Friday Favorites – 6/27/2014

Last Saturday night, Muri and I went out to dinner with our friends, Annette and Ben, then to the local theater to see the film, Jersey Boys.   We had seen the touring company of the Broadway hit on stage and, the truth is, I didn’t expect to enjoy the film as much as the play.   It’s not just that music is almost always better live … it’s that filmmakers usually feel compelled to change the flow of musical theater by extending dramatic scenes or adding on-location backgrounds to musical numbers that need no elaboration.  Yes, and I’m a theater snob, I admit it.   Why can’t they just film an elaborately produced stage production as Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cameron Macintosh did when they filmed the remarkable 25th anniversary production of Phantom of the Opera at Albert Hall in 2011?   Jersey Boys was no exception … the play was primarily about the music, while during the film, I found myself impatient for the added scenes to end so the music would start again.

Friday Favorites 6/6/2014

It is 11:00 on Friday, the end of what has been a hectic week.  It is amazing how many retired people I meet who tell me that they are busier in retirement than in their working days.   That is the preferred solution … I have known other who, after spending years with work as their only activity (and source of fufillment) find themselves bored or depressed … and miserable.  In Al-Anon’s Dos and Don’ts, one of the most neglected Dos is Find recreation and hobbies.   I am fortunate that I have had many outside interests for my entire life because, for some reason, it is hard to develop interests after a life of workaholism.  Yes, a number of my hobbies (or avocations, as I like to call them) were on life support during my working and parenting years, but they seem to have recovered enough in my semi-retirement to fill any empty spaces in my days.

Friday Favorites 5/30/2014

There’s an old saying … When I Got Busy, I Got Better.  I can’t speak to the universal truth of that but I will attest to the fact that most times that I get busy, I feel better.   I got all my work done in the morning yesterday, made myself a tuna sandwich for lunch, then took a short nap on the lounge chair on the patio.  These days, I accept that at my age, a nap can give me the energy to have a more productive day, a notion I would have rejected ten years ago.   It works, really … afterward, I ran a bunch of errands then took a 2.79 mile walk in the park.  Yes.  Exactly 2.79 according to the Runkeeper app on my Samsung smartphone.  Ain’t technology wonderful.

Friday Favorites 5/23/2014

I love the smell of linseed oil.  Like many smells, it is linked closely to memories like the smell of my mother’s oil paints when she enrolled in painting classes while I was in high school.  Linseed oil is made from flax seeds and because it is a drying oil, it is used as a base for most oil colors.   No, the smell of linseed oil is not my Friday Favorite but it certainly leads there.  As my Mom was learning to paint, she took the time to show me what she was learning … I learned to scumble a blank canvas, how to mix colors both on the palette and canvas, and to apply paint with both a brush and knife.  And for about twenty years, I painted intermittently.   I loved oil painting for more than the smell of the paints.  I liked it that the medium was forgiving of mistakes … I could paint over them or just scrape them off with a palette knife.   I loved the texture of the paint on the canvas, particularly when applied with a knife, and the richness of the colors.   And, of course, I liked it that it seemed to come naturally to me.  If I were asked, What’s your best art medium? I’d answer, Oils.   Yet, I haven’t done it for years.  For me, an oil painting is a long term project, one that requires a space where canvases can be left up while they dry or while I decide what’s next.  I can do a watercolor in a day or two, although there are certainly more paintings that turn out poorly in watercolors than in oils.  There’s just more space in my busy schedule for watercolors, although these days, writing seems to take precedence.

Friday Favorites 5/16/2014

If you are a regular, you may have noticed that I’m scrambling to keep up with my Postaday Badge this week.  Question, by the way – do I have any regulars?  Other than me, that is.  It doesn’t really matter …  the point is that with some drama early in the week, work to do for the job that may come in any day now, chores to do for the arrival of my grandkids on Sunday and fretting about my S-S-S-Seventieth birthday on Tuesday, the brain cells have been close to comatose at night when I usually blog.  So, here it is, a little before one p.m. on Friday and there are no Favorites posted.  So, I’m going to make it easy on myself and post several photos that I like.

Friday Favorites 5/9/2014

I think that some people would say that, for a man, I love flowers just a little too much.  For some reason our society does not regard liking flowers as an especially masculine trait.  If you listen to the local sports talk weenies, you’ll hear them urging you to call 1-800-FLOWERS to send Mom a bouquet for Mother’s Day but for Father’s Day it’s tool or a fancy camera.  Of course, once Dad has that fancy camera, you may catch him in the garden, taking pictures of (gasp) flowers, since their colors often make for stunning close-ups.  And, of course, artists like Monet and Van Gogh painted flower for that very reason.  True, the same weenies who think that a man shouldn’t love flowers often see art as not very manly either.  If I listened to those guys, I’d be a dull man indeed.

Friday Favorites 4/25/2014

I have a pretty good ear for music.  When a song by an artist I know comes on the radio, I usually know the artist within a few bars although it may take me a few minutes to come up with the name.  Those of you with Younger Eyes are probably saying, That’s nonsense, Bud.  If you don’t know the name, you don’t know the artist.  Those of you with Older Eyes like mine know just what I mean … I can see the artist in my mind’s eye, maybe come up with an initial and the name is dancing tantalizingly on the tip of my tongue.  There are several options at this point: if I’m in the car and the song is on Sirius XM radio, push the Display button until the Artist shows up;  I can Google the title of the song (not while I’m driving, Younger Eyes); or wait while my memory rummages through my brain cells, which these days seems to work like a very large file alphabetical file cabinet.  Modern science suggests that seniors should look up answers instead of racking their brains because the latter practices not remembering … but I still like to prove to myself that the old filing system still works sometimes.

Friday Favorites 3/4/2013

I have rarely done repeat Friday Favorites here on Bud’s Blog but I’m making an exception this week.  There’s a good reason, though … I am finally getting to see my favorite jazz vocalist, Diana Krall, who I featured as a Friday Favorite back in August of 2013.  While Muri and I were in AZ last week … and while she was strolling through Chico’s, one of her favorite clothing stores … I took a walk around the Dana Park outdoor mall.  On one of the windows was a poster for Diana’s appearance in the Phoenix area April 8.  Hmmm, said I, That probably means she’ll be in the LA area, too.  Being a busy sixty-nine year old guy, I forgot to look for an LA appearance online until we got back to Anaheim Hills Monday, but sure enough, she was appearing at Segerstrom Hall in nearby Costa Mesa (our in-car GPS, by the way, calls it Costa Messa).  Very few seats left, however, so I got two for Saturday night in the balcony (which is still in Costa Messa, but just).  None-the-lessa, I’m excited, which is why Diana gets a repeat performance here on Bud’s Blog.

Friday Favorites 3/21/2014

This week is my daughter, Amy’s birthday.  She will be thirty-five … but she will always be my Little Girl, too, even though she has two Little Boys and a Little Girl of her own, now.   Little Boy Number Two, Maddux is going to be seven this week.  It’s been a busy week and we are headed to Arizona to celebrate with them, so this will be a very short post.  But they are my Friday Favorites.

Dad and Amy

Papa and Maddux

Friday Favorites 3/14/2014

It was 1962.  My friend, Charlie, and I were leaving for college the next day.  Charlie was anxious to go, but his girlfriend, Anna, was trying to talk him out of it.  We were all headed down to Savin Rock to cruise the parking lots at Jimmie’s and Phyllis’, Charlie and Anna in his Chevy and me in my Dad’s turquoise and white Buick Special with Wolfman Jack on the radio.   I knew we’d run into Russ in his white Ford, looking for someone to race and that at some point I’d have to tell Charlie I was having second thoughts about going away to college.   Uhhhh, wait.  That would be the plot of the 1973 film, Amercan Graffitti.  It happens every time I watch it … I begin to transport the story to my hometown and populate it with my high school friends because, after all, I did graduate in 1962, the year portrayed in the film.  Fred Roos, who did the casting for the film, brilliantly chose people who looked like average high school kids instead of movie stars, and in their period outfits and hairstyles, I can see someone from my high school yearbook in every scene.   And the soundtrack, which featured 41 hits of the early sixties could just as well have been a soundtrack for my senior year.