Storms, Super and Otherwise.....

Sweet Girl and I watched the fundraiser concert on television tonight to raise money for the victims of Hurricane Sandy in the Northeast. I promise I didn't JUST watch it because Billy Joel was performing. Okay, that's a lie. That is exactly the reason I watched it. But I paid attention to the rest of it too.

And I texted a donation to the Red Cross. So there.

Sweet Girl and I both assumed that Billy would sing "New York State of Mind," and we were both wrong. He sang "Miami 2017," a song he wrote back in the 80's about New York City being devastated by disaster. He considered it a science fiction song, little realizing that the devastation mentioned in the song would visit New York not once but twice. And I'm guessing when he wrote it, 2017 seemed like a long, long, long way off. 

I'm intrigued by the use of the term "superstorm," as if giving hurricanes names and then retiring those names isn't enough. I'm not CRITICIZING the use of the term, I promise. I do wonder, though, what term the weather folks are going to use when the next superstorm comes along, especially if it's superer than this one. Superduper storm?

I certainly don't want to fall into the trap some people have, specifically the folks I overheard at the blood drive today. I'm paraphrasing, but they were implying that more attention is being paid to THIS hurricane because it happened to New York City, and that there wasn't nearly this much attention paid to the victims of Hurricane Katrina when it hit New Orleans. (Hello? Did they even WATCH television for the last 7 years?)

I don't think that should be anybody's focus. I don't think we need to compare the two storms, even if one was super and one was just a plain old hurricane. Loss is loss, devastation is devastation, death is death. I'm glad they held a fundraising concert this soon after the storm, and I hope the response is beyond anyone's expectations.

I am also glad they have canceled the New York City Marathon this weekend. I originally had mixed feelings, but after seeing pictures of the damage to the city and surrounding areas, I think canceling it was absolutely the right thing to do.

Besides, canceling the marathon frees up my Sunday for football.

A Very Cool Idea I Wish I'd Had.....

I almost used the title "The Coolest Thing EVER," but then I didn't want to be one of those people who declare something is "the most beautiful I've EVER seen!!" or "that is the most delicious cake EVER!!" or "that movie was the best EVER!!" Not that some things aren't worthy of exclamation (exclamation POINTS even), but if I declare something is the coolest thing EVER today, I'm pretty much removing from contention any and all cool things I may see/do/hear/taste/experience in the future, near and distant.

There. Now that we've got THAT out of the way.

Another disclaimer (if that's what we want to call the foolishness in the first paragraph, and I do, because it sounds so much better to say "disclaimer" than "I'm an idiot"):

Almost every time I've ever exclaimed over something cool I've seen/done/heard/tasted/experienced in my life, I've later learned that nearly every other person on the planet had already seen/done/heard/tasted/experienced it and I was late to the party. That may very well be the case this time as well.

First, do you recognize this item?

Of course it's a bowl, but it's no ordinary bowl.

Katydid and I saw these at a crafts booth while we were on BRAG this year, and she bought one for her granddaughter.

Sweet Girl bought this one for me (at the Arts Market?) and brought it to me when we had our family reunion. It is indeed a bowl, but it is made out of an old LP. Album. Record. Whatever.

(I apologize for the glare. I have yet to heed Pioneer Woman's instructions about not using the flash and instead using natural light.)

It may be a little difficult to tell due to the glare, but this one isn't made from just ANY album. It's "52nd Street" by Billy Joel. This album didn't produce as many chart-topping singles, but it's got one of my all-time favorites on it, "Stiletto."

Who in the world would have thought to do this with all those old albums? I've only got about a jillion of them, and Hubby has a gazillion of his own. At $5-10 a pop, we could almost pay the bar tab on our upcoming cruise.

I mean, most of us found out the hard way that the albums would MELT, but who thought to do it on purpose? And I wonder how he or she formed that shape?

Even the album cover gets in on the action. It's laminated and formed into a gift bag. How clever is THAT?

What a very special gift. I'm afraid I didn't exclaim enough over the gift when Sweet Girl gave it to me, but I hope she'll read this and realize how much I appreciate it.

Now to decide what I can display in the "bowl" without detracting from its coolness.

Movin' Out Update......

I reread my post from last Friday night about the musical Movin' Out, based on the music of Billy Joel. I really should have posted this yesterday in honor of The Piano Man's 60th birthday (!), but I had the motorcycle ride thing going on.

I realized upon rereading the post that it sounded terribly negative, and I didn't mean it that way. I was posting from my Blackberry during intermission, so I didn't have time (or thumbs) to go into a lot of detail.

One thing I said was that I would be happy to tell you what was going on if I had any clue. It was a lot like a ballet in that respect. I probably could have followed the "plot line" if I had been a little LESS familiar with Billy's music. I kept wanting all the random pieces to fit together, when I should have just sat back and watched and listened.

I was also a little distracted by the guy who was doing all the singing. He had a wonderful voice, but I confess a rather large bias toward the original, and he was a bit too nasally for my taste. He could play the piano like nobody's business, but he was rather.....ummmm......laaaaaaaaarge to pass for the real Billy. I know, I know......he isn't really supposed to. But I couldn't get past that. There was another piano player, too, who joined in occasionally. But Big Guy did most of the playing. I noticed, however, that NEITHER of them were playing when the musical used pieces from Billy's classical collection, Fantasies and Delusions.* They are admittedly hard to play (Billy hired a classical pianist to record them because he didn't feel competent to play pieces THAT HE WROTE), but I found it odd that they incorporated them into the musical but felt compelled to use the canned versions.

On a similar note, I was excited to see "Angry Young Man" in the program. The prelude to that song is perhaps one of my favorite piano pieces in the world. The first time I ever heard a recording of that song (I don't think it was released as a single), I thought to myself, "There is no way one single human being is playing that song." There was just too much piano, and it was played so fast it sounded like at least two pianos. It sounds VERY angry. Then I saw Billy perform it live, and my jaw dropped. Granted, he had to stand up to play it, but he plays it alone.

That being said, Big Guy APPEARED to be playing the prelude to "Angry Young Man," but he was only playing part of it. I can't explain how I knew that. I just know that his hands weren't moving up and down the keyboard as fast as they should have been if he had been playing the whole thing.

We were sitting in the balcony, and we were looking straight across at the "band". They were on an enclosed platform above the stage. Picture a screened-in porch directly above the dancers' heads. Wanda the Warrior Princess said she didn't think they knew we could see them. Tee hee.

I also described the dancers as an ADHD nightmare. I didn't mean that to sound like it was BAD. It was just that there was dancing EVERYWHERE, and you didn't know whom to watch. If you looked at that couple over there, or that soloist, you might miss something over here on this side of the stage. You just couldn't look everywhere there was something going on.

I'm not familiar with Twyla Tharp's style; I only know her (peripherally) by reputation as a choreographer. Now I'm no trained dancer, but I believe in pointed toes. Twyla apparently thinks toe points are highly overrated. Occasionally a dancer would do a kick or some other move with the leg extended and the foot flexed instead of pointed. That felt to me like a golfer whiffing the ball. Or a basketball player going for a slam dunk.....and missing. Or a football player running into the endzone.....and dropping the ball right before he crosses the goal line. Something just didn't look right about it.

"Captain Jack" is one of the few Billy Joel songs that I will push the button to skip to the next song. It's partly because of its subject matter, drugs. But it's partly because it has the word "masturbate" in it, and I just don't think that's a word anyone should sing. I'm just sayin'. Anyway, they didn't do THAT in the musical number, but it was almost pornographic nonetheless. Not offensively so, but it certainly lived up to the song's musical intent. There was a whole lot of drugs, sex, and rock and roll going on. And a transvestite. He (she?) got a real laugh from the audience during that number.

I know this is going to sound petty and picky and ridiculous and all those negative things that normal people say to those of us who are obsessed by details. We are NOT OCD; we just want things to make sense in their natural order.

There is a line from Billy's song "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" that goes: "Brenda and Eddie were still going steady in the summer of '75. / When they decided the marriage would be at the end of July."

In the musical, it says "...in the summer of '65." I know they were trying to make it fit in with the whole 60's thing and psychodelia and the Vietnam War, but COME ON! Sorry, but I'm a lyrics purist.

All in all, it WAS a good show, and I would go see it again given the chance. Actually, I would go see almost anything at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta. As I will do at least two more times this year, for Jersey Boys in June and Chicago in September.

-------------------------

*When I heard that Billy had written a collection of classical piano pieces, naturally I had to have it. It arrived in the mail just as Hubby and I were about to get in the car. I tore into the CD package excitedly and said, "Fantasies and Delusions. Wonder why he named it that?"

To which Hubby IMMEDIATELY replied, "Probably because you THINK you're going to play that in the car."

Billy and Elton Part 2.....

As promised, I TRIED TO POST video from the concert Saturday night. I didn't get any video of Billy Joel and Elton John singing together. I was way too excited at the beginning, and by the end when they sang together again, I had used up my memory card. [Note to self: Purchase a larger memory card before you go to the Dominican Republic next month.]

It's not great video, and it certainly doesn't capture the essence of being there. It probably violates all sorts of copyright laws and a couple of international peace treaties, but oh well.

I created the video from clips that I took Saturday night, and then I added fairly mundane captions and titles to the movie.

And I THOUGHT I formatted it small enough for it to upload. But it's been spinning for an hour (maybe more, I lost track of time), and it's past my bedtime.

Just trust me that I was really there.

When I first started going to see Billy Joel in concert, he was 29. And he had hair. He will be 60 this year, on May 9th.

Back in the 80's he would do back flips off the piano.

In the 90's he would stand on the piano and pretend he was going to do a back flip, then just jump off backward.

Now he doesn't even bother getting up there. I'm not sure he can.

He still puts on a heck of a show. But that twirling the microphone stand has got to go. I think he's milked that one for just about all it's worth.

Billy and Elton........

This may be a new low. Or high? I'm blogging from the Billy Joel/Elton John concert. Waiting for it to be Elton's bedtime so Billy can come back out. Please don't send me hate mail. Elton is okay, but I came to see Billy. It'll be HIS bedtime soon too.

I haven't missed a Billy Joel concert in Atlanta since 1978. I went to one in 1984 when I was 7 months pregnant. The usher did not take kindly to my standing in my seat. Neither did my ex. Or Katydid.

I hope to post video tomorrow, if they don't confiscate my camera.

Musical Connections.....

Being an English teacher, I appreciate complete circles, fulfilled plots, things that have a beginning and an ending, connections.

I especially enjoy connections that occur in fields other than literature. I'm silly enough to think sometimes that I'm the only one who notices these subtle relationships.


Take, for example, two songs by Queen, "Bicycle Race" and "Fat-Bottomed Girls." I am not a huge Queen fan, so I don't know their lyrics inside and out, upside-down, through and through. I don't even know if these two songs originally occurred on the same album. [Okay, in looking for the album cover, I discovered they WERE released together, and in fact one was the "B" side of the other single.] Anyway, in "Bicycle Race" there is a reference to the fact that "fat bottomed girls are riding today..." and at the end of "Fat-Bottomed Girls" there is a line that says "Get on your bikes and ride!" I just think it's cool that those two songs relate to each other. Even if they WERE released back-to-back on the same single, they didn't HAVE to refer to one another.

And then there are two songs by Billy Joel, whose music I DO know inside and out, upside-down, through and through. I haven't missed a Billy Joel concert in Atlanta since 1978. I don't know whether that's cool or sad. Probably obsessive at the very least. I even celebrate Billy Joel's birthday on May 9th. He's touring with Elton John again next year, by the way, and I'm surmising it's in celebration of his 60th birthday.

These two songs both appear on the CD The Nylon Curtain. One of them is "Allentown," which got quite a bit of airplay if for no other reason than its political statement. The other, however, is a ballad probably known only by the true Billy Joel devotees, and I'd venture to guess that many of THEM couldn't sing the first two lines. It's called "Where's the Orchestra?" and is the last song on the CD. At the very end of the song, it has a reprise of the melody line from "Allentown." That one IS very subtle, and I smile with smug satisfaction every time I listen to it, because I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who has noticed it.

The fair ain't what it used to be....

When we were young, the fair was one of the biggest things of the year. We waited with tremendous anticipation and couldn't wait until the day arrived. I usually went with older brothers and sisters, and they had this dumb rule that you had to go in and walk around the whole fair before you rode or did anything. I guess it was so you didn't squander your money at the beginning, only to find something later than you really wanted to do.

The fair was about 5 miles from one end to the other. Or maybe it just seemed that way. And there were about a million people. And the guys running the little booths were very nice men, upstanding citizens who would never dream of cheating a little blond, curly-haired girl. My favorite ride was called the Paratrooper.....seats under canopies designed to look like parachutes. Maybe that was the beginning of my desire to skydive. I loved the ferris wheel, but I didn't really want it to stop at the top. And I did.

Because only at the top could you look around and see the whole wide world. Seriously. The whole world.

I loved cotton candy but hated the stickiness it left behind. I hated candy apples because it took too long to bite through the tough coating on the apple. And once I got to the apple, I was done anyway. Who goes to the fair to eat fruit?

We went to the fair tonight, and either the fair has changed a whole lot, or I have. We bought $20 worth of tickets, which was 20 tickets. And the two rides we picked out required 5 tickets each. Seriously. We rode two things. On the ferris wheel, your legs don't even dangle anymore. And you can't subtly make the car swing back and forth.

I don't think this guy found the fair all that much to write home about either. He may be seriously considering a career change.






I made hubby go into the building where they were showing livestock. We saw these two goats, and they weren't all that thrilled to have their picture taken. I didn't see a tip jar, so it wasn't that. Maybe they were shy. We also saw a massive bull with massive........bull parts. I put my hands on the railing to get a better look at him, and they came away wet and sticky. They were right about where the drooling bull slobber would have landed. Excuse me, I have to go wash my hands....... Okay, I'm back.

Just as we were leaving the fair (because it was, after all, 8:00 and approaching our bedtime), my sister sent me a text message saying that Billy Joel was on public television. You'd have to know us to know what seriously addicted Billy Joel fans we are. I haven't missed a Billy Joel concert in Atlanta since 1978, which is the year most of this footage was shot. I got home in time tonight to catch the tail end of the program. Of course, most of my favorite songs weren't even written yet.

Apparently Billy Joel ain't what he used to be either...

Friday Night Fantasies.....

Get your minds out of the gutter.....not THAT kind of fantasies.

Some random places I'd like to be this weekend.

At the Oreo Cow Farm, where they gave out free beer and Oreo cookies during a bicycle ride. I had a beer; my sister had the Oreos.


St. Thomas.............

Cabo san Lucas, Mexico........


Charleston............

Gatlinburg.............


Watching a healthy Courtney Kupets compete in a gymnastics meet........


Las Vegas......

Myrtle Beach.......


St. Augustine (okay, probably not a wise choice, what with TS Fay churning around in North Florida).........


The Georgia-Florida football game...... with another win for the Dawgs......

A Billy Joel concert anywhere.......

In a time crunch here...

....'cause it's going on midnight, and if I don't get my blog posted in the next 21 minutes, I won't have posted every single day since I started. And my all-or-nothing personality just can't handle that. It's every day, baby.

And the fact that I spent all day at Epcot with my sweet girl does not excuse me from my blogging responsibilities! It was a last-minute, impulsive decision that we made this morning. Her doctor said she couldn't drive or swim post-op, but he said NOTHING about riding down to Orlando and walking around in the 95 degree heat and melting all over Epcot. I waited and waited for it, but he didn't mention it. So we figured it must be all right.

I'm all for being impulsive and flying by the seat of our pants, but this could really have been planned better. Like if we had thought about spending the night with my friends Wilson and Nurse Boop, who live a mere 10 minutes from the greatest place on earth. (We did, however, get to share a meal and a couple of pitchers of beer with them, so it wasn't a total loss.) Or maybe waited until first frost to go mingle with about a billion other human beings from many different countries.

Why is it that I'm surprised to hear young'uns speaking with a British accent? It always makes me smile. It's like I thought they talked "normal" like we do here in the South (HA HA HA HA HA) up until adulthood, and THEN they developed their British accents.

Here's one of my two favorite t-shirts from today. I'm gonna make a point to take pictures of great t-shirts everywhere I go from now on.
If you can't read it, it says "Beer makes you feel the way you should feel without beer." I think that is a profound statement. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. And it's attributed to someone who is probably very famous, but I can't make out the name at the bottom. And I'm in a time crunch. I was going to take a better picture, but I had already mortified Sweet Girl by taking a picture of the guy's shirt while we were in line for the Nemo ride, all while I was PRETENDING to take a picture of Sweet Girl herself.

My other favorite t-shirt was on a very large lady (and I can say that because I almost qualify for that description myself), and it said "I suggest you take the stairs." It was almost, almost totally ironic, except that she was going up the stairs. BETWEEN two escalators. So she gets points for having the nerve to wear the shirt in the first place, and for actually using the stairs. Couldn't take a picture of this one because I'd already used all my mortification points for today.

Gonna turn into a pumpkin in seven minutes. The last time I was up until midnight was either while I was writing my dissertation or after a Billy Joel concert or during college football bowl games. None of which followed a 12-hour day on my feet at Epcot. So I'm done.