or lack thereof, an overwhelmed person's escape into a helpful lonely room. One section made me picture a child trying persuade a crowd of loud adults, maybe soldiers, to let him tag along.
The orchestra's concert hall, Brucker Hall, was comfortable and easy to reach, even with a full-car security check — open your trunk, hood and all the doors — on the way onto the grounds. You should go sometime.
Afterward, pizza at Pupatella, still my favorite Arlington pizza place, up there regionally with 2Amys, and a surprisingly in-depth discussion of John Denver. Beethoven worked on poems, prayers and promises too.
How do you cover a famous musician's Alzheimer's-affected final shows? No Depression does it beautifully with this recent piece.
A tingle shot through me. His delivery was perfect, if too low in the mix, and the sparkling Fender around his neck was an encouraging sign. But then, in the middle of the first song, it happened. He forgot a phrase, then looked hopelessly at the teleprompter trying desperately to recover, to find his place. He shook it off, spoke into the mic, "let me play one now" and proceeded to deliver a blistering, tasty, technically proficient and incredibly inventive guitar solo. All would be ok, but the realities of the reason for the farewell tour were evident. And they would stay in the room for the night. And we would only love him more for it.
Alzheimer's is a disease I have come to be far too intimately familiar with in recent years, and I live in fear of its coming for me eventually. It is worse than death because the person you know and love is gone, but their physical being remains, and often there is just enough flicker of familiarity inside their eyes to keep you from fully letting go. It is a lengthy, drawn out process and, while that allows for some acceptance to settle in before the inevitable, it is like watching someone you love die in slow motion. Or worse, it is like watching someone you love die twice.
Watching Glen Campbell forget the words to his most famous song right out of the gate was a harsh reminder that this disease is all too real and that this truly is farewell. Soon he won't remember the words to any of his songs, then he won't even recognize his songs, then he won't recognize songs, and then he will be gone.
Previously in this blog: A well-done preview of the Campbell tour.
1978: Frank Stefanko shoots the Darkness on the Edge of Town cover.
2011, November 16: Thirty-three years later, the Kitten Covers Tumblr:
2011, November 19: Three days later, Stefanko poses with the kitten.
NBC may be shelving the show for the winter, but I still love it. This line from last week's terrific episode (a line coming from near the end, so if you still plan to watch, go no further) was my favorite from TV recently.
Video excerpt:
Dean Pelton: "I thought you were a fly on the wall."
Abed: "Some flies are too awesome for the wall. Documentarians are supposed to be objective to avoid having any effect on the story, and yet we have more effect than anyone because we decide to tell it. And we decide how it ends. Will your story be yet another sad one of yet another man who just wanted to be happy? Or — will your story acknowledge the very nature of stories and embrace the fact that sharing the sad ones can sometimes make them happy?"
