BE-BOP NEAR THE TRAIN STOP

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (07-19-18)

     Last Friday was such a nice day we decided to head down to Tarrytown and take in a some jazz in Pierson Park for the Friday Evening Concert Series. If you're in the mood for it, a little jazz can be just the thing. Much of it is instrumental, so you don't even have to sing along. Every time see a rock band these days, they start the song, get to the chorus and then stick the mike out into the audience and expect us to sing it. NEWSFLASH: that's what we pay YOU for. With jazz, the band handles all the details by themselves, and nobody sticks a saxophone out into the audience expecting me to solo.

     Jazz is pretty free-form, so you don't really have to obsess about playing the right notes all the time. If you play a real clunker, the best thing to do is stop abruptly, take the horn away from your mouth, stare into the crowd, then play the same wrong note twice more, and people will think you're a real artist. Try to look tortured by the banality of playing correct notes all the time. When I make four mistakes in a row playing bass in the rock band, the rest of the guys look at me like I'm an idiot. But if I was in a jazz band I'd be so far ahead of my time that I wasn't even born yet. I just want to take the opportunity to tell those guys right now that in a few years, perhaps they'll understand the significance of the wrong notes I played two years ago.

     Even if you're a singer in a jazz ensemble and don't know the words, you can fake it. Ella Fitzgerald was the best at that. She would sing, "A tisket, a tasket, a brown and yellow basket..." Lose her train of thought, then start singing, "Scoodly-bip bop bap bip doo-WAAAAA!" And everyone thought she was a genius. If she ever got back to finish the tisket and the tasket story, it didn't make a whole lot more sense than "scoodly-bip bop," anyway.

     I was actually in a jazz band with some guys from Katonah a few years ago. We would get together every other Wednesday, and to fit in, I would look sullen and suck on a reed for a half hour before we started, until they reminded me that I was the drummer. "Do you know how to use brushes?" They asked. "Take a look at my hair and decide for yourself." End of conversation.

     I'm a rock and roll guy from way back, most of us Baby Boomers are. Jazz wasn't really on my radar until my first year at college, which I spent at the University of Hartford. My roommate Mike was a sax player on scholarship at one of the premier music schools in the country, and rooming with him taught me the first and most valuable lesson I learned at college, which was that I had better open up my eyes and my ears and start absorbing the world, not just Clinical Psych 101. I would sprinkle in some jazz during my shift as a disc jockey at the school radio station. I knew which tune would last exactly the length of time it took to announce the song, "hit the post," visit the restroom, rush back to my chair, drop my headphones on the floor, kick them across the room and still have four seconds left to cue up.

     My Mom wasn't a big jazz fan. She would scrunch up her nose if she heard me playing some Miles Davis. "I don't like that 'cool jazz,'" she would say. "Or is it the 'hot jazz' I don't like?" I never knew what the hell she was talking about, but I told her not to get out that thermometer and check. She was famous for taking your temperature in an impolite place when you had your back turned.

     She thought that every jazz musician looked like they were "on something." Yes, Mom, it's called unemployment. She was an opera nut. Every time I came into the room she had it playing on the radio, and she would wave her arms toward me.

"Mom, what are you doing?" "I'm wafting!" She thought if she fanned it over to where I was sitting that I would be intoxicated by its charms, but I never liked it. Why can't they sing like normal people? Plus the whole thing was in German, and it sounded like a meeting of the Gestapo put to an impossible-to-sing melody, and that was just the love scene.

     With jazz you just absorb it by osmosis, and it's like wallpaper you can tap your toe to. Anyway, down by the train station in Tarrytown on a Friday evening is a great place to plop a couple lawn chairs, open up a little wine and cheese and take in some great views of the Hudson. The music will just make all those things seem a little better. And if anyone plays a few wrong notes, start clapping like crazy and everyone will think you are an aesthete of the highest dimension.
 

TWELVE SCORE AND ONE YEAR AGO

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (07-22-18)

     Last week on the 4th of July America turned 241 years old. Did you bring a birthday present? What do you get for the country that has everything? It has amber waves of grain, it has purple mountain majesties, it has oceans white with foam. Most of these  assets are highly leveraged to the Chinese at the moment, so you'd better get out and see them now because they're planning to turn them into a giant Legoland.

     This year's Independence Day was sitting there independently in the middle of the week, on a Wednesday, which is impossible to make a long weekend out of. Who's with me on this: let's keep Independence Day on July 4th, but observe it from the beach on a Monday, where I can patriotically dip myself into one of those sea-to-shining-seas that I've been hearing so much about. This year we had a quiet little barbecue by the pool, no drinking, no carrying on, and we listened to the fireworks exploding all around us in the evening.

     It's always a great day for the National Anthem. Luckily the copyright is still good, or we could be singing The Star-Spangled Banner to the tune of "Happy Birthday." If you try it in your head you'll see it's not as bad as you thought.

     It's hard to write a good national anthem, because there are a lot of factors involved. Francis Scott Key wrote the poem, "Defence of Fort M'Henry" during the War of 1812, sitting in a jail cell while the fort was being bombarded. He decided to use a conversational tone. He writes, "O, say..." here and there, as if he's just killing some time describing this flag situation until the bombs stop and they can pick up something at the deli. "O, Canada," on the other hand, has no conversational tone, because Canada is a huge place, and there is nobody else around to talk to. Instead, the words speak directly to the country itself, promising to "stand on guard for thee." It's worked pretty well as a national security plan, as long as nobody falls asleep on duty.

     I have to give Francis Scott Key credit, because it's hard to find anything that rhymes with "star-spangled." New-fangled? Right-angled? Hair-tangled? Casey-Stengeled? If you watch peoples' lips when they try to sing the song at a ballpark, you'll see all sorts of unusual things. Nobody knows the order of the bursting, streaming or gleaming, and is it the night that's perilous or the fight?

     The Star-Spangled Banner is actually four verses long, and gets bleaker and gloomier as Key realizes that there is no coffee maker in the jail cell. I would have put a guitar solo in between the first and second verse, and maybe start the song off with some cowbell, but that's just nitpicking. The tune that we chose to go with the poem is a British folk song called "To Anacreon in Heaven", and it's too bad we couldn't come up with something American. Before 1931 when Congress made things official, people were using "My Country 'Tis of Thee" as our national song, which has exactly the same tune as Great Britain's National Anthem. It would have been pretty embarrassing to have a country that 'tis of thee and a national anthem melody that 'tis of somebody else's.

     Yes, the song hard to sing. The trick to singing the Star-Spangled Banner is to start the song as low as you can sing. I recommend going down at least one flight of stairs before you even start. When you get to "the rockets' red glare" you're going to thank me for that advice. I like our National Anthem. It has depth, it has weight. I don't mind that you can't sing it, you can't remember the words and you can't dance to it. They said the same thing about Bohemian Rhapsody, and who's laughing now? As long as I can barbecue to it, and and I live in a land where I am free to use any barbecue sauce I want, we're good.

WORLD CUP BREAKUP

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (07-05-18)

     Ask anyone from any foreign country what their favorite sport is, and they will answer quickly and enthusiastically: FOOTBALL! Unfortunately, they're not talking about real football, they're referring to that silly game Europeans play, where they run from one side of a large field to another, kicking a ball back and forth, aiming it into a small net and not getting it anywhere close most of the time. Statistically, there is only a slightly less chance of catching a tuna with that net than a soccer ball.

     This goes on for an hour and forty-five minutes. That's if we're lucky. But if the referee has late dinner plans, or things aren't going so great at home, or he's having a better than expected time being a referee, he can simply extend the match at his discretion to account for stoppages during the game. All this effort is devoted to a zero-zero tie. If someone does accidentally score a goal, much of the remaining time is taken up by an announcer yelling, "GOOAAALLLLL!" It's about as exciting as watching grass grow, and I'm including artificial grass.

     For all the scoring that is achieved in soccer, you might as well not use your hands OR your feet. Just hit the ball with your head, and if you can think of anything else to hit it with, knock yourself out, if hitting the ball with your head didn't already knock you out. Why not simply increase the size of the net? That goalie gets pretty good money for sitting around back there checking his emails while everyone else is scurrying about like a bunch of kangaroos. Speaking of kangaroos, one hopped onto the field during a match in Australia recently, and it was the most exciting thing that ever happened until someone foolishly chased it away with a pickup truck. The game of soccer would go from 0 to 60 in two seconds if they just made a kangaroo one of the players. Even a pickup truck would be an improvement.

     I prefer baseball. I know, I know. Soccer fans are the same people who say that baseball is the boring sport. They think that way because they don't understand the drama of the game, where one pitch or one swing of the bat can change the fortunes of the contest. The fact that there is a large amount of free time scheduled within the game is an under-appreciated bonus. In between pitches you can get a pedicure, ice a birthday cake, do your taxes.

     People from other countries, baseball is where you want to be. First of all, it's the only professional sport played in a park. Secondly, it is relatively safe. There is a lot of violent contact, but all of it in the stands. Third, I can't think of any other game where foul balls are tolerated with such equanimity.

     I want athletes from other countries to consider playing baseball instead of soccer. Baseball has become a much healthier and more inclusive place. It is the WORLD series, after all, and over the span of more than a century, we've extended the eligibility to include one team from one other country. Also, because of the health risks, ballplayers don't chew tobacco anymore. Instead they crack bird seeds with their teeth and spit the shells out onto the dugout floor. Some say this behavior is less than manly. Now, I don't know how things are at your bird feeder, but you have to be plenty tough to nose out the squirrels in my neighborhood. I'm thinking of putting up a cake of suet to attract more ballplayers. So far I have a few Cardinals, a Blue Jay and an Oriole.

     Other countries, I read the newspaper, and I know some of you aren't our BFFs right now. But us Yankees need your best athletes. Forget soccer, it's boring with a capital Z. You play ball with us, and we'll play ball with you, if you know what I mean, and if you do you'll be the first one. America welcomes you with open arms. Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Give us anyone you might have lying around who can throw a baseball 98 miles an hour. Give us somebody who can hit .300, with a slugging percentage of say, .450. We can smooth out the details later.

CLUELESS IN NEW JERSEY

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (06-28-18)

     My sisters and I get together every year for a weekend at the Jersey Shore, with their kids and spouses, and this year we decided to do something a little different. We signed up for one of those "escape rooms," where they put a group of you into a room and you have to figure your way out using only your wits, your guile and the clues that are provided to you. I thought it might speed things up if we were able to figure our way out using only our wits, our guile and a Milwaukee Sawzall, but I went along for the ride.

     We were all over it in the car on the way back from the restaurant, full of confidence and brio. We had a dynamic group: Dan is a math whiz, Erica has great organizational skills, Guthrie sees the big picture, Deb knows how to make connections, Anne is a communicator and Sky is good at management. Everyone brought something to the table. My expertise is that I know every episode of "Get Smart" backwards and forwards, which don't be surprised if it comes in handy. With that kind of brainpower, we could break out of Leavenworth. Our enthusiasm was slightly tempered when all the car doors locked automatically and we had to ask Paul to let us out from the driver's seat.

     Once we were inside the room, the moderator explained that we were in Nazi Germany, and we had to figure out how to open the jail cell door where a bomb sat, ticking away. We had 30 minutes to access it and disarm it. Why couldn't I have watched more "Hogan's Heroes" instead of "Get Smart?" He left through the back access door and the game was on. Deb turned the access doorknob and it opened right up. "Let's get the hell out of here," she said, and started to make a break for it. We dragged her back inside and began to look for clues. There was not a moment to waste.

     I saw a burlap bag with words on it that said, "THIS IS NOT A CLUE!" Was that a clue? Somebody found a some fuses and a fuse box. We put them in and the cell door opened. Now we needed four numbers to punch into the control panel. Something started beeping- MORSE CODE! The legend gave us the answer in German and also a translation- a one and a nine. Was it one-nine or nine-one? Nine-one or one-nine? One-nine or nine-one? A message flashed on the video screen: "Jesus, it's 1-9. I have another group coming in at 8:30, so let's get moving on the bomb."

     I picked up an army helmet and looked inside: "SEVEN! Its says seven!" Well, it turns out that was just the hat size, but on the plus side it fit me perfectly, just in case we couldn't defuse the bomb. "Why do we want to open that cell door in the first place? What if the bomb gets out?" Another number came from a map on the wall that we transferred to coordinates on a grid.

     We punched in the numbers and.... We did it! We disabled the bomb and saved the free world. I asked the group if they wouldn't mind coming over to help me figure out how to work my new coffee maker. There are several clues buried in the instructions, but I'm having a hard time getting them out.

     The experience brought to mind some ideas for other escape rooms. How about "Escape from the Bathroom," where the clues are buried in a book that you NEVER finish? Or an escape room where you have to put together a shelving unit from IKEA in order to get out, for instance. What about an "Escape from the White House," using clues that you'd have to be an idiot not to see before you went in?

     In the end, it was a group of people, using their own special skills, finding common ground, working together towards a shared goal. If you extrapolate that idea out to other walks of life, you can almost see the way forward. I'd like to think we can get there one day, but I'm going to keep that Milwaukee Sawzall handy just in case.