Happy Birthday My Love (at Fifty!)

Today is The Wife's birthday!

This year is a big one: this year, she turns fifty. We passed the point several years ago when we had been together for over half her life, but that milestone definitely stands out right now. I know that fifty is one of those ages where you're supposed to look back and be introspective and stuff, and I'm sure she is doing some of that. I'm not at fifty yet (September 2021 for me), but for now I think we'll keep doing what we're doing now, because it seems to be working.

Onward and upward, as always!

A brief slideshow of photos (some of which are already on this post, but I like them and it's my blog, so there they are again!) follows. The song is "Live Forever" by Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors, a wonderful band.


And now, my annual list of memories and things from our years together. (New items on the list are appended to Number 97, alphabetically. I do this because I'm too lazy to renumber all the stuff after that one every year.)




















1. Her hand fits perfectly into mine, as though our hands were fit for each other.

1a. That said, there's a good chance that she prefers the dog to me.

2. The first time she saw Star Wars was with me. And ET.

2a. The first time I saw Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty were with her.

3. She used to keep an aquarium before a bunch of moves made us give up the fish. Maybe we'll do that again someday. But when we started dating, she had two fish, named Ken and Wanda, named after two memorable characters from A Fish Called Wanda. When Ken went belly-up, she called a friend and solemnly informed her, "K-k-k-ken d-d-d-died." (One of the movie's running gags is Ken's stuttering.)

4. I don't remember exactly when it happened, but I've converted her from someone who hated coffee into a regular coffee drinker.

5. For reasons passing understanding, she has always found Erik Estrada attractive. She and I used to have arguments over who could best the other in a fight: Agent Mulder from The X-Files or Ponch from Chips. (I think Mulder would have blinded Ponch with the beam from those giant blue-beamed flashlights he and Scully were always toting, and then beaten him into submission with his eternally-able-to-get-a-signal cell phone.)

6. One of the first things we cooked together was Spanish rice, which is to this day a comfort dish of ours. The first time we made it together was also the first time she'd ever cooked with actual bulb garlic, as opposed to garlic powder. The recipe called for a clove, but she thought the entire head was a clove, so into the rice the entire head of garlic went. That was the best Spanish rice ever.

7. A few years ago she baked a Bundt cake for The Daughter's birthday, but the damned thing stuck in the pan, resulting not in a ring but a mound. So she just mounded it up, glopped the frosting right over the top, and called it a "Volcano Cake". Now, every year at her birthday, The Daughter says, "Remember the Volcano Cake?"

8. Our first date was to see Edward Scissorhands. So, Johnny Depp's been there since the beginning, from Edward all the way to Captain Jack Sparrow and beyond.

9. We used to go out for chicken wings and beer every Thursday night. We didn't even miss our Thursday night wing night when The Daughter was born: her birth was on a Saturday, and we left the hospital on Tuesday, so at the tender age of five days, The Daughter entered a bar for the first time. This may have made us bad parents, but I don't think so. A girl's got to know how to handle herself in a bar, right?

9a. She's not a huge fan of when I post photos of her sleeping.


10. She insisted on breastfeeding both The Daughter and Little Quinn, which in both cases required lots of pumping. Especially in Little Quinn's case, since he was never able to eat by mouth. Every drop of breastmilk that entered his body went in via the G-tube, so for as long as her production held up, she pumped six times a day.

11. I'll probably never completely understand how much of herself she sacrificed in fourteen months to keep Little Quinn alive and progressing. It seems, in retrospect, that every free day she had was given to him.

12. That same instinct in her kicked in again when Fiona was in danger. She didn't question the necessity or possibility of spending months flat on her back with her feet inclined, if that was what it took. If commitment was all that was needed, Fiona would be here today. (Of course, if commitment was all that was needed, Little Quinn would be here and Fiona wouldn't have happened.)

13. We used to associate certain teevee shows with the snack foods we'd eat while watching them. NYPDBlue was always chips-and-salsa. ER, when we still watched it, was often good ice cream. Now, good ice cream has been transposed to Grey's Anatomy.

14. "Our" first teevee show was LA Law.

15. Subsequent teevee shows of "ours" included ER, Mad About You, The Pretender, Profiler, CSI, Firefly, and more.

16. On our first Internet account, we set up our combined e-mail identity after the two main characers on The Pretender. We were "Jarod and Miss Parker". People familiar with the show wondered what that said about our relationship, since Jarod and Miss Parker aren't allies. In fact, Miss Parker was initially a villain but as the show went on her character became much more complex.

17. She started roller blading, got me hooked, and then promptly stopped roller blading. Now she prefers biking.

18. It was almost without warning that I met her parents for the first time. We started dating late February 1991; a couple of weeks later was spring break, for a week, so I came home to Buffalo. At the end of that week I tried calling her, only to learn from the old lady she was renting a room from that she wasn't home because of a death in her family. I remembered her saying something about a sick grandfather, and that's what turned out to have happened; her grandfather had passed away from Lou Gehrig's Disease. When I got back out to school, her entire family was there. So I met the future in-laws on the spot. Luckily, I seem to have made some kind of decent impression.

19. Our first long trip together was from Iowa to Idaho, to visit her family, a couple of weeks before school began in August of 1992. She had already graduated college, but I was in my senior year. While we were out there, the infamous Ruby Ridge Incident was taking place twenty miles down the road, so all week there were National Guard vehicles on the roads and helicopters overhead.

20. I am forever amazed at her ability to take some fabric and create a garment. This skill of hers looks like magic to me.

21. Her first pair of overalls were a gift from me. She thought the whole thing was goofy – maybe she still does! - but she wore them for years until at one point they became too small for her, and then a short while later they became too big for her. We didn't start wearing overalls together until we'd been dating for about a year.

22. Back in the 90s, on two different occasions, we picked out Persian kittens. Both were wonderful cats, both are gone now, and we miss them both dearly. The first was a beautiful tortoiseshell Persian named Jasmine; the second was a red Persian named Simba. Both died in the year preceding this blog's launch.

23. Adopting Lester and Julio was The Wife's idea. I'm still unsold on these two giant lummox goofballs.

24. The Wife also took The Daughter to adopt Comet, when The Daughter was only two.

25. Shortly after The Wife moved to Western New York to be near me, she adopted a cat from the shelter she named Lilac. That cat never really liked me all that much. Lilac died a few months after Little Quinn passed.

25a. She is directly responsible for all the animals with whom we currently live.














26. She loves to laugh, particularly at my expense. She is convinced I don't think she's funny, but that's just not the case.

27. Things with which she has a deft touch include: a pair of scissors, a needle and thread, a kitchen knife, the mixer, bread dough, a screwdriver, a lug wrench, and a shot glass.

28. It irritates her that The Daughter has inherited my tolerance for sunlight -- I tan, whereas The Wife burns.

29. The Wife likes to read, albeit not quite as much as I do. She always has a book going, and she reads every day.

30. She never used to use a bookmark, until I finally decided I was tired of watching her flip through a book looking for a passage that was familiar to her so she could find her place. I bought her a bookmark.

31. She loves nuts – except for walnuts and pecans, which I love. This makes it occasionally difficult find good brownies and similar items in bakeries, since many people default to putting pecans or walnuts in their brownies or other chocolate cookies.

32. When I first met her, she was a huge Anne Rice fan and read most of what Rice wrote until she decided that Rice's output wasn't interesting her much anymore. Since then she's read a lot of other authors, including a lot of unfamiliar names whose books I've plucked from the stacks of offerings at library book sales over the years. Interesting how obscure even the bestsellers of yesteryear eventually become, huh? Currently she really loves Gregory Maguire, the Wicked guy.

33. When we first met, she was a Washington Redskins fan. So of course, the first Super Bowl we were together was the one where the Redskins knocked the Bills on their collective arse. Oh well, at least she hated the Cowboys.

34. She prefers her KFC "extra crispy", where I'm an "Original Recipe" guy.

35. Movies that are particularly meaningful or nostalgic to us, in addition to Edward Scissorhands and Star Wars are Dances With Wolves, Titanic, The Lord of the Rings, Singin' in the Rain, and the James Bond movies.

36. For some reason we didn't take any pictures when we were on our honeymoon or when we were on our vacation to Disney a year later. I think we were between working cameras at those points...but lately I really wish we'd have addressed that at the time.

37. Things we did on our honeymoon to Cape Cod, Boston, and New Hampshire: road a boat out to sea to watch the whales; visited the New England Aquarium; ate dim sum in Boston's Chinatown; bought lots of kitchenware at an outlet strip (don't laugh, we still have some of that stuff); visited the Boston Science Museum. While doing two days in Boston we stayed at a hotel about forty miles out and road the train into town; on the second day, on the way back, we fell asleep on each other's shoulders.

38. Our first argument as a couple resulted from a common misunderstanding between people when one is from Iowa and one is just living in Iowa for a while. I told her we'd meet for dinner, so she showed up at noon and got annoyed because I wasn't there. Well, duh! I said "dinner", not "lunch". Except, remember, she's a native Iowan, which means instead of eating breakfast, lunch and dinner like most (ahem) normal folks, she ate breakfast, dinner and supper. Thankfully, I've converted her since then. Whew!

39. Our first wedding anniversary saw us spending a week at Walt Disney World. What a wonderful time that was! Even if she managed to rip her toenail out two days into the trip, thus requiring me to push her around in a wheelchair the whole time after that.

40. She had long hair when we started dating, and I had short hair. Now we've reversed that.

41. Before we started dating, I had a beard. When I became interested in her, I shaved it so I'd look better. Then, I learned that she likes facial hair. So I grew the beard back a while later.

42. Foods I've tried because of her: asparagus, squash, rhubarb, grapefruit, and more that I don't recall.

43. She loves George Carlin.

44. She bought me my first cell phone, and my second cell phone.

45. When we were at the Erie County Fair in 2001, she wandered off to look at the Bernina sewing machines. When I came by ten minutes or so later, she was in the process of buying a Bernina sewing machine. I didn't complain; I just stood there, kind of looking shell-shocked.

46. Leading up to our wedding, she rigidly adhered to the notion that the groom should not see the bride in her wedding dress until she comes round the corner to walk down the aisle. So I didn't see her until she came round the corner to walk down the aisle.

47. Starting a family was her idea. Not that I was against it; I figured we'd get there eventually. She just picked the "eventually".

48. She picked The Daughter's first name, so I got to pick her middle name.

48a. And now, this:


49. Since Thanksgiving Break at college was only a four day weekend, I didn't go home for T-giving my junior year; instead, I spent the weekend with her. We went to see her extended family out in Storm Lake, Iowa, which is on the other side of the state. Since she has family over there on both sides of the family, we ended up having two Thanksgiving dinners that day. Some part of me is still full from those two meals.

50. Iowa delicacies that The Wife and I share are pork tenderloin sandwiches and broasted chicken.

51. Some of our early dates were sufficiently cheap that we had to look for ATM machines that would dispense cash in five dollar denominations.

52. She bought Simba, the above-mentioned red Persian kitten, while we were on a shopping trip to Erie, PA. She fell in love with the kitten as soon as she saw him in the pet store; we then spent the rest of the day walking around the mall with me listening to her as she tried to talk herself out of buying him. (Persian kittens are pricey little buggers.) Finally, while we were at dinner at Red Lobster, she decided to pull the trigger.

53. Before Little Quinn, the most heartbroken I ever saw The Wife was the day we finally had to end Simba's life. His kidneys were in failure.

54. Great gifts she's bought me through the years: my current winter coat, a cupboard-full of drinking vessels of all types, candles, incense burners, the Star Wars original trilogy on DVD, my anniversary edition of The Lord of the Rings with paintings by Alan Lee, my star sapphire ring, my current wristwatch, and many more.

55. The first thing she ever gave me: a stuffed bear, around whose neck she tied a lavender ribbon. I think she doused it with perfume. I named that bear "Bertrand", after philosopher Bertrand Russell.

56. The first thing I bought her: a little two-inch high figurine of a laughing Buddha. I think this confused her a bit.

57. Despite my best efforts for a while, she's never much warmed to baseball. That used to bother me, but these days that doesn't bug me much at all. I'm pretty cool to baseball myself now.

58. For a few years we went to Cedar Point each fall. We haven't been there in a long time, but I always found being there with her in the fall, in the cool air, pretty romantic. I loved riding the Giant Wheel after dark, sitting up there with her hand in mine, looking out over Lake Erie.

59. At Cedar Point, she decided that she liked this one coaster that does loops, so I stayed on the ground while she rode it. I'm terrified of those things.

60. Why don't we play mini golf more often? We both love mini golf. The Daughter loves mini golf. What gives?

61. One day in 1996, we were eating lunch in Buffalo when we had "The Discussion". Any guy who's ever been dating the same girl for a period of time measurable in years will know what "The Discussion" is. So I agreed, it was time for us to take the "next step". Later on, while she was having her eyes examined at LensCrafters, I bopped over to Penney's to buy her a ring. I chose a nice emerald one that looked really pretty. Sadly, they didn't have it in her size, so they had to order it, which would take three weeks. So I figured, OK, I'll get the ring in three weeks and make this thing official. Yay, Me!

62. The next day, she proposed to me.

63. Three weeks later I showed up to get the ring. They had it, but they couldn't find the paperwork, so some poor guy at the pickup counter at Penney's spent his entire lunch hour trying to find the paperwork so I could give my already-fiancee her engagement ring.

64. I don't remember exactly when we picked out her wedding rings, but we each have an Irish wedding band, and each ring is set with the other person's birthstone. So my ring is set with four amethysts, which is her birthstone; hers is set with four sapphires, which is mine.

65. For years I wore my ring incorrectly. Apparently there's one way to wear an Irish wedding band that signifies being married, and another that signifies being single. I was wearing mine the "single" way. I was alerted to this by a guy I worked with at The Store; he said, "Yeah, you're telling all the women that you're available." I replied, "Yeah, and I'm beating them off with a stick."

66. On our honeymoon, it was important to her that she at least get to dip her toes in the Atlantic Ocean. So she did. The water was very cold, though.

66a. She replicated this moment years later when we took a trip to the Jersey Shore.


66b. We returned two years later.


67. It always bugged her mother that she saw Niagara Falls before her mother did. Later we took her mother to Niagara when she was out for a visit.

68. During the summer of 1991, when I was at home and she was still in Iowa, she came to spend a week with me. I took her to Buffalo and to Toronto, on the way to which we stopped to see Niagara Falls for her first time.

69. She was really confused the first time a Japanese tourist asked her to take his picture in front of the Falls.

70. At the time our beer of choice was Labatt's. It's pronounced "la-BATS", but we had a family friend at the time who liked to say it "LAB-uhts", which is how I said it at college just for fun and habit. So when she visited me that summer, we went to the bar where this friend hung out, and he was so impressed when she ordered a "LAB-uhts".

71. Our favorite mixed drink in college was the sloe gin fizz. A few years ago I tried making these again, discovering that her tastes had changed and she now found them sickeningly sweet. I like them still, but yeah, they're sugary. (And pink. When I told a friend at work who knows everything about liquor that I'd bought some sloe gin, he laughed and said, "Oh good! Now you can make pink drinks!")

72. She taught me the right way to do laundry.

73. I taught her the right way to crack open crab legs so as to not mangle the meat.

74. Our first major mistake of parenting was taking The Daughter to a fireworks display on the Fourth of July in 1999. The Daughter was all of fifteen days old. This was the big display in Lakewood, NY, which is right on the banks of Lake Chautauqua. The Daughter did not respond well to the fireworks detonating right over our heads; the sounds were bad and for years afterwards The Daughter was very scared of loud sounds.

75. We always say that we should go camping. We never actually do go camping. We need to do more camping.

76. Once for dinner I made some frozen cheese ravioli with sauce, a favorite meal of ours that we hadn't had in a long time. She said that she was looking forward to "eating some cheesy goodness". Unfortunately, the raviolis were a bit on the old and tough side, and the cheese never got nice and melty, so after the meal, she commented, "That wasn't really cheesy goodness."

77. She likes eggs over-easy. I'm not a big fan of those, but I try to make them for her when she's getting over being sick.

78. She makes fun of my over-reliance on boxed mixes in the kitchen.

78a. I'm much better about this now. Her main kitchen complaint about me is that I make way too big a mess when I cook.

79. In 1993, when Cheers aired its final episode, she bought pizza for my roommate and I.

80. She only swears when she's really annoyed.

81. She is not happy that her nine-year-old, fourth-grade daughter is now the same shoe size as she is.

82. A while back she had her hair colored a brighter shade of blond than is her natural color. It was awesome.

83. Before that she experimented with red. I've tried talking her into doing that again, but no dice.

84. When my aunt met her the night before our wedding, she made a comment to the effect that I was to be commended for adding blond hair and blue eyes to our gene pool.

85. The Daughter has blond hair and blue eyes. So did Little Quinn.

86. I'm not sure there's a variety of seafood she dislikes.

87. I love the way she looks when she's just come home from work and changed into her PJ's.

88. Adopting Lester and Julio was her idea, but she claims the upper hand on that anyway because she was helping out my mother.

89. For some reason, The Daughter and I like to bring up at the dinner table the fact that The Wife, as a kid, had to help the family out on Chicken Butchering Day. I don't know why.

90. She thinks Orlando Bloom is really attractive. I don't see it, myself, but you can't argue these things.

91. For my birthday in 1992 she drove me to Dyersville, IA so I could see the Field of Dreams.

92. If I want to spoil her, all I have to do is buy her blush wine, cashews, olives and chocolate. Cake helps, too.

93. She spoils me by looking the other way when I go to Borders; by making me waffles or French toast or Spanish rice; by cleaning the kitchen after I've messed it up; by indulging my love of pie; and a thousand other ways.

94. I'm always game for a pie in the face, but I'm pretty sure nobody pies me like she does. Or better.






95. I know I've found the perfect girl for me when she describes our Thanksgiving in 2006 as being perfect because, after dinner, we went to see Casino Royale. In her words: "We had a big turkey dinner, and then we watched James Bond kill people."

96. We both love laughing at David Caruso on CSI Miami.

96a. Sadly, CSI Miami is long gone, but now we thrill to the adventures of Team Machine on Person of Interest, of Castle and Beckett on Castle, and we enjoy Alton Brown's delicious brand of pure evil on Cutthroat Kitchen.

97. One time when we were working out at the Y, and she got so engrossed in what she was doing that when I approached her, she didn't recognize me at first.

97a. She loves lilacs.


97b. She loves sushi, so for a while our Saturday night dinner tradition was I'd buy her sushi at The Store, and she'd eat that while I had a "charcuterie" plate of my own. (I think we can all agree that "charcuterie" is the fancy-schmancy word for "cheese and crackers," yes? Kind of like how "grits" turned into "polenta" at some point and started commanding $15 a plate?) But she'd eye my cheese and ask for a bite or two. Over time this morphed into her and I both having the cheese plate.

But she still loves the sushi, and I still have to buy it for her! It just becomes her lunch at work on Mondays. No escape!

97c. While driving once:

ME: Huh.
HER: What?
ME: I know I've heard this piece but I don't know what it is.
HER: [into phone] What is this song? [holds phone to speaker, then looks at phone] It's the fourth movement of Mozart's Eine kleine nachtmusik.
ME: Wow, I didn't know your phone could do that.
HER: I'm pretty sure it's standard now! Your phone can do it too!
ME: Whoa....

See? She teaches me things.

97d. For years she worked in the restaurant biz, which meant working just about all of the major holidays and struggling just to use her allotted vacation time. Now, she's in banking, so not only does she get the holidays off, she gets off all of them, including the ones I don't! (I have to work MLK Day, Presidents Day, and the other "lesser" holidays that are still "No mail and no banks" days. She gets 'em off now.) She is not shy about gloating about this.

97e. She continues to make fun of my previous claims that I "am not a dog person". To my recollection I never made any claims along those lines, just that I was unfamiliar with dogs, not that I disliked dogs. She just shakes her head and keeps on being amused at how much Cane and Carla like me. What can I say!

97f. Her, a few years ago: "Hey, there's this event where people who own greyhounds all meet up in the Finger Lakes and then we all tour around to wineries and taste wine and have fun with our dogs! Wanna go?" We just got back from our fourth time on that trip the day before yesterday.

98. Maybe this is a personal failing on my part, but I can't bear it when she cries. It kills me inside. But I'm trying to get better at this, since as Gandalf said, "Not all tears are an evil."

99. I wish we were living lives that didn't include so many tears.

100. I love her more than I did last week at this time.

101. Number 100 on this list will be equally true next week at this time. And the week after. And so on.

102. She makes me happier than I thought possible.

103. She...oh, I guess that's where I need to stop. I love you, honey!

Ack! An apology

I've just discovered that Blogger has again done that thing where it fails to notify me via email that there are comments awaiting approval (a few from my Christmas music posts!), so I apologize if you thought I rejected your comment. I would sack those responsible, but that would be me, so...sorry!

Bad Joke Friday

My job is to drill holes in things and then bolt them together.

At first it’s boring, but later on, it’s riveting.

Something for Thursday (posted on Friday because of WRITING WRITING WRITING edition)

Despite my best efforts in high school and college--and I did make a lot of efforts--I never did become a "jazzman," as the term was back then. (I have no idea if the jazz world has adopted a more inclusive expression or not.) I played in the jazz bands, and occasionally dabbled with some friends at small-group work, but eventually I had to admit that the best I could ever hope to be was a decent "session musician", a decent bandmate but not really a soloist or creator. I admire jazz and even love a lot of it, but it's not in my blood the way music needs to be if it's going to be your music.

But I can, and did, and still do, admire the hell out of Miles Davis.

I first became aware of Davis in the way that a lot of young people become aware of major musicians, by wanting to know about famous musicians who play the same instrument as themselves. Young clarinetists likely know about Benny Goodman and Richard Stoltzman, and young flautists about Jean-Pierre Rampal and James Galway. As a trumpeter I certainly knew about Wynton Marsalis, Maurice Andre, Adolph Herseth, and Miles Davis. Funny thing about Davis, though: the more I listened to him (and though his music has fallen off my radar the last bunch of years, I listened to him a lot back then), the less I heard him through the aural prism of his trumpet playing and the more I heard him as a musician. Again, I think that any young musician goes through such a thing, if they're serious about the whole affair of music.

Miles Davis's music was not the kind of flashy, loud, fast, "big band" kind of jazz. He almost seemed more of a jazz chamber musician, a creator of introspective music that combined many influences and always seemed to be teeming with bright intellectual life. Davis's most famous album is almost certainly Kind of Blue, for many reasons, but I feature here not that work but another of his greats, Sketches of Spain. For this album Davis used several classical works by Spanish composers as a starting point, including Rodrigo's famous (perhaps the most famous classical work by a Spanish composer) Concierto de Aranjuez. The album is an early blend of jazz and world music, and it is informed throughout by Davis's often-haunting trumpet playing.

Here is Sketches of Spain, by Miles Davis.

Tone Poem Tuesday (Late Thursday Edition)

You know how when I get hyper-focused on finishing a writing project, I push everything else aside and work only on that? Sure you do! I spent the bulk of this week's leisure and writing time on finishing second-round edits on The Savior Worlds (The Song of Forgotten Stars, book 4), but I got that done last night, so at long last let's turn to the music of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.

Coleridge-Taylor was English by birth, and he was mixed race: his mother was a white Englishwoman, and his father was a Sierra Leone Creole physician. Coleridge-Taylor quickly achieved success as a musician and was one of the more popular composers of his day. Musicians in New York even referred to him as the "Black Mahler," so successful was his brand of late Romanticism. Coleridge-Taylor's most famous works are a trio of cantatas he composed based on Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha, and the most successful of those was Hiawatha's Wedding Feast, a work which would have made Coleridge-Taylor a very wealthy man had he not sold the rights for 15 guineas in a moment of financial need. Coleridge-Taylor was far from the only composer to make this mistake; Sergei Rachmaninov would have been extremely wealthy had he retained the rights to his Prelude in C-sharp minor. Alas, the artist must often be concerned with the here and now at the expense of the future, and financial distress may well have contributed to Coleridge-Taylor's ill health that led to his early death when he was just 37.

A year after the trio of cantatas was complete, Coleridge-Taylor added an overture, which we hear today. It is a thrilling, brooding, and lyrical piece of late Romanticism, most reminiscent of Antonin Dvorak in its melodic feel and its enticing energy. Coleridge-Taylor, as an Englishman, was primarily influenced by the music coming from the continent and not from the early threads that would become jazz in America. He belongs to a tradition that was already shifting in new directions, and one wonders what he might have done had he lived to see the dawning of Modernism.

Here is the Hiawatha Overture by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.

BLASTOFF!!!

Sometimes you just have to admire the awesome power of a rocket's thrust.

Bad Joke Friday

Maybe I've used this one before. Maybe I haven't. I dunno, it's still bad.

Something for Thursday

It's Black History Month, so why not feature a man who I consider to be one of the four greatest voices* in the history of pop music? I'm talking about the astonishing, amazing, absolutely one-of-a-kind Sam Cooke. Every time I listen to a song by Cooke, I'm freshly bedazzled by the absolute control he has over his instrument. A voice like his--a kind of gravely high tenor, one of the most unusual kinds of voices to hear--can be so very difficult to control, but Cooke always homes right in on the pitch he intends to hit, and his melismatic gifts are the stuff of legend. Sam Cooke makes singing just about any song sound utterly effortless, but when you try to sing along, you can almost feel him leaving you in the dust, grinning as he goes.

I don't want to dwell on the awful facts of Sam Cooke's very strange death, so I won't. But I will note that the world was robbed of one of its greatest voices that day.

Here are several songs by Sam Cooke.








* The other three are Freddie Mercury, Annie Lennox, and Ann Wilson.

Tone Poem Tuesday

Continuing an exploration of work of black composers in this, Black History Month, I turn to William Grant Still, one of the best-known black composers. The difficulty black composers have faced in history can be illustrated in the fact that Still lived from 1895 to 1978, dying in my lifetime, and yet many of his works are already lost. Still was born in Arkansas, where his musical life began, but his life later took him to Ohio, New York (where he is considered part of the Harlem Renaissance), and finally to Los Angeles, where the house in which he lived is now designated a Los Angeles Historical Monument. Still was a prolific composer over his long life, and he achieved things in music that would be the pride of any composer, much less a black one from a country not historically known for rewarding the creative efforts of its minorities.

Still wrote his symphonic poem Africa in 1930, after he had spent his youth working in W.C. Handy's band and studying composition with Edgar Varese. Still's style combines African-American sounds--blues, spirituals--with traditional orchestral writing. Africa comprises a musical depiction of a continent to which Still never traveled, and he would describe the work as "the Africa of my imagination." He even opens the piece with distant drums tapping an almost tribal rhythm before the more plaintive orchestral writing begins. Still described his work, which traces three movements, in a letter thusly:

“An American Negro has formed a concept of the land of his ancestors based largely on its folklore, and influenced by his contact with American civilization. He beholds in his mind’s eye not the Africa of reality but an Africa mirrored in fancy, and radiantly ideal.

I. He views it first as a land of peace; peace that is partly pastoral in nature and partly spiritual.

II. It is to him also a land of fanciful and mysterious romance; romance tinged with ineffable sorrow.

III. Contact with American civilization has not enabled him to completely overcome his inherent superstitious nature. It is that heritage of his forebears binding him irrevocably to the past, and making it possible for him to form the most definite concept of Africa.”

(via)

Africa is a lyrical and rhythmic work that seems to sway and dance with sound that recalls blues and spirituals, but in a more distant way, hinting at the ancestral home of the musical traditions that African-Americans would make central to their often sad experiences in America. It's a fascinating piece.

Here is Africa by William Grant Still.

Winter at the Ridge

What a strange winter we're having in WNY! Our snowfall is way down, well below average, and Lake Erie remains almost entirely ice-free. At this point in the season, the lake is almost certainly guaranteed to remain wide open (we're past winter's halfway point, and as temperatures slowly go up, so will the amount of sunlight the lake receives, thus preventing large formations of ice)...which you would think would mean that we're set up for a lot of the dreaded lake-effect snow, but you have to have really cold air blowing over the lake for that to happen and so far, we haven't even had that. But we did get some snow over the weekend, resulting in these lovely scenes from Chestnut Ridge Park in the hills south of Buffalo....






The kicker? Today and tomorrow we're above freezing, so we're already melting all that off. Sigh!

Bad Joke Friday (Saturday edition)

I had this selected, but I forgot to post it. Sorry!

(In the event this is too obscure)

Something for Thursday

Featuring black musicians this month in honor of Black History Month, here's a good one. If your spine isn't tingled by this, I don't know what to do for you. Here is William Warfield singing "Ol' Man River" from Showboat. Just listen to the lyrics of that final verse:

I get weary,
and sick of tryin';
I'm tired of livin',
and scared of dyin'.
But ol' man river--
he just keeps rollin'
along.

Amazing song, sung in what must be one of the great vocal performances of all time.

Tone Poem Tuesday

February is Black History Month, so each of this month's regular music selections (Tone Poem Tuesday and Something for Thursday) will feature music either composed, or performed, or both, by black musicians.

George Walker (1922-2018) was the first black composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for music, for a work entitled Lilacs. Walker was a teacher, a composer, and a performer of note, and he had what was by all accounts a long and successful musical life before he died at the age of 96. This work is an exuberant bit of modern dance that he wrote on commission from the Las Vegas Symphony, in commemoration of that city's centennial celebration. Hoopla: A Touch of Glee is a bright and bold orchestral showpiece that thrums with the odd optimism of Las Vegas, a city that has no reason to exist other than to be a place where the kinds of things that go on in Vegas...go on. I've been listening to this oddly infectious work for several days now, and it's not easy to forget.

Here is Hoopla: A Touch of Glee by George Walker.

An Obscene Photograph.

Hey, I warned you.

Super Bowl Trivia Questions!!!

So the Big Game is coming up, and you'll probably want some trivia questions for your Big Game party! In that spirit, here are some for your freebie use. I have not grouped these in any way, nor am I ranking them by any idea of difficulty. Answers are in the comments for the post. Enjoy, and may your preferred team end the game with more points than the other one!

1. What is the highest combined point total in a Super Bowl?

2. What is the lowest combined point total in a Super Bowl?

3. What winning team scored the fewest points?

4. What losing team scored the most points?

5. What is the oldest existing venue to have hosted a Super Bowl?

6. What is the oldest existing stadium that is home to an NFL team to have hosted a Super Bowl?

7. What is the last Super Bowl to be played in a stadium that was not home to an NFL team?

8. According to a Super Bowl-related episode of THE SIMPSONS, who are the favorite teams of Homer Simpson and Moe Szylack?

9. Three American Idol winners have performed the National Anthem at Super Bowls. Which ones?

10. These two teams have met in three Super Bowls.

11. These teams have each met in two Super Bowls.

12. These three teams are 1-0 in the Super Bowl.

13. This is the only team to be currently undefeated in multiple trips to the Super Bowl.

14. As of 2020, this team has gone the longest without returning to the Super Bowl.

15. As of 2020, this team went the longest between Super Bowl victories.

16. To date, this is the only Super Bowl whose participants played their home games in the same state.

17. Following each of this team's last two Super Bowl victories, the starting quarterback for both games retired. Name the team and the two quarterbacks who retired as champions.

18. These teams have won at least four Super Bowls.

19. These teams have lost at least four Super Bowls.

20. This player is the only special teams player to have been named Super Bowl MVP.

21. The team with the NFL's season rushing champion has advanced to the Super Bowl only four times. Name the players, the teams, and the Super Bowls.

22. Since the NFL adopted a 16-game regular season, seven teams have posted records of 15-1 or better. Only two of those have won Super Bowls, however. Name the two champions, and the remainder of the teams and their results.

23. This is the only team to win the Super Bowl after being outscored during the regular season.

24. Over the course of 12 months, this city hosted the NHL Stanley Cup Finals, the World Series, the Super Bowl, and the NCAA Final Four. Which city was it, and which Super Bowl was hosted?

25. Four coaches have each lost the Super Bowl four times apiece. Name them.

26. Which of the following has never happened in a Super Bowl: a punt return for a touchdown, two wild-card teams meeting in the Super Bowl, a team playing a Super Bowl on its own home field, or a head coach winning a Super Bowl with two different teams?

27. Name the four teams that have as yet never reached the Super Bowl.

28. In only two Super Bowls did neither team commit a turnover. Which ones?

29. The closest geographical proximity between the two cities represented in a Super Bowl was 164 miles. Which two cities, and which Super Bowl?

30. What is the earliest in a Super Bowl that a winning team has taken its final lead?

31. No team has ever won three consecutive Super Bowl championships. What two teams came closest to doing so?

Enjoy, and go Chiefs (although a 49ers win would not leave me unhappy)!

Bad Joke Friday

I was going to make myself a belt made out of watches.

But then I realized it would be a waist of time.

Something for Thursday

Listening to this piece might lead one to assume that it is perhaps a movement from a larger sacred work for baritone, chorus, and orchestra, but it is not: It's a piece of film music, composed by Patrick Doyle for Kenneth Branagh's 1989 production of Shakespeare's Henry V. This piece comes after the Battle of Agincourt, when it becomes clear that the vastly-outnumbered English host has in fact routed the French. King Henry says this:

Do we all holy rites:
Let there be sung Non nobis and Te Deum,
The dead with charity enclos'd in clay;
And then to Callice, and to England then,
Where ne'er from France arriv'd more happy men.

Composer Doyle--for whom Henry V was the first major film project--wrote a penetrating and lyrical theme of both sadness and hope to accompany a long tracking shot as King Henry marches across the field of battle, carrying one of his English casualties on his back. Braveheart gets a lot of credit for the brutality of its battle scenes, but Henry V was there first, depicting medieval battlefields as places of churned mud and bloody filth. Doyle's soaring sacred piece soars above all of this, building and building from the soloist onward as more and more of the musical forces join in. The result is sublimely effective, and it's easy to see why Branagh has returned to Patrick Doyle for his filmscores in many, if not all, of his subsequent directorial efforts.

Here is "Non nobis domine" from Henry V.

Tone Poem Tuesday

In his lifetime Hector Berlioz wrote three operas (four, if you count the "Dramatic legend" La Damnation de Faust, which is sometimes staged as an opera even though its long passages of purely orchestral music make such staging difficult). The first is rarely heard on the opera stages of the world today owing to its high degree of difficulty for the singers, but the opera isn't completely forgotten, as its overture is frequently heard in concert halls. Benvenuto Cellini is based on the memoirs of the Renaissance sculptor of the same name. In addition to fine sculpture, Cellini left behind an autobiography that has been hailed as the finest autobiography ever written, and which represents one of the finest accounts of Renaissance Italy written by a contemporary. Berlioz had a deep love of all things literary, which informed all of his music, including the opera Benvenuto Cellini. Even though this opera failed (and only one of Berlioz's three operas, Beatrice et Benedict, was a success during his life), Berlioz--ever the recycler--made use of some of its material in one of his most famous works, the Roman Carnival overture.

Here is the overture to Hector Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini.

The Snowy Ridge

Chestnut Ridge Park, which lies in the hills just south of Orchard Park, is one of my favorite places on Earth. Here are a few photos from a brief walk The Dee-oh-gee and I took there yesterday.

Bad Joke Friday

Something for Thursday

As noted the other day, conductor and pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy has retired from public performance. Ashkenazy was born in 1937 in Russia, but in the 1960s he emigrated to the West where he has lived ever since, starting with London and then to Reykjavik and then to Switzerland. His output as a pianist and a conductor propel him into thie highest ranks of musicians of the last fifty years. The other day I featured Ashkenazy as a conductor; today I present him as a performer in his natural element.

Thank you for the music, Vladimir Ashkenazy!

Tone Poem Tuesday

I'll have more to say about this later in the week, but for now I learned yesterday that one of my musical heroes, pianist and conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy, has retired from public performance. Ashkenazy has been a giant of the music world for more than sixty years, and his performances--both at the keyboard and on the podium--always have a good deal of excitement behind them. In my opinion, Ashkenazy's cycle of the three symphonies of Sergei Rachmaninov have never been equaled. (One day I'll write the long paean to the Rachmaninov Second that's been in my head for years.)

While Ashkenazy might well be most closely associated with Russian and Slavic music, he was no one-trick pony. Here he is conducting Debussy, about as spiritually far from the heavy Russian Romanticism of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov you can get and yet still remain in roughly the same time period. Debussy's La Mer is a three-part work, called "symphonic sketches" by the composer, who wanted to avoid the associations of the symphony and the symphonic poem. Debussy often worked to throw off formal constraints in a way that is not unlike his earlier countryman, Hector Berlioz. La Mer is deeply evocative and masterful in its use of orchestral textures to convey Debussy's impressions of the sea.

Here is La Mer by Claude Debussy, performed by the Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra, conducted by the great Vladimir Ashkenazy.

I'm progressive!

In more ways than just the political, mind you. My lenses, for one!


Yes, it was finally time for new glasses. I've been mildly farsighted since my college years, when I found that I was getting headaches when doing heavy reading and computer work, so I've had prescription glasses for those kinds of scenarios ever since then. My prescription has changed a few times in the years since, but never much, and my last pair of glasses (acquired in 2009!) only themselves became necessary when my previous pair (acquired in 2001!) became scratched to the point that they were annoying to wear.

Last time I visited the actual eye doctor for an eye exam, though, he indicated that I had in the course of time and age and all that stuff gone from farsighted to being mildly nearsighted, which explained why I'd been noticing that stuff in the distance was increasingly blurry. The worst effect of this was driving and noticing that street signs and such were much harder for me to read than they had once been. So, enter The Wife's new job with its spiffy vision plan, and off to the optometrist. An hour or so of exam-stuff later ("Which is clearer? 1 or 2? 1 or 2? Read the bottom line...no? the next one up...no? How about now?"), another hour or so of looking at frames and talking about lens options, and a week for the new lenses to be ground, here I am, with new glasses.


And let me tell you, the difference for distance sight is amazing. I can see far off stuff with clarity that has been so long gone I didn't realize it, but now that it's back, I can't believe it.

I could have chosen basic glasses for distance sight, and then removed them every time I wanted to read or write, but that seemed a pain in the ass, and anyway, I like the way glasses look. It's much easier to look like your thinking thinkly things if you have a pair of glasses on! So I opted for dual lenses, which brought up the next option: bifocals or progressive lenses. I actually had bifocals for a time when I was in grade school, and while they worked, I really didn't like the constant sharp line across the lower part of my vision, so I decided to get the progressive lenses where there is a transition between the "reading" section at the lower part of the lens and the "distance" part that takes up the upper half. I'm on Day Three of these glasses as I write this, so I'm still working out the kinks. I'm finding that I can't really hold a book and my head at the same angles as before, and that I have to actually move my head slightly as I read if I'm holding the book at my usual closeness. This is kind of irritating on its own, so I'm trying to teach myself to hold books farther away from my eyes, which is also an adjustment. I'll get there, but for now I'm having moments of clarity alternating with moments of wondering why I can't see my book totally clearly, and figuring out why with a bit of finagling and fidgeting.

It'll be fine. One thing that makes me a little nervous is only having one pair, now that I'll be wearing these basically all the time. I figure I'll be careful this year, and then next year I'll get another exam and assuming that my prescription doesn't change much between now and then, I'll get a second pair and then either rotate them in and out or use one for work or...well, who knows. That's a year away. Let me just get through the next year without breaking these! Luckily my track record on breaking glasses is...OK. There was the pair that I broke in college when I had them in my backpack and unfortunately landed right on top of them when my feet hit a patch of ice and went right out from under me. And then there was when I was in second grade, and I left my glasses (brown horn-rims, no less!) on the living room floor when I went to get something and then came running back in, having forgotten they were there, and only had time to register my mother screaming "YOUR GLASSES!" before I felt the crunch of eyeglasses under my foot.

Two broken pairs in 48 years isn't bad, is what I'm trying to say.

Bad Joke Friday

Something for Thursday

The 1957 musical Funny Face is kind of an odd duck of a movie. It seems to me a bit underrated, coming as it did when the musical was likely on the decline, but it's still an entertaining film loaded with great songs. Every time I see it I'm struck anew by the lack of...well, chemistry between the leads. I yield to no one in my love and admiration for Fred Astaire, and my feelings on Audrey Hepburn border on worship, but in all honesty, the age difference between the two stands out like a sore thumb in this movie. Astaire was thirty years older than Hepburn, and by 1957 Astaire was nearing 60, so the age difference is very noticeable. I've often wondered how the movie would be seen today if it had starred Gene Kelly instead of Astaire, but of course, we'll never know--and it's not as if this flaw sinks the movie anyway. Astaire at near-60 is still Fred Astaire, after all.

And Audrey Hepburn is still Audrey Hepburn.

Here is Ms. Hepburn with "How Long Has This Been Going On."

Tone Poem Tuesday

I am constantly amazed at the sheer output of Antonin Dvorak. Music poured out of the man, and his gift for melodic drama set with wonderful orchestration never, ever fails to delight. Even so, I was unprepared for the degree to which this piece--which, to my knowledge, I had never heard before a couple weeks ago--forced its way into my imagination. It's called The Golden Spinning Wheel, and it is based on a Czech folktale that was gathered into a book by Czech poet K.J. Erben. As folktales go, it's pretty satisfyingly grim, with a young maiden capturing the heart of the king and being murdered by her evil stepmother for her troubles, only to be resurrected by a magician. You can read the entire tale here...but meanwhile, give a listen to Dvorak's tone poem, which is thrilling and adventurous and romantic in all the wonderful meanings of the word. At times this work is so swashbuckling in its sound that you can practically see Errol Flynn, rapier in hand, as he disposes of the evil soldiers as he fights his way to his love's side.

Music like this is what keeps me coming back to classical music, year in and year out. I hope you'll give it a listen. Here is The Golden Spinning Wheel by Antonin Dvorak.

It's toasted!

So I tried a new beer:


Well, it's new to me, anyway. It's not "new". Blue Point Brewing of Long Island has been around since 1998, although now it's a subsidiary of Anheuser-Busch. I've seen this label with its pleasant-looking fishing sign look in the beer section at The Store a few times, and this week I decided to give the Toasted Lager a try.

The word "toasted" puts me in mind of the first episode of Mad Men (the only episode I watched), when an ad executive in 1960-something (I think) is trying to come up with an ad campaign for a cigarette company, given that people are starting to suspect that cigarettes are actually very unhealthy. What he comes up with is to focus on the tobacco company's production method of toasting the tobacco: "It's toasted!"

Of course, this has nothing at all to do with the beer, which is so named apparently for the "toasted" nature of the brewery's first kettle. They say there's a blend of six "specialty malts" for a smooth drinking experience, but I don't know about that. I can report that the beer is pleasant and easily quaffed. I'm probably not drinking this stuff in seasonably appropriate fashion; lagers like this should be consumed in the fading light of a summer evening, not a January in Buffalo. But it probably does just fine in washing down a plate of wings, so...yeah.

Anyway, it's toasted!

Bad Joke Friday

Said the Left Eye to the Right Eye:

"Between us, something smells."

Something for Thursday

I'm sure you've often wondered: "Why sure, the main theme from Star Wars sounds great when played by a full symphony orchestra, but how does it work when scaled down to a string quartet?"

And here's your answer!

Sunrise

Buffalo Niagara is, admittedly, cloudier in general than I would like. But it's not always like living under a gray bowl, and we get some very nice sunrises here.

This morning's is a case in point. Geography puts the sunrise directly behind my workplace this time of year, and it can be a real delight.

Tone Poem Tuesday

I suppose a "Back to basics" kind of thing is normal in January, isn't it? Not so much a series of resolutions or a grand statement of intent to change my life, but there is most definitely a desire to clean things up a bit and to indulge a bit of simplicity.

In that vein I've been listening to a bit of Franz Joseph Haydn of late. Haydn's reputation has taken a pretty dispiriting turn over the last few decades, it seems to me; he's seen as a kindly old composer of nice, pleasant, and undemanding music. Haydn is Mozart without the fire, a placeholder to give us someone to talk about other than Mozart in the era between Bach and Beethoven. He's referred to as "Papa" Haydn, and his symphonies often have cute nicknames: The "Clock" symphony, the "Surprise" symphony, and so on.

Well, to that I say nonsense, because in Haydn I find beauty and passion and the very best of the rationalism of the Classical era. I find formal perfection, structural amazement, and melodies that lodge in the ear with joyous aplomb. Returning to Haydn is like drinking clear, cool water after a long and difficult journey.

Here is the Overture in D Major by Franz Joseph Haydn. Notice how complete a journey he takes us on, all in the space of just under five minutes!

The Princess of Pitties

So, you may be wondering, how is Carla, our second dog, working out? Not that it matters, since she's been living with us for more than three years now, but right now it looks like she's fitting in just fine.

Bad Joke Friday

The occasional feature triumphantly returns! For how long? Erm...we'll see!

(credit)

Something for Thursday

So a strange thing happened while I was writing my annual Year's End Quiz for 2019. The last question of the quiz is "Quote a song lyric that sums up your year." I always interpret this less as a song that has lyrics that can specifically capture a year, but rather a song whose emotional essence seems to me to align with the year that's ending. I don't usually have a problem with this, but for some reason, this year I did. I kept thinking that there should be an obvious song, one that was lurking somewhere just beyond the peripheries of my inner ear. It was pretty frustrating, I have to admit--and the song that I settled on, Queen's "The Hero," was a fine choice that really does capture a bit of how I feel about a year in which so many of my favorite stories all seemed to end.

And then today, while wandering around my shift at work, I had the ever-popular Ohhhhhh! moment, in which I realized what song I should have used.

I've known this song for many years, going all the way back to my high school years when I'd be with the jazz band playing standards from the Great American Songbook at town park dances and church festivals, which is why when I heard it in the context of a movie in 2019, it was...well, it's one of the best uses of a great old song in a movie that I've ever heard. It comes, of course, at the very end of Avengers: Endgame, when Steve Rogers has finally laid aside his shield and is dancing with Peggy Carter just before the film fades out. Here is "It's Been a Long, Long Time" by Kitty Kallen and the Harry James Orchestra.

Never thought that you would be
standing here so close to me
there's so much I feel that I should say
but words can wait until some other day

Kiss me once, then kiss me twice
Then kiss me once again
It's been a long, long time

Haven't felt like this, my dear
Since I can't remember when
It's been a long, long time

You'll never know how many dreams
I've dreamed about you
Or just how empty they all seemed without you

So kiss me once, then kiss me twice
Then kiss me once again
It's been a long, long time

Ah, kiss me once, then kiss me twice
Then kiss me once again
It's been a long time

Haven't felt like this my dear
Since I can't remember when
It's been a long, long time

You'll never know how many dreams
I dreamed about you
Or just how empty they all seemed without you

So kiss me once then kiss me twice
Then kiss me once again
It's been a long, long time....

My Annual Year's End Quiz!!!

Did you keep your New Years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

My resolutions never change much: "Read a lot, write a lot, eat healthier, walk more, listen to more music."

As these go, not bad! The toughest one is "eat healthier," which is a back-end kind of thing: I have no problem finding newer healthier foods to like. It's staying away from the less-than-healthy ones that tends to trip me up! This is something I need to work on big-time.

As for the rest, it was a decent year. I wrote a fair amount (though a lot of my writing time this year was spent on editing existing manuscripts, so drafting was on the backseat for a chunk of the year). Reading was a constant, and I really have made effort to listen to more music!

Did anyone close to you give birth?

As the set of "people who are close to me" continues to age, I expect this answer to remain fairly constant: no one close, though some friendly coworkers and online acquaintances had babies, so yay!

Did anyone close to you die?

Two brothers whom I count among my best friends lost their mother this year in a frighteningly short battle with cancer--in fact, it was so short that it wasn't even much of a battle. She didn't even get to suit up to fight the damned thing. That was terrible. She was a terrific woman and her passing has left a big gap in the lives of a lot of people.

What countries did you visit?

Real ones? I never left the US. False ones? Plenty! I spent a lot of time in my own fictional realms of Emmenmore and Lazony, and hopefully you'll get to read about them in 2021!

What would you like to have in 2020 that you lacked in 2019?

Well, I have to wait until November for this, but I really hope to have a President-Elect.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?

I continued to develop relationships online and off, especially with people at The Geekiverse, where I continue to write articles and attend events. I had two signing events, one being at Nickel City Con, the area's biggest pop-culture convention. What fun that was!


What was your biggest failure?

I can talk about usual stuff like how I kept eating way too much sugar, but I'll go with something very specific because it just keeps sticking in my brain. Back in March I was asked to work a shift at a different location of The Company, because that location's person in my position was on vacation and they really needed some stuff done. One of the jobs was caulking the outer edges around a wall-mounted urinal, and...I completely screwed up the job. I didn't test the caulk I used first (it was a brand I hadn't used before), so I wasn't prepared for the ghastly ease with which it exploded from the tube when I applied pressure to the gun handle. I did what I could to minimize it, but what I should have done was just putty-knife it away and redo it. Unfortunately by this time it was the lunch hour and I was in the way of customers, so I just cleaned it up as best I could and left it. At the end of the day I left a note of apology for my total bungling of the job for my counterpart. I remain embarrassed about it now, nine months later. It goes to show that sometimes it's not the complicated jobs that screw you up: it's the simple ones that you should be able to do in your sleep.

On a less serious note, given my personal branding I am likely the only person on Earth for whom this counts as a "major failure," but...2019 was the first calendar year since 2010 where at no point did I receive a pie in the face.

I know. I'm as confused as you are.

What was the best thing you bought?

Two pairs of vintage overalls! Actually, I bought several pairs of vintage overalls in 2019 (I'm increasingly drawn to the vintage side of the clothing world), but these two pairs stood out strongly: a pair of raw-denim Lee hickory stripe overalls, and a pair of Gap overalls from a product line called "Oil Can," which I knew nothing about.




Whose behavior merited celebration?

It was a rough year for public behavior, wasn't it? In specific I'd say Greta Thunberg, the teenage activist from Sweden who has been working hard to focus humanity's attention on the increasingly disastrous climate change problem.

And thanks to the Democrats in the House of Representatives for impeaching the worst President in American history.

Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

Republicans don't really have it in them anymore to appall or depress me. Their ongoing fealty to Donald Trump and their dedication to pursuing the most odious set of policies ever continues to disgust, though.

Where did most of your money go?

Books, booze, going to movies, food, gifts, and vintage overalls.

What did you get really excited about?

Seeing My Fair Lady on the big screen! And Stranger Things 3.

Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?

A bit happier. The Wife changed careers in late 2018, leaving a lucrative but deeply draining restaurant management career for banking work. The difference in her mental outlook, and therefore mine, is amazing.

Thinner or fatter?

About the same, give or take a pound or two. I need to make a concerted effort in this matter.

Richer or poorer?

Jury's out on that. (Same as last year.)

What do you wish you'd done more of?

As always, reading, writing, and walking. (Same as last year.)

What do you wish you'd done less of?

Eating crap that doesn't make me feel good. I need to adopt a more selective approach to the things I eat for flavor alone, and I've actually been making headway in that regard.

How did you spend Christmas?

With family.

Did you fall in love in 2019?

Of course! Love actually is all around.

How many one-night stands?

Ha! I'm not telling you that!

What was your favorite TV program?

We loved Stranger Things 3 and Dead To Me on Netflix, and we're enjoying the new ABC detective series Stumptown, which is based on a series of graphic novels that I liked a great deal.

Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?

Me level of disgust for the Republican Party continues to bury my Anger needle in the red, so.

What was the best book you read?

Here are the books I rated with five stars on Goodreads in 2019:

A Brightness Long Ago, Guy Gavriel Kay
On a Sunbeam, Tillie Walden
The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern
STAR WARS Omnibus: A Long Time Ago…., various
A Gentle Madness, Nicholas Basbanes
Maestros and their Music, John Mauceri
These Truths, Jill Lepore

(That last one I only gave four stars, but it should have been five. It's an amazing history of the United States, written just last year by an author I've only recently discovered.)

What was your greatest musical discovery?

A heavy-metal prog rock band called Ayreon. They're fascinating.

What did you want and get?

An impeachment.

What did you want and not get?

A new former President. And Les Miz tickets. (It played in Buffalo in mid-December, which is the last time I can afford theater tickets.)

What were your favorite films of this year?

Avengers: Endgame and Knives Out. (My long-form review of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker will have to wait for 2020, but...I am more and more of the opinion that it was not good.)

What did you do on your birthday?

Same as every year: I likely worked, and then a few days later went on vacation for our yearly trip to Ithaca.

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2019?

Heh! It's just not changing, folks.

What kept you sane?

As an American, right now I'm just holding my breath before the final plunge.

Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

The afore-mentioned Greta Thunberg. Generations to come are not going to look with kindness upon my generation or the one before, and we've got it coming.

What political issue stirred you the most?

Of all the ones out there, climate change continues to be the big one, the changing of the game that we're completely ignoring.

Who did you miss?

Carrie Fisher.

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2019:

Read a lot, write a lot. Listen to music. Go for walks and look at sunsets. Take all the pictures you want. Learn new things and try new stuff. If you have a dog, take him for walks. Buy books for your daughter, even when she complains that she likes to pick her own books (let her do that, too). Nothing fits your hand so well as your lover’s hand. Eating out is fine, but learn to cook things, too. Have a place to go where they know you and what you order. Don’t be afraid to revisit your childhood passions now and again; you weren’t always wrong back then. Overalls are awesome, it’s OK to wear double denim, and a pie in the face is a wonderful thing!

If you take selfies, post your six favorite ones:












That last one is my favorite self-photo of this past year. I just really like the way that photo turned out. I took this one while off by myself at this place on the shores of Canandaigua Lake that breeds African violets, while The Wife was perusing the plants.

Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

Sometimes this is easy, sometimes less so. But with the decade ending along with the year, I'll go with Freddie Mercury and friends, in their end credits song to Flash Gordon, "The Hero":

So you feel that you ain't nobody
Always needed to be somebody
Put your feet on the ground
Put your hand on your heart
Lift your head to the stars
And the world's for your taking

All you gotta do is save the world!

So you feel it's the end of the story
Find it all pretty satisfactory
Well I tell you my friend
This might seem like the end
But the continuation
Is yours for the making

Yes you're a hero!

And with that, here comes 2020 and the 20s with it. Let's do this!