Playing Favorites 8/26/2022

I’ve missed posting Playing Favorites for a few Fridays in a row now. Given how rarely I post these days, it is hard to believe that I posted every day for two years, 2011 and 2012.  Oh, to be sort-of-young again.  But here I am, ready to post another Favorite. I decided I’d post something a little more eclectic than the rock and pop I usually post. According to Wikipedia, Amici Forever is a quintet of classically trained musicians, comprised of sopranos Jo Appleby and Tsakane Valentine, tenors David Habbin and Geoff Swell, and basso Nick Garrett.  Nick Patrick, who had produced albums by the Gipsy Kings, Tina Turner and Marvin Gaye produced the band’s first album The Opera Band. The album mixes opera classics such as “Nessun Dorma” with pop standards such as “Unchained Melody” and “Requiem for a Soldier”. It charted at number one in New Zealand and number two in Australia in 2004 but hardly made a ripple in the US. It did, however, it did make its way to Borders (a place I still miss) where I listened to it on one of their listening stations. I bought it immediately. 

Playing Favorites 7/1/2022

So, music lovers, the question of the day is: How far down the list of songs I like (or even songs I love) can a song fall and still be regarded as a favorite?  And, in fact, Can a song that I’ve completely forgotten about but used to love qualify for Playing Favorites?  This week, as I was looking through YouTube’s list of live performances, I came across Greg Lake (formerly of Emerson, Lake and Palmer) performing From the Beginning.  So the question becomes, Can a song I’ve forgotten about but used to love … by one member of the band that originally recorded said song, a member who, by the way, died in 2016 … qualify for Playing Favorites?  Of course, while the questions sound hard, the answer is easy.   Here on Oldereyes – Bud’s Blog, my Alter Ego and I make the rules and we usually agree.  Like today.

Playing Favorites 4/29/2022

I try to be scrupulously honest here on Bud’s Blog … except, of course, for those times where my tongue is firmly in cheek or my Inner Curmudgeon has taken control of the keyboard.  So I have to admit that when I decided to post my favorite duet, I knew exactly where I was headed.   That’s probably a bit surprising since I’ve been listening to pop music for over sixty years during which I suspect hundreds … if not thousands … of duets have made it to the charts.  And thousands more have appeared on duets album by artists like Frank Sinatra and Kenny G that featured an assortment of vocal stars singing with the top-billed artist.    There were duet groups like Sonny and Cher or Peaches and Herb, and one-time duet hits like Endless Love by Diana Ross and Lionel Ritchie or We’ve Got Tonight by Kenny Rogers and Kim Carnes.   One of the most famous duets, You Don’t Bring Me Flowers by Barbara Streisand and Neil Diamond was manufactured from solo performances by an enterprising program manager before it was released as a duet by 1978 … and performed live a the Grammy Awards Show in 1980.  Online there are dozens of greatest duets list:  there’s a Top Forty from Billboard Magazine (with Endless Love as number one) and a Top Fifty from the UK’s Telegraph. (with Lee Hazelwood’s and Nancy Sinatra’s Some Velvet Morning as the winner.  Those Brits.  Go figure.). Rolling Stone’s 20 Best Dramatic Duets of All Time selects Kenny Rogers’ and Dolly Parton’s Island in the Stream as number one.

(Favorite) Friday Favorite

I know I am getting old when my nostalgic Thursday morning consists of reading the nostalgic posts I wrote between 2010 and 2014 on this blog under the title Friday Favorites. Yes, I am nostalgic over my nostalgia. (That would be nostalgia^2) (engineering humor) (not funny). There are over 200 Friday Favorites posts, most of them looking back over seven decades of life to find favorite songs, favorite vacations, favorite events … favorite you name it. I also (re)discovered that I was getting old back then. When I accidentally searched for Friday Favorties (one of my Favorite typos, apparently) there were half a dozen posts so titled. Really. Yes, I are a writer.

Driving to the Park

If this post looks familiar, there’s a reason. I accidentally published it before it was finished. So, now, I’ve finished it and am publishing with a new title.

As I age, I become more of an observer of life and (perhaps) less of a participant, although I prefer to think that I participate in kinder and more considerate ways. Even when the forty year old in my head conspires with my Inner Curmudgeon try to agitate me into repeating the actions of my youth … say, flipping off the driver who cut me off … I resist. Most times successfully. Sometimes, the behaviors of our strange species that I observe are exactly what sets off my forty year old and my Inner Curmudgeon and my brain becomes a battleground between Look at that. Isn’t that interesting, and Look at that idiot. I should give him a piece of my mind (a truly odd saying, if you think about it).

Friday Favorites – 9/12/2014

It is almost 3:00 pm in the afternoon.   On Friday.   And once again, I’m having trouble coming up with a Friday Favorite.   Oh, I’ve come up with a few ideas but upon searching the Older Eyes – Bud’s Blog archives, they’ve been done before.  After almost four years … 201 posts … I think this well is dry.   It’s not that there aren’t things I like enough to post about, I just don’t like them enough to call them a Favorite.  So, I’m making an executive … maybe an executive editor … decision.  This will be the last Friday Favorite, leaving only one theme day on Bud’s Blog, that being Monday Smiles.  It’s one thing to run out of favorites … running out of smiles would be a sad day indeed.  So this will be a Friday Favorites retrospective.

Friday Favorites 9/5/2014

I am an incessant collector of mementos.   You might call them tchotchkes if you knew the Yiddish term (a knickknack or trinket, usually of little monetary value).  Isn’t it true that it’s memories that transform a tchotchke into a memento?  There are rocks and sea shells from various places we’ve visited.   There are glass birds that spend forty-something years on my Mom’s tier table.  There is a bullet casing from the 7-gun salute at my Dad’s funeral.  There’s a candle from the table at my daughter’s wedding and my old slide rule from college.   I bring this up because this week I had my office painted, which required moving all the furniture to the center of the room … and packing up all my mementos.  Now, I am reconstructing my office and discovering much working space my memento collection was costing me.  So, I’m trying to be judicious in deciding which … and how many … of them make there way back to my desk and bookcase and which make their way to our storage bin.  Some, I may conclude actually are tchotchkes that I can discard (I can’t bring myself to say, Throw in the Trash).

Friday Favorites 8/29/2014

Our First House in Yorba Linda

This is probably a peculiar post, so let me explain how it happened.  I decided I would like to post about all the places I’ve lived … with pictures … on my Dad’s Legacy Blog that I’m building for my kids and grandkids.   I decided I wanted to post a picture of every apartment, dorm, room and house I’d lived it.   My wife Muri will tell you I can get a bit obsessive when I take on such a project.  The places that were truly home were easy … I had pictures already scanned.   I found an old picture that shows my dorm at the University of Connecticut and I found a picture of my freshman year dorm on the Stevens Tech website.  That left Google Maps Street View to find the rest.  In some cases, I didn’t remember the exact address and had to eyeball my choices.  One apartment has been torn down and another, I haven’t a clue where it was in Newton, MA.  Anyway, by the time I finished, I didn’t feel like starting on a Friday Favorites, so this is it.   I’ll understand if you decide to skip it.

I was thinking this morning about how many places I have lived in my seven decades.   I was born in New Haven, Connecticut and spent the first couple years of my life living with my Mom’s parents.   There are a few pictures of me and some relatives in that neighborhood but no memories.  When my Dad came home from service in WWII, we moved to a small apartment on The Boulevard in New Haven.  It was a neighborhood full of young families, so there were lots of kids to play with, many of whom I still remember with a little assistance from some old photos from my Dad’s house.  I had my first best friend there, Roy Winchester.  In the summer before I started fourth grade, we moved to small ranch house in East Haven, Connecticut.  They say that home is where the heart is, but some places have more heart than others … I would call 650 Bradley Street home for nineteen more years, even though I went away to college after 13 years and off to work after 17.  For college, I spent a year in the dorms at Stevens Tech, in Hoboken, NJ, a year in an apartment in Waterbury (while I attended a branch of the University of Connecticut), and two years in the dorms at the main campus in Storrs, CT.   When I took my first engineering job in 1966, I first rented a room in Brookline, Massachusetts then moved to an apartment that I shared with a UConn classmate in Newton, MA, not far from where the shootout with the Bostan Marathon bombers took place.  I would take a room in Newport, RI when I changed jobs until Muri and I got married.

Friday Favorites 8/22/2014

I grew up in what was probably a lower middle class neighborhood, not that I even thought about such things back then.  It was my neighborhood and I was happy there.  Sure, I knew there were more affluent families and more upscale neighborhoods but I didn’t care.  I took it for granted that some of my friends had more money and some, less.  Some friends bought their clothes down at the shops around Yale University … I bought mine at the discount stores like Anderson Little.  A few kids had their own cars.  Quite a few came from multi-car families so they had ready access to a car.  My family had one car, Dad’s.  If Mom needed a car, she drove him to work then picked him up.   When I started to drive, sometimes, I’d do it for her … and sometimes, I’d do it for me so I could drive to school.  Dad was very reasonable about letting me borrow the car for dates and such, although he usually let me do my best negotiator routine before he handed me the keys.

Friday Favorites 8/15/2014

Since my blogging break a few weeks ago, I’ve found it easier to take a day or two off from Older Eyes – Bud’s Blog. That’s a good thing because blogging was becoming a job … and these days, I have two real jobs to keep me busy, so I don’t need a hobby behaving like work. But I still find it hard to skip my Monday Post, Monday Smiles, and my Friday Post, Friday Favorites … and here it is, 11:15 on Thursday Night. After posting 197 consecutive Friday Favorites, I’ve learned to go back and look at my archives before starting in on a new Friday Favorite because often, my latest inspiration is an inspiration I’ve had before. Case(s) in point. Tonight I considered posting my favorite big band hit (done 9/3/2010, Begin the Beguine by Artie Shaw), my favorite doo-wop song (done 10/21/2011, Come Go with Me by the Del Vikings), my favorite painting (done 8/13/2010, Renoir’s Girl with a Watering Can) and my favorite artist (done 6/24/2011, Claude Monet).   I need to get a post done tonight because I have an important business call in the morning to prepare for.  I’ve already resorted to favorite number and favorite color.  Could it be I’m entirely out of favorites? Not quite.