Get Out of the Room

Posted on November 24, 2007 by onesanevoice

The program I am in at school is extremely intense with a higher than average drop-out rate.  I am halfway through now and no way will I become a statistic.  I need you to remember I said that so you can throw it back in my face when I start whining so bad you get tired of listening and call me a waaaaambulance.

The way the program is set up is that we have to pass a series of tests, administered daily, the completion of which enables us to advance to the next room.  I know I just described speed-dating but it’s actually different.  The tests are timed, they involve implementation of the new language we learned this past year, and they demand enormous concentration.  Unlike dating, they don’t require that you dress appealingly or even shower.  What they do require is for everyone to remain absolutely still and focus.

It’s yak-yak-city until the instructor walks in with the day’s tests and a stopwatch and then it’s like we’re on a field trip to the morgue.  Silence.  The day I’m telling you about here is the last day before Thanksgiving break which happened to be the day I had to pass a test that was keeping me in that particular room a great deal longer than I wanted to be.

The test began and I was humming along like a classic Mustang on a country road.  At the precise moment I began silently celebrating that the door might finally be opening for me into the next room, the door to the room I was in burst open and in charged one of the school’s directors looking agitated.  “We have a medical emergency!” he announced and we all looked at him like yeah, we know, you’re about to be fed your own spleen.

The EMS hadn’t arrived yet so he started ransacking the room looking for a blanket to put under a student in the next class who had collapsed with some kind of seizure.  Since our school is as prepared for this as the White House is for bungee jumping, the best he could find was a closetful of graduation gowns which would actually be an amusing mental picture were it not such a serious situation.

The way it played out is that the student rallied, the gowns went back in the closet, and the teacher started the test all over again.  I don’t know if my rally was as successful as the fallen student’s but I sucked it up and did my best.

Son, a recent college grad who loves the fact that I’m a student now and he isn’t, called that evening to see when he was expected the next day for Thanksgiving.

SON:  What’s wrong?  You don’t sound happy.

OSV:  I had a really miserable day at school.

SON:  Awww.  Were the other kids being mean to you?

God, I needed that laugh.

Daughter’s Featured Fotos fuse Nature and Art with images from exclusive Gramercy Park and the edgy Open Studios at Hunter College

get out 1 gramercy_park

past the locked gate. shhh! don’t tell

get out 2 metal_wrap_masks

metal wrap masks

get out 3 really_big_leaf

really big leaf

get out 4 living_inside_a_drawer

living inside a drawer

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Fourth and Goal

Posted on November 20, 2007 by onesanevoice

This weekend was classic football weather with that crystal bite in the air and magenta leaves in transit and the distant thump of a high school marching band.  We live within earshot of a high school, the one Daughter attended, and when I left the house on Saturday I could hear the drumbeat and crackling PA system that announced the players over the muffled hum of the crowd.  I really love autumn.

Daughter called the night before to tell me Fall had truly arrived.

DTR:  It’s football season!  I’m getting those calls again for Chester Yun.

OSV:  Who?

DTR:  Chester Yun, the guy who had my cell phone number like five years ago before I got it.  He was in major debt with football betting.  As soon as the season heats up I start getting cell calls from all the people Chester beat saying they want their money.

OSV:  You’d think his friends would have his new number by now.

DTR:  Mom?  They’re not his friends.  They’re bookies.

OSV:  Bookies?  Are you sure?

DTR:  Oh yeah, it’s always the same guys.  I tell them Chester’s still not at this number and they ask me if I want to hear the point spread.

OSV:  What??  What do you tell them?

DTR:  The same thing I always tell them.  Teachers don’t make enough money to gamble.  Then I wish them luck in finding Chester.

OSV:  Chester is fish food in the East River.  Would you please not talk to bookies?

DTR:  Mom, it’s once a year.  It’s a tradition.

My tradition at this time of year is the staff/family meeting at my uncle’s nursing home up in Westchester.  This uncle, my late father’s brother, was always looked after by my Dad and with his dying the torch passed to me.  I visit on a regular basis and take care of other matters, which I wrote about in This Call May Be Used For Training Purposes, and I piggyback this nursing home visit with a trip to the cemetery where my parents are buried.

Facing my parents’ double headstone (they died within 4 months of each other in 2004) I can hear the gurgle of a little stream behind me.  It always makes me smile because I remember the day they bought the burial plots back in the late sixties and my Mom being all pleased that they got the last family plot up against the stream so you can hear the water.  My Dad, who bore a striking resemblance to Walter Matthau with a similar deadpan delivery, looked at her with a mixture of amusement and affection and said, “You know if it’s noise you’re looking for we can save a bundle on the ones close to the train tracks,” and my Mom waved her hand at him going “Oh, stop.”

It was a sweet memory of the parents I miss on a beautiful autumn day.  As I looked across the wide expanse of graveyard with headstones as far as the horizon, it made me consider once again that rich or poor, black or white, great or small, the unsparing truth remains that sooner or later we all run out of road.

Daughter’s Featured Fotos give us Other Things to Consider

fourth 1 connected_kicks

connected kicks

fourth 2 dont_forget_to_post_your_revolution!

don’t forget to post your revolution

fourth 3 arrows_and_feathers_side

arrows and feathers

fourth 4 sparks_are_hidden_inside_the_walls__who_knew

sparks are hidden in the walls. who knew?

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Barking in the Dark

Posted on November 16, 2007 by onesanevoice

I see lately that readers are opening the entry Who Let The Dog Out? possibly expecting it to be about the latest woes of bounty hunter Duane Chapman in a politically correct America.  But it happens that the entry in question was written three months before Dog’s recent leaked phone call with his son in which he referred to the son’s girlfriend with repeated racial epithets.

Everyone has something to say about this news story and aside from the obvious abhorrent nature of any words that fuel hatred, it strikes me as odd that people are this surprised that a redneck ex-con with a hairdo out of Deliverance might actually be a bigot.  Prejudiced people are everywhere and nothing excuses them.  The fact remains that we’ve all done business with them, worked alongside them, unwittingly dated them, even elected them to public office.  They usually look just like concerned members of the community, do-gooders even, and if we suddenly get a glimpse at their hidden agenda we need to be sharp enough to have considered the possibility it existed in private all along.  Often you don’t smell the shit until you step in it.

A secondary issue here might be what exactly is up in this father/son relationship that set the stage for a phone call to be taped and showcased for enquiring minds everywhere.  If I were the Dog I would be more concerned about that than my career.  A&E pulled the show the moment the story broke, but we can look to many past cases in which the celebrity-turned-pariah rose like Lazarus from the ashes to star in the new fall line-up after an acceptable waiting period.  Can anyone say Rob Lowe?  Family bonds are more fragile and way more complex.  Building personal relationships based on mutual caring and respect has a way of influencing all the other aspects of life.  It’s harder to hate when you feel loved.

The other thing I’m missing here is when did Al Sharpton become the go-to guy for racial absolution?  This is not Martin Luther King, Jr. we’re talking about.  This is someone who has managed to elbow his way to the front of high-profile cases and stir every pot he could by exploiting people’s fears in the name of equality.  I’ve seen enough of the cards he’s holding to think that a racist going to Al Sharpton is like a man with a crush on his step-daughter asking for Woody Allen’s help.  There exist many positive role models for racial understanding in today’s society yet the only phone number on the get-out-of-jail card anyone seems to have is Sharpton’s.

We’ll see what happens here with Dog.  I predict he’ll be coming around again even faster than Imus.  Dog excels at being a believable repentant.  And people like to see lawbreakers tracked down and brought in for justice.  Just make sure the tracker talks the right kind of trash.

Daughter’s Featured Fotos all say Look at the Pretty Colors

barking 1 pretty_colors

rainbow serenade

barking 2 homemade_vegan_dinner

homemade vegan dinner

barking 3 amber_reflection

amber reflection

barking 4 nycs_well_known_fall_foliage

nyc’s famous fall foliage

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Cuts Both Ways

Posted on November 12, 2007 by onesanevoice

You can count me among those who avoid any type of elective surgery or needle-related body art which means I will be easily recognized in years to come as the unadorned woman whose upper cheeks meet her lower cheeks because I won’t do anything to stop either of them.  Some of my fellow female migraine sufferers have rejoiced at the news that Botox treatments inhibit headache pain but I will swallow beta-blockers forever rather than sidle up to anything with a name I can trace back to badly handled meat.

All of this has been on my mind since Daughter informed me she is screening surgeons for a lasik procedure.  I know that lasik eye surgery has become commonplace to the point that they offer payment plans and early-bird discounts like car dealers and restaurants down in Boca and they can call it a procedure or a phenomenon or a miracle or whatever they want but it’s still rock and roll to me.

For the first three decades of my life I had no holes in my body other than the ones my maker installed and then when Daughter was five she desperately wanted her ears pierced.  I scrutinized her little friends’ ears and picked the one with the ear holes placed most perfectly (yes, I’ve always been crazy) and asked her mom which jeweler had pierced them and she directed me to nearby Boro Park.  Boro Park is a neighborhood in Brooklyn populated with a large segment of Hasidic Jews and it was a jewelry store owned by one of these Orthodox community members that Daughter and I found ourselves in.

The shop owner was clad in the customary black coat and hat and was very formal and courteous.  He had Daughter hop up on a stool and as she giggled with anticipation he put a hole in the first ear.  The instant he pulled away, Daughter’s eyes and mouth opened so wide I was afraid of what might fall in and then after that terrible moment of suspended pain and shock had passed the sound came.  It was loud and it was frightening and it came from the place deep in a five-year-old’s gut where gleeful anticipation turns to outright horror.  In the midst of this otherworldly howl Daughter shot off the stool and bolted for the door.

I raced after her and body-blocked the entrance scooping her up in my arms.  She was having no part of puncturing that second earlobe.  The shop owner calmed her down and offered her a lollipop.  We both told her how lovely the new earring looked.  She was unmoved.  Then with her eyes staring straight into me she said she would be willing to do the second ear if I did both of mine.

So now we had two interesting dilemmas.  One, I didn’t want my ears pierced.  Two, the shop owner was Hasidic and as such was forbidden to touch any man’s wife other than his own.  Daughter was back on the stool with her arms folded looking at us.  Realizing this could be an all-day standoff, I relented and agreed to have my ears done as well.  Daughter’s face lit up.  Now it was up to the shop owner and his Higher Authority.

He was clearly very uncomfortable with this situation and was adamantly shaking his head no so I figured I’d make it easy for him by laying out the facts as follows:  If Daughter refused to have the other ear pierced, we would be removing the earring already in and leaving the store with no payment exchanging hands.  If the shop owner agreed to touch me twice very quickly and I would never say it happened, he could make two sales in the next ten minutes.  He considered these options briefly and it turns out that the conventions of religion are much more organic than the mortgage payment.  All of our holes are perfectly placed but you didn’t hear it from me.

Daughter’s Featured Fotos were taken all around NYC and celebrate Men at Work

cuts both 1 faro_sketching

street artist faro sketching

courtesy of www.flickr.com/photos/theorie/

cuts both 2 infinitys_game

artist infinity’s game

cuts both 3 bobby_k_at_kennys_castaways

musician bobby k at kenny’s castaways

cuts both 4 1__cut_a_hole___

what are these guys doing? 1. cut a hole in a box. . .

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Rolling an Even Seven

Posted on November 8, 2007 by onesanevoice

This week Husband and I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary and since our schedules didn’t allow us to do dinner on the actual day itself, we went for a lovely brunch this past Sunday when the opportunity presented itself amidst the splendor of a beautiful autumn weekend.

We were on our way back toward the city from upstate and planned to stop for breakfast at Cracker Barrel, that culinary wonderland for middle Americans everywhere, but the place was overflowing with middle Americans from everywhere so we hit the road and kept looking.  We passed a picturesque bed and breakfast with one of those cute b&b names like The Feather & The Rose or The Chocolate Owl or let’s call it the Cock and Crow and the sign out front said Sunday Brunch so we pulled over to check it out.

The interior was antique-laden and lovely just as you would expect and the brunch menu looked delicious except for the $30 per person prix fixe which seemed extravagant because it was.  Considering we were thisclose to putting our name on a Cracker Barrel waiting list to order waffles and grits, a brunch that would run eighty bucks with tax and tip seemed indulgent.  But Husband is a romantic and suggested we make it an anniversary brunch because sometimes I’m stupidly practical and need a push toward whimsy.  He reminds me of this every year about this time but usually it’s to lament once again that I refused to give in to his request to have a mariachi band at our wedding.  Let’s not even go there.  Many things indicate wedding festivity to me but sombreros with dangling pompoms do not make that list.

In case you haven’t eaten yet and are waiting for your pizza delivery I’ll tell you what we had:  Husband’s appetizer of shrimp cocktail featured delectable shrimp the size of a lumberjack’s fist, I’m telling you they were huge.  If I saw shrimp this big that were still alive I’d ask for ID.  My ricotta-filled crepe was infused with a berry glaze and a succulent, perfect blackberry perched on top.  Both of our selections were heavenly.

I’m a meat and potatoes girl so I had steak and eggs, rare and over, just as ordered.  Husband chose tarragon chicken with basmati rice and cranberry compote.  The lemon dill sauce on the chicken was studded with capers and Husband poked one with his fork and asked if I knew what a caper was exactly.  I said not really so we asked our waitperson, a solemn young man of twenty-something in a crisp white shirt and black tie.  Husband predicted his response would be, “Let me go ask the chef,” and when he answered with those precise words the mimosa I had downed kicked in and I started to giggle.

The Cock and Crow waiter returned to our table with his seriously professional manner and said, “The chef said to tell you capers are the fruit of the caper bush.”  Well, that about did me in but I held on long enough to nod intelligently and say to thank the chef for this information.  What I was picturing was the chef rolling his eyes at our bourgeois ignorance and snapping to the waiter, “What’s a caper?  Tell those assholes it grows on a bush,” and then taking a swig from his bottle of Merlot.

The second the waiter walked away Husband said, “The caper bush?  Is that next to the sauerkraut tree?” and I could feel the creme brulee start to work its way up the back of my throat toward my nose.  But I deflected it with a gulp of coffee so my $10 dessert didn’t have to reach the table a second time and when we got home I googled capers and son of a gun if the chef wasn’t even jerking us around.  It is a bush.

Bossy Street Art is the theme today for Daughter’s Featured Fotos

rolling 1 curb_your_god

curb your god, all of you

rolling 2 smash_something

but feel free to smash something

rolling 3 conform,_consume

while you conform and consume

rolling 4 remember

and don’t forget to remember

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Oceans of Knowledge

Posted on November 4, 2007 by onesanevoice

Today I read Dear Abby in the newspaper and one of the questions was from a 13-year-old who had experienced a traumatic incident in the life of an early adolescent.  She had been cleaning out her fish tank in the kitchen sink and one of her fish slipped down the drain.  The writer was feeling guilt-ridden and responsible for the death of a helpless creature and wanted to know how to deal with these emotions.

The advice columnist responded with solid reassurance that the writer was certainly not the only fish owner this had ever happened to and that she might find some solace in saying a little prayer over the drain and then vowing to be more careful in the future, perhaps by transferring her fish to another container before cleaning out the tank.

When I read this column in the paper today I felt a real emotional tug for the young teen who wrote in with this question since it suggested there might not be anyone present in her life she could talk about it with.  Chances are that if this girl doesn’t have an adult to get dead fish absolution from she also has no one to talk to about sex or the changes in her body or people in her life or school who might be giving her trouble or behaving inappropriately.  The fact that my mother was someone I could talk to about anything made me even sadder that this kid didn’t seem to have one of those moms.

I remember when I was in junior high and I was walking through a park with a close friend and she asked me what I knew about masturbation.  I gave her my best explanation which is pretty much the information I would give today.  She asked me where I found all this out and I told her I had asked my mother and we had a long talk about it.  My friend said she could never talk about sex with her mother, it would be too embarrassing.  I asked her why she would be embarrassed and she said, “Not me.  My mother.”

Whether this was actually the case or if my friend was projecting her own reluctance onto her mother or if she herself grew up to be the kind of mom her kids could talk to or not because they thought she’d be embarrassed will never be known.  The important thing is I knew the safety of knowing where to bring my fears and questions as a child and in turn made sure my kids knew where to bring theirs.  Whatever other mistakes I made as a parent, and I’m sure there were many, I always tried to make certain this was not one of them.

Right below Dear Abby were the horoscopes for the day and here was mine:  Trust what you know.  Then relax and settle into your own point of view.  You don’t need to persuade anyone to see the world your way.  Convince yourself.  That’s enough.

I liked that because no matter how old we are and how much we’ve tried to do all the important things right, every once in a while it’s nice to feel assured we’ve done the best we can and it really is enough.

Let’s stay on that page and call Daughter’s Featured Fotos today Evocative

oceans 1 street_sale

street sale

oceans 2 balloon_princess

glory days

oceans 3 language_is_worth_a_thousand_pounds_a_word

language is worth a thousand pounds a word

oceans 4 Stella!!!1

stella!!!!!

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Take Me Away, eBay

Posted on October 31, 2007 by onesanevoice

There is no better friend to the insomniac than a place where anyone anywhere can sell anything anytime.  And where there is someone selling, there is someone buying, or as the case may be, bidding.  It’s like being at a poker game in your jammies with Conan in the background.  If there were a way to suck down fat-free Bailey’s on the rocks while you were doing it we’d be at the edge of perfection.

I have looked in on eBay a hundred and ten times but never have I purchased anything until last week.  When I spotted the page that responded to my Google inquiry I was too excited to even bid on the item I had found for fear I might lose it to a higher bidder.  So I took a deep breath and hit Buy It Now! with full knowledge that I was overpaying but in the end things are really only worth how much we want them and then all bets, and bids, are off.

The treasure I had found was a complete service for six (including the spoons!) of flatware from the 1940s with Bakelite handles in the most delicious butterscotch color imaginable.  In case you don’t know or don’t care, I’ll just tell you briefly that Bakelite is a very collectible vintage plastic that was produced in the first half of the 20th century and was used for campy costume jewelry and kitchen utensils among many other things.  The colors have yummy descriptive names like creamed corn, apple juice, pumpkin and root beer to name a few.  There are actually chemical tests to do on an item to determine if it is real Bakelite.  Were it not for the serious insanity of die-hard collectors, the fact that there is a test to ensure authenticity would be funny considering we’re talking about PLASTIC.

The set arrived on Saturday and it was even more indescribable than described.  Husband watched me carefully unpack the 24 pieces and lay them out on the counter.

HUSBAND:  I can see how happy these forks make you.  What are you going to do with them?

OSV:  I’m going to set the table with them.

HUSBAND:  What about the forks we already have?

OSV:  These will take their place.

HUSBAND:  You want me to eat with orange plastic utensils?

OSV:  Of course not.  They’re butterscotch Bakelite.

I couldn’t find a buyer for this idea (or even a bidder) so I cleared out the drawer next to the current flatware which wasn’t a bad idea either since my kids are in their twenties and probably won’t be using those sippy cups anymore.  I called Husband into the kitchen to view our two silverware drawers side-by-side.

HUSBAND:  It looks like we’re Kosher.

OSV:  You sure you don’t want to just try eating with them once?

HUSBAND:  Depends.  What are we having for dinner?

We stood there looking at each other realizing it was five o’clock on a Saturday and we had two sets of flatware and no food to eat with them.  So we went to the diner where I had a burger deluxe which was excellent.  The fork, however, was painfully ordinary.

Taken on a visit to Chelsea’s art galleries, Daughter’s Featured Fotos depict images of Patiently Waiting

take me away 1 the_dementia_line

for direction on the dementia line

take me away 2 mid_sentence_explosion

for a breaking story

take me away 3 postcards_from_dead_relatives

for postcards from dead relatives

take me away 4 waiting_for_hitchcock

for hitchcock

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But Then I’d Have to Kill You

Posted on October 27, 2007 by onesanevoice

There’s a teacher at my school who I sometimes chat with between classes while she has a smoke in the parking lot.  I normally avoid people while they’re smoking because I’m a long-ago reformed smoker whose father recently died of lung cancer and it’s just bad for me all around.  But she apologizes and I stand away so we make it work.  She’s much younger than me and I got a lot out of her class last semester as well as liking her as a person.

It’s hard to like someone and know they have young children and not tell them they’re setting the stage for tragedy by sucking in smoke but it isn’t like they don’t already know that.  Smoking is the most insidious of addictions.  Calling it a habit is subconsciously trivializing it like maybe it could be confused with misplacing your keys all the time or saying ‘you know’ at the end of every sentence.  But no one ever had to get chemo for losing their keys, you know?

Husband successfully stopped smoking earlier this year after many sincere and gut-wrenching efforts and it feels like a huge cloud has been lifted from over our heads.  He had tried everything from the patch to the lozenge to gum to herbal cigarettes and so forth and I would tell you what actually worked if I could but it’s a secret.  It’s not my secret because I would tell you if I knew.  I just don’t know.  He’s not talking.  He said it might not work if he talked about it so it’s his secret and I can’t even tell Caryn who I tell everything but that’s never been a problem because she and I are very good with secrets.

If you don’t have one friend you tell everything to you have my sympathy.  If you go to Confession that’s probably just as good so raise your hand if you go to Confession.  I thought so.  I doubt any priest is going to tell you what your best friend will — that the person you retaliated against had it coming.  That you are the true caped crusader of goodness and to reward your cosmic sense of justice they are sending you this hilarious forward:

but then 1 ive_been_thinking65

This has no relevance to wonderful Husband but that does not diminish its hilarity.  Marital humor is timeless and need not apply to real life.  Also, I wish I had those shoes.  If you are female, the person you spill your guts to is also the person you buy shoes with.  This is as trusted a position as keeper of secrets because no woman wants to hear she has too many black sandals.  Caryn is very busy and cannot go shoe shopping with you but if you need to release the darkness from your soul to a trusted listener I will give you her number.  And after she tells me, your secret is safe.

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Wild Grannies Can’t Be Broken

Posted on October 23, 2007 by onesanevoice

Over the weekend we went to our friends’ wedding and on the way a fellow guest we gave a ride to told some memorable stories about her Irish grandmother.  Husband and I shared reminiscences about our equally colorful Jewish grandmothers and now it’s later in the week and I’m still thinking about mine.  Three years ago I lost both my parents and my grandmother (see Ghosts In My Head) and none of them are ever far from my thoughts.

How someone as sweet and nurturing as my Mom could have been the offspring of my tenacious, headstrong grandmother is a mystery.  I’m trying to think who to compare my Mom to so you get a mental image and all I can come up with is Edith Bunker in the best way imaginable, just go light on the dingbat antics but leave enough in to make it endearing.

For my 4’10” tall grandmother, think Ruth Gordon in every movie role she ever played from the wacky eccentric in Where’s Poppa? to the life-loving elder in Harold and Maude right down to the clever criminal in a vintage Columbo.  They were similar in lifespan as well, both living to near 100.  Despite her lengthy and successful career, Ruth Gordon didn’t win an Oscar until she was 72.  In her acceptance speech she thanked the Academy saying, “I can’t tell you how encouraging a thing like this is for a young actress like myself.”  It was sly and funny and exactly what my grandmother would have said.

One of the stories I shared in the car was about a day back in the 1970s when my grandmother was also in her 70s working alone in the country road store she owned and operated for decades.  An edgy young customer came in and leaned forward against the counter she was standing behind.  In response to her offer of service he said, “Just give me all the money in the drawer.”  Her first reaction being ‘not on your life’ she said, “And why should I do that?”  Because, he told her, he had a gun.  “Show me,” demanded Grandma.  No doubt startled, the jumpy young guy said, “You don’t need to see it, just take my word for it.”  And with that he thumped his pocketed hand against the front of the counter.

My grandmother said by that point she was really annoyed.  “That could be anything in your pocket,” she informed him.  “You need to show it to me.”  The young thug raised his voice and shouted for her to get all the cash out of the register RIGHT NOW!  My grandmother turned the key in the register lock, pulled it out, and threw it over the guy’s head down the canned goods aisle.  She leaned over the counter and said in his face, “You want my money so bad you can go get it.”

Two of her regular customers pulled up in a truck and the guy bolted out as they entered.  The customers insisted on calling the police.  My grandmother said not to bother, he wouldn’t be back.  It was one of these customers who told me he retrieved the register key from the canned goods aisle or I might have had doubts about the accuracy of my grandmother’s account.  But then again, probably not.

Some people make you feel instantly comfortable and they’re usually the people who are comfortable with themselves.  So let’s have Daughter’s Featured Fotos today be all about Looking Comfy.

grannies 1 pants_of_tiles

pants of tiles

grannies 2 camel_toes

snuggly camel toes

grannies 3 metal_man_crawling_on_wires

metal man crawling on wires

grannies 4 foam_rubber

ahh, foam rubber

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Those old time Billboard blues

Posted on October 19, 2007 by onesanevoice

When I was a teenager and had occasion to leave my room and join the rest of the household, my parents would sometimes have the radio on or a record playing.  Invariably, what would hit my ears would be Tony Bennett or Frank Sinatra singing a song composed by Cole Porter, Irving Berlin or the Gershwins.  I could never understand what the big deal was to just sing a song you didn’t write.  My generation’s musical legacy was to be the creators as well as the performers of their original works.  That was talent.

True, the Motown sound was manufactured for the boy and girl groups of the 60s, groups like the Supremes and the Temptations, the Ronettes and the Four Tops.  But no one else covered their songs as a general rule; the songs were identified with them and their style.  None of the British invasion groups adopted a Sam Cook song as their anthem.  That just wasn’t how the game, or the music, was played.

Musicians of the early rock era like Buddy Holly were too busy creating their own sound and changing the course of popular music to either pay tribute or bite off the fame of others.  Further down the road of rock there were two hit versions of Layla, one fast and one slow.  And Clapton did them both.  One of the few exceptions to the singer as songwriter phenomenon was Elvis, who managed to straddle both worlds by being an updated version of the old time song stylists as well as a pioneer in performance showmanship.  There’s also no mold to fit Dylan into with his slyly brilliant lyrics, strange presence and voice that sang notes no one could put down on paper or get out of their head.

I awoke from the past one day to hear my own teenagers discussing cover bands, groups that sang the hits of others exclusively.  And they were okay with that.  Rock had become egalitarian.  When did this happen, I wondered.  I mean outside of wedding bands and Beatles instrumentals in elevators.

Now I notice remakes everywhere.  My most cherished memories appear before me clothed for current times sung by people whose parents hadn’t met yet when I listened to them the first time around.  Joni Mitchell’s signature Big Yellow Taxi presented anew by Counting Crows with Vanessa Carlton.  Michael Buble bringing the word ‘crooner’ back with the same sex appeal and promise of romance it had in a time less hurried and complex.

Yesterday on my car radio, I heard Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds sing his recent cover of James Taylor’s Fire and Rain, possibly the most depressing song on the planet.  Of all the James Taylor songs he could have redone – Handy Man, Sweet Baby James, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight – Babyface walked right by all of them and picked the ‘I’m an addict in an asylum with my career in ruins and my friend just committed suicide’ one.  If I wasn’t driving, you could just pass me a bowl of Seconal and a spoon.

For your listening pleasure, here is some crooning courtesy of Michael Buble.  Because when I walked out of my room 35 years ago and entered the rest of the house, this is where I came in.

Daughter’s Featured Fotos tell us that If we listen, we can hear. . .

billboard 1 subway_station_23rd

the underground world

billboard 2 national_bears_israel

the bears’ national anthems

billboard 3 howl_festival___art_in_tompkins_sq_pk

the howl art festival in tompkins square park

billboard 4 line_of_shit

this line of shit

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