Month: June 2006

Dear Mr. Green,

Anyway God Bless the man I knew as McKinley Green.

So I wrote back, clarifying that Pop was my grandfather, but that, yes, those stores were three blocks from my house, on the street of my elementary school.

I wrote my note before I actually read your blog that described your relationship to McKinley. Do you have anymore recollections of your Pop? It’s been so many years since those days that it is hard to remember some things. I printed out the portion of the June 24th note to let my sisters read your memories of McKinley. I’m sorry that this grand man passed away so long ago and we didn’t realize it. Was it in Binghamton?

So, I sent him a link to this story, which he evidently had not seen.

Since he asked: My grandfather loved tinkering with vehicles. He did some work in the driveway, but mostly, he’d be at some Texaco station downtown near the former post office.

He also read the National Geographic. This is actually something I remember only because he used to give me the maps every month. I used to study those maps all the time, so I developed a pretty good sense of where countries were, world capitals, and the like, at least circa 1971, when I went off to college.

So, I was much encouraged reading about the project both in last Saturday’s Wall Street Journal (page A-2), and in the May-June issue of Beatlefan magazine, issue 160. The show, currently in previews, opens tomorrow in a “$130 million, 2,013-seat theater at the Mirage featuring 360-degree-in-the-round seating and advanced high definition video projections with 100-foot digital moving images.”

The Beatles’ legendary producer Sir George Martin and his son Giles, who helped create the “authorized mash-up”, were on hand when the press, stripped of their cellphones and tape recorders, heard 15 minutes of the 90-minute presentation, which included:

Strawberry Fields (Anthology demo) morphing into an outtake, then the official version at its original speed, with riffs from at least a dozen other Beatles songs: Sgt. Pepper brass section, In My Life keyboards, the Hawaiian chant from Hello, Goodbye, plus Piggies and Penny Lane.

Within You Without You vocal to backing track, and monks, from Tomorrow Never Knows, with snippets of Got To Get You Into My Life.

Lucy In The Sky extended intro before the song.

Orchestration from Good Night with vocal from Octopus’s Garden, plus bits of Sun King, Mean Mr. Mustard, Lady Madonna, and While My Guitar Gently Weeps.

According to the WSJ, there will be “30 recognizable songs with snippets from 150 more.” There will be a soundtrack by the end of the year, which I most certainly will want to get (somebody tell my wife, please). Giles Martin said he won’t know what it’ll sound like until “his bosses”, Ringo, Paul, Olivia Harrison and Yoko Ono give the final word.

So, as I said, I’m encouraged.

Not so incidentally, my subscription to Beatlefan has a strange genesis:

Friend Fred had spent months trying to nag me to order a subscription. Then one day, about a month before my birthday, a copy arrives in the mail. I mentioned it to Fred, and, well…
ME: I thought to subscribe, and I’m in SUCH a fog, that I figured that
I MUST have, but I don’t think I probably got around to it. (There
are LOTS of things I do I don’t remember doing.) So, THANK YOU very much!
FRED: That’s pretty funny! I tried imagining your shock and surprise when that first, unexpected issue showed up, you wondering HOW could this be, and then maybe figuring out yours truly was the one responsible, and gratitude would instantly overwhelm you!
Instead, it comes in, and you figure, “Gee, guess I did subscribe after all!…”
Honestly, that just cracks me up!
But you’re gonna love it! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

The game itself was like the TV show, complete with working buzzers. The questions were all business-related, thus its applicability to work. I don’t remember much what happened in the second round, when I was in my first face-off, but I do remember the seventh (!) round; there was the capacity to double or even triple the scores, which would have quickened the game, but this was not done.

The question was something like “Name a brand name.” I said “Coke”. Not on the board. My opponent picked something I thought might be up there, maybe Microsoft. Nope. OK, I picked “Nike”. Try again. Opponent picked another loser. I thought I didn’t understand the question, and picked “Clorox”. Not there. My opponent picked Pepsi. No go. I picked “Dell”,. Uh uh. The number one answer was McDonald’s, which I might have gotten to, but answers #2-#4 were Starbucks, e-Bay, and Amazon. I knew there were 100 marketing people, but I NEVER would have gotten those last three answers. Still, there’s that mild embarassment of going down in flames before several dozen people you work with.

More recently, I was getting a haircut, and “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” was on. The question was something like: In Mexico, the program 100 Mexicanos Dijeron translates into which of these classic game shows?” IMMEDIATELY, before they gave the four choices, I knew the answer was Family Feud, even though I didn’t recognize the verb. (The contestant didn’t know, her lifeline didn’t know, and she quit with her $8000.)

Fiona is our most excellent alto soloist in our church choir. Michael is this great guy she met a couple years back. The three of us have played hearts together, although not in the last three months; last time we played, Fiona won, and I want a rematch.

This was an outdoor wedding at Moreau State Park, between Saratoga and Glens Falls. The weather in the morning did not appear at all encouraging, with yet another rainy night in Albany. But the weather cleared.

Carol seemed to think the wedding was at 4 p.m., rather than the stated time of 3:30, which turned out to be a good thing, because we got there at about 3:15, and she would have worried unnecessarily.

The groom, the bride, and her two daughters walked to the site of the wedding accompanied by a bagpiper. The choir sang God Is Love (not the lyrics in italics), accompanied by a guitarist and two violinists from the choir. The minister offered up a brief but joyous service, and then we ate. It was a pot luck, and it worked out well.

Some people commented to me how wonderful it was that the choir was there. I noted we pretty much had to be there. You spend 40 weeks a year, pretty much every Thursday night and Sunday morning with a group of people, and you almost inevitably develop a pretty tight bond. About a previous choir, someone once accused us of being a “clique”, and that was probably true. this group may less cliquish, but still pretty close. (That said, Fiona is pretty swell – though she’d be embarrassed to read that.)

I met a woman I’d seen on the bus I sometimes take, who’s a drinking buddy of the bride, and who I prostelized about, of all things, blogging.

The park had a playground not 50 yards away, and Lydia and some the other child had a chance to use the slides and do other activities.