Month: September 2018

Week in Review – September 23, 2018

Diana stayed in Florida for work on Monday while I flew back up to New York in time to attend a show at the City Winery.

The Loft is the smaller venue upstairs at the winery, which is located in the SoHo neighborhood.  I heard that the whole location is closing at the end of the year as Disney has purchased the entire block to consolidate their New York locations.   The entertainment was provided by the Ana Popovic band and I had limited expectations, not having seen or heard much about her.

Popovic is a blues singer and guitar player who grew up in Serbia and now records and resides in the United States.  I was very pleasantly surprised by Ana’s music and particularly by her excellent band, which included trombone, saxophone, and keyboard players from New Orleans.  It’s always interesting to notice someone who speaks with a very noticeable Eastern European accent, singing without any trace of an accent.  Here’s one of my favourite performances of the evening, “A New Coat of Paint”, a cover of the Tom Waits song from the classic “The Heart of Saturday Night” album.

Another song that I enjoyed was “Slow Dance” from her most recent album, produced by the fantastic Keb Mo:

Finally, here’s a jam between Ana and the brass section:

This was a very enjoyable evening of high quality music performed in a very nice, intimate venue.  I’m sorry the club is closing, but understand they are looking for a new location to open in the New Year.

A typical New York scene greeted me on returning to my hotel – dueling jackhammers digging up the street right outside several hotels at 11pm.

I flew back to Dallas on Wednesday evening and always enjoy the view of the New York skyline from La Guardia airport.

Around the same time, Will and Christine were arriving in Stewarton, Scotland to visit my Mum and Dad for a couple of days.

Here’s what Will had to say on text about this visit:  “Had such an incredible day today with Granny and Grandpa!  Woke up to a homemade breakfast of haggis and black pudding.  Then went to the coast to see Ailsa Craig.  Walked the coast, got haddock fish and chips and smoked salmon at the famous ice cream shop.  Found a little shop with authentic curling stones and these stones made from compressed heather that were really cool!  Went into some old churches.  Then headed home.  Had homemade cottage (Cumberland) pie for dinner and meringue for dessert then ended the night with some Arran single malt scotch.  Also had some really good Dunlop cheddar and oatcakes with dessert!!”  The way to Will’s heart is clearly through his stomach.

The next day they all met up with Struan in Glasgow, where Will treated himself to a Hunting Robertson kilt and accessories.  I enjoyed my Mum and Dad telling me today that Will reported having “done” Scotland, England, and Spain in the couple of days he spent in each.

 

 

The Dallas area was treated to around six inches of rain overnight on Saturday, which resulted in some pretty bad flooding.  We thought the rain was mostly finished in the afternoon and I took Diana to see a movie without letting her know the name or what it was about.  The trailer led me to believe this was a light, romantic comedy which was just what McD needed after a very long work week.  See what you think:

It turns out the movie, “Life Itself”, had a significant amount of tragedy embedded in a very well done story of three generations of two families.  The creator of the TV show, “This is Us”, had a major role in the film and you could certainly see the similarities in story telling techniques.   We’re looking forward to “This is Us” starting a new season this week as it’s our favourite TV show these days (sorry Brent).  I enjoyed the references to Bob Dylan’s “Time Out of Mind” throughout the movie and how it played into the story.  Here’s a song from that excellent album:

It was still raining heavily when we exited the movie and Penelope was so suitably miffed with this that she shut down one of her window wipers.

I saw this video on TV this morning and thought it was hilarious – a Great Dane mimicking his owner doing lunges.

https://www.msn.com/en-ie/news/video/great-dane-performs-lunges-with-owner/vp-AAApfAX

I’ve been enjoying this new song by Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits fame.  Kind of a new jazzy feel with the saxophone solo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week in Review – September 16, 2018

 

Back to New York again this week.  The hotel that I usually stay at was transformed into “The Macallan Manor” for several nights as the club members there enjoyed a very fancy scotch tasting experience with some good bands playing.

It’s always very sobering to be in New York on September 11th, as we all remember watching the horror unfold on our television sets in 2001 , while the New Yorkers lived through it.  My colleague took these pictures at the memorial – the only night of the year when lights outline the silhouette of the fallen twin towers.

Meanwhile, I was attending a Jethro Tull concert at the Beacon Theater on the upper west side.  This was a sold out, 50th anniversary concert by a band that I enjoy very much but have never seen live.   My pre-concert meal was at an excellent Mediterranean restaurant, the Hummus place, that is right behind the Beacon theater.

The mushroom hummus was amazing and the falafels were some of the best I’ve had.  On exiting the restaurant, I was amused to see the Jethro Tull equipment truck – “Scotsman & Clan Transportaion”.

The concert was very enjoyable with a lot of video accompaniment from the 50 year history of the band and of world events.

It’s fairly amazing that a band with a flute as it’s main lead instrument and with a very classical bent has survived this long.  Here’s a video of their Bach cover, “Bouree”.

The concert lasted well over two hours, with an intermission.  The Beacon is such a gorgeous old theater with great acoustics – here are a couple of pictures from inside.

Predictably, the last song of the show was “Aqualung” which came with an entertaining video backing.

Hurricane Florence caused me to change my plans and travel down to rendezvous with McD in Florida a day early on Thursday.  My flight to St. Petersburg arrived with no issues and a smooth ride overall.  Diana’s hotel was within walking distance to downtown and we enjoyed exploring the area.  Dinner was at the Copper Shaker which had excellent cocktails, service,  and food.

Diana worked most of the day on Friday and so I was able to explore the breakfast joints, bookstores, coffee shops, and cigar bars of St. Petersburg reasonably thoroughly.   I found it to be a very friendly, eclectic, walkable, and enjoyable city overall.

On Friday night we moved over to the Sandy Pearl resort in Clearwater Beach.  The beaches there are made up of beautifully fine white sand.  We enjoyed dinner at the very casual Frenchy’s Café, known for the grouper sandwich and “Crabby fries, and then enjoyed a lovely sunset.

Saturday started with lobster benedicts at Clear Sky café next to the hotel – very good.  It was very hot and humid by the pool and so I didn’t last very long before retreating to air conditioning.  I heard some great music coming from Clear Sky in the afternoon and so wandered over to listen.  Diana joined me, and we met a fun couple from the nearby town of Dunedin.  It made me smile because a work colleague recently moved back to Dunedin in New Zealand to run his family businesses.  The couple had known each other from Kindergarten until the end of middle school and had recently reconnected – some good stories.  They also recommended “Bon Appetit” in Dunedin for dinner.

We enjoyed dinner and the Dunedin sunset very much.  Our waiter, Michael, had been in the restaurant business for 52 years, and certainly knew what he was doing.  We shared a steak tartare starter, and then Diana enjoyed a nicely cooked lobster tail while I had the Dover sole (deboned table side by Michael).  This was very much an old school restaurant.

In an effort to coax me out of air conditioning and down to the pool, Diana treated me to a poolside cabana on Sunday.  This was a very special and luxurious way to relax and enjoy football and a book all day.  I’m writing his post from the luxury of the cabana couch.  Thanks Diana!

The Cowboys don’t play until later today, but the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (the local Florida team) just beat the Eagles, which always helps the Cowboys playoff chances.

I’ve been absolutely loving the book “Rules of Civility” by Amor Towles this week.  This is about the exploits of a young lady in New York during the years surrounding the Great Depression and is exceptionally well written.  I loved “A Gentleman in Moscow” which was Towles most recent novel and this, his debut novel, is even better in my opinion.

On the music front, I was reacquainted with this amazing Ray Charles song – a tribute to Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, and John and Bobby Kennedy.

Wow!  What a song and what a performance.

 

 

 

Week in Review – September 9, 2018

Diana spent the week in Pacifica with her Mum while I worked from home all week and did my best to be self sufficient.  The great news is that Clorinda is home from the hospital and back to normal after giving us quite a scare.  Her neighbors, Andy and Jude, had a party on Saturday night to celebrate their sixtieth birthdays and you can see from these pictures that Clorinda was her old-self – camera always at the ready.  She’s very fortunate to have such kind neighbors.

Diana captured this lovely panoramic sunset from the deck of Andy and Jude’s home.

I passed the time on a rainy Saturday by going to see the movie “Blaze” at the Alamo draft house and cinema in Denton.  The movie is directed by Ethan Hawke and tells the story of the country folk musician Blaze Foley, a little known and very talented songwriter.  The movie is very well done in a documentary style but with actors playing the roles of Blaze and his compadre Townes Van Zandt.    Charlie Sexton, who we saw at the Kessler a few months ago, plays an excellent Van Zandt.  Here’s Foley’s best known song:

Today has been spent weeding the garden and enjoying the start of the football season.  The Cowboys haven’t played yet and I’m hoping for a positive start.  I’m looking forward to McD finally returning home this evening.

A trend began this week of people substituting penguins for Trump in pictures with some hilarious results.  Thanks to Brent for turning us on to these.  Definitely a positive change.

I read a few short stories from Ry Cooder’s “Los Angeles Stories” this week.  Regular readers of the blog will know that Cooder is one of my favourite musicians, with his “Paradise and Lunch” being a top 10 album for me.  It always frustrates me when world class musicians are also very talented in another artistic field – just doesn’t seem fair.

The stories are in what I believe is called the “LA Noir” genre.  Kind of like short versions of LA Confidential.  It’s amazing how quickly Cooder can set a scene and introduce several very believable characters.

I came across this music from Abdullah Ibrahim this week and have been enjoying it very much.  Ibrahim is from Cape Town and is heavily influenced by Duke Ellington and Thelonius Monk.  Apparently there’s a jazz sub-genre known as “Cape jazz” that this represents well.

In other music news, I was introduced to Ronnie Earl through this track:

Earl is from Boston and originally graduated with a degree in special education.  After seeing a performance by Muddy Waters, he became interested in playing blues guitar professionally.  He has been the associate professor of guitar at Berklee college of music for several years now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week in Review – September 2, 2018

A similar routine again this week to the last couple – Diana working in St. Petersburg, Florida Wednesday through Friday and me working at home.  There were a couple of differences – Diana got stuck in Tampa due to a thunder storm around the time she was due to take off on Friday afternoon, and I had to drive to the Fort Worth office every day for all day meetings.

On the bright side, Diana was able to connect with Merry Lee and Jeff, have dinner at their country club, and then spend the night at their lovely new home in Tampa.  She put a lot of work into making sure that her client presentation on Friday morning was successful and so it was good that she was able to relax with friends.  She learned earlier on Friday afternoon that her Mum had been taken to the hospital by paramedics and was very concerned about being so far away from her – Jeff and Merry Lee were a welcome distraction.  We just learned that her Mum could be discharged from hospital this afternoon and Diana will be in San Francisco tomorrow afternoon to make sure she settles in well back at home.

Meanwhile, I took advantage of being in Fort Worth all week to meet up with a colleague for dinner at the Capital Grille downtown.  We walked from dinner to a jazz club called the Scat Lounge.  On the way we passed by Sundance Square and downtown’s most iconic public art, the Chisholm Trail Mural which serves as a reminder of Fort Worth’s rich cultural roots. The three-story Richard Haas trompe l’oeil mural spans the 1908 Jett Building’s southern facade and was completed in 1988 to commemorate the Fort Worth segment of The Chisholm Trail cattle drives of 1867-1875.

I had been reading about the Scat Lounge for the last couple of years and was looking forward to trying it out.  As luck would have it, a band named “A Taste of New Orleans” was playing on Wednesday night, and they were a real treat.  Here are a couple of their performances.

The Scat Lounge is an excellent venue – just the right size and very reminiscent of a New York basement jazz club.

We met Patty and Brent for dinner and a movie on Saturday night.    The movie was quite unique and different than you might expect – a true one of a kind dedicated “To Patty”.  It featured Chad and his exploits over a 24 hour period.  The version we saw was just the initial “rough cut” but a truly hilarious and very clever production.

After the movie, we enjoyed dinner at The Grape on Greenville Avenue (McD’s favourite Dallas restaurant).  I enjoyed the Moroccan Rabbit “Tagine”, Brent the Crispy Pork Collar, and the ladies both had the Steak Frites.  After dinner margaritas at the Blue Goose across the street put the ladies right off to sleep.  What a lovely evening with great friends that we’re going to miss very much.

I finished a couple of very different books this week.  The first, “The Sportswriter” by Richard Ford, is part of a trilogy that tracks the life of Frank Bascombe, a New Jersey based writer for a sports magazine.  The book tracks his experiences over a long Easter weekend when he is 38 years old, having recently lost a child and been divorced.

I’ve heard Ford described as the poor man’s John Updike and particularly this trilogy compared unfavorably to Updike’s “Rabbit” trilogy.  I found the writing styles quite different and, with several decades between the settings, the situation and scenarios quite different as well.  I’m not ready to run out and read the rest of the trilogy but do look forward to catching up to them sometime soon.  “Independence Day” from the trilogy won the Pulitzer prize for fiction in 1996.

The second book, “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” by Ottessa Moshfegh, was completely different than anything I typically read, and it’s probably good to try new things from time to time.  I had read a positive review in the New Yorker magazine and it was the book club pick at the Wild Detectives book store that I love in South Dallas.

The narrator is a young woman, living in New York in the year 2000, and determined to withdraw from life for a year in order to escape from or cope with her traumas.  The book is incredibly dark but the writing is very good.  I would not recommend this book to the faint of heart.

Here’s a song I heard for the first time this week from the Chris Duarte Group.  It reminds me a lot of “Tin Pan Alley” by Stevie Ray Vaughan and has equally good sound and production.

My boss just sent this picture from the Toronto air show this weekend.  What amazing precision and a great picture that he took.